When and how did the concept of posthumous reward and punishment enter ancient Judaism?

Question

Throughout the Jewish Bible / Christian Old Testament, it's pretty consistently expressed that all people have the same fate after death - although the nature of that fate is sometimes seems to be annihilation and sometimes it seems to be a silent half-existence in the land of the dead.

By the time of the Gospel of Luke - which I understand was probably written the late years of the 1st century, recounting stories from a generation earlier - Jesus is quoted recounting the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. A good poor man and bad rich man die and are sent to posthumous reward and punishment respectively. This - plus a lack of any wording which indicates that this was a new and surprising idea - suggests to me that the idea of posthumous reward and punishment was already common by then.

Is it known or hypothesized when and how this idea entered Judaism?

Answer 1

The concept the question is referring to is called "Sheol." The word "Sheol" is sometimes translated as "grave," but it's not quite a correct translation. The Sheol concept is developed throughout the Old Testament, from a relatively simple concept to one that had received a lot of development, yet was still not settled "canon" so to speak.

The Old Testament's treatment of Sheol is often contradictory or confusing, usually because the concept is referred to in an oblique sense and may often be the subject of comparison for another topic. In other words, it is rarely the subject of its mention (being a tangential mention or a poetic contrast).

Therefore, one can find passages that describe it in all sorts of ways, including:

• A place of peace.
• A place of no reward.
• A place of rest.
• A place of unrelieved misery.
• A place of deep darkness.
• A place of isolation from God.
• A place of heaven in fellowship with God.
• A place where everyone ends up.
• A place where only certain people end up, and may also be formed into groups.

Each passage has its own context that must be carefully considered. In many if not most cases, the passage is not attempting to define Sheol, but rather use it to examine something else.

In terms of time, a lot of these passages are pre-Exile. The concept of resurrection began to get more treatment after the Exile, and the Book of Daniel from the 2nd century BC attempted to throw a large amount of definition into that concept. In that book, the concept of Sheol is still present, but the resurrection conversation eclipses it. The author of Revelation goes all-in and said there would be one for the notably good and notably bad for each to get their rewards, and also a general one for everyone. The Book of Daniel sparked a wide number of apocalyptic writings for the next two centuries, a phase which largely ended with the New Testament Book of Revelation, and the concept of resurrection and "just rewards" therein was debated extensively.

Early Christians would give the resurrection topic even more concentration, which continues to this day. But even in the time of Jesus, the concept of resurrection was not settled in Jewish circles: Sadducees dismissed it as having no secure authority in the Old Testament, while Pharisees accepted it (which is notable because they were quite legalistic). Jesus did not dwell much on the topic Himself (despite being pressed for information): He preferred to circle the conversation around to the here-and-now application of the ministry.

This answer is a digest of the following sources:

H.H. Rowley. The Faith of Israel. Aspects of Old Testament Thought. The Westminster Press. 1956.

H.H. Rowley. The Relevance of Apocalyptic. Lutterworth Press. 1963.