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{en} God, Self, and Death: The Shape of Religious Transformation in the Second Temple Period (2003) is a book by Shannon Burkes.

Abstract

"This volume considers the emerging Jewish interest in an afterlife during the second temple period in relation to developing views of the deity and the self. In some circles God is understood as increasingly distant from the human sphere, and so justice must occur in another world or after death; at the same time, more autonomous constructions of the self in response to community breakdown suggest that reward and punishment come not only collectively, but also on the individual level in a post-mortem realm. The book traces the interconnections between these themes in Job and Ecclesiastes, Ben Sira and Daniel, then Wisdom of Solomon and 4 Ezra, crossing genre boundaries in an attempt to offer a more encompassing historical investigation."--Publisher description.

"This project explores the connection between a growing Jewish belief in the afterlife, new conceptions of the deity as less involved in the present human world, and a growing interest in the individual's fate apart from that of the community."

Editions and translations

Published in Leiden: Brill, 2003 (Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, 79).

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 1. Job and Qoheleth
• 2. Ben Sira and Daniel
• 3. Wisdom of Solomon and 4 Ezra
• Conclusion

External links

• Google Books (partial text)