These Psalms do not explain how this will happen. The Psalmist, led by the Spirit, only hopes that there is a different outcome for man than the one depicted by Ecclesiastes. Salvation from Sheol is brought by the One who holds in His hands the keys of life and death.

6. The Apocalypse of Isaiah (24-27). The first Revelation of the resurrection of the dead is found in the Apocalypse of Isaiah, which was written by one of the prophets of his school in the middle of the fourth century.

At that time, the rise of Macedonia began. King Philip, Alexander's father, was preparing for great campaigns of conquest. Revolts and unrest undermined the Iranian Akhmenid monarchy, weakened by the war with Greece. Egypt and Phoenicia were separated from the Persians.

The Apocalypse of Isaiah does not refer directly to these events. He speaks of the inner essence of history and, as it were, divides the world into two poles: on the one – the pagan kingdoms built on violence, on the other – the city of salvation, the ideal Jerusalem. The forces rebelling against God are personified by the prophet as monsters of Chaos. They rage like an angry sea, but the day of judgment is near, when the dark elements will be finally defeated:

On that Day the Lord will smite with His sword heavy, and big, and strong, Leviathan, a serpent running straight, and Leviathan, the bending serpent, And he will kill the monster of the sea. (Isaiah 27:1)

The death of the sons of Chaos will mean the end of the era of resistance to God. Satan's dark world will be destroyed in the final eschatological battle (Is 26:14).

The Church of the faithful, having passed the purifying path of sorrows, will rise in triumph.

The prophet also speaks of the end of death itself (25:8). The sword of the Lord will destroy the gates of hell; The faithful will find not only the immortality of the spirit, but also new life in all its fullness:

THY DEAD SHALL LIVE; dead bodies will rise! Arise and rejoice, you who are prostrate in the dust; For Thy dew is the dew of plants; and the earth will vomit up the dead. (Isaiah 26:19)

Kn. Genesis considered death not as a norm, but as a result of man's falling away from God. Expelled from Eden into the wilderness, he was deprived of the fruit of the Tree of Life (his direct relationship with the Creator) and was doomed to "return to the dust" from which he was created by God (Gen 3:19). This drama was foreshadowed by the fate of the people of God. When he broke the covenant, he was banished into the wilderness captivity (Hosea 2:14). But after repentance, God resurrected him, as is revealed in Ezekiel's vision of dry bones (Ezekiel 37). The new Revelation already speaks of the resurrection of the whole personality of man.

Greco-Indian religious philosophy considered the body as a prison of the spirit. In the divinely revealed teaching, the duality of human nature is part of the original plan of the Creator. In the very act of creation, man is placed on the verge of two worlds – the visible and the invisible. Through Adam, nature, matter, is united with spirit, which marks the pledge of the transfiguration of all creation (the'osis). The coming Kingdom of God is not a world of spirit alone, but a new Eden, a new heaven and a new earth, which are given to the resurrected and renewed humanity (Is 11:6-9; Revelation 21:1).

It has often been asserted that the earliest Old Testament testimony to the general resurrection of the dead is found in the writings of the second century (2 Maccabees, Daniel). In fact, this Revelation was given two centuries earlier, in the Apocalypse of Isaiah.

The belief in the resurrection of the dead did not receive Church-wide recognition immediately: between the 90s and 60s of the second century B.C. And even later, in the Gospel era, the Sadducees regarded it as an inadmissible innovation.

Review Questions