PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF REVERSAL: KERYGMATIC ...

Eusebius, Evangelical Preparation 15.20.6
They [Stoics] say that the soul is both generated and mortal. But it is not immediately
destroyed upon being separated from the body. Rather it remains for some time by
itself – that of the diligent remains until the dissolution of all things by fire; and that
of the foolish remains only for a limited time. About the endurance of the soul they
say this: that we ourselves remain as souls which have been separated from the body
and have been changed into the lesser substance of the soul; whereas the souls of
irrational beings are destroyed along with their bodies.
It would certainly be too simplistic, then, to claim that a “Greek” notion of the afterlife in the
first century generally involved the liberation of the soul into utopian immortality. Greco-
Roman understandings of corporeality, immortality and the afterlife in the first century were
clearly varied.
Judaism of the period also tolerated a degree of diversity. Alongside beliefs in bodily
resurrection (exhibited in 2 Maccabees, for example), was a range of Jewish beliefs about the
immortality of the soul and the nature of the afterlife.
The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides evidence a Jewish belief in immortality of the soul:
Pseudo-Phocylides, Sentences 105-108
For souls remain unharmed in those who have perished. For the spirit is God’s loan
to mortals, and his image. For we have a body from the earth; and then after we are
released to earth again, we are dust. But the air receives the spirit.
115
The soul is immortal and ageless, living forever.
Likewise, the Wisdom of Solomon envisages the afterlife as involving immortal souls:
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