Transience, Transcendence, and Timelessness: Insights from Early Jewish Literature

Religion has had a highly influential impact on the human understanding of death. In this context, inter alia, biblical texts have expounded the notion that death is not to be feared because of a divine promise of a transcendent, paradisical and timeless existence beyond the grave. Anthropologists such as Bronisław Malinowski have gone as far as to suggest that religion only originated as a direct consequence of belief systems that were designed specifically to reduce and/or overcome this universal fear of death.

Accordingly, Transience, Transcendence and Timelessness: Insights into Early Jewish Literature proposes to explore the mortality of humans and their hope for future life from an ancient Jewish perspective