Antiquitopia

I was reading a bit of Leviticus Rabbah and found a gem of a passage: R. Judan b. R. Simeon said:  Behemoth and the Leviathan are to engage in a wild-beast contest before the righteous in the Time to Come, and whoever has not been a spectator at the wild-beast contests of the heathen nations in this world will be accorded the boon of seeing one of the World to come. (Leviticus Rabbah 13.3) How cool is that?  Behemoth vs. Leviathan--the great, untamable beasts described at the end of Job!  Come one, come all for this once in an afterlife-time event!  It is like King Kong versus Godzilla!  It is also an interesting view of the afterlife:  it is compensation for this life.  By giving up the animal fights of the arena in this life (reference to Roman practices), one gets to the see the ultimate beast-fight in the world to come.  (Leviticus Rabbah, by the way, predicts that they will kill each other in this contest.)

So...in addition to the last post (in which one person's heaven is another's hell), in this the afterlife is very individualized: It's all very personal! Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! oh no!

So yesterday we learned that life is a job, and God will pay you 14.50 a day. After this, you have to pay for your sins...in cash. If you have any leftover, you go to heaven; if not, you have to be born again. Today, we will continue with our afterlife theme and learn what heaven is like...according to Angels in America: To remind everyone that one person's hell is another person's heaven; and vice versa.

This is how I plan to start off my Life after Death class next year: You have to pay for your sins...in cash!

Next Spring, I will be teaching a special topics course at Illinois Wesleyan University on "Life after Death." Firstly, I will get to continue next year at Illinois Wesleyan! Secondly, the very fact I am teaching this course is an homage to my late advisor, Alan Segal, whose major book on Life after Death will serve as the basis for the class. (Painting: William Blake)