Madigan and Levenson have woven three purposes in to this exploration of the earliest expressions of the idea of bodily resurrection in Jewish and Christian religion. At the core of the book is the history of how the resurrection doctrine evolved from biblical ideas through the Second Temple and Talmudic/early Christian eras. Linked to this is an argument that bodily resurrection is in fact a core belief of rabbinic Judaism. Finally, as a Christian and a Jewish scholar writing together, Madigan and Levenson present resurrection as a doctrine common to the “classical form” of both religions, even though the meaning of resurrection is entirely different for Jews and Christians.
The history is the bulk of the book, and its most carefully executed dimension. The authors note that for most of the Hebrew Bible, life and death represent more than biological realities. Life is a social concept, encompassing family well-being, prosperity, and security as a nation on God’s promised land. Without these, an individual or the nation of Israel as a whole could experience itself as “dead.” When the prophets spoke of God restoring the “dead” to “life,” they spoke literally. When later on this logic was extended to individuals, resurrection still retained its collective and spiritual character — the individual brought to life with others in spiritual perfection, through Christ or Am Yisrael.
At times the book seems to be trying to jar modern readers into accepting the importance of resurrection as a core doctrine, particularly for Jews. The authors implicitly denigrate the alternative idea of the timelessness of the soul. This part of their argument crops up in several places and is hurried. While the authors state that resurrection means very different things to Jews and Christians, they do not explore how the connections and differences might factor into interfaith dialogue. Still, the core of the book provides subtle readings of important biblical passages relating to life and death, and is extremely helpful to anyone looking to understand resurrection and immortality in Judaism. General index, index of primary sources, notes.
