The three major Middle Eastern religions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are fundamentally connected in terms of their history and eschatological beliefs. All three are indebted to the now mostly extant religion of Zoroastrianism as a major source of those beliefs.
Eschatological themes likely originated in the Middle East through the Zoroastrian religion in Persia. In other religions, existence was usually assumed to end or become insubstantial at death. Zoroastrian developed a consistent and systematic set of beliefs concerning an afterlife that influenced later religions, including major themes of a final judgment and of a final place of bliss and reward for the righteous while consigning the wicked to torment and punishment (Hopfe, 231).
Early Jewish beliefs, in contrast, was a temporal religion, focusing on the here and now, with few eschatological elements. Blessings came from obedience to God’s will …show more content…
For the Jews, it was possibly first when Cyrus the Great liberated them from Babylonian captivity (Hopfe, 235). As the Jewish people were brought into further contact with the Gentile nations, through their repeated captivities, they began to incorporate some of the host nations concepts of an afterlife into their own body of beliefs. Thus, later prophets spoke of a judgement of the righteous and the wicked, as for example in Daniel 7. When the Jewish people were conquered by the Romans, there was an increasing need to find reconciliation between the Gentile beliefs and their own, and present their own beliefs as compatible with those of their neighbors. Thus some Jewish writers, such as Philo of Alexandria, sought to combine the elements into the framework of Jewish beliefs, developing more extensive notions of a World to Come, and emphasizing similarities between Jewish belief and those of the
Eschatological themes likely originated in the Middle East through the Zoroastrian religion in Persia. In other religions, existence was usually assumed to end or become insubstantial at death. Zoroastrian developed a consistent and systematic set of beliefs concerning an afterlife that influenced later religions, including major themes of a final judgment and of a final place of bliss and reward for the righteous while consigning the wicked to torment and punishment (Hopfe, 231).
Early Jewish beliefs, in contrast, was a temporal religion, focusing on the here and now, with few eschatological elements. Blessings came from obedience to God’s will …show more content…
For the Jews, it was possibly first when Cyrus the Great liberated them from Babylonian captivity (Hopfe, 235). As the Jewish people were brought into further contact with the Gentile nations, through their repeated captivities, they began to incorporate some of the host nations concepts of an afterlife into their own body of beliefs. Thus, later prophets spoke of a judgement of the righteous and the wicked, as for example in Daniel 7. When the Jewish people were conquered by the Romans, there was an increasing need to find reconciliation between the Gentile beliefs and their own, and present their own beliefs as compatible with those of their neighbors. Thus some Jewish writers, such as Philo of Alexandria, sought to combine the elements into the framework of Jewish beliefs, developing more extensive notions of a World to Come, and emphasizing similarities between Jewish belief and those of the