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The belief in a…

The belief in a future age when the righteous who had passed from this world would be resurrected to enjoy eternal bliss in a new and wonderful universal earthly kingdom of God, while the wicked would receive the punishment they had escaped before death, first took shape in the last centuries of Israel’s biblical history.

A. Melinek, “The Doctrine of Reward and Punishment in Biblical and Early Rabbinic Writings,” in Essays Presented to Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. H.J. Zimmels, J. Rabbinowitz, & I. Finestein (London: The Soncino Press Limited, 1967), 281.