judge

I'm not sure if this belongs in GRD but .....
I was watching a discovery channel program and it mentioned the ancient egyptian belief in "resurrection in the afterlife"

Was this idea prevalent prior to it's appearance in the bible?

And what did it entail?

rocwrestler

Yes, resurrection and the thought of afterlife go as far back as early mesopotamia civilizations. The idea of one God and a life after death is written about in earliest assyrian civilizations. The story of the Great Flood is also mentioned in several civilizations but is to believed to be based upon an old assyrian account of a simple man very similiar to Noah.

rocwrestler

Oh, and i forgot to mention that even the neanderthol prepared its dead for an afterlife. Of all Gods creatures only man realizes that he will die. Thats what separates us from the other species on earth.

Heathen Dawn

Ever wonder why the Egyptians buried their dead with material possessions? Because of that belief of corporeal resurrection.

judge

Yes...does mumuification indicate they expected to be resurrected in exactly the same body?

Or in the same body transformed?

Marduk

Who knows, Egyptian theology is very confusing and contradictory. The person, at death, split in three; the body, which was mummified & preserved and given food & such for its afterlife here, the spirit and the soul. All going someplace different. The soul went to the sky to be with Osiris, I don’t recall where the spirit went, I think it was to some idealized version of life on Earth.

Amos

Metamorphosis is native to mankind and prior to religion. Religion is just a theory to develop a tradition out of which the afterlife emerges in or among its members.