Neil Gillman (1933–2017)

This is an interesting book that expounds a very liberal Jewish viewpoint. In this liberal Jewish view, Torah, or the Bible, is not the literal "word" of God, but rather the human understanding of God, written by our ancestors in a metaphorical form.

I was raised in the Reform Jewish religion, then, as an adult, became a born-again Christian so I went from a very liberal concept about God and religion to a very conservative view. In the past few years, I have been studying the Jewish religion and have come to appreciate many things about it that I did not learn while growing up in it.

One interesting statement from this book is the author's interpretation of the verse from the Shema - the phrase "On that day, the Lord will be One and His name shall be One". According to the author, "On that day", refers to the end of days, the age of the Messiah, and for the Lord to be One and His name to be One means that the entire world will acknowledge God.

I also found it interesting that the author refers to Jonah as the only successful prophet in the Bible. I had not thought of it that way before.

The author shares that in the Jewish religion, the Bible is not the final authority on doctrine, but rather tradition plays a large part as well. Judaism does not have creeds and no one has the final word - everything can be argued. When I left the Jewish religion years ago, that was one thing that I disliked about it. I felt that it made the religion pointless if there was not an "answer", and everything could be argued. I was thrilled, as a born again Christian to find that Christ is the answer to everything. Now, I am also appreciating the more Jewish view that God's ways are not our ways and we really cannot truely understand Him and, in my opinion, those who claim to know the exact answers and truth are, many times, deluded or deceived.

The author states that "Judaism is the only religion in which study is equivalent to worship." He shares that ha-satan, refered to in Job, means the satan, not "Satan" as a proper name and that the Jewish view of the satan is not the same as the Christian view in that in the Jewish view, the satan does not act independantly from God, but rather co-operates with God.

I find Gillman's understanding of what it means for Jews to be the "chosen people" refreshingly different. He explains that just as we might chose an apple from a bowl of mixed fruit , that does not mean that we might not chose a pear another day nor does it imply that the apple is superior to the pear and all of the other fruit. He states that "the doctrine of Israel as God's chosen people is Israel's self-perception, not God's own perception of Israel. No human being knows objectively what God wants, feels, or does. God transcends human understanding."

Rabbi Gillman presents the liberal Jewish view that the Bible is man's word, man's understanding of God and the world. He shows how some Christian viwes are based on those of the Jewish religion and how some Jewish beliefs are influenced from the Greek philosophy that also influences the Christian religion. For example, the concept of an immortal soul, which is one concept that some Jews believe, originated in Greek philosophy.

This is an interesting and insightful book.… (more)

In the Death of Death, Conservative Jewish theologian Neil Gillman writes a history of the development of Jewish views about the afterlife. He begins by explaining that what Orthodox Jews consider history is in fact simply "myth." Gillman is quite clear that he does not believe that God revealed His word to His special people, but that Judaism is rather the result of some men grasping to understand God. He affirms belief in God and believes that God has sown knowledge of Himself throughout his creation, but to believe that God has revealed Himself to man is to engage in idolatry. This position is much more assumed than demonstrated.

Most of the rest of the book is a much more straightforward presentation of the history of Jewish views on the afterlife. Like most scholars, Gillman finds little evidence of firm views on any kind of afterlife in the earlier books of the Old Testament. His review of the relevant passages is informative as he traces an increased concern for the afterlife, culminating in the affirmation of bodily resurrection. Although Gillman entertains the possibility that foreign influence was at least partly responsible for the development of resurrection belief, he seems to lean towards it being a natural outgrowth of core Jewish belief.

As we move beyond the Old Testament, Gillman continues tracing Jewish beliefs, noting the introduction of the concept of the immortality of the spirit. His use of sources is somewhat less helpful here. Although Jewish sources are reviewed proficiently, he gives insufficient attention to first century Christian sources. While lamenting a lack of sources about the Pharisees - and dismissing the Torah as a credible source for their beliefs - he gives short shrift to valuable Christian sources from the time period, such as Paul's letters and Acts.

Gillman then charts the "Canonization" of bodily resurrection in Jewish thought through the Talmud and into the Middle Ages. He spends an entire chapter on Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher whom he credits with moving Judaism away from bodily resurrection to an emphasis on spiritual resurrection. Thereafter, he discusses the mystics, who also played a role in spiritualizing Jewish afterlife belief. Add in the Enlightenment and Jewish intellectual, though not religious, assimilation into modern Europe, and the Reform and Conservative Judaism of the 19th century has largely abandoned bodily resurrection, once the cornerstone of its faith, in favor of spiritual immortality, the hallmark of Judaism's long-time competitor, Greek philosophy. Little space is given to the Orthodox.

But Gillman's book is not just about history, it is about the present. He sees a return to an emphasis on bodily resurrection in Reform and Conservative Judaism, though still couched in terms such as "symbol" and "myth." The return to an emphasis on bodily resurrection is explained well as a return to Judaism's emphasis on God's concern for the present life and his power to shape our futures. But as with the author's own apparent re-embrace of bodily resurrection, it is unclear just what is meant. It is accepted, but only as "myth" and "symbol." To Gilman, to believe it is literally true is to "trivialize" God. This assertion, like the one that to believe God revealed His word to Moses is to engage in anti-Jewish idolatry, are disappointingly conclusory. It comes across more as one mired in quasi-naturalistic assumptions than a rigorous theological or even philosophical conclusion.

The history in the book, with the exception of neglecting Christian sources and the knowledge they can shed on Second Temple Jewish afterlife beliefs, is well presented. Gillman ably covers 3,000 years of Jewish attitudes on the afterlife. Also well presented is the reasoning behind certain shifts in beliefs and the leading thinkers behind those shifts. The book, however, is steeped in the author's less-than-adequately-explained use of terms such as "symbol" and "myth" and "literal," that left this reader at times wondering just what it is that was really believed. Put another way, what do you really believe if you say you believe in bodily resurrection but only as a "symbol" and not as a "literal" redemption? In what way does that give hope and affirm God's goodness and value for the present human condition? There may be answers to these questions but I did not find them in this book.… (more)