Jewish Beliefs on the Afterlife

Abstract

That the Christian belief in the resurrection is related to Jewish eschatological ideas is impossible to gainsay. This is a fact. But this fact does not by itself explain why this belief succeeded in the first Christian centuries. Jews were clearly visible in most larger communities during this period, but visibility does not equal influence. That their religion was widely known does not mean that their tenets were widely accepted. That Christianity first reached Jewish communities cannot explain either how this new religion was accepted by the Greeks.