Endnotes

1.

In more relaxed mode, however, some ancient Greek burial customs provided not only basic necessities for the hereafter, but also toys and games, and in some special cases, slaves and even wives.

2.

Passages such as Job 19:25–27, which in the King James Version seems to predict bodily resurrection more solidly than the Hebrew warrants, may have gained this meaning when read in the Septuagint.

3.

Philo, On the Giants 14.

4.

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1–3, often quoted as supporting “immortality,” must be read in the context of 1:16–3:9. The speech of “the wicked” (2:1–20) is intended as a classic statement of the pagan denial of resurrection; 3:7–9 is the answer. At the moment, the righteous souls are in God’s hand, but a new day is coming in which they will rule the world.

5.

It is thus misleading to describe this view as “a resolute view of death as resurrection,” as does Jon Davies, in Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 122.