Acquiesce to Righteousness

BCE that there arose a belief in an afterlife, in which the dead would be resurrected and
undergo divine judgment. Before that time, the individual had to be content that his
posterity continued within the holy nation.
The salvation of the individual Jew was connected to the salvation of the entire people.
This belief stemmed directly from the teachings of the Torah. In the Torah, God taught
his people sanctification of the individual. However, he also expected them to function
together (spiritually) and be accountable to one another. The concept of salvation was
tied to that of restoration for Israel.
During the Second Temple Period, the Sadducees, High Priests, denied any particular
existence of individuals after death because it wasn't written in the Torah, while the
Pharisees, ancestors of the rabbis, affirmed both bodily resurrection and immortality of
the soul, most likely based on the influence of Hellenistic ideas about body and soul and
the Pharisaic belief in the Oral Torah. The Pharisees maintained that after death, the
soul is connected to God until the messianic era when it is rejoined with the body in the
land of Israel at the time of resurrection.
Christianity
Christianity’s primary premise is that the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ formed
the climax of a divine plan for humanity’s salvation. This plan was conceived by God
consequent on the Fall of Adam, the progenitor of the human race, and it would be
completed at the Last Judgment, when the Second Coming of Christ would mark the
catastrophic end of the world.
For Christianity, salvation is only possible through Jesus Christ. Christians believe that
Jesus' death on the cross was the once-for-all sacrifice that atoned for the sin of
humanity.
Page 71 of 127