While the Talmud and other rabbinic texts have much to say—although much of it lacking in specifics—about postmortem reward and punishment and resurrection, these topics are largely absent from the Tanakh. One thing that is clear from the latter, notes Jeremiah Unterman, is that attempts to communicate with the dead are definitively pagan. In conversation with Dru Johnson, Unterman discusses biblical ideas about death, the contrast between these and the attitudes of other ancient Near Eastern peoples, and why Second Temple-era Jewish texts take a different approach. (Audio, 39 minutes.)
More about: Afterlife, ancient Judaism, Hebrew Bible