It is idle to look for the origin of this belief in any one series of influences. For many generations poets and philosophers had swung themselves in bolder and bolder imagery up to the Deity, which they, as Jews, conceived in so intense and personal a fashion. Very many passages in the Bible have seemed to imply a belief in personal immortality and resurrection, and perhaps do imply such a belief. Nor is it necessary to assume that these passages are of late origin. Some of them may be, but one would have to be very certain of the limitations of poetic exaltation to say just what definite background of belief metaphor and hyperbole demand. We shall not go far wrong if we assume that even before the Exile, individual thinkers had conceived, perhaps even preached, the dogma of personal immortality. Its general acceptance among the people occurred in the period previously mentioned. Its official authorization took place much later in the final triumph of Pharisaism.
Personal immortality and resurrection of the body are kindred, but not identical, conceptions. Of the two, resurrection is probably the older, and resurrection, we may note, implies a real suspension of personality, when the body is dissolved in death. But the body may be recombined, and, when that occurs, the personal life is renewed. The exact time must have been very differently conceived by different men. A great many, however, had already very definite fancies—one can hardly say beliefs—as to the great day that would deliver the souls from Sheol. That such a great day would come, on which the whole cosmos would be permanently readjusted, is the essence of all eschatology. It was only natural that all other hopes of the people should tend to be combined with it; and of these hopes the principal one was the Messianic hope.
It is obvious that no adequate discussion of the development of this hope can be given here, even if our fragmentary sources permitted such discussion. The most that can be done is to state the situation briefly. It is all the more important, as the Messianic idea was the source of the most powerful political movements among the people, and the direct occasion of at least one of the desperate insurrections of the Jews.