Judgment of the dead
Judgment of the dead (or judgment of the hereafter ) describes the religious conception according to which the human being is placed before a divine or otherworldly body that judges his or her lifestyle. This can happen immediately after death or already during lifetime ( eschatologically ), in some religions in both ways. The assessment is mostly based on ethical standards. However, social criteria or death rituals can also play a role. In a broader sense, the term refers to all selection processes that a person has to go through after their death. Often the judgment of the dead coincides with the last judgment at the end of the world.
Essential basic terms and concepts
The forms of the judgment of the dead and the associated conceptions of the afterlife reflect a certain understanding of the world. The following concepts and influencing factors are essential:
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Primary influencing variables (often combined with one another)
- Ancestor cult in which the idea of a continuum of this world and the hereafter predominates.
- Cult of the dead and funeral cult . One speaks of the cult of the dead when death itself is the focus of the rites and no longer the relationship to the ancestors. There is a dualism between this world and the hereafter.
- Last judgment with notions of end times ( eschatology ). As a rule, one imagines the world to be linear (rarely cyclical), at the end of which there is the judgment of the dead.
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Religious and cosmological concepts
- Death and immortality
- Relationship between this world and the hereafter , between the underworld / realm of the dead and heaven
- Ideas of god / gods, spirits and demons
- Ideas of karma , grace , guilt , salvation , predestination , etc.
The more philosophical concepts such as the worldview , ethics and morals , conscience and free will , as well as the notions of responsibility , guilt (ethics) and justice also have an influence . As more social concepts play the social status , the social structure , law and law , v. a. the principle of retribution , and finally the rituals and sacrifices as well as the forms of burial and grave goods play a role.
Judgments of the dead in different religions and cultures
Preliminary remarks
Judgments of the dead and with them the notions of end-time events ( eschatology ) are often a fundamental and complex element of numerous religions. A purely historical description along the time axis only results in loosely connected partial views. Therefore a sociological , phenomenological and anthropological consideration is worthwhile . If one wants to understand a religion's judgment of the dead, one must understand its belief in the hereafter and its ethics.
Fundamental to understanding the concept of the “judgment of the dead” is the idea of justice , which is initially traced back to divine origin. Notions of a restoration of justice in the other world through a judgment of the dead can first be demonstrated in the Mediterranean and Indo-European regions. People are judged based on religious, ethical and social criteria. Injustice committed or suffered is redressed, often in accordance with local legal norms. This occurs in stratified societies with hierarchical claims to power and often goes hand in hand with established religion. The justifications for the respective social order were initially metaphysical, later pseudorational, and useful for those in power.
This gave rise to the problem of theodicy (God's righteousness), which theologians and philosophers are concerned with to this day and which is not solved by any afterlife judgment, namely the problem of why evil has come into the world despite divine omnipotence and so much calamity there despite all sacrifices and prayers causes. In most cases it is not taken into account that good and bad can largely be determined relative to religion, society and culture as an expression of power and interests. In some religions, this divine omniscience and omnipotence appears in its most extreme form as the doctrine of predestination . Nevertheless, etc. was dead court be established here with hell, heaven, the Apocalypse, although this only makes sense if people with a free will and conscience are equipped so they for good or evil decide to. In Eastern religions, however, even the gods are subject to the law of karma . They are only part of an all-embracing cosmic harmony that is to be striven for - especially in Daoism .
The tension between free will (or conscience) including the longing for redemption on the one hand and the divine claims on the other essentially determines the design of the judgments of the dead. According to the legal theorist Hans Kelsen, people look for “absolute justification” in religion and metaphysics. This means, however, that justice must be transferred from this world to a hereafter, whereby a superhuman authority or a deity becomes responsible for absolute justice.
Historical religions
The idea of a judgment of the dead can first be clearly demonstrated in Egyptian mythology . SA Tokarev noted that consoling hopes for a reward in the afterlife were just as lacking in early class societies as they were in the " primitive society " in the early religions. Tokarev saw them as a necessary means to defuse intensifying class antagonisms. The goal of salvation is achieved in three main ways:
- In the oldest forms of belief mainly through magical rituals , e.g. B. in the ancient Egyptian religion and in the ancient mystery cults .
- Later through one's own efforts , usually through the acquisition of esoteric knowledge, asceticism or heroic death, for example in Orphicism , Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam as well as Zoroastrianism, but partly also in the religion of the Teutons ( Valhalla ) and the Greek concepts of Elysion .
- Finally through divine help , for example in Christianity (especially in the doctrine of justification ), in Judaism (especially in the later, post-exilic) and in Islam, which are therefore also called religions of salvation (for Buddhism, which is sometimes included, the motif of divine salvation through grace just not).
These forms are seldom pure. Over the years, mostly mixed forms have emerged from the three main forms, e.g. B. a funeral judgment in Hinduism, Buddhism and the Chinese ancestral religions, predestination and magical rituals in Islam, transmigration of souls in Orphic and Jewish Hasidism , etc. In younger religions we often come across customs from older religious traditions.
The limiting factor in the assessment of older religions is the tradition that is usually only archaeological and its scientific interpretation. In the following, the note “no judgment of the dead”, especially in the case of the early historical religions, does not mean that there actually was none, but only that none of it has been handed down (e.g. with the Phoenicians ). For the pre-classical high cultures, however, more detailed written documents have been preserved, especially in Egypt and Mesopotamia, in other cultures, such as early Vedic Hinduism , there are relevant religious or sacred texts.
Old Egypt
In ancient Egypt, the judgment of the dead, including images of the afterlife, can be demonstrated in detail for the first time. The "idea of a judgment of the dead" already emerged in the Old Kingdom and is attested in the pyramid texts in connection with the royal ascent into heaven . The idea of the judgment of the dead was initially limited to the king ( Pharaoh ) himself and his closest confidants. His invocation represented a danger, as a "request to review the deeds" in the case of the king's misconduct resulted in a negative judgment, which not only prevented the ascension of heaven, but also led to an eternal stay in the "hidden realm of death".
It was only in the course of the Middle Kingdom that the new theological concept of the third level ( Duat ), also in the private sphere, after successful examination by the judgment of the dead, reunited the Ba soul, which appears mainly in the form of a bird, as the bearer of the immortal forces in the hereafter with the body of the Dead, which was therefore to be preserved as a mummy .
The Judgment of the Dead (also Hall of Complete Truth ), which was modified in the New Kingdom and before which every non-royal deceased had to appear, was given canonical regulations and precise framework conditions for the first time . Now every ancient Egyptian knew in advance what “charges” awaited him and life before death could be adapted to the laws of the court of death. The judgment of the dead consisted of a tribunal, led by Osiris , of 42 judges (Gaugötter), some of whom were demonically understood , who decided which Ba souls were allowed to enter the afterlife . If the heart of the deceased and the goddess Maat, symbolized as a feather, were in balance, the deceased had passed the test and was brought by Horus to the throne of Osiris to receive his judgment; if the judgment was negative, the heart was given up to the goddess Ammit for destruction after the Amarna period , and the deceased was threatened with staying in darkness . It was not “innocence” that determined the judgment, but the ability to detach oneself from one's sins .
Beyond beliefs: If you passed the judgment of the dead, you could travel on through the underworld Ta-djeser to the bright place Sechet-iaru . Here the continuation of this life awaited you, with the ushabti doing the work for you. In the realm of the dead, in which one depending on grave goods more or less secure and comfortable living, there was next to the Duat or Nenets ( Against Sky ) the extermination site . There those eaten suffered their punishments and underworld snakes in their pits inflicted their ultimate death. In Christianity, this process corresponds to the practiced conception of hell , which may have penetrated into Christianity from here. Because at least in pre-exilic Judaism there is no such place of punishment, but only a desolate underworld ( Sheol ). Only in the Hellenistic epoch was it supplemented by a penal place Gehenna ; similar in Mesopotamia. The grave was her place of residence as the “ house of eternity ” with a false door to the west as access to the underworld. “Going out during the day”, that is to say, to travel across the sky with the sun god Re on the sun barge and to survive the dangerous night voyage threatened by Apophis , was the reward of the Ba souls or ancestral spirits lingering in the underworld. The fate reserved for the pharaohs after their death was the ascent to the divine circumpolar stars. The judgment of the dead was of great importance to the Egyptians, as was the entire care for the afterlife, since the dead were dependent on food (sacrifice). The underworld, through which the sun barge also drove every night, was perceived as unsafe, a place where numerous dangers threatened, often in the form of animal demons.
Sociology of religion : The fact that the western realm of the dead was understood, on the one hand, as a place of horror and, on the other, paradoxically, quite positively, is due to the mixing of chthonic ideas of a fertility cult around Osiris with those of a sun cult determinedby the world god Re . Here old peasant and old nomadic concepts come together, as theyare thematizedin mythology through the fight between Osiris and Seth and which apparently reflect prehistoric population conflicts. These conflicts were related to the Aridization of the Sahara during the history of North Africa and at the beginning of the ancient Egyptian empire between 3500 and 2800 BC. Together. Possibly they were the trigger for the formation of the empire, since the population pressure evidently led to an increasing enslavement of the nomads pushing into the Nile valley. Overall, the Egyptian conceptions of the judgment of the dead and the afterlife are thus a heterogeneous mixture of different religious traditions, in the development of which a “blurring theology”, for example with antagonisms between Re and Osiris, is conspicuous and incompatible things have been combined. Overall, in the Egyptians' belief in the afterlife, magical ideas outweighed religious and moral ideas, and according to SA Tokarev the concept was "evidently developed by the priests in the interests of the ruling class as a reaction to growing class antagonisms". The Marxist ethnologist and religious scholar wrote further: “The slave owners and priests were anxious to intimidate the superstitious mass of the enslaved people by threatening punishments in the hereafter and to comfort them with the hope of reward in the hereafter. For the era of the Middle Kingdom , especially for the period of severe social upheavals in the 18th century BC. Chr. ... this is very indicative. Certainly the Egyptian doctrine of the judgment of the dead later influenced the development of similar ideas in Christianity to a certain extent. ”With the exception of the deceased pharaohs in ancient Egypt, there was hardly any ancestor cult outside of the cult of the dead and burial.
Ancient oriental cultures
The ancient oriental conceptions of justice extend into the afterlife, as the Egyptian cult of Osiris shows with its concept of a judgment of the dead. This is where an individual “debt” is settled after death. This “guilt” is based on the non-compliance with this-world rules, which the respective rulers have enacted in the service of maintaining their power and which increase the pressure to comply with them with the threat of a penalty after death. The same principle applies to the other religions of salvation and the Mediterranean mystery cults . The ruler has a god-like position and is promoted by a caste of priests who did not make the current interpretation of the world available to the individual. The ancient custom, later also practiced in early African kingdoms, of electing a new king every year and ritually sacrificing the old one so as not to allow a constant rule, was soon circumvented by various measures. With the Hittites, for example, or in Mesopotamia, a “king for a day” or a substitute king was appointed for this occasion.
Mesopotamia
While the concepts of the judgment of the dead and the afterlife of ancient Egypt are rather hopeful, even with the possibility of magically deceiving the gods, the relevant Mesopotamian concepts are more of a grim and hopeless counter-image. This also applies to the old Canaanite-Jewish ideas of Sheol rubbed off.
The main features of the concept of the afterlife in the religion of Mesopotamia were extremely pessimistic, the worship of the dead was shaped by the fear of the dead and the horror of their wretched fate in the underworld of Kurnugia , which was entered through seven terrible gates , a fate that met both good and bad. as far as these criteria occur at all. The fear of death and the search for immortality are described here for the first time in world literature ( Gilgamesh epic ). The basis was the idea that man was completely subordinate to the gods and was at their service. With the help of prescriptions and resolutions (the Me principles, which are similar to the ancient Ma'at concept of the Egyptians), the gods determined the fate of each individual and laid it down on divine fate tables. It was then the task of the people to carry out these resolutions in absolute submission. Life stretched linearly and came to an end with death, which released humans as a shadow existence into the underworld, which was ruled by the goddess Ereškigal , later together with Nergal . The rites of this world with their emphasis on the purification ceremonies for atonement were designed accordingly.
Actual judgment of the dead and the underworld: everyone who reached the kingdom of the dead via the Ḫubur underworld had to submit to a judgment of the dead. The process is described in fragments in the Epic of Gilgamesh (Flood Legend). Heroes like Gilgamesh appeared as pale judges of the dead, of which there were seven, mostly deceased and then like Gilgamesh deified great kings. In contrast to Egyptian ideas, there is hardly any reward or punishment in the afterlife, so there is no personal responsibility and no principle of retribution. Because fate was predetermined by the gods. Only fallen warriors were treated better, as were those who were well cared for by the living through sacrifices for the dead in their tombs ( kianag ). Fathers of several sons also had it better, as Enkidus' report from the realm of the dead shows. In general, however, the same dark fate lies over every dead person: he eats dirt, freezes, starves, thirsts and is feathered like a bird. If he is lucky, he can flee and in this world, according to the pronounced fear of demons of the Mesopotamians, frighten the living as an evil demon (so also in the ancient Arabic religions and from there in Islam, e.g. the jinn , but also in Christianity, for example in Halloween customs). Dead rituals and sacrifices were primarily intended to mitigate this fate of the dead, for example to provide them with at least pure water through libations.
The Sumerian royal tombs of Ur (around 2700 BC) discovered by Woolley show a very old and primeval layer of customs. They bear witness to massive human sacrifices, only found in Kiš , that were carried out during a burial. However, it is unclear whether it was believed that the dead ruler could take women, helpers and equipment with him to the afterlife. But similar examples can be found in other early cultures, which are taken as a sign of deification, which saved the king from the underworld. She got to even the pharaohs, but you had in Egypt after the first dynasty of the human sacrifice given up and is content in the grave with shabtis.
Parallels and references: Presumably the Israelites, insofar as they are not remnants of the patriarchal period (the biblical Abraham immigrated from Ur in southern Mesopotamia), adopted the Mesopotamian ideas for their own hell Gehenna (Gehinnom), especially during their exile. They roughly correspond to those of Hades , which also has a counterpart to Hell: the Tartarus . There are also parallels between the Gilgamesh epic, the Osiris myth and the Orpheus myth , which suggest that they are ancient oriental Mediterranean myths that continued to have an impact on ancient times. In Egypt there is also a (fertility) myth of the passage to hell of the goddess Inanni (in a different version of Ishtar ), who loses one of her divine abilities when passing through every gate. After the seventh gate she stands naked and disempowered in front of the underworld goddess Ereschkigal , whose death look she is at the mercy of and from which she can only escape through a foresighted trick.
Further development: Whether death is presented as something pleasant or gloomy has a massive impact on the present and the ethics of the living. Accordingly, this fear later led to a certain doubt about the meaning of it all. One did not want to submit to the inscrutable advice of the gods without further ado without being able to demand the slightest justice, so that now and then there was a very secular hedonism or a complete negation of the world. An ancestor cult as such existed, but mainly in the form of sacrifice and burial cults among the nobility and deified rulers. Otherwise one was more afraid of the spirits of the dead.
The Elamites , who lived east of the Tigris in what is now western Iran from 3000 BC. BC established an empire, had slightly different ideas. Their belief in the hereafter was structured strongly anthropomorphically ; many grave goods were found that suggest care for the afterlife. A pronounced fertility cult also seems to have played a role. The god of the dead Inšušinak (Sumer. Lord of Susa ) formed a supreme trinity together with the gods Humban and Chutran. The dead were received in an intermediate realm by the pair of gods Ishnikorat and Legamel, who acted as psychopomps , and brought them before the god of the dead, who judged them.
Old Iranian religion and Zoroastrianism
Although there are still remnants of it, especially in India (Parsism), Zoroastrianism is discussed among the historical religions. In comparison to the ancient Egyptian religion with its hopes of the afterlife determined by magical ideas and in comparison to the ideas of the afterlife of the Mesopotamians with their mercy and hopelessness, it represents a third basic type Dualism the main role.
As in other religions, especially if they have been alive for long periods of time, the concept of the hereafter varies greatly in the chronological order. In the earliest part of the Avesta , the Gathas , no physical resurrection is mentioned, although the idea of a judgment of the dead is already there. Only in the younger parts of the Avesta, which were built around 200 AD, is there talk of heaven and hell as physical places. This concept took shape even more when Judaism, Christianity, and Islam emerged and were influenced by Zoroastrianism.
Little is known about the ancient Iranian religion before Zarathustra because of numerous power-political and religious overlaps. However, since this originated from the old Iranian forms of religion, it is assumed that there must have been similarities to the religious concept he designed. Cultural and religious details or even a uniformity of culture and religion in the Iranian highlands of this period, in which also numerous different peoples crowded together, cannot be derived from the few finds. This only changes with Cyrus II in the Achaemenid period . At that time the belief in Ahura Mazda as the highest being was widespread, which Zarathustra took over as well as the old fire cult and developed it further into monotheism of a religion of revelation . The similarity to the Vedic religion is striking .
In Zoroastrianism (also Parsism and Mazdaism), which may have arisen about 3500 years ago, the good-bad dualism personified by Ahura Mazda and Ahriman is consistently developed for the first time in the history of religions and is at the center of ideas. A dualism of body and mind is strictly rejected, rather the evil arose through Ahriman's intervention that destroyed the original harmony. Accordingly, good and evil are primarily cosmic, non-ethical concepts, which only appear secondarily as signs of disturbed harmony in ethical phenomena. Accordingly, Zoroastrianism does not know an actual and cataclysmic end of the world, but a renewal of the original harmony. As a central element, this dualism also determines the ideas of the hereafter and of the judgment of the dead. Justice is absolutely human here, since Zoroastrianism for the first time grants people free will . Predestination, magic, protection, etc., on the other hand, are completely absent from Zarathustra's basic concept, but have been preserved to this day as remnants of older ideas.
Judgment of the dead and the afterlife: The Iranian concepts, as they are mainly described in the Gathas , are very similar to the Indo-Vedic of the Upanishads . Physical death is related to the forces of evil. Therefore, anyone who touches a corpse becomes defiled. Death therefore decays in the towers of silence . The bones were collected in order to await the last judgment in the grave, an old concept of the bone soul, as found in some North American Indians (see there) . Even the holy and pure fire was not allowed to come into contact with it. The soul is thought of as a spiritual principle and does not need the body. Heaven and Hell are places in the hereafter that are each assigned as a result of thoughts, words and deeds. There is thus an accountability of the person towards Ahura Mazda (also: Ohrmuzd), and thus a judgment of the dead is necessary. There, after death, individual punishments are assigned in a first judgment by means of a scale of justice, which correspond to the behavior in life. In this way moral principles of this world such as justice gain greater importance again, especially the main duty of the believer: the promotion of good creation, whereby the harmony concept that connects the spiritual and physical world plays an important role. When the good thoughts, deeds and words of man outnumber the bad, a beautiful virgin receives his soul at the bridge of selection (Činvat Bridge) and leads her to the other side (cf. Huris in Islam). Amescha Spenta , the good disposition, awaits him there and leads him to heaven. If the evil thoughts, deeds and words predominate, his soul encounters a witch as the personification of his conscience and falls from the now razor-sharp bridge into hell ruled by Angra Mainyu (= Ahriman). There is also an unspecified third place for souls where good and bad are in balance. The punishments in hell correspond to the severity of the offense, because the goal is to educate people. The greatest virtues of man are the careful cultivation of the soil, keeping contracts, righteousness, and doing good deeds; The most serious violations are those against ritual purity, which condemn man to eternal death: burning a corpse, eating a corpse, unnatural sexuality ( sodomy ).
In a later time the judgment took place on the other side of the bridge, first by a judge, later by a college of three chaired by Mithras . In addition to the way of life, it was important whether the dead had worshiped the right or the wrong gods.
After a certain point in time, the dead are sent back from heaven and hell to undergo a second judgment on the occasion of the resurrection of the world at the end of the Zoroastrian cosmic cycles of 12,000 years. The decisive factor is whether the person has lived in harmony with both aspects of being. Man has to face two judgments because there are two aspects of being: menok and geti , the spiritual and the material form of the world. The future resurrection of the flesh and the Last Judgment , followed by eternal life for body and soul, are correspondingly the final “restoration” of Ohrmuzd's “good creation”, the removal of evil from it and the union with him. An eternal hell is considered immoral, and thus all people will become immortal after having served their punishments in hell if they have undergone the second judgment on the occasion of the resurrection of the world. However, on this occasion the sinners are removed from the world together with Ahriman, that is, they are destroyed, so that, according to SA Tokarev, the ideas of the afterlife of Zoroastrianism are basically "permeated by the moral idea of retribution".
Sociology of religion: The origin of this strict dualism of the Avesta , which extends well beyond death , is now seen in the enmity between the settled peasants and the nomadic cattle herders of the Indoarians , which can be found in the story of Cain and Abel and in the battles between the Iranian Ahura - and the Indian Daeva worshipers. The careful cultivation of the soil as the main virtue points in this direction, as does the obligation to comply with contracts, etc., especially since the other virtues are relatively vague. Zoroastrianism did not take its final form until the beginning of the Achaemenid period from the sixth century BC after the power-political replacement of the Medes and became a centralized priestly cult , especially under the Sassanids . According to SA Tokarev, the development of Zoroastrianism reflects the development of the Iranian states with the escalation of class differences. There was an ancestral cult as a cult of the dead, mainly to appease the spirits of the dead who were believed to have power over the affairs of the living.
The later Gnosticism influenced by Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism exerted an influence on early Christianity. Later, the basic dualistic ideas in Christianity can be found mainly in the sects of the Paulikians (7th century), the Bogomils (10th century), the Cathars and Albigensians (12th / 13th centuries).
Ancient Near Eastern Religions
These are the religions practiced in Asia Minor and Palestine, i.e. in the Mediterranean East, which show some similarities. These are mainly dualistic fertility cults ( Ba'al versus Mot) and partly strongly syncretistic religions that contain Mesopotamian elements. Above all, Palestine was shaped by city-state cults, as due to the overlapping zones of influence of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and Asia Minor, larger independent territorial states could only rarely and briefly form here.
Syria and Palestine
At least in the Early Stone Age there was apparently no actual cult of ancestors and deaths. There was probably a vegetative-polar idea in which the lower, earthly world corresponded to an upper, heavenly world and in which the earth was female, the sky was male and both primordial powers had created all living things together. At death the ashes of the earth were given back as their share, heaven received its own with soul or spirit. The cremation sites deep in the ground point in this direction. Any kind of afterlife with a judgment of the dead was thus superfluous.
Late Neolithic in Palestine-Syria there was a megalithic cult with menhirs (so-called mazebas ), which were especially dedicated to the dead. It was believed that the dead lived in them and occasionally sent revelation dreams when one slept there. The meaning is not clear. The ancient cult site of the god Moloch in the Hinnom valley south of Jerusalem became in Judaism Gehenna , hell as a place of punishment.
The Semitic peoples may have immigrated from the Arabian Peninsula, the Sinai or Mesopotamia and the Syrian desert in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. The ideas of the underworld are generally rather diffuse, occasionally determined by polar myths of the gods' warfare (Mot devours Baal). As in early and middle Judaism, there was apparently no judgment of the dead. Due to the vegetation-mythical structure of the other religions, this is not likely. The same applies to other Bronze Age Semitic tribes in the region: the Moabites , the Ammonites , who worshiped Moloch, the Edomites , Amorites , Nabataeans and other mostly originally nomadic peoples.
Hittites, Urartu
The religion of the Hittites , which has only been handed down as a state cult, primarily adopted myths from Anatolia , but also the ideas and myths of many neighboring peoples. There were extensive death rituals for the divine kings. But even the “simple” dead finally went to the other world. However, there was apparently no judgment of the dead, just as little in the cultures of the successor states.
The religion of Urartu ( Chaldeans ) is characterized by the gods' legal claims against humans. Almost nothing has been handed down about ideas about the hereafter. Nothing is known about a judgment of the dead. The same applies to the Phrygians , about whose religion little is known.
Ancient Classical Religions
In the ancient religions of the Mediterranean region, everyone had to seek and fill their place in life. Greeks, Etruscans and Romans - if at all - have rather weak ideas about the judgment of the dead . The focus was on observing the rites of the dead.
The funeral cult was strongly pronounced among Etruscans and Romans, especially among the ruling class. There are also strong remnants of a manic ancestral cult. However, since such an ancestral cult usually excludes or only contains reduced judgments of the dead, these are probably to be understood as adoptions from Hellenism.
Greeks
According to Hesiod and Pindar, as well as Homer and Plato (e.g. in Der Staat , Book 10), people initially believed in a kind of island of the blessed, Elysion , where, besides relatives of gods and heroes , the one who proves himself in three reincarnations on earth had, was allowed to go. Only a few such as Heracles , Perseus , Andromeda , Cassiopeia or the Dioscuri were transferred directly to Olympus or to the stars. The later ideas represent the old cosmological tripartite division: the Tartaros , a place of punishment where the fallen titans and other evildoers or former divine power competitors who had acted against the divine will suffer; to Hades , a milder anything but bleak underworld; the Elysion, a heavenly place.
The underworld called Hades is God and place in one. This is where the feeble dead shadows live, which you have to strengthen with food and libations so that they can speak at all. The dead are led from Hermes to the underworld river Styx , which they cross with the help of the ferryman Charon , who has to be paid with the so-called obolus . There they step through the underworld gate guarded by the hellhound Kerberos . So that they are not eaten by him, they are given honey cake .
The old religious ideas of Hades were replaced by philosophical ones in Plato , in which the concept of virtue ( Areté ) gained importance and gave people a self-determined means of overcoming such dark ideas. The Orphic turn, in the center of the doctrine was the fate of the dead, tried to secure a blissful afterlife the faithful through mystical ceremonies.
There is a clear judgment of the dead here . According to later tradition, the three judges of the dead, Minos , Rhadamanthys and Aiakos, cheerfully assist Hades, who is relentlessly strict as an underworld god , on the Asphodelos meadow . The souls of the righteous are directed into the blissful Elysion realms around which Lethe , “the river of oblivion”, flowed, the ancient island of the blessed. After a negative judgment, however, sinners had to go through long purification ceremonies before they achieved the status of blessed and, after they had also drunk from the Lethe River, were allowed to go to Elysion. Before that, however, they were allowed to choose their future incarnation themselves. The most serious sinners were damned forever.
There is also the idea of punishing wicked people who have aroused the wrath of the gods. They are thrown into the abyss of Tartarus , the terrible place of exile, where they have to atone for their misdeeds in various ways ( Sisyphus , Tantalus , the Danaids , Prometheus , Minos , etc.). Except for the few deified, no one is spared Hades.
It was widely believed that the fate of the dead depended on whether the living performed the required ceremonies on the corpse. Therefore, these took a central position in the Greek religion. Accordingly, the souls of the unburied found no rest. Sacrifices for the feeding of souls were considered very important.
Etruscan
The structure of the Etruscan religion, which is characterized by a pronounced cult of the dead, is archaic and extremely complex. It is not known whether there was an actual judgment of the dead. There was also a "Charun" clearly modeled after the Greek underworld ship Charon, but this is also only attested from the 4th century BC. It was then that the pairing Persephone / Hades (Phersipnai / Eita) appeared, apparently under Greek influence. A deification of the dead was possible; it could be achieved through sacrifice. Judging by the paintings and sculptures in the necropolis, one believed in a joyful after-existence.
Romans
Little is known about the early Roman conceptions of the afterlife ; all in all, they remained rather vague later on. The fate fate was like largely mapped out by the Etruscans. The ancestor cult was pronounced. It was believed that the soul would continue to live in a paradise and that there was a kind of reciprocal relationship of trust between gods and humans. Later the Romans largely adopted the religious ideas of the Greeks. They mixed them with Etruscan and ancient Italian concepts to create a politically effective state cult. A strong longing for salvation is unmistakable in the imperial era , which gripped people in the spiritual and political turmoil and which, among other things, prepared the ground for Christianity. With this, completely different, far more precise concepts of the afterlife and the judgment of the dead were introduced, for example Greek, Egyptian, Persian and Christian-Jewish ones. In Virgil's sixth song of the Aeneid (29–19 BC) the adoption of Greek ideas about the hereafter is particularly clearly attested. A separate Roman judgment for the dead, apart from Greek concepts, did not exist in the strongly worldly oriented Roman culture. Regardless of this, observance of the rituals of the dead was very important in order to save the dead from a possibly bad fate.
Old European religions
The Celts, Teutons and Slavs and especially those of the Balts, Finno-Ugric peoples, Scythians, Thracians and Illyrians are difficult to reconstruct because the sources are poor overall. There are two main reasons for this:
- These peoples were not homogeneous societies , but rather loosely divided into tribes and local rulers, which sometimes never formed states at all, sometimes only very late, and which also lived scattered across large parts of Europe.
- The influence of Christianity made itself felt early on. Much of what is now considered "Germanic" is already influenced by Christianity. But ancient Greek ideas and the structure of the underworld along with individual motifs, such as the bridge to the underworld, hell river Gjoll , the hellhound Garmr or the bridge guarding giant Modgud seem to have quite early acting on their afterlife. Other researchers value them as remnants of an all-Indo-European tradition.
Celts
The religion of the Celts is probably rooted in the still very egalitarian urn field culture . We do not find a pronounced good-bad dualism and accordingly neither gods-fighting myths nor a judgment of the dead. Possibly there was a vegetative dualism (see above) . Nowhere in Celtic eschatology is there any mention of guilt, punishment and judgment in the afterlife. Instead, there was a pronounced belief in the migration of souls and an interaction between this world and a pleasantly conceived afterlife without death, work and winter.
Scythians
Little is known about the religious ideas of the Scythians . There seems to have been no judgment of the dead.
Germanic peoples
In the religion of the Germanic peoples , which because of the large area of distribution is by no means uniform and, as far as dying and afterlife are concerned, rather dark, the whereabouts of the dead was the lightless Hel . Originally it was not considered a place of the damned, who had to serve a sentence there at “places of agony like the Nystrand ” (the beach of the dead) (already a Christian idea that had a strong impact on the Völuspá here). Accordingly, there is no judgment of the dead. Some tribes did not believe in an afterlife at all; life was irrevocably over with death. Every misfortune was better than death, because at least one lived (according to Hávamál ). More often, however, it was believed that life would go on as before after death, and that one could be killed two or three times in the same body before it was finally over. It remains unclear whether this required a journey through the dead. In the north, the local Hel was developed as the underworld goddess. The place Hel became a punishment place of hell under Christian influence. The moral quality of the dead (here initially his merits as a warrior) increasingly became the reason for the assignment, whereby initially only the positive selection of the Valkyries on the battlefield was decisive. The underlying idea comes from the Migration Period (4th century AD) and was not handed down in writing in the Snorra Edda until the 9th century AD . Perhaps Christian motifs were already incorporated, because, according to Wolfgang Golther : "In reality, Hel and Walhalla are one, the great, all-embracing realm of souls."
At first there was mostly only Hel for the dead of the pre-Christian Teutons, in which life was by no means miserable. Rather, it was very similar to earthly. A festive reception was prepared for the noble. Only in some North Germanic tribes is Walhalla even present as the last refuge of a specialized warrior caste. Even the Dane Saxo Grammaticus only speaks of underground places of death - those for warriors with pleasant green areas and for "envious people" in snake-deep caves in the north.
Slavs
The old Slavic belief, which we only know in outline, was shaped by the belief in nature spirits (→ animism ) and the perceived kinship with animals. Partly elaborate grave goods indicate pronounced ideas of the afterlife. There seems to have been a kind of paradise and a fiery place where the wicked suffered. With the Eastern Slavs , the type of death was also decisive: was it natural or unnatural? An ancestor cult seems to have been widespread. There was the idea of a peaceful life after death and apparently no judgment of the dead. The soul left the body after death, either stayed there or went into an afterlife.
Baltic and Finno-Ugric religion
Both religions have no judgment of the dead. The Baltic mythology knows a positive fate expectancy. The dead easily crosses the border to the hereafter, where they expect no punishment.
Thracians and Illyrians
According to Herodotus , the Thracians and Illyrians had a real longing for death, believed in the immortality of the soul and had very positive ideas about the afterlife. Any court proceedings for the dead are unlikely.
Religions of Central America and the Andes
The religions of the pre-Columbian regions not only of the formative (1500 BC-100 AD), but also of the classical (100 BC-900 AD) and post-classical periods (900-1519) are strong shaped by the animistic belief in ghosts. There were significant temporal (e.g. Olmec , Zapotec , Toltec , Mixtec , Chavin , Nazca , Paracas , Mochica , Chimu , etc.), regional and local differences (e.g. La Venta , Teotihuacan , Monte Alban , Tikal , Palenque , Copán , Chichen Itza , Tenochtitlan , Tiahuanaco ) in cult and gods. Certain principles and myths were common to all. The problem of tradition also arises here sharply.
Central America
The Maya religion was ruled by submission to the will of the gods and the laws of the universe. There was a strong belief in predestination and a strong awareness of sin as an offense against laws determined by the priests on the basis of astronomical and oracle techniques. Numerous sacrifices were made, especially human sacrifices. In contrast to the central Mexican religions, there is no paradise among the Mayans. Cyclical eschatological concepts based on a complex calendar were already pronounced. The Mayans paid special attention to the royal dead because they were considered divine.
The Aztec religion was arguably the most highly developed part of their culture and was extremely complex. The universe was viewed as unstable and had to be stabilized through constant sacrifices. Fate was completely subject to the almighty laws of the calendar .
With the Aztecs there is no real judicial or ethical judgment of the dead aimed at weighing merits and offenses , at most one derived from external approaches. It was the human task to fight and die for gods and world order. Magic, oracles, and signs dominated everyday life; the worldview was very pessimistic. In addition, there was generally an ancestral cult that was also fertility cult. The Central American gods are mostly vegetation deities for rain, maize, etc. The Aztecs conception of the afterlife does not depend on the earthly lifestyle of a person, but on the type of death and the earlier professional social position of the dead soul, the potency of which it takes into the realm of the dead. A close relationship to the blood of the sacrifice, in turn a connection to fertility, is characteristic of all pre-Columbian cultures; likewise a sacrificial cult with human sacrifice.
Cosmologically , the world was divided into three parts: the upper world, the solid world, the water world and the underworld. These main worlds were partly subdivided into up to 13 overworlds and 9 to 13 underworlds, the latter as sometimes dangerous abodes of the souls. The whole thing is overlaid by a cyclical cosmogonic "principle of four" (four world ages, four quadrants of the four cardinal points, etc.).
This underworld was ruled by the twelve dark lords with names such as "One Death", "Bringer of Pus", "Bone Staff" or "Blood is its Claw", ie de facto by demons. According to the Mayans and Aztecs, whoever died had to descend to a place of fear ( Xibalbá ) and, led by a death dog (very similar to the Cerberos of the Greeks), take the dangerous path down, crossing a seven-armed underworld river. He was then tested and humiliated by the lords of the underworld until they released the soul again. It seems that there has been a kind of general judgment of the dead, but less as a kind of reviewing authority, but more as a distribution function. Because apparently demonic arbitrariness and the inexplicable will of the gods prevailed. Also, the subsequent procedure is not entirely clear, if there was one at all.
There were four paradises in the realm of the dead , corresponding to the four cardinal points: The warriors killed in battle went directly to the eastern paradise, the "sun house" Tonatiuhichan , where they met the people who had died as a sacrifice. There was also a western paradise, the “corn house” Cincalco , for those who died in cots, who were also worshiped, but who then occasionally appeared at crossings at night and paralyzed those who met them there. The dead, whose death was associated with the rain god Tlaloc , came to the southern paradise, which is described as extremely fertile , i.e. drowned people, those struck by lightning, but also those who had died of leprosy or other diseases. However , there was no direct route to the northern realm of the dead, Mictlan . To reach Mictlan, tests of courage had to be passed in nine different locations before being admitted there after four years. There was also a god of the dead, Mictlantecuhtli , who ruled the northern realm of the dead together with his wife Mictecacíhuatl . Once the dead man got there, he simply disappeared.
The creator couple Ometecuhtli and Omecihuatl lived in the uppermost of the 13 (or 9) afterlife. The small children who died were the only human dead to arrive here.
Andean religions
In South America, especially in the precursor cultures of the Incas, mummy cults can be detected in necropolises, which point to the belief in a body-bound survival after death. Since there are no written documents here, only archaeological finds, we can only make assumptions about whether there were ideas about a court of death at that time. This seems rather questionable.
For the Inca ruler it was assumed that he would occupy the same godlike position in the hereafter as in this world; for the nobility, who developed a rich funeral cult, corresponding gradations were valid. For the Incas, however, in contrast to the Central American cultures, a judgment of the dead is not even rudimentary.
Living religions
Judaism, Christianity, Islam
In the monotheistic revelation religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the judgment of the dead is closely connected with the end of the world ( apocalypse ), the resurrection from the dead, the final judgment and the final redemption . The sometimes highly differentiated conceptions of the hereafter are often contradictory, blurred or, as in Christianity, especially in its doctrine of grace and justification , or in the doctrine of predestination of Islam, are transferred to the divine and therefore inexplicable will. Secondly, human ideas of justice are subordinated to this will, as can be seen in Dante's “Divine Comedy” with its highly scholastic systematizations of sin and differentiation of punishments. This was particularly useful for maintaining the power of church and state or the caliphate .
From ancient, mostly Greek traditions, thoughts of transmigration of souls have penetrated here and there into Christianity and Judaism . In Kabbalistic Hasidism , the notion of the transmigration of Gilgul's souls, developed especially in the Book of Zohar , has gained a foothold since the late Middle Ages. The Zoroastrianism has essentially acted with his strict dualism of good and evil and his judgment of the dead ideas of the monotheistic religions of revelation, about the Manichaeism and the derived from it groupings.
Of particular importance is the extent to which the establishment of the court of death institutionalized in the monotheistic religions is influenced by the central notion of violence and the exclusive concept of truth, as described by Jan Assmann . This is accompanied by the extraordinary importance of sin and the exclusive bond with the one God, which produces a pronounced repentance when his laws are broken and requires a mechanism for their dissolution.
Judaism
The Judaism reflected in its development stages, many of the ideas that occur in later sister religions to death, afterlife and eschatology, which is why it is considered in more detail. His ideas are extremely heterogeneous and can only be represented in a historical longitudinal section. Because in Palestine different historical and religious developments overlap. In addition, the Jewish tribes each brought their own traditions about life after death. The officially forbidden necromancy was widespread (see Saul's visit to the witch of Endor ). Basically, there are five development phases:
Nomadic period and pre-exile period (First Reich up to approx. 539 BC): Little is known about the earliest period of nomadism and their ideas about the hereafter. There was no retaliation after death. God punished people either in this world or in their descendants. During this period, the belief in gods protecting the kin ( teraphim ) and possibly ancestral spirits was widespread . The eschatology of this period is unique in that it deals with the collective fate of the nation, but shows little interest in the fate of the individual after death (cf. Ecclesiastes [Kohelet] 9, 5).
Judaism's primary conceptions of the afterlife are extremely pessimistic in Israel's archaic period before exile. Originally, death did not belong to creation, but was a consequence of the Fall; In addition, the depictions of Genesis 1–11 on the origin of evil are very inconsistent. There was also no conception of body and soul and a corresponding dualism , rather life was seen as a unit, and blood was considered the soul or at least its carrier. In early Judaism, it was initially assumed that there is no further life after death and thus no immortality (except indirectly through offspring). Accordingly, one wished for a long earthly life in order to postpone this fate as long as possible. The realm of the dead Sheol , into which all the dead came without distinction, had no connection with God, but was subject to his suzerainty. It was presented as underground, cold and dark and apparently follows Mesopotamian models. All differences, including good and bad, stopped there; there was no thinking, feeling and no wisdom. There was therefore no unnecessary judgment of the dead. Very few people whom God consumed directly escaped it. Concepts of eternity always referred to the entire chosen people of Israel. The strictness of the old Jewish, pre-exilic concept of death has paradoxically led to the development of countless rites of the living around death. They all had the purpose of preserving the memory of the deceased with the living for as long as possible, since it was only in a certain sense that it lived on. In addition, the dead body was handled extremely carefully, as it was God's property and therefore must not be destroyed and later, when a resurrection was thought to be conceivable, it must be available intact. However, this implies the question of why God did not guarantee this on his own and needed the help of people. When the idea of a soul came up is unclear, especially since there were two words for it: nefesch and ruach .
Babylonian exile (597–538 BC) and post-exile period (Second Empire 538 BC to 70 AD): In the post- exile period, the first differentiation of the realm of the dead came about. One beganto differentiatethe Sheol from the Gehenna , which was now presented as a place of punishment. The distinction corresponded to that between the Greek Hades and Tartaros, which probablypenetrated Judaismthrough Hellenism (4th century before to 2nd century after Christ). Gehenna is the Greek form of the Hebrew Gehinnom.
The cosmology of the Jews, which was also strongly influenced by Mesopotamian ideas and later enriched by Zoroastrianism , apparently prevented a clear expression of ideas about the afterlife. According to SA Tokarev, the pre-exilic idea of the "chosenness of the people of Israel", which was particularly conspicuous in post-exile during the Second Temple period , increasingly replaced the idea of retribution after death. Because after the intensification of class antagonisms, it became necessary to give the oppressed people a kind of religious consolation, which in most religions compensates for the suffering in this world as retribution after death and as a reward in the hereafter. This made a judgment of the dead necessary, which was individually superfluous because of the purely collective idea of being elected, especially since the divine punishments always hit the people in this world. The reforms of the kings Hezekiah and especially Josiah were already aimed in this direction.
The religious-philosophical ideas of Hellenism left hardly any traces in Judaism during this period. His abstract metaphysical concepts did not or hardly penetrated or only much later in the first phase of the diaspora . Concepts of the afterlife, ideas of the immortality of the soul, of retribution after death, etc. are completely absent. God rewards and punishes the people here on earth, if not directly, then at least their descendants. Already in the final phase of state Judaism in the first two centuries before Christianity, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body won first with Isaiah (26:19), later with Daniel (168 BC), partly with Daniel with the idea of reward or punishment , more and more followers. At first it was aimed at those who fell in battle. Like the idea of a necessary judgment for the dead, it was strictly rejected by the Sadducees, for whom death meant the absolute end (Paulus, Acts 23, 8). However, Sheol received several “divisions”, depending on the sinfulness of the inmates.
At the turn of the century, the three competing theological currents of Judaism, Sadducees , Pharisees and Essenes , of which ultimately only the Pharisees survived in rabbinism , are important in this context . According to the most important Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37/38 to approx. 100 AD), whose traditions here could be incomplete or even distorted, the Sadducees believed that man had free will , the Essenes believed in a predestination of man , while the Pharisees taught free will with a foreknowledge of God (similar to the Asharites in Islam). The Pharisees also differed from the Sadducees, who appointed the Jerusalem temple priests, in that they believed in a resurrection of the dead who would be judged underground. The righteous pass into other bodies (by which no transmigration of souls should be meant, since it was probably not a matter of material bodies), while the wicked are forever punished and kept in captivity. According to the Mishnah , eternal life is only lost if someone denies the resurrection of the dead, the divine origin of the Torah , the most important religious foundation of Judaism to this day, or the divine destiny of human fate. The Pharisees' achievement was to overcome the temple alignment of Judaism by sanctifying everyday life by observing Jewish regulations. Jesus ' teaching was close to both the Essenes and the Pharisees. All in all, Hellenism with Orphic and Platonic ideas had an increasing influence on Judaism and its ideas about death from the 1st century BC.
Talmudic period and rabbinism (up to approx. 700 AD): After the destruction of the temple in 70 AD and the beginning of the diaspora , the rabbinical doctrine of the Messiah gainedmore and more supporters, and Hellenistic ideas settled due to the coexistence with these peoples, finally through. Associated with this was the belief in a bodily resurrection of the body within the framework of an eschatology, which has since been reflected in strict funeral regulations such as the prohibition of cremation, autopsy and mummification, etc., which partially destroys the body. Judaism changed from a pure, ethnically and this-sidedly determined revelation religion withthe goal of the “promised land” to a redemption religion with an otherworldly focus on resurrection and eternal life. This gave rise to the theoretical necessity of conceiving a quasi pre-selecting intermediate instance, which distributed the people accordingly in hell ( Gehenna ) and the Sheol waiting area for the paradise Gan Eden , the rather vaguely imagined place of the righteous after death and a last judgment which now remained just as necessary. The criminal court, it was believed, would last twelve months in Gehenna (if the Sabbath is observed there as well, since no fires are allowed to burn on that day) and be based on the righteousness of people, including that of non-Jews. The old idea, promoted by class contradictions, of acquiring eternal bliss in the hereafter through good works in this world (and the study of the Torah) gained importance in the Talmud.
Medieval Judaism (700 to approx. 1750 AD): In the rabbinical Judaism of the diaspora , a serious theological change had begun, and the resurrection (to this day mainly in the eighteen supplications , the Schemone Esre present) including the Last Judgment and eternal life in Paradise was now accepted as such through the inclusion of Christian ideas. This process was completed by the 9th century, whereby Orthodoxy is based on the physical resurrection, whereas modern Judaism understands the resurrection as a spiritual and spiritual process of redemption. The 13 beliefs of Maimonides explicitly mention notions of reward and punishment for the just and the unjust. Accordingly, the coming world is the reward of the righteous, while the unrighteous are punished with the destruction of their souls. Above all, the mystically oriented Kabbalah was dedicated to the problem of rebirth and the judgment of the dead. She designed a highly complex structure of the human soul, whereby only the lowest level nefesh , the animal soul, had to endure divine punishments, the spiritual soul ruach, however, was admitted into paradise and the immaculate soul neschamah entered God. Ideas of a transmigration of souls Gilgul developed and the physical resurrection was viewed as inferior to true eternal life.
Modern Judaism from 1750: The Messianism and resurrection of thought are now a central idea especially of Orthodox Judaism. The Reformed Judaism of Haskala , which adhered to rational ideas , rejected both and avoided all discussions about life after death, especially in the 20th century. Both concepts were urgently needed as immovable hope during the almost two thousand years of the diaspora, because they, like strict adherence to traditional principles and rites, held the people together, with complex catalogs of regulations such as in the Shulchan Aruch , which, among other things, also contained the kashrut - Contains dietary laws. However, this behavior has contributed not a little to the isolation and ghettoization of the Jews in other societies and thus to anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism with its repeatedly flaring pogroms , especially in Poland and Russia. But the focus in Judaism is still on this world, since only here can humans receive and do what is good. Since then, the main interest of Judaism has been directed towards the return of the Messiah and what would happen with it, hopes in which ecstatic catastrophe fantasies are controversially bundled with ideas of salvation from the building of the third temple and more realistic historical-political ideas ( Zionism , Greater Israel , settler movement) and give the State of Israel a significant part of its internal and external tensions.
The modern Jewish theology has also influenced by the rationalist philosophy of Baruch Spinoza's discussion of a practical design of the afterlife and judgment of the dead largely removed, especially with the artifice of death now than sleeping on a purely spiritual place (so later, under the influential Aristotelian thought good standing Maimonides ) to display a waking up in the judgment from which the wicked, so especially the non-Jews (and formerly the slaves), are excluded (and the Christ then redeemed by his death, including descent into hell, mainly in the The lower class of the Roman Empire and among the slaves contributed significantly to its great success). This resulted in two contrary theological currents, incompatible also in the eschatological and the afterlife, which still determine Judaism (and the State of Israel) today:
- the rationalism of Maimonides and Moses Mendelssohn , which ultimately led to the Haskala , the Jewish Enlightenment, and which also brought about the Zionism of Theodor Herzl ,
- the opposite of the mysticism of Kabbalah , especially of the Book of Zohar , which led to Eastern European Hasidism and ultra- orthodoxy , which ultimately led to the national religious parties or the settler movement such as the Gush Emunim .
The Shoah exerted another profound influence on these concepts . How much this influenced criminal and court ideas still determine Orthodox Judaism today is shown, for example, by a statement made by the high-ranking ultra-conservative rabbi Ovadja Josef from the year 2000, which was later formally withdrawn under public pressure : “The six million Jews who were cursed by the hands Nazis murdered were resuscitated souls of sinners who had sinned and led others to sin, as well as doing all sorts of prohibited things (for Jews). Their poor souls came back to be cleansed of their sins through all the terrible tortures and through their deaths. "
Christianity
Basics: Christian conceptions of the judgment of the dead are diverse. They are based on Jewish, Greco-Hellenistic, Oriental and Medieval traditions. They also repeatedly reflect political situations. The rulers influenced the belief in the hereafter and the ideas of the judgment of the dead (very nice with Dante, who banished the unpopular popes and princes to hell ) and used them economically. Examples are the crusades and the indulgence trade . With the persecution of heretics and the burning of witches , with the ban from church and excommunication , the judgment of the dead was de facto transferred to this world. The burnings were justified by the fact that those affected escaped eternal damnation because the soul would be purified by the fire. The ban meant exclusion from divine grace mediated only by the church.
The fact is that, despite all the legends about demons, angels of death, spirits, stray souls, etc., such a preliminary judgment does not exist in New Testament Christianity as a closed and coherent construct and the question of the nature and structure of the afterlife before the Apocalypse without a more precise one Answer remains. The reason is simple: already Christ and especially his first followers believed in an apocalypse predicted by him in the near future and still during the lifetime of the evangelists ( parousia ). Further constructs about death and the underworld were therefore simply not necessary at first, a gap that was then felt more and more painful over time, into which later, slightly pagan and often very different regionally popular ideas of sometimes extremely brutal afterlife customs, as described by Dante, penetrate and they could fill alternatively. Later ideas of Gnostics and other philosophical and theological currents such as Manichaeism were added ( Augustine, for example, was a Manichaean for some time).
General aspects of the Christian belief in the hereafter and the judgment of the dead , as formulated above all by the apostle Paul and the church fathers :
- The ethical claims of God, such as humility, charity, forgiving enemies, turning left / right cheek, etc., which, as it were, because no one can adhere to them, automatically create sinfulness, are almost impossible to fulfill in practice, partly stoic thinking. They are much stricter, even more radical, than in Judaism, the rest of which Christianity inherits, however, including the ideas about Gehenna (hell), resurrection and the Messiah, as they were theologically discussed at the time of Jesus.
- What is new is the idea of man's sinfulness and his redemption through divine grace , the central thought figures of Christianity in general, which then also form the ethical foundation of the judgment of the dead, although redemption is only guaranteed through unconditional submission to the church.
- The dualistic doctrine of Gnosis with the central idea of the Logos entered Christianity and the Logos merged with the figure of the Savior Jesus. This established a good-bad dualism that could only be resolved in the figure of Jesus, a prerequisite for his later function as world judge, which did not exist in Judaism. The doctrine of the Trinity , medieval Mariology and the veneration of saints then provided further components of an end-time world judgment that could act as advocates or defenders. At the same time, evil was personified as Satan , a role that did not exist in Judaism either and which already took up iconographic Greek influences ( Pan , who, like the satyrs , can be traced back to the early Neolithic goat demon).
- Another focus is the belief in the existence of an afterlife and in the resurrection as well as in the existence of an immortal soul, whose identity in the intermediate realm remains unclear. This results in a separation of soul and body, as it was already postulated in the patristic , whereby there were theological controversies about the details of the doctrine of the soul, especially in the Middle Ages, and the soul was divided into more and more components. However, up to Descartes there was at least one agreement that according to the ancient Greek conception the soul was responsible for the formation of will, consciousness and reason as well as for the physiological functions including the sensory impressions. Later, in Western philosophy and, most recently, in psychology, the mind-body problem , which is still discussed today, developed.
- The fate of the dead was originally based on the classic three-tier cosmology Heaven / Earth / Hell, as described by Dante and John Milton and how it is conceptually based on Goethe's Faust , even up to our century of Christian theology, above all, as for hell .
- Death is the result of sin, which came into the world through Adam and Eve (cf. original sin ) and which every human being now carries within himself as a merciless idea, mainly represented by Augustine, which is therefore not in East Rome as in West Rome personalized, but remains embedded in cosmological and healing-theoretical connections between death and resurrection.
- The church represents an intermediate worldly realm until the return of Jesus with the resurrection of the dead, who then no longer have an earthly body, but a spiritual one ( soma pneumatikon ).
- Everyone will be resurrected, but only those who trust Jesus ( justification by faith ) are redeemed . This will be decided at the Last Judgment . Like the doctrine of the chosen people of Israel, this leaves the fundamental question of God's righteousness towards all his creatures open.
- The grace and love of God as the mechanism of the eschatological judgment of the dead are disputed to this day in their extension to all, only Christian, only believing or even only specially chosen people.
Accordingly, there were several partly contradicting development phases and core ideas, which were characterized by sect formation, especially in the first centuries :
- After the near expectation of the parousia had not come true, people increasingly turned to the, albeit always very controversial, intermediate state between death and resurrection. At the same time, pre-Christian ideas spread again, according to which each individual would be judged in death in order to then be with God or else cut off from him completely. This interpretation was a consequence of the New Testament prophecies of a collective mass resurrection with a subsequent mass tribunal.
- With the idea of the intermediate realm of the dead, in addition to the idea of an immediate entry into paradise after death, which avoided this intermediate realm, but also the idea of two dishes, the personal after death and the eschatological at the end of time.
- Another concept postulated the sleep of the dead until the Last Judgment. But this seemed unfair, since here the punishment of sinners and the reward of the good would be delayed, and church fathers like Tertullian therefore later designed auxiliary constructions adopted by the Byzantine church of East Rome, which at least gave the souls of the righteous a kind of refreshment during this period.
- The conception of evil - and it is a prerequisite for an ethical judgment of the dead - remained very inconsistent in Christianity, especially in its interaction with culture and religion, could never really be solved in terms of its inherent problems and soon ended up either in the religious mysticism of popular belief or in philosophical theodicy . After the catastrophes of the 20th century, and especially the Shoah, the problem arose again in full sharpness.
- Diffuse chiliastic notions of the second coming of Christ in a thousand year earthly kingdom (Rev. 20: 1-6) before the actual end of the world with an “anticipatory resurrection” of the believers before the Last Judgment, a Christian re-molding of old Jewish Messiah concepts , added further to the confusion, especially since even then it was already judged and cleansed, but in the end Satan temporarily gained the upper hand again.
- All these very incoherent belief concepts , which also assumed that there was no possibility of reorientation after death, ultimately led in Catholicism to the development of an idea of limbo and above all of purgatory or purgatory (Latin: purification), in which this purification of minor sins (with Dante the seven deadly sins ) was still possible, but this could be shortened by the intercession of the church ( indulgence such as with Johann Tetzel : “As soon as the money rings in the box, the soul jumps out of the fire.”). The now set but again assume that the verdict damnation or salvation was final already at death, which is why Protestantism rejected this doctrine strictly and by the already by Augustine , starting with Paul (Rom., 3:28) conceived doctrine of justification replaced in which ultimately an individual judgment of the dead became unnecessary and the collective through divine grace, which was only granted to the believer, reduced to this one point, that of the endeavored faith.
So one could argue philosophically that there is a judgment of the dead in Christianity with the necessary ideas, iconographies, instances and procedures, although conceptual and vague - but these are not really Christian in the narrower, not defined in terms of power politics or religious history, etc. modern acceptable sense.
Particularly noteworthy is the medieval iconography of the court , which is mainly on the account of their high grade and extremely esoteric Bildsymbolismus often misunderstood and only after 367 n. Chr. Canonized by Martin Luther and John Calvin as unpaulinisch rejected Apocalypse of John (chap. 21 ) as well as based on the Jewish Garden of Eden , Heavenly Jerusalem and ancient models, as well as other pagan ones, e.g. B. took up Celtic, Slavic and Germanic ideas or had retroactive effects on them (cf. in particular "Germanic"). Great value was placed on deterrence, on the other hand the hope of the heavenly Jerusalem among the believers was nourished by particularly splendid representations, probably also in order to distract from the hopelessness of earthly existence, which mostly dominated the life of the people of that time with its social grievances by promising salvation and, above all, justice in the hereafter. Popular belief has in part preserved these figurative ideas to this day, although modern theology has long considered these concepts of the Last Judgment with a judge Jesus enthroned above the crowd of angelic choirs as mythological. However, some communities still hold on to such eschatological court presentations and have in some cases further differentiated them and provided them with elitist complexes of being chosen.
Islam
Basics: Islam's ideas about the judgment of the dead, eschatology and the afterlife are quite clearly outlined. However, the Koran does not offer a uniform or even systematic picture. Only the so-called "traditions" ( Hadith or Sunna ) and later theological treatises made the ideas more precise. Islam took over ancient Egyptian ideas (weighing of the soul) and adapted itself to the Christian idea of intercession and redemption. In addition, regional concepts of conquered peoples were incorporated.
Basics:
- Pre-Islamic in Arabia, death was an area into which one passed into an imperishable but inanimate cosmic space, completely separated from the living world, over which other gods ruled. Funeral customs were very important to keep the deceased safe. A murder had to be avenged in the sense of tribal honor so that the dead could rest.
- With these customs, Islam completely broke . Everything is now under the sole rule of Allah , to whom absolute loyalty and submission are due. Allah determines the length of life. Personal merit doesn't count. The only thing that matters is that man lived his life in the service of God. Correspondingly, he will also be judged on the Last Day (2nd Sura, 3–8). Elaborate funeral customs developed so that the dead would be ready on the day of resurrection. A cult of the dead was forbidden in the traditions, but this too gradually developed under the influence of old local traditions.
- The ethics of Islam are simple and far easier to fulfill than the Christian ethics . It is prescribed to be righteous, to reward good with good and evil with evil, to be generous, to help the poor, etc., as well as the formal commandments of the Five Pillars of Islam . Ethics is based on the assumption that creation is good and that man has to pass a test in it. The Koranic law serves as a guideline. The focus is on the principle of justice and encompasses all areas of human life. It leads to the application of the Talion principle . The focus is always on the community of believers, the ummah .
- Another central basis is the predestination doctrine of Islam, which is directly related to the good-bad problem , which was soon discussed controversially within Islam and led theologically to several splits and whose interpretations naturally have significant effects on the content of the judgment of the dead:
- Jabrians deny any free will. They are a radical breakaway from the Asharites, with whom they agree on most points.
- Qadrians grant humans a completely free will and are very similar to the Mutazilites , according to whose belief the moral law is not determined by divine revelation, but necessarily results from the order of nature or being. An act is already good or bad in itself, and even God cannot convert an evil act into a good one and vice versa.
- Asharites occupy a middle position and approve of a limited free will within the framework of the eternal divine will. They believe that evil is what God forbids through revelation, while good is that which he does not.
- A third key message of Islam is the eschatological doctrine of the Last Judgment and the afterlife.
Judgments for the dead: In Islam there is not just one judgment after death, but as in Christianity there are two, which, however, are much more clearly differentiated from each other and also better defined with regard to the time in between. Basically, if you include this interim period, you can speak of three dishes. There are also several variants of the sequence described below in the Islamic Book of the Dead :
- Intermediate course: Izra'il, the angel of death, has a special meaning (this idea also exists in medieval Christianity as a takeover from other religions, where there is usually such a companion, which on the other hand is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible). The task of the angel of death is to separate the soul rest from the body immediately after death (gently with Muslims, coarse with non-Muslims and "unclean" souls) and with the help of two white-faced angels to lead it to heaven, where it is received, if justified the highest spheres, is brought before Allah, but then returns again to her body on earth, where it sleeps until the resurrection. But if she belongs to the damned, i.e. the non-Muslims and bad faithful (only this criterion applies!), After the soul has been roughly separated from the body, she is carried to heaven by two black-faced, green-eyed angels, but rejected at the lowest gate of heaven, to the Pushed back earth and brought there to the other damned by the hellkeeper angels.
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Questioning in the grave: It takes place after the burial and, since the result is already known, it is a kind of show trial. The deceased is tested by two angels, Munkar and Nakir (blue and black), through four questions (Who is your God? Who is your prophet? What is your religion? Where does your prayer point?). If he answers correctly (the answers are noted by a scribe), the angels Mubashar and Bashir take care of him, comfort him and promise him paradise. Otherwise he will be left alone until the Last Judgment. In the case of wrong answers, the dead are already tormented in the grave by the angels Nakir and Munkar by opening a gate to hell in the grave, while the grave is tortured tightly around the dead. This principle of double punishment is not directly documented in the Koran, but it developed early on.
This is followed in a kind of sleep by the waiting time ( al-barzakh ) for the Last Judgment, which is initiated by the resurrection. Before it begins, there is another forty year reign of the anti-Christ. This rule is ended in a cosmic battle by the Messiah on the model of Armageddon , whose victory ushers in a Golden Age until the Resurrection. - Last Judgment: During the Last Judgment, each individual is personally assessed and judged again by God. His book of life, in which all deeds are recorded, play a set of scales (Egyptian) that assesses good and bad deeds as well as what has already been atoned for, and a narrow bridge "Sirat", (Arabic as-Sirāt , Arabic الصراط) which leads over the hell fire to paradise (Zoroastrian) plays an essential role. The condemned must remain in hell for all eternity and suffer endlessly physically, so that this is also referred to as a " second death ". But between paradise and hell there is a third place, the A'raf , where those stay where good and bad deeds are in balance (Zoroastrian). However, their stay there is limited in time and, if they are Muslims, they will later be admitted to paradise.
Hereafter and Resurrection: The Hell that describes the Koran as a burning fire, as in Christianity repeatedly divided (seven parts: Muslims, Jews, Christians, etc. have their own departments for example.). The stay is only endless for the unbelievers, but for believers it ends after the atonement of their sins.
The resurrection ( sura 75 ), initiated by powerful signs, probably taken from Jewish eschatology , which also did not exist in the ancient Arabic religions, is understood in practical terms as a happy life in the afterlife, filled with sex and feasting for men. The martyr ( Shahid ) arrives directly in this paradise without all these ceremonies (a reason for the martyrdom of Islamic terrorists, because martyrdom is the best thing that can happen to them. This idea is particularly pronounced with Shiites.) The certainty of salvation due to the sacrifice of his own life leads Islamic suicide bombers to act in the belief that in this way he will be spared any judgment of the dead and that his path will lead him directly to paradise. The Sufism again established over the centuries a somewhat gentler eschatology which presented all the individual responsibility to the fore.
Sociology of religion: Why there is this partly contradictory filter function in Islam (on the one hand it is said that all dead have to go to hell for a while, on the other hand the pure should slumber peacefully towards the Last Judgment), partly superfluous filter function (whether Muslim or not is checked twice ) is unclear. In contrast to Christianity, however, it was also a political movement from the outset, that is, ideological-religious unity was enormously important from an early stage and almost from the beginning, also in the form of military power, but also the fact that conquered tribes and peoples the Took over Islam in order to be able to be better mastered, whereby there were regular adaptation processes with local religions and customs. This instrumentalization, which can already be found in the Koran in many ways, undoubtedly has its parallels to the rampant ideas of the afterlife of Christianity, which are also used as an instrument of power, but in Islam also with the indication that above all non-Muslims have to be afraid, while half-pious Muslims have less or not at all.
A fundamental problem of Islam is the doctrine of predestination , which is sometimes understood as extremely strict . It completely excludes any human responsibility, since it does not provide for free will . Since the Qur'an is contradicting itself on this point, there have been numerous controversies (and three schools of thought, see above). The theodicy problem necessarily arises. However, there is no real problem of evil in Islam, as it was not intended to be autonomously connected to the ground of being, but purely individually, so that the philosophical problem of theodicy was omitted. Rather, evil is understood as part of God's mercy, as a kind of testing authority that gives people the opportunity to do good. In the Qur'an there are therefore two levels of human action: that of the divine action within the framework of his predetermining will. Underneath there is the level of the human being on which he carries out his actions independently within the framework of divine prior knowledge. Islamic theology therefore does not describe any actual redemption through God from guilt and sin , because there is a “consideration of God in all earthly affairs”.
South and East Asian Religions
In the Eastern religions (with the exception of Shintoism ) the ethical conflict , if one attaches importance to it, is passed on transpersonal on the path of the transmigration of souls into new forms of existence that end in the self-dissolution of nirvana . This is related to the sometimes emphasized disdain or at least the acceptance of the earthly. The type of existence in the hereafter follows from the type of existence in this world; the Dharma manifesting itself cosmically on this side determines the karma on the other side . Structurally, one can therefore speak of a judgment of the dead, since an accounting with the earthly way of life takes place indirectly within metaphysical processes, but according to criteria that are primarily based on humility and charity. But notions of hell have also developed secondary or as a takeover from older traditions. In Hinduism and Buddhism there was Yama , the god of the dead , and ten gods of the dead in the Chinese religion. Yama appears as a judge and has similarities with Ymir from the Nordic world of legends and with Yima from the gods of Iran. This suggests his origin from the gods of the Aryan immigrants, especially since he appears there as there and like his brother Manu as the first mortal.
Hinduism
Basics and terms , as far as relevant for the afterlife and the judgment of the dead (they are partly also central to Buddhism):
The Hinduism is not a monolithic religion; rather, it contains diverse traditions with a wide range of different beliefs and practices and numerous geographical, cultural and linguistic manifestations throughout India and back India, China and Japan as well as on the South Asian island world, so that Hinduism is sometimes referred to as a "composite religion" which consists of many different and sometimes contradicting elements. He mainly appears as
- classical Sanskrit Hinduism or Brahmanism
- Folk religion of South Asia and Hindu influenced tribal religions in India, which in addition to Hindu polytheism also have many animistic features
- ascetic religion endowed with most often anti-Brahmin trains and basic texts of the charismatic founder (z. B. Jainism, Sikhism), sometimes referred to as missionary religions of salvation occur
The ideas of the hereafter are correspondingly diverse. What they all have in common is their origin in the Vedas , which enjoy a kind of revelatory status. All Hindu traditions hold fast to the belief in the doctrine of karma as a law of cause and effect, which includes the moral and spiritual dimensions, also includes the principle of free will and must not be interpreted fatalistically . The cycle of birth, rebirth and death samsara, in turn, is closely linked to the karma teaching. The ultimate goal is moksha , the freedom from ignorance as the real cause of suffering and bondage, the knowledge of the true nature of the self ( atman ), an unchanging knowledge that breaks the cycle of rebirths samsara.
The self is clothed in three bodies. Above all, the type of self separated from the body (not-self) (analogy: house and resident), for example in the body or outside, is interpreted differently in the various traditions (some traditions even differentiate between five bodies).
- In addition to the physical, ephemeral body, sthula sarira is the second
- "Fine body" sukshma sarira , which takes an intermediate position through its ability to act, to sense perception as well as through mind and intellect and is not destroyed by death, but rather enters into a close connection with the self until this reaches the final freedom moksha . It is the individual karma (quasi the character) and carries all personal characteristics and the pattern of all actions, longings etc. in itself.
- Finally, a third body is karana sarira , the causal body or body of ignorance, a kind of embryonic or dream state of the fine body.
All three bodies are subject to change, only the Atman is knowing and dominating. From a Hindu point of view, death is the separation of the subtle body from the physical body. If the individual is not finally liberated, the fine body, illuminated by the consciousness of the self and identical with one's own karma and personal inclinations (in contrast to Buddhism), will seek another physical body, whereby from the individual structure of the fine body, the Awareness at the time of death, travel and destination also depend on death, so that a logical continuity exists between the individual lives.
Basics of the historical development: Similar to the historical development of the other major religions, the belief in the hereafter, determined in this case by the karma belief, and the additional and quite contrary to the system, the judgment of the dead can only be understood against the background of alternating socio-historical processes.
- Pre-Aryan ideas: Very little is known about the religious ideas of the pre-Aryan period of the Indus cultures of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro . There was evidently, as archaeological evidence suggests, a kind of totemic animal cult, which, however, was probably not yet familiar with a developed judgment of the dead. Associated with this was a notion of reincarnation that can be traced back to this day among the Dravidian tribes of India .
- Vedic phase and early Brahamanism (approx. 1500–500 BC): The Aryans , who probably came from the area north of the Caspian Sea, brought them around 1500 BC. An extensive pantheon , later comprising 33 gods, to India. Its members were hostile to each other in two groups, Asuras and Devas , and fought against the forces of darkness (demons), as it is presented in the Vedas, especially the very old Rigveda . One of the most important gods seems to have been Indra , as well as Varuna and other deities who still populate the Hindu pantheon today. The sacrificial cult was central. There were apparently no priests, idols and temples in the early phase. There was also an ancestral cult, which is typical for nomads and semi-nomads living in clans and clans and which continues to exist today. However, it forms only a small part of the entire religious system, especially in the context of the caste system and reincarnation as well as in the funeral rites, with the help of which the spirits of the deceased must be appeased by giving them the path between death, judgment in hell and through certain rituals Rebirth made easier. Magical rituals were common. The concept of the hereafter of that early period is very confused. There is still no talk of retribution after death, and there does not seem to have been a concept of the soul in the narrower sense, so that the Vedic religion is characterized as being primarily oriented towards this side. At the same time it took place between 1000 and 500 BC. Given the pure materialism of the Lokayata founded by Brihaspati , which only regards what is visible as real, and whose teachings are only obtained indirectly from the reports of the Vedas ( Barhaspati Sutras ), which fought against him fiercely, as he was a strong competitor seems to have been and could well have left its mark on some materialistic aspects of Hinduism.
- The later Vedic philosophy then developed ideas of an unchangeable law according to which everyone was responsible for his actions, not only in this life but also in future rebirths. Greatest emphasis was now placed on the correct performance of sacrificial rites, and the Brahmins , priests who could negotiate with the gods, were given the highest respect. Obviously, the increasingly unequal social order played an important role in the development of these ideas, which have not yet been clarified in their details, since these concepts now make it possible to depict injustices in one's own life as a result of actions in earlier existences.
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Classical Hinduism / Brahmanism (500 BC – 1000 AD): The complex concept of the soul now becomes central. With the emergence of the Brahmins as a caste of priests, whose task was the study of the Vedas , the religious ideas of the Aryan conquerors based on a heavenly cult had changed into an aristocratic religion that could now function as an instrument of rule.
The idea of rebirth , possibly originating from old indigenous ideas, gradually developed under the influence of the two competing religious systems and against the background of the emerging caste system, initially to a double system, between the Indo-European good-bad systems and cosmic systems of harmony with their pure secular, sometimes utilitarian, expressions of justice. As evidenced by the Manu legal book , the transmigration of souls, in addition to the very detailed description of infernal torments, demons and myths of the battle between the gods, initially took a rather insignificant place in the Vedas, only to become more and more important in later Brahmanic writings, which, however, de facto a falsification of the original Vedas equaled. The caste system played an increasingly central role as a regulator of rebirth, because the sinner was reborn in a lower caste. SA Tokarev wrote: “The old reincarnation belief thus took the form of the dogma of retribution after death and was used to give religious consecration to the caste system based on exploitation.”
Another regulative in SA Tokarew's sense was then the Dharma - Thought, that is, the fulfillment of the duty according to the personal circumstances. Ultimately, this means that you have to do what you were supposed to do according to your birth, class and social role, and not try to take on the role of others. Dharma thus also brings the greatest reward for rebirth and supports an ideology that regards inequality as given, because it explains social hierarchies, creates new ones and is essential for karma. - The later Hindu religious philosophy then tried to theoretically underpin the whole system with the idea of karma, and this karma philosophy developed an enormous and highly differentiated life of its own over the centuries. Gradually almost 250 treatises, the Upanishads, were written . However, not much remained of the old Aryan religion of the Vedas, which are still formally central in Hinduism to this day, and many beliefs of Brahamanism are more related to pre-Aryan religious ideas. Such often blatant contradictions between non-violence on the one hand and the often bloody rituals, asceticism and sexuality of Tantrism and a pronounced belief in spirits on the other hand are resolved in Hinduism by the fact that they are not perceived as contradictions.
The ethical and metaphysical mechanism of the karma thought apart from social justifications consisted primarily in the fact that it shifted the traditional oppositional dualism of the conquerors into man as something that he had to bear with himself and overcome. In the end, worldly justice became relatively meaningless in this world and only remained present within the karma. Here, however, it was not important in the form of an institutional judgment of the dead (apart from the hell of the god of death Yama, see below), but rather as a self-responsible element on the ladder of existences to be striven for with the ultimate goal of breaking through the cycle of rebirths in which the Gods themselves and their hierarchical relationships and tasks, which are now increasingly diverse, were also involved. On the other hand, the position of the Trimurti Brahma (Creator), Vishnu (Preserver) and Shiva (Destroyer), dominating and overarching creation, remained ambivalent as a kind of fundamental cosmic trinity and representation of cosmic consciousness. In this context, the individual soul was just a particle, like a single wave in an ocean, but with moral attributes that, as causal agents, were and are precisely quantifiable from rebirth to rebirth. - In the resistance against this more and more rigid caste system and this little consolation philosophy of endless rebirth chains, in which the personal karma is determined by past deeds, then emerged almost simultaneously in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, the one that was fiercely fought by the Brahmins, and from India from the 12th century Buddhism and Jainism expelled . Both religions challenged the power of the gods and undermined the authority of the Brahmins as earthly advocates and executors of atonement.
- In the more recent Hinduism from 1000 AD, as well as in the wake of popular piety, which was not receptive to the abstract thought processes of the Brahmins, and in the confrontation with Islam, which above all attracted many people from lower castes and casteless, numerous sects emerged at their center Avatars stood as gods of salvation. They eventually became an essential feature of Hinduism. Gurus were usually at their head , although pre-Hindu customs were often continued.
Basic features of Hindu life after death:
Death is a gift from the gods, especially from the creator of the world Prajapati (later known as Brahma ), who thus achieved their own immortality, which they originally did not have, at the expense of humans - and in order to satisfy the god of death. But it only affects the body, not the soul. Immediately after death, the soul is stripped of its body and exists as a thumb-sized apparition linga sarira , which is immediately seized by two demonic servants of the god of death Yama, who subjects it to a preliminary examination. Then she returns to her old apartment and hovers in front of the doorstep. The cremation must be completed by then so that it cannot return to its old body. Other rather complicated ceremonial steps follow, which also ensure that the soul receives a kind of transitional body and becomes an ancestral spirit pitri . Thereafter, the soul leaves the world to embark on its dangerous year-long journey into Yama's realm, where, by holding onto a cow's tail, it also crosses the terrible underworld river Vaitarani , which marks the border to Yama's realm. Victims and other ceremonies of their loved ones support them on this trip. At Yama she is now subjected to a final judgment of the dead. Above all, the Upanishads describe five basic possibilities , despite all the differences .
- If life was evil and thoughts cruel and destructive, then the journey leads to regions of darkness or to rebirth in non-human form , which lasts until the effect of the causal deeds is used up and one is reborn as a human being. However, evil as a concept and concept is not developed in Hinduism and is more likely to be found as a negation of the good, orderly, virtuous, true, pure, etc., and also shows in this context, regional, social, historical, etc. sometimes very different variants. Accordingly, the most important means of deliverance from evil are ritual atonement and purification, redemption, asceticism, karma hygiene or grace.
But even in Hinduism there is the idea of a hell , precisely those dark regions. After that, the person charged with such bad karma is brutally dragged to a place of punishment by the demonic henchmen of the god of death Yama (the ideas about this are very inconsistent in Hinduism) and tortured there. Since every deceased person is guilty of his karma except for the very few redeemed during his lifetime who do not die but perish, this path is initially the same for everyone. Then the convicted person is sent to one of the eight million hells (according to other traditions 8 or 16). Now he goes from hell to hell until the end of the world age. Then he is reborn as a lower being, i.e. stone or animal. - The rebirth as a person without traveling to other regions: This happens when positive and negative deeds are balanced or the person is virtuous but does not believe in the existence of other regions. Unlike the Jainas, the Hindus believe that whatever body the soul will inhabit, it is the only resident there, not a subtenant or resident of a “tenement house”.
- The attainment of the heavenly world ( svargaloka ) in virtuous people who, however, expect such a reward. The pleasant life there only lasts until the earnings are used up. New earnings cannot be earned there.
- The journey to brahmaloka , the world of the Creator Brahma . This enlightened path is permitted to those who seek God for God's sake. However, since the prerequisites for this are of a dualistic nature, this path is often not considered final. But here there is the possibility of further spiritual development, which culminates in an understanding of the identity of one's own and the divine self as a path of gradual liberation karma mukti.
- In the highest form, which can only be reached by a few, there is no journey; rather, this is the fate of those who already recognize the identity of Atman and Brahman in this life. They are already considered redeemed in their bodies. In death, physical and subtle bodies dissolve, and the eternal, liberated self remains (not to be confused with Buddhist nirvana , in Hinduism one speaks at best of Brahma-Nirvana, i.e. the absorption into Brahma).
There is no actual cult of the dead as such in the Indian religions, but there are numerous rites and ceremonies in the context of dying and death, which primarily serve to facilitate the soul on its way, but also to prevent it from returning. Rather, the body is detached from the reincarnating soul through the purifying fire, i.e. destroyed, and its components return to their origin. Death itself, on the other hand, is seen as a kind of sleep of the immortal and indestructible soul.
Jainism and Sikhism
Jainism : Jainism arose around the same time as Buddhism. Its essential characteristics are non-violence and asceticism. The Jainist regards the world as uncreated and of eternal duration. It is essential that there is neither a Creator God nor an institutional judgment of the dead or even a doomsday scenario, that rather the cycle of birth and rebirth continues indefinitely. Jainas, however, like Hindus and Buddhists, believe in the karma doctrine, rebirth ( samsara ) and a spiritual release from this cycle by entering into nirvana. According to this, karma does not build up from different parts as in Buddhism, which can also be transferred to different people, but it drives the Hindu idea to an extreme and literally "sticks" to the soul. Jainism is perhaps the religion that demands ethical principles most strictly and makes the total salvation of the soul exclusively dependent on it, without resorting to a judgment of the dead, divine grace, predestination, original sin or similar penal and exculpation mechanisms: everyone is solely responsible for their own salvation and any violation of ethical principles throws the soul back on its path to salvation.
The complex ontological and cosmological system of the Jainists has five domains. The lowest area, Hell Adholoka , is divided into seven rings, which get darker and more agonizing towards the bottom and in which the souls are purified according to their Karman , which is bound up in the universe by a strict causality that does not require any judicial mechanisms of the dead , the material substance which binds the soul to the body and which must therefore be purified from it in the course of many reincarnations.
Sikhism : In monotheistic Sikhism , which emerged as a reform movement in the 15th century, religious concepts of Hinduism were merged with those of Islam. The leading figures are the ten gurus . Sikhs accept the doctrine of rebirth. In contrast to the Hindus, however, they reject the belief in a repetitive series of births as a person. From the lowest form to the highest form, the human, a being ascends in thousands of lives, for only one human can unite with God. There is no predestined future; rather, everyone must make the best of their fate. Asceticism is not recommended, rather active charity. Sikhism is thus a social religion, and ethical principles in the context of society replace the Dharma ideas of Hinduism and the judgment of the dead contained in it. They demand surrender to the social situation and see this as ethical in the sense of a later salvation in Brahma.
Buddhism
Basic features: Buddhism emerged as a reform of Hinduism against the sacred scriptures of the Vedas and the folk religiosity that was expressed, thus also against the Brahmanic sacrificial cult and the Upanishad mysticism. Although Siddharta (later known as Buddha , the enlightened one) is a founder person, it is not a prophetic religion of salvation in the classical sense, since salvation in it is achieved in other ways through individual effort and not through divine grace. It is also heterogeneous , even if by far not to the same extent as Hinduism, in which Buddha is considered the avatar Vishnu , and shaped by several large philosophical schools that deal primarily with its distinct epistemological aspects and, for example, in Zen with intensive meditation practices . Accordingly, it is structured less dogmatically than logically, condemns the caste system and recommends the self-awareness of its followers. In this sense, like Jainism, from which it took many suggestions, it is a more modern variant of Hinduism.
Differences to Hinduism: The most important differences in connection with death, the afterlife and the judgment of the dead are presented as follows, especially in the Pali canon :
- Buddhism denies the existence of an individual soul. Rather, the individual is composed of phenomena that can be divided into five categories: physical, feelings, sensory perceptions, reactions to them, and consciousness. Strictly speaking, there is therefore no transmigration of souls in the narrower sense, since there is no atman in these five categories . Buddha's teaching deals accordingly with the non-self ( anatman ). Identification with the self, as in Hinduism, he considered a common cause of human suffering. Through meditation one can free oneself from the illusion of self.
- The role of consciousness in the transmigration of souls is that of a catalyst , which itself does not enter the new person during rebirth. Only the intentions that are linked in a karmic “conditional nexus” are decisive for the new person, indeed they even have an effect on the selection of the mother who will give birth and the hereditary disposition in her.
- Accordingly, the ego is not reborn as an individual unit as in Hinduism, and death is a state of heightened consciousness that offers the possibility of breaking out of the cycle of rebirth. The Tibetans' Book of the Dead describes these possibilities. Therefore, a person's thoughts during his death are of paramount importance.
- The stream of phenomena that make up the five spiritual categories is driven by karma to seek an embodiment that corresponds to the karmic realities. However, there is some disagreement between the major secondary schools about the method :
- The Theravada -Buddhismus, (by followers of the Mahayana) usually as hinayana -Buddhismus (also referred Shravakayana or "small vessel"), is the earliest form. His teaching is based on the Pali canon. The salvation of the individual is in the foreground here.
- Mahayana Buddhism ("large vehicle") , which emerged later . The salvation of the collective is in the foreground. He shows the possibility of transferring one's own already redeemed krama to other people through bodhisattvas and thus temporarily foregoing one's own entering into nirvana until the other is also saved.
- The Tantrayana -Buddhismus (also Vajrayana or Mantrayana , and usually pejoratively referred to as Lamaism). Still widespread today in Tibet, Mongolia, Lhadak, partly Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, partly China and Japan. It originated in India, but became extinct there due to the destruction of the monasteries by Islamic invaders.
- The East Asian forms of Amida Buddhism and Zen (see below).
- Smaller schools or subsidiary forms are:
- Sahajayana Buddhism, which emerged in Bengal in the 8th century, disregards all conventions and shows signs of a piety of rapture.
- The largely mystical Kalacakra Buddhism, a system of astrology that developed in the 10th century and which assumed religious significance, is considered to be the most highly developed and last tantra system.
- The Buddhist cosmology is extremely structured, especially in the Tibetan Buddhist version of Lamaism three spheres of existence (Triloka):
- The sphere of desires ( Kamaloka ) with the following levels in descending order: six lower heavens ( Devaloka ) with eight to 24 regions, where Indra and other lower Hindu-Buddhist deities and the titans who fight them live, the human world, the animal world, the world of the hungry Ghosts and hells. Hell Naraka , over which Yama rules with eight generals and 80,000 followers, is in turn divided into seven to eight main hells and 16 to 128 hot and cold side hells where the wicked suffer. Rebirth is possible in all of these realms, but the human realm is very difficult to reach. Even gods are born again. The rebirth in hell is also limited in time. Nirvana, however, remains the ultimate goal.
- The subtle sphere Rupaloka of the higher deities.
- The sphere of the incorporeal Arupaloka in which the heavenly beings of the sphere of endless space and consciousness live. The Vajrayana -Buddhismus knows two other spheres.
- The four noble truths: The root of life is suffering ( dukkha ) (1), which arises from desire ( tanha ) for power, enjoyment and long life (2). Salvation in nirvana (3) is achieved by overcoming this suffering and walking the eightfold path (4). However, Dukkha is also impermanence, imperfection through old age, illness and death. The root of desire is Anitja , a misconception of the essence of reality.
- There is no god and no gods. Buddhism is the only major atheistic religion. The Buddha did not speak out against the worship of gods, but warned against its uncritical recognition, as it would not lead to the solution of suffering. However, god-like figures have developed later, and certain gods such as the god of the dead Yama have been adopted or have been preserved. Wherever gods do occur, however, they are less proper names than designations of certain functional positions, which are occupied by people who have earned the rank for some time.
- The ideas of hell with the god of the dead Yama correspond to those of Hinduism. However, Lamaism teaches in part that hell is merely a product of the imagination. However, they consider Hinayana and Mahayana to be real and thus also a judgment of the dead.
- Buddhism knows no sin , no violation of divine commandments. Rebirth is not a punishment, just the natural consequence of existence. The law of karma works mechanically and does not need an authority to judge the deeds. It is not the deeds as such that are decisive, but the motives for them, the intentions.
- Ethics: In Buddhism, numerous highly complex texts entwine around evil . Evil in the moral sense is just as little developed as a separate category as in Hinduism, but exclusively in the soteriological , i.e. salvation-related sense, as everything that stands in the way of the attainment of Buddhist salvation, i.e. that does not allow perfect truth / freedom to break through. It is understood as being at the mercy of one's own desires. People live in a self-induced, wrong worldview that solidifies with every wrong act, which inspires them with wishes, inspires fears and makes rules that do not correspond to reality. All aspects of evil are interrelated, so that evil is not only understood as subject-centered in the western sense, but also contains object-centered aspects such as “the evil world”, “the evil age” etc. as trans-individual forms in which Within the framework of the individual cannot act otherwise than evil. Moral action can also be soteriologically wrong. The religious ethics of Buddhism therefore does not fit into the classical ethical systems of the West, such as Immanuel Kant (at most there are similarities to Max Scheler's ethics of values ) with his autonomous rational subject, since this is canceled by the laws of samsara with self-realization in nirvana which in turn can be balanced by the ethical ideal of the Mahayana Bodhisatava. Ultimately, however, the ineradicable delusion of one's own substantial, autonomous self is evil per se or radically evil in a meta-ethical sense. This self must be the first to be given up in the first stage of the eightfold path . In Buddhism, an actual philosophical ethics could therefore be absolutely impossible, and Buddhism consequently avoids it, since, as shown, it can only exist on the basis of an autonomous self and collides with the concept of not-self. Naturally, these relativizations are also subject to all ideas of a judgment of the dead or a hell of whatever kind, which are therefore not metaphysical regions, but expressions of self-deception, which and thus samsara extends into the hereafter, but there most likely through the excessive lucidity during the Death can be overcome - one of the most essential functions of such "otherworldly" concepts in Buddhism.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead: It was created by a tantric master of the Nyingma school of Vajrayana and contains the most detailed depictions of death and rebirth with numerous elaborate burial rites that also include mummification. It has the purpose of enabling the dying person at the moment of death, when he is in an intermediate state, to realize his true being and thus to prevent rebirth in this world. If this fails and the karmic inheritance is too heavy, rebirth becomes inevitable. If the necessary balance is also not achieved, the deceased has to face the judgment of his previous actions, which is passed in a court hearing chaired by the funeral judge Yama, while his helpers pull the deceased in front of him with a rope around his neck and into him his deeds are held up to a mirror. If the bad deeds predominate, he will be tortured (chopping off limbs), but can turn the tide in his favor by realizing that this torture is only a projection of his own mind. Finally, he is further aroused by images of the sexual act. If he finds the strength to recognize this last stimulus as an illusion, he can also escape rebirth, if not, he remains in hell for the maximum duration of a world age (kalpa) according to the Lotus Sutra or is in a lower one Form of existence reborn.
In Buddhism, the judgment of the dead is not a judgment on ethical, social, etc. misconduct, as a result of which a personal karma, which does not exist in Buddhism, is purified as in Hinduism, but it is part of the karma process itself, and its function exists above all in recognizing the illusory nature of existence and thus helping to avoid rebirth, but not to impose penalties for deeds which, in the sense of Buddhist metaphysics, are only part of this purely knowledge-dependent world.
East Asian variants: Mainly two, both originated in China:
- Amida Buddhism , which emerged in the 4th century, awaits redemption in an intermediate realm.
- Zen Buddhism , which emerged in the 5th century and later made its home in Japan . He was mainly interested in this world, less in death and rebirth, turned as a reform movement against frozen customs, placed meditation as an instrument of enlightenment about the identity of all being in the center and developed a strict training, which he had an enormous influence on practiced Japanese culture. (see below)
Daoism and other Chinese religions
General: In China, in addition to the ancient classical shamanism that still exists today, Daoism , Confucianism and the Buddhism described above have gradually entered into a partly intimate connection ( San-jiao ). According to a common characterization of the Chinese religion, all three denominations form a single religion. They adhered to Confucianism, actually not a religion, when it came to the instructions for daily life, turned to Daoism for ritual purification and exorcism and to Buddhist priests at funerals. However, the reality is much more complex. Rather, the world on the other side was interwoven with this world and its reflection. The gods and spirits there had begun their existence as humans, and gods could be promoted or replaced by imperial decree. In addition, many shamanic elements of ancestor worship were preserved. The Chinese religion has basically remained an ancient ancestral cult based on a family and clan cult, but more in the sense of ancestor worship than as a religious cult, since the emphasis here, also required by Confucianism, is on the continuity of the lineages. This syncretism appealed to all strata and therefore persisted into the modern age alongside the communism of Mao Zedong (with interruption by the Cultural Revolution ), which, although anti-hierarchical, also contained Confucian elements or they have always and above all since 1980s used. Mao himself put it this way in his "Red Booklet":
“We all have to learn from him ( note: the people ) the spirit of selflessness and altruism. Proceeding from this, one can become a person who brings great benefit to the people. One can be endowed with greater or lesser abilities, but whoever possesses such an attitude will be a noble person with a clear character and high moral qualities, a person free from low interests who is useful to the people. "
Early concepts: As early as the Shang dynasty (approx. 1766–1028 BC) there was evidence of a belief in survival after death. The worldview comprised the classic three levels of the dead, the world of the living and heaven (gods and ancestors). At death the three upper parts of the soul ( hun ) of the deceased rose to heaven and joined the gods of nature, the seven lower parts of the soul ( po ) sank into the earth into the realm of the dead. However, the dead continued to participate in the family life and received daily food and drink offerings for at least five generations. Taoism later more or less adopted this system.
The Confucianism , however, who was until 1911 the state cult, not a religion in the strict sense, since he developed little or no original metaphysical concepts, even a waste of time keeps thoughts about death (so Confucius in the Analects ), but above all a staatspolitisch- ethical system of everyday practice and politics. Concepts of the afterlife were originally rather alien to him, although they later developed over time under the influence of Daoism, which took up the ancient Chinese, still strongly animistic ideas of the I Ching , as well as Buddhism. Some Confucian books also contain metaphysical subjects (afterlife, ghosts, etc.). Confucius himself observed religious customs very conscientiously, was later even deified and worshiped in his own temples. Its metaphysical basis is, however, only the legalization and formalization of the traditional ancestral cult in the ceremonies ( Li ), he has not developed his own metaphysical system, and there has never been a Confucian priesthood of its own. After death, through the cult of ancestors, people remain in continuous communication with the world of their descendants. The main object of the Confucian concept, however, for Confucius, as for his two most important successors, Mengzi and Xunzi (both 3rd century BC), is the moral quality of man, world and state, with Confucius and Mengzi postulating that man is by nature out of good, Xunzi, on the other hand, believed that evil was innate in him.
The Daoism , however, is the most original and indigenous religion of China. Laotse (= "old master", probably 6th century BC) is considered to be the spiritual initiator of this religion, which partly emerged as a reaction to Confucianism, Taoteking as its basic script.
Essence and cosmological context: Daoism avoids the problem of earthly justice and its ethics and deals above all with the primordial ground of being and the inherent changes ( I Ching , Yin Yang ). With simultaneous rejection of the old religion teeming with gods, spirits and demons, he returns more strongly to metaphysical content and takes nature as his model, which is seen as the essential source of all ethical norms, evil z. B. as a degenerate nature, to which the human being has nothing to oppose and which must therefore be completely absorbed in the unconditional acceptance of one's own nature. Idleness is ideal here; the Tao is hidden and cannot be known. If action is necessary, however, it should follow the Wu Wei principle: “do what is natural”. The Daoists therefore rejected all civilizational developments, but also the social ethics of Confucianism, and their ideal was a return to Stone Age living conditions, which they regarded as sufficiently self-sufficient.
An intermediate position is taken by the philosophy of Mohism , which emerged at about the same time , which is closer to Confucianism than Daoism, but includes the otherworld more, while Taoism sharply rejects the old Chinese religion of gods and spirits and rather early, still not theistic , animistic, but philosophically arched ideas are comparable.
The often central dualism , especially of the Chinese religions, is not ethically understood as a good / bad pair (which is not included in the dual yin / yang symbolism!), But ontologically as a system of fundamental harmonic interactions. Justice in this sense is thus a cosmic phenomenon to which the gods ultimately also have to submit, but whose worldly form is subordinate to the cosmic one and in this context is rather irrelevant.
Death, afterlife and judgment of the dead:
- In Daoism there were two souls, as had been the case since the Shang period: Tji as the life inextricably linked to the body and the Ling , the soul that can be separated from the body (also po and hun ), which after death is either a Gui , a devil, or a beautiful , a deity, depending on the qualities of this world (especially nobles were able to enjoy the heavenly existence). Death itself was seen in ancient China as nothing more than part of a seamless whole, a universal order that had to be approached in due order. Disturbances in inherent harmony, which, like all evil, always stemmed from human free will, automatically resulted in retribution. However, the power of the various underworld and divine beings could, to a certain extent, avert these consequences. Initially, this attitude found expression in a previously strongly developed burial and ancestral cult, and sacrificial rites were of paramount importance.
- With the arrival of Buddhism in China in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the ideas of heaven and hell that already existed in Daoism were systematized up to the 9th / 10th. Century. The immortalized Lao Tzu and other saints lived in a paradise believed to be near Mount K'un-lun . Others, such as ascetics who had become geniuses , lived on the five islands of the blessed to the east. Hell in particular has now been systematized. Up to now it had been understood as a kind of prison that was under the administration of an inscrutable bureaucracy (Chin. Di yu for hell means earth prison) and in which the dead suffered their punishments, for example for not or badly observed death rituals etc., less because of ethical ones Misconduct. Now a system with ten hells came into being, in which one had to pay painfully for one's sins.
- From the 7th century during the Tang dynasty , Daoism lost its influence, especially among the people, especially when the Confucian order was introduced into the spirit world and into the administration and the competition from Buddhism became ever stronger. As a result, it sank more and more to a pure monk religion and a magic cult. How much also of misunderstood Buddhism then influenced the Chinese underworld ideas of Taoism, the example of the Jade report from the 19th century ( s. Fig. ), Because here there are now a "classic" with the aura of mythical Jade Emperor appointed Judgment of the dead, which also punishes worldly transgressions of the moral-ethical category with cruel punishments. After the punishment, the souls are sent back to earth and reincarnated in lower forms of existence.
- What is remarkable for all religious directions in China is the fact that there was initially no such thing as a court of the dead as an authority for the ethical evaluation of this worldly actions in the afterlife, but a court of hell that is administered by one of the ten kings of hell, Janluo Wang . Originally, however, it was not concerned with misdeeds of souls in this world, but with corresponding misconduct in the underworld, which was conceived as a complete counterpart to this world and was also subject to the emperor. Moreover, the kings of hell did not have a very high rank until the middle of the Han period ; the highest among them bore the title of "grandson of heaven", so had roughly the rank of imperial provincial governor. The notions of the ten circles of hell did not develop until the 9th and 10th centuries AD, systematized by Confucianism, whereby the ideas of Buddhism were completely misunderstood here and now something like hell punishments is actually in the Chinese religion trained for transgressions in this world (there were, according to the variety of such misdeeds, 138 penalty places), which formally resemble Dante's inferno quite astonishingly. In the Chinese hells, however, in contrast to those of Dante, no divinely ordained punishments are carried out, but measures to restore harmony, for non-observance of rituals of the dead or for violating social rules in this world. Such punishments could then be averted through sacrificial ceremonies by priests. In real underworld careers in this world, for example, the innocently persecuted could gradually assume divine positions or the function of judges of hell. This late phase of the Chinese concept of the underworld contains innumerable fables and fantasies which, taken in isolation, should alleviate the fear of death, but which on the other hand have also been an important constant in Chinese culture. (In legends, journeys to hell were occasionally described by the living.) Thus, heaven and hell were made an understandable copy of this world, which was also under the control of the emperor and certainly offered "development opportunities" for deserving people in the Confucian sense. With that, death and what might have come afterwards was no longer so terrifying, since it corresponded to the conditions in this world.
After the syncretistic amalgamation of Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, the actual procedure of the judgment of the dead was as follows: At the moment of death the dead are led by messengers to the god of walls and ditches Ch'eng Huang ( 城隍 , Chéng Huáng ), who is a kind held first hearing. The virtuous can then immediately move on to one of the Buddhist paradises, for example to Mount K'un-lun , where the Daoist immortals reside, or to the tenth court of hell to be reborn immediately. The sinners, on the other hand, go straight down after 49 days to hell at the bottom of Mount Meru . The courts of justice of the ten kings of Hell Shih Wang are located in the hell capital Feng-tu ( 酆 都 , Fēng dū ) and there - like worldly courts of law - have different jurisdictions, with the 10th king being responsible for the reincarnation of souls. This systematization is Confucian, while the model of hell is based on Buddhist ideas, while paradise is predominantly structured in a Daoist manner. The sinners are now subjected to their punishment in one or more hells, which, however , can be mitigated by the intervention of the gracious Ti-ts'ang ( 大 願 地 藏 菩薩 , Dàyuàn Dìzàng Púsà - " Ksitigarbha "), a Buddhist Bodhisattva . Then those punished drink the potion of oblivion and climb the wheel of rebirth that carries them into their next existence. According to other ideas, however, they will be thrown from the bridge of pain into a river that will carry them into their next life.
Accordingly, death was not a cause for joy, and attempts have been made to avoid it throughout Chinese history. Daoism in particular made extensive attempts to achieve immortality in this world or to find a paradise that, apart from Mount K'un-lun, was usually imagined as a place beyond the horizon. Under the premise of the horrors of death, several speculative evasive options developed, including a philosophical-Confucian one, which propagated the ritual reinsertion into the cosmos through all kinds of manipulations of the spirits. However, the extreme flexibility of the Chinese folk religion finally made it possible in the late period to accept all these ideas simultaneously and not as contradicting one another, so that the horrors of the ten relentless kings of hell finally disappeared.
Japan and Korea: Shintoism, Zen Buddhism and Shamanism
After death everyone becomes a kami . Hence there are innumerable kami that can be seen as spirit beings rather than gods. They were originally understood as personified natural forces; trees and mountains could also be kami. After death, good people become benevolent kamis, and evil ones turn into ruinous ones. Obtaining the status of a kami has no ethical quality, as it takes place almost automatically after death.
Ethics: The concept of " sin " ( tsumi ) is structured completely differently in Shintoism than in Western thought or Buddhism. It describes a worldly burden from which one can free oneself again by paying fines or other compensations that the injured party often demands himself. Tsumi is thus part of the legal system and less of ethics; at best it has something to do with cultic purification on the margins. There are heavenly and earthly tsumi , i.e. things that were imposed on a person by gods, such as skin diseases and other afflictions. Earthly tsumi, on the other hand, are things that humans do themselves, such as incest or witchcraft. The “ethical” principles of Shintoism according to Eliade can therefore be summed up in the following sentence: “Worship the deities, keep the rules of purity” and “Be sincere and straight”. From an evolutionary point of view, there was therefore no need to develop any metaphysical concepts in the sense of a judgment of the dead. In addition, one can simply throw one's offenses into the throat of the underworld after death (see below) .
However, two basic concepts are decisive: makoto no kokoro (true heart) and magokoro (faithful heart), usually translated as "righteousness, pure heart, righteousness". Although the Shinto ethic values individual virtues such as loyalty, honesty, love and child obedience , it attaches particular importance to magokoro , which creates the dynamic attitude to life that creates these virtues. Purification ceremonies to create this attitude are therefore important in Shinto. Magokoro is also a prerequisite for communicating with the kami and receiving their blessings.
The central “principle of retribution” has been preserved above all in the Kōshin belief, a remnant of an originally more complex system of Daoism, Buddhism, Shintoism and popular belief. According to this, three Sanshi worms live in every human body. They track down the good and sometimes the bad deeds in this person. At the so-called Kōshin-Machi (every 60 days) they leave the body while sleeping and go to Ten-Tei ( 天帝 ), the heavenly ruler, to report to him. Ten-Tei then decides whether to punish the evil person, for example through illness, shortening his life span or in extreme cases through death. Followers of the Koshin faith therefore try to live their life without evil deeds; however, those who have cause for concern try to stay awake during the Koshin nights to prevent the worms from leaving the body. The most famous symbol of this belief are the three monkeys . The main deity of the Kōshin popular belief is Shōmen Kongō , a terrifying multi-armed figure. The three monkeys that cover their eyes, ears and mouth are often shown.
Concepts of the hereafter: In Shintoism ( path of the kami ) there is no separate judgment for the dead. In general, he is primarily interested in this world. Its main ethical requirement is submission to the emperor. However, there are also strong Buddhist influences here. The underworld is called Yomi -no-Kuni / Yomo-tsu-Kuni and is the domain of the goddess of the dead Izanami who died when she gave birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi ; together with her brother and husband Izanagi, who ruled the heavens, she formed the pair of primal gods, who were both man and god. The realm of the dead or "land of darkness" ( Yomo-tsu-Kuni ) or "land of roots" ( Ne-no-Kuni ) or also "deep land" has two approaches: the first runs gently and curvy uphill, the the other is in a huge cave on the seashore, and it penetrates straight into the earth. All blemishes with all sins are thrown into it, the main characteristic of peasant cultures being the damage to irrigation systems, cruelty to animals and the pollution of holy places. The subterranean world is inhabited by male and female spirits, shiko-me (the ugly women) or hiso-me (the frowned women). When one dies, the spirit ( kami or mi ) leaves the body to go to the other world and to be reunited with the spirit of the cosmos. Buddhism then had a particularly strong influence on the cult of the dead.
The Japanese Buddhism developed under the concept Jigoku own, different from the rest of Buddhism hell ideas. Jigoku is a region with hot and cold places underground. It is ruled by Emma-ten or Emma-ō (buddh. Yama) and Lord of the Dead, who judges the dead by consulting a list that contains all their sins. He ensures that all beings are assigned to one of the six Gati (forms of existence in which they are reborn depending on their quality) when they are born again. He is assisted by two disembodied heads that rest on pillars on each of his sides. The female head Miru-me also sees the most secret offenses of sinners, while the male head Kagu-hana discovers every wrongdoing. The damnation does not last forever, however, and the dead are sentenced to temporary sentences in one or more places of hell. Here, too, the judgments can be tempered by bodhisattvas, according to the supplications of the living. The Jigoku-zōshi , a scroll from the 12th century, shows 8 major and 16 minor hells in words and images.
In Korea , in addition to Buddhism and Daoism as well as Neo-Confucianism , a very old ancestral cult with the involvement of Korean shamans predominates. Accordingly, there are no original ideas about a judgment of the dead outside of Buddhism or Daoism.
Ethnic religions
Ethnic religions are of great interest mainly because of the preliminary and transitional stages to the judgment of the dead in the context of their conceptions of the hereafter, as they show the social and economic framework conditions under which they can arise in the first place. Especially notions of wandering souls, which are based on the concept of the multiple soul, are very old and can be proven worldwide.
Most of the indigenous religions of Asia, Africa, Oceania and Australia as well as America do not have a philosophically trained concept of the concept of conscience in the western sense , which is essential for autonomous moral evaluations, for example Greek philosophy , patristicism , scholasticism and above all Immanuel Kant . They only contain religious or everyday practical representations, which arise from the surrounding and social situation and often appear in the form of rituals and taboos , a behavior pattern that is still widespread in the West to this day, which means that religion can be used directly for non-religious interests. and leads to a “system of norms” according to which “once and for all certain acts are regarded as religious atrocities for which some atonement ... must occur”. Most of them have a mythical ancestral cult in the center, which excludes judgments of the dead (the cult of real, personal ancestors is a historical later development), since there is still a spiritual continuum between this world and the hereafter, as Jensen already postulated ( see below ). In general, it is evident from the history of religion that a concept of conscience of whatever kind, but above all ethically and morally oriented, is usually associated with the phenomenon of the judgment of the dead, although initially often in a strictly religious, mostly priestly-theologically determined form as an internal authority, which controls the execution of divine will (and thus also of the worldly). Correspondingly, there is usually no pronounced good-bad dualism in today's sense in these ethnic religions. The ethnic religions, however, show different ideas of belief in the dead, especially in connection with chthonic ideas of fertility, which later in the more developed religions lead to a judgment of the dead and, because of the elimination of the eternally constant ancestral world, also to eschatological ideas, which is why a closer look is also worthwhile in this context .
Asia
In addition to the high religions, remnants of old shamanic or animistic ethnic religions have persisted throughout Asia , either outside the major religions, such as the Bon in Tibet and Nepal or among the Adivasi of the Indian subcontinent, in Mongolia ( Tengrism ), but also syncretistic within the predominant high religions such as in many parts of India and back India as well as in Indonesia and the Philippines (e.g. Igorot). There are no pronounced concepts of the judgment of the dead , especially outside of the high religions. As in other ethnic religions, the hereafter is understood as a continuum of this world. The function of the local ancestors, often mythical and later also personal, relates above all to the collective of this world. Individual forms of retaliation, however, are missing.
Often there is no pronounced belief in death at all. At most, one finds the idea that the dead were transformed into ghosts, for example in the case of the Kubu of Southeast Sumatra. The nomadic Semang on the Malay Peninsula believe the dead will disappear westward and return as birds at night. The culturally developed Andamanese have a similar belief in spirits, but also have ideas about the underworld, which could also be traced back to Christian influences. The same applies to the Wedda in Sri Lanka. Overall, one finds more or less variants of the same archaic beliefs everywhere, even among the Ainu Hokkaidōs .
In the Near East , especially the monotheistic religion is Kurdish Yazidis , remarkably still exist person illustrative evil in which it neither hell, but an up to seven-time rebirth (reincarnation), whose nature depends on the lifestyle. The focus is on individual responsibility. The cult of the dead and rituals are pronounced. Strong Zoroastrian, Babylonian and Judeo-Christian influences can be identified (angels, the fall of man, baptism). As far as is known (this secret religion is still largely unexplored and has no sacred texts), an actual judgment of the dead is not institutionally pronounced, but an indirect moral evaluation in the course of the transmigration of souls.
Another variant is the old religion of the nomadic Sinti and Roma , which presumably comes from northern India. Magic, ancestral cult, fertility cult with worship of the earth and belief in the dead are pronounced. There are often strong syncretisms with Christianity (Sarah, Mary, Apostles). In the context of the clan, death is only a transition stage into another form of life and is shaped by the belief in survival after death. Against the background of such concepts, ideas about the judgment of the dead are not pronounced, or if they are, they resemble the adopted religions of the area.
The Batak Sumatra, belonging to the ancient Indonesian peoples , who developed quite similar beliefs, albeit with strong regional tribal variants, developed an already very complex belief with ideas about the Trinity , which, however, hardly exists today due to the similar Christianity in some features. Death was understood as a transition into a soul spirit tondi . In the realm of the dead, depending on the position in this world and the rites used at the funeral, which could drag on for a year, he had a different position up to the highest position of sombaon ( person worthy of worship), so that one can speak of a preliminary form of the judgment of the dead , because a post-mortem classification takes place in the hereafter, which, however, is still defined from this side. The most powerful representatives, however, are again the ancestors, also present in portraits, with their influence on this world, which must therefore necessarily be favored.
Among the women on Seram , the idea of the Dema deity can be found , similar to the other ancient Indonesian religions , which, however, were later all overlaid by Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity as well as the religions of Chinese immigrants. The number of gods, spirits, demons and cultural heroes is enormous and regionally diverse, as are the corresponding myths, often also those that deal with disputes between gods, especially between the gods of the upper and the underworld. The souls of the dead who did not die in an “orderly” way can become demons. The ancestors are generally thought of individually, but have a high status as tribal ancestors or ritually elevated ancestors, but only for people who are in a genealogical sequence. Correspondingly, a class of nobility had formed among the ancient Indonesian peoples. The status was taken into the afterlife, which was achieved after an arduous journey led by a soul companion and, as a soul village, was an image of this world also in social terms. But if the rites in this world were stopped, the soul village also fell into disrepair, because the unity between the dead and the living was broken. The breaking or dissolving of such a continuum is, in turn, the prerequisite for the existence of a judgment of the dead as a caesura between this world and the hereafter, as the invading high religions all offered either systematized or institutionalized. According to Jensen, the spiritual basis of such a change is the increasing expectation of salvation of people, which brought about a change from the dema-god realized in primeval events to the intervening deity, as it is typical for polytheism and especially for monotheism. An intervening ancestral cult that guaranteed these expectations of salvation, but without ethical presuppositions, would have been disturbing here, since the gods increasingly combined their intervention with ethical rules, which then replaced those of the originally practical and ancestral customs of indigenous peoples. Instead of the magical ancestral spirits, there were other control and punitive mechanisms on this side (e.g. priests) and on the other (judgment of the dead, afterlife, hell). Max Weber noted:
"Where the belief in spirits is rationalized into belief in gods, i.e. no longer the spirits are magically forced, but gods want to be worshiped and asked, the magical ethics of belief in spirits turns into the idea that those who violate the norms intended by God, the ethical displeasure of the God meets, who has placed that order under his special protection. "
Africa
Of particular interest are the old religions of the sub-Saharan area and the Sahel or the so-called Sudan zone , less the mostly Islamic area of North Africa or the old Christian area in Ethiopia , except for the syncretisms that extend far north in the Sahara such as the Tuareg and other, sometimes marginalized, ethnic groups, particularly in the transition zone and in the regions of old African kingdoms (see History of North Africa ).
Basic structures of African religions: It was generally believed that death came about by mistake, and the dead lived underground in a realm of the dead ruled by one or more gods of the dead, but very similar to this world (for example in the south-west Bantu area ; but this idea is missing e.g. in Madagascar). But the dead are also present in this world through magical powers and must be kept happy, and especially in East Africa it was believed that people as a whole lived under the power of gods, ancestors and spirits, who represented the decisive supernatural phenomena and were influenced accordingly so that Africa has also been called the continent of magic . Cults of possession such as the central Sudanese isoki cult or the holey cults of the Dogon are widespread. The African religions, including the large and complex ones such as the Yoruba with its 401-strong pantheon, are accordingly dominated by ancestral cult, which, like the Maasai , can largely be absent. Fear of the afterlife and the fear of death are widespread, here and there with reincarnation or comparable ideas, with the Bantu in the Zambezi-Angola province and with the Dogon and Bambara on the upper Niger with the concept of a multiple soul, the same and particularly complex in the Upper Volta - Province. Occasional traces of totemism can also be found , mostly as clan or clantotemism as is particularly pronounced among the Maasai. In the Upper Volta Province, totemism occurs in the form of nagualism . Occasionally, as in Northeast Africa, it is believed that the dead come back as soul birds. Instead of ancestral cult, which does not exist, for example, among Khoikhoi and San and the Mbuti pygmies , in Africa it is better to speak of the veneration of the "living dead", because the dead are still several generations present, they are sacrificed on the house altar and everything that happens in the clan is reported to them. The relationship with them and with otherworldly spheres is harmonious and life-affirming, and the main question of the African ethnic religions is not: what fate awaits us in the hereafter? Rather, what influence do the dead have on us living, and what deeds that we inflict on our fellow human beings can they later avenge us as dead? In the peoples outside of the cities that have been influenced by the Neolithic up to now, there are also fertility cults. The stars are occasionally associated with the dead, as is the case with the ethnic groups of the southern Limpopo region or north-east Africa.
A judgment of the dead , there is only sporadic and in pre- and early forms, such as in central Sudan, where the earth god plays a significant role. The belief in rebirth is widespread. The idea of a judgment of the dead is alien to most of the population. The subsistence strategy plays an important role here, because hunters and gatherers and early so-called old planters tend to adhere to the cult of ancestors; Agricultural farmers that have only been developed show a general tendency to gradually develop concepts of a judgment of the dead with the concept of the underworld in combination with cyclical conceptions of fertility and parallel to pantheons of gods. However, the area of humus soils suitable for high-yield agriculture in Africa is relatively small, and the decisive economic factor there has always been human labor. The Kambara and Duka, however, believe that evil deeds are punished and good deeds are rewarded. Other local population groups in Central Sudan are also familiar with retaliatory measures in the afterlife. The Djukun call the realm of the dead "House of Truth", in which Ana , the earth deity, rules as the chief judge. The Duru also believe that the God who lives in the earth judges the dead. Besides, the position of the dead in the hereafter depends on the position in this world. To what extent Islamic influences played a role in such cases or whether these are autochthonous ideas, as found in the Pacific region, is debatable. In Liberia and Sierra Leone , however, this is suspected, because according to the belief of the Vai, the spirits of the deceased are tormented and severely by the dead, whom they have wronged in the course of their lives, during a 40-day journey including a river of the dead questioned. The Central African Wute have developed moral-dualistic concepts, because they divide the dead souls as well as numerous nature spirits into good and bad, similar to the neighboring Mbum . The good went to God, the bad into the fire. In the case of the Central African Bongo , loma, as a power from the hereafter, directs fate and evaluates it according to moral criteria, even intervening directly in life. Social and moral rank then determine the relationship to Loma in the hereafter.
As in other world religions, the important role played by the overarching high religions in the course of North Africa's history , especially in the case of Islam, must always be taken into account. As found, for example in the fandano of that religion Hadiya in Northeast Africa Islamic Eschatologievorstellungen, Fast customs, etc., similar in Dar Fur . The Daza and Tubu still practice an ancestral cult and pre-Islamic agrarian rites, etc. The fear of death and the belief in natural spirits are still alive with the Tuareg , as well as remnants of the old Berber belief in North Africa . Often, however, as in the Oberniger Province, Islam is viewed primarily as the afterlife religion, or, as in the past with the Songhai, only external customs were adopted. In addition to Islam or Christianity, Africans often continue to practice the old folk religion, which, however, is gradually beginning to wane, as in Islam and Christianity the fear of otherworldly powers and their arbitrariness in a very distant, non-intrusive and therefore also not, which is pronounced in traditional popular beliefs venerated otiosen high and creator God is appeased by the compassionate intervention of the creator God and especially by Jesus Christ. In this way, a certainty of salvation arises that is based on ethical standards and is guaranteed by a no longer arbitrary judgment of the dead, as long as one adheres to these standards.
Oceania and Australia
For the peoples of Oceania , the existence of the dead is a task for the memory of the living. But there are always moments when the dead leave this parallel existence to the living in order to descend into the underworld, the places of oblivion. However, there is no pronounced judgment of the dead in Oceania, nor are there any pronounced doomsday scenarios. The basis, especially in Melanesia, is a worldview with a strong ancestral cult, as is the case in Polynesia and Micronesia , of whose religion, however, hardly anything is left due to the radical history of conquest. The best known here are the megalithic stone sculptures called moai from the Polynesian Easter Island , which presumably represent mythical ancestors and acted as mediators between gods and humans within the framework of the individual clans whose power they represented. Kinship and descent are also the basis of culture and the basis of religious life in Melanesia. Occasionally, and especially in Polynesia, the social system is overlaid by power-politics-oriented nobility systems (especially in Hawaii , where there were eleven nobility ranks) and chief systems with mana and taboo (especially in Melanesia), such as those in Hawaii, Tahiti or Tonga also corresponds to a heavenly upper world for the nobility and a barren underworld for the common people. The purely class-specific system, however, still has an otherworldly corrective in the more or less pronounced ancestor cult, which in some princely rule also only applies to the aristocratic class. Totemism is particularly widespread among the Papuans of New Guinea. In Melanesia in particular, the kinship groups and tribal associations were carriers of religious life.
However, for Altpflanzer typical early or pre-forms of a judgment of the dead with ideas of the soul can be found above all where, as in Polynesia in particular, there are often diverse pantheons of gods, mostly associated with natural phenomena, and thus cosmogonically also an underworld, usually imagined as a copy of this world. The emphasis here is mostly on the shamanic soul journey , described as arduous , the aim of which is to unite with the previously deceased tribal and clan members, but at the end of which there can be a kind of entry ceremony with an examination by the underworld deity and thus a preliminary form of the judgment of the dead . In this context, the evidence that the deceased has undergone certain ceremonies during his lifetime, which can be proven by the presence of tattoos, plays an essential role in this context . Originally the realm of the dead seems to have been identical to the realm of the gods, but then evidently moved under the earth with the idea of the dema deity , who is neither good nor bad, since this is where the origin of life and fertility is imagined which was only created by the death of the Dema deity, so that a close connection between death and fertility arose, which is typical for all planter peoples, as Adolf Ellegard Jensen observed in particular with the Melanesian people of the Marind-anim .
The Maori have Hine-Ahua-Rangi, an underworld goddess. Her father Tāne acts as the organizer of the world and as a representative of the good. His antagonist God Tangaroa , on the other hand, is the cause of evil, so that here we already have a cosmogonically based, secondary ethical dualism in front of us. Hine-nui-te-pō (Great Woman of the Night) also acts as the goddess of death , as Hine-a-tauira's wife and daughter at the same time of Tane, who, when she found out about her incestuous origin, fled to the underworld and settled there gave a new name. There, however, she does not act as a judge of the dead, rather she embodies the ultimate abolition of male power by drawing men to their death, because rank, social position and positive powers of existence within the tapu system were essentially viewed as male. Women, on the other hand, were impure and a source of negative influences on these forces. Another myth confirms this very different conception of the underworld deity, which is mainly based on old plant ideas of fertility. In this story, the Polynesian trickster half-god and cultural hero Maui is killed while trying to rape the goddess of death and thus achieve immortality for all living beings.
As elsewhere, the Maori mana and tapu are passed on to the individual, as is the sacred tribal land. Later Maori churches (e.g. Ringatu and Ratana ) were formed, which tried to merge the old religion with the Christian one, including the Christian ideas of the afterlife.
The Australian Aborigines, on the other hand, have developed this cult of mythical ancestors, which is not an ancestral cult in the narrower sense, but the worship of mythical figures, i.e. fantasy beings that are imagined in various figures, into a highly complex mythical-philosophical system, the dream time , in which there is also no place for a judgment of the dead due to the system, because all moral laws and customs in the world are derived from the connection between the visible and the spiritual universe. The living and the dead are therefore inseparable, and the ancestors have their seat in natural phenomena and totems . The ideas of the Australians about the life of the soul after death are relatively unclear and inconsistent. Some tribes believe that souls migrate across the earth, others that they travel north or to heaven, or that they dissolve into nothing shortly after death. Accordingly, there is no idea of a hereafter, and ideas of the soul do not play a major role. In some myths it is said that in the past, like the moon, humans were constantly reborn and that they eventually expressed a wish to be allowed to remain dead.
America
Many different ethnic religions have developed in America. As elsewhere, the concept of the afterlife is primarily dependent on the respective subsistence strategy, i.e. hunters and gatherers , nomadic cattle herders or farmers. In the case of the latter, ideas and fertility myths are predominant in both North and South America, which per se generally exclude a judgment of the dead or only partially show it. Totemism is mostly spread as a clan or tribal cult, as is the animistic belief in ghosts. An ancestor cult occurs predominantly in the communal religion type and was therefore present in the arable tribes such as the Pueblos ( Katchina ). Altogether, especially in many parts of Latin America, old cultural patterns have been preserved, and accordingly, remnants of these religions are often still alive in the area where the ancient Mesoamerican and South American high cultures radiated, whereby a striking mixture with Catholicism can be observed here, for example with Christ as the sun god and Mary as the moon goddess. The sun rises from the “holy” mountains and “dies” in the west, in the land of the dead.
The Beyond belief was based on the here and now; There were notions of rebirth in some areas. One lived on as the dead in the way one had lived in this world. As far as they exist, newer notions of a judgment of the dead, especially in Ibero America, can often be traced back to the overprinting of mostly Catholic Christianity, which, especially in Latin America, has occasionally produced local mixed forms that can no longer actually be described as Christian, because even in the old American ones Such ideas existed in high cultures, but they were only clearly present in Central America (see above) .
- North America
In North America, ancestral beliefs, accompanied by a strong animistic belief in ghosts, prevailed almost exclusively, but because of the nomadic way of life, this seldom brought about a real ancestor cult. The Eskimos of the Arctic believed that the dead resided in heaven; but also underground one met the ancestors again. There were similar ideas in the subarctic . In the case of the North Atlantic Algonquin , there were status-dependent mummifications and second burials if the dead were taken on hikes. The Natchez and other northern and prairie tribes had the idea of the bone soul, which only reaches the afterlife after the bones have been cleansed. The Comanches believed in a kind of paradise. On the Pacific north-west coast and the north-east coast, there was a belief in a high god, the great spirit , who was called Manitu among the subarctic Algonquians and Naskapi and which already made ethical demands; sometimes there were ideas of a multiple soul. Some tribes of the Great Basin had developed the notion of soul dualism. The fear of spirits of the dead was particularly widespread among the Californian Indians, who also believed in a special god of the dead, Kuksu , to whom extensive ceremonies were dedicated. The Indians of the Southwest believed in an afterlife far to the west after sunset or in the sky. A soul did not get there until its violent death was avenged. In the Great Plains and in the eastern woodlands in particular, the dualistic dichotomy of a warring world of gods into powers of the heights and powers of the deep was common . Overall, burials in North America suggest a widespread belief in life after death. In eastern North America, red ocher (mostly hematite ) was also scattered over the dead or the entire grave. Grave goods are common. Also the enormous clan burial complexes of the Adena and Hopewell cultures , equipped with rich gifts , which in some cases carried out an effort comparable to the Egyptian pyramids (there were over 100,000 of them, for the mounds of Poverty Points about 405,000 m 3 of earth were moved, the largest required about 3 million working hours), points in this direction.
All of these are symptoms of an ancestral cult of nomadic cultures, even where agriculture was practiced, sometimes with an urban culture such as on the central Mississippi and lower Ohio (e.g. Cahokia with 20,000 inhabitants). Particularly interesting in this context is the spirit dance movement that began in 1860, especially in the Great Plains , and which propagated the belief in the resurrection of all Indians and the expulsion of all whites and carried messianic features. However, pre-judgments of the court of death do not exist in any of the North American ethnic groups.
- Central America, Northern South America and the Caribbean
In addition to Catholicism, especially in northern Mexico, there are syncretism forms with the old indigenous religions with a then pronounced animism, but also remnants of the old high-cultural religions with gods and spirits (see above) , but here too without essential indigenous ideas of a court of death apart from the Christian, unless through the resumption of old Mesoamerican religious beliefs, such as can be observed in the Mexican province of Chiapas , an ancient Maya region, as well as in Guatemala and on the Yucatan peninsula .
- South America
Due to the great climatic and geographical differences, there is a greater breadth of variation in the religions, but all of them, where not syncretistic or shaped by Christianity, also show the old animistic image, albeit a particularly diverse one. But there are no gods or cultural heroes in all of South America that are common to all Indians, but the myths are thematically interwoven with one another despite the great variety. However, the belief in some form of continued existence after death is widespread. As in Central America, there are no forms of judging the dead outside of Christianity, although there are images of the underworld as the place of residence of the dead, whereby, as with the Xavante of Central Brazil, there are even principles of order, because in their underworld, for example, the dead are strictly separated according to consanguinity. so that worldly conflicts cannot continue in the realm of the dead. Tests also have to be passed through during the journey to the afterlife, which is generally imagined as the underworld, which, however, can be very different, i.e. both happy as well as bland and miserable, but in general, like death, is not feared and is understood as part of existence . Rites of passage, for example in Amazonia, are frequent, as are secondary burials and communion with the dead. The ideas of the afterlife are often determined by the cult of ancestors, even where, despite the particularly extreme genocide by the conquistadors, ancient Andean forms of religion of the Incas and their predecessors had survived, occasionally with the belief in an otious high god.
New religions
Tworuschka uses “new religions” to refer to syncretistic religious communities that have emerged in the last 200 years and that differ so strongly from the dominant religion that they can no longer be viewed as their splits ( sects ). With the Mormons, for example, who mix Jewish and Christian elements with inspiration from Joseph Smith , there is a judgment of the dead based on the principle of human free will.
Afro-Caribbean and South American religions : Often, as in voodoo, archaic ideas of ghosts are mixed with Christian content. Since they are mostly widespread in the lower classes and react to social injustices, they are interpreted as ways of coping with this world, which is perceived as oppressive, and as a class-specific binding agent. Little is known about their ideas about the hereafter.
Asia: The concepts of the judgment of the dead among the Baha'i and in the Unification Church ("Moon sect") are largely determined by the basic religion or only weakly or not at all.
Developments in the modern age
Hermeneutics
In the following, one can no longer speak of a judgment of the dead in the actual and narrower sense, but one can speak of ideologically or religiously tinged processes and residues in connection with eschatological and fundamental psychological processes, which concerns the individual and collective coping with the problem of death. A purely historicizing presentation of the central concept of the judgment of the dead would be incomplete without considering the mental structures, concepts and motivations with which it is interwoven in modern times and up to the present day or which it influences. Numerous modern thinkers have seen it similarly. Oswald Spengler wrote:
“The death that every person born to light has to suffer is linked to the ideas of guilt and punishment, of existence as a penance, of a new life beyond the illuminated world and of a redemption that puts an end to all fear of death. Only from the knowledge of death comes what we humans have as a worldview, as different from animals. "
Yet it is tricky to draw such historical parallels. Bertrand Russell brought the problem of interpretation to the point when, in connection with the messianic features of communism, he said somewhat derisively that Marx probably adapted the Jewish messianistic understanding of history for socialism in a similar way to what Augustine did for Christianity. The dialectical materialism that underlies Marx of historical development, this would correspond to the biblical God, the proletariat would correspond to the elect, the Communist Party of the church, the revolution of the second coming of Christ and the Communist empire the millennium . A direct transfer, in this case of messianic ideas to the ideological content of modernity, is problematic and more semantic in nature because of the clear differences between the two systems . This is only permissible insofar as it relates to current events with similar social dynamics, which have a comparable mythical basis, which in strong images express elementary human experiences and hopes. Accordingly, the idea of the judgment of the dead is to be interpreted in a modern context as a phenomenological reference system within the framework of a hermeneutic circle . Nowadays “hell” is also often interpreted theologically as follows: “Hells are mythological images of the existential human fear of the impending crash into nothingness, they are negative messianic myths.” Like the judgment of the dead, they are part of the changing world and social interpretation.
Preliminary remarks
After the end of the Middle Ages and especially after the Enlightenment, the ideas of the hereafter, of heaven, hell and a judgment of the dead as well as the fear and hope associated with them did not cease to occupy people. It is therefore only inevitable to examine the current concepts in this context concretely and in the circumstantial evidence , even if the term “judgment of the dead” does not necessarily appear expressly in the medieval or ancient sense. But the basic idea still exists outside of the religions, too. It occupies people, uses societies and states not only in a conservative, perhaps even fundamentalist sense, but also in modern, secular and ideologically transformed clothing.
Here is primarily the phenomenon of the neutralization and fragmentation of religion, which Theodor Adorno identified in “Studies on Authoritarian Character” :
“The neutralization of religion goes hand in hand with its fragmentation. Just as the emphasis on its practical utility ultimately separates religious truth from religious authority, so too is the specific content of religion constantly subject to a process of selection and adaptation. "
Another mechanism in this context is, however, very ancient: the sacralization of power , as can still be clearly seen in the iconographic examples of modern totalitarian rulers. And some of them, such as Kim Il Sung in North Korea , were de facto declared immortal, others were given mausoleums as mortuary temples, where they, like Lenin, Stalin, Mao or Hồ Chí Minh, were embalmed on display and at least temporarily (Stalin e.g. ) the revered admiration, if not adoration, of the people. Gustave Le Bon , one of the co-founders of mass psychology , described the phenomenon as follows:
“One is religious not only when one worships a deity, but also when one dedicates all the powers of his spirit, all the submission of his will, all the gluten of fanaticism to the service of a power or a being that is the goal or guide of thought and actions will ... Nowadays the great conquerors of souls no longer have large altars, but statues and pictures do, and the cult that is practiced with them is not significantly different from previous ones ... For the masses you either have to be a god or you are nothing . "
Because submission and fear are central aspects of every power, as Bertrand Russell states in “Forms of Power” and also gives the reasons for this:
“There is a sense of utmost security in submission to the divine will ... All willingness to submit is rooted in fear, whether the leader to whom we submit is human or divine. (P. 19)
For pragmatism, a belief is 'true' if the consequences are pleasant. Belief in the higher merit of a dictator has more pleasant consequences than unbelief when one lives under his government. Wherever there is effective religious persecution, official belief is true in a pragmatic sense. The pragmatic philosophy gives the rulers a metaphysical omnipotence that a daily philosophy would deny them. (P. 258 f.) "
Secularization, ideologization, instrumentalization
In the course of post-medieval secularization , in the wake of Reformation and humanism , new perspectives on religions were introduced. Especially in the 19th century, worldviews emerged in which otherworldly elements of religion were instrumentalized or reinterpreted in terms of materialistic ideas. What connects them is the phenomenon of the loss of transcendence or, as Richard Schaeffler noted: "The history of religion leads to the complete veiling of the 'sacred', more precisely, its identification with the 'profane'." This meant that religious ideas such as the judgment of the dead were mostly very critical or rated absolutely negatively, even if artistic movements such as Romanticism or the Pre-Raphaelites exaggerated them in a mostly antiquated manner or if fascism and capitalism instrumentalized them for power politics . Unless ignored or denied, religious phenomena have been "explained" in three ways:
- either as purely psychological substrates that are subject to depth psychological mechanisms such as repression , projection , defense or introjection ,
- as socially determined mechanisms within the framework of social developments apostrophized as class struggle , especially in Marxism-Leninism ,
- as evolutionary stages of development that the enlightened person has now left behind, as in Darwinism and its nasty child, social Darwinism .
Nevertheless, the major ideologies in particular show partly religious traits, although without being religions in the narrower sense, but with a strong binding effect, redeeming figures, promises of salvation and redemption motifs up to eschatological ideas that are partly taken from the world of faith, which are now inevitable due to the often materialistic basic concepts were relocated to this side of a nearer or more distant future, even where religious backgrounds are still present and integrated, such as in the divine will of grace anticipating Calvinism / capitalism, above all of Anglo-Saxon character, as the Puritan pilgrim fathers brought to America.
Typical of the ideological concepts of modernity, especially when they are "constituted by the iron bond of terror" in a totalitarian form with a "claim to a total explanation of the world" and under the "law of killing" as well as with "fear as a public-political principle Acting ”(Hannah Arendt), is here the shift of the judgment of the dead to this world. In the Third Reich, for example, the will of the Fiihrer was considered absolute and quasi-divine and, according to Schmitt, that also meant here: Supreme judge in a quasi-divine position without any control, who, as further developments showed, also exercised this right, very much like "little father Stalin ”or the“ Great Chairman ”Mao, they too are absolutely charismatic figures. For the Soviet KGB and its predecessors and successors, a function as a secular judge of the dead or its vicarious agent (in the old and classical religions, these were mostly demons) can be established. Both organizations sent their victims to death camps after opaque processes or bureaucratic procedures: some to the concentration camps (the hell guards there were not called skulls associations for nothing ) and the others to the gulags . Both were worldly hells, as Eugen Kogon in “ Der SS-Staat ” or Alexander Solzhenitsyn in “ The First Circle of Hell ” called them.
Marxism, Socialism and Communism
In communism there is the eschatological, “paradise of the working people” to be understood in this world. This concept has salvation-historical-messianic references.
All three atheistic ideologies showed little interest in religious questions, except that they rejected religion as an instrument of oppression in the sense of Marx and Engels (Marx called religion the " opium of the people )". Only in its later totalitarian manifestations did Bolshevism in the Soviet Union and the regions it gradually ruled or influenced by it (e.g. China, North Korea, Eastern Bloc ) have the undeniable advantages of institutions and hells similar to the courts of the dead or fear previously recognized for securing power. In practice, however, he and his imitators not only follow totalitarian patterns of action, but also the classical religious models that they theoretically rejected so strictly. At the same time, they proved the usefulness of such metaphysical institutes, with the old instrument of the death penalty now growing into a constant threat, just as under fascism. The normal individual human fear of death was thus instrumentalized as the fear of death for society as a whole and thereby acquired a metaphysical tendency in the sense that everyone who stood in the way of the ideal end goal, be it social, economic, territorial or racist, was in the interests of the The overall idea is to be destroyed. The Soviet show trials , especially of the 1930s, which, like the similar trials before the National Socialist People's Court, can also be interpreted as this-side trial for the dead, since their judgments were given by the highest authority, namely Stalin, and regularly led to or in the hell of the Gulags The main purpose of death sentences ended was to make this clear to the entire people.
fascism
The fascists in Europe transferred the salvation expectations contained in the Christian religion to their own ideology. National Socialism contained components of a divine judgment understood as a liberating act of salvation ( Final Solution , Final Victory , People's Court , etc.), which aimed negatively at the opponents of the regime, the enemies and, from a racial point of view, primarily at the Jews. Numerous quotations confirm the eschatological announcement of their annihilation for the Jews. Conversely, for the German people and the Aryan race, the “Führer” himself increasingly became the judge and savior. At the same time, the National Socialists developed a downright cult of the dead. Even before the war , those who died fighting for the party were transfigured as “ martyrs ”. This was particularly true of the victims of the Hitler coup of 1923. Death in the cult of the dead represented an initiation into heroism and eternal life, but also meant a voluntary sacrifice for the national community. This gave meaning to the sacrificial death retrospectively.
Capitalism and imperialism
In his essay “The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1904/05), which was primarily aimed at Calvinism and Pietism , Max Weber tried to illustrate the inner relationship between capitalism and Protestantism. In view of the Calvinists' certainty of salvation, Weber writes:
"The apostle [Paul] 's admonition to' fix 'one's own vocation is interpreted here as an obligation to achieve the subjective certainty of one's own choice and justification in the daily struggle. In place of the humble sinners, whom Luther promises grace if they confide in God in repentant faith, those self-assured 'saints' are bred that we in the steely Puritan merchants of that heroic age of capitalism and in individual copies down to the Find the present again. And on the other hand, in order to achieve that self-assurance , restless professional work was inculcated as an excellent means . "
“That special life of the sacred, which is religiously required and which differs from natural life, took place - that is the decisive factor - no longer outside the world in monastic communities, but within the world and its order. This rationalization of the way of life within the world with regard to the hereafter was the effect of the professional conception of ascetic Protestantism. "
In particular, Calvinism, which is determined by a disciplined way of life, makes a turn from the otherworldly judgment of the dead to the advance of this world, success-dependent "bonus", because here the result of the judgment of the dead as a certainty of salvation is already read from the success of this world, especially economic activity and anticipated as a purely human valuation, but no longer subject to the divine will of grace after death, as was the case with Luther. According to Weber, this explained the legalities of western colonialism and imperialism up to globalization , even if later forms were increasingly practiced without asceticism. The justification of the colonialism and its atrocities, already disputed by Las Casas , has been viewed as a service to God and proof of divine grace since the Spanish conquest of the New World and its excessive slavery. Your own success was and will be interpreted as a consequence and confirmation of a divine judgment of grace that has an effect in the here and now.
In western modernity , the old metaphysical ideas of the judgment of the dead have often become obsolete or untenable, sometimes even within the religious communities. They were either eliminated by atheistic rejection, agnostic neutrality, religious indifference, or they were transformed and replaced in the sense of a present-day anticipation of salvation. The divine will of grace was interpreted as being exclusively oriented towards worldly success (Calvinism / Pietism), or - as in baroque piety - in a strongly figurative externalization of beliefs.
What remains is a kind of psychological void, a spiritual discomfort in the face of the still and in principle irresolvable ignorance about life after death, despite enormous scientific advances. This discomfort causes many to look for answers in East Asian religions (transmigration of souls), in quasi-religions such as esotericism, or in fundamentalist groups. No one can avoid the fundamental question of whether one's own lifestyle is assessed after death. The awareness of one's own mortality and the fear that goes with it are considered to be a fundamental part of human existence.
Summary of the essential structures of the court of death presentations
If the concept of the judgment of the dead is taken broadly enough, the following general characteristics can be identified:
- The idea of a judgment of the dead essentially contains promises of salvation or redemption and usually corresponding condemnation judgments with penalties of varying severity and duration in certain metaphysical regions provided for this.
- At the beginning of the history of religion, the essential criteria and selection mechanisms for judging the dead were not so much ethically determined, but rather socially, socially and also based on status, or they were based on the cause of death and similar comparable motives. It was only relatively late that they were based on the morally interpreted principle of retaliation.
- A judgment of the dead originally always took place after death in whatever other world, but later, because it made sense in terms of power politics, it was at least partially relocated to this world and / or connected with this-world eschatologies.
- A funeral court was usually structured institutionally as a formal court of justice with defendants, witnesses, prosecutors and judges, possibly even recorders. In the East Asian religions above all, however, there is also the form of the system-immanent judgment of the dead, which does not require any institutionalization, since it is essentially already established in the context of the transmigration of souls. Usually these forms were then supplemented by institutionalization, for example in Buddhism, where it functions as part of the karmic knowledge process and not as a primary instrument of atonement as in Hinduism, while in Taoism-Confucianism it is an autonomous and downright bureaucratic part of the underworld and initially only the deeds are sanctioned there, only later integrated in the context of syncretistic processes between Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism also ethical values.
- The main motives for the creation of a judgment of the dead were fear of death and the hope of the most favorable fate possible afterwards. This belief was probably triggered by the emergence of differentiated, stratified societies, in which the power potentials were distributed more and more differently and instruments were necessary to stabilize them outside of the pure monopoly of force on the psychological level through transcendent punishment or reward elements in the sense of fear and hope hold what a purely shamanic ancestral cult with its soul world, which is not punished, could no longer achieve. The extent to which class struggle features played a role, as posited by Marxist research on history and religion, is debatable.
- In many religions there are often transitions and mixed forms between the individual forms of the judgment of the dead, especially in the historical longitudinal section.
- Overall, it is noticeable that some ethnic religions have a pronounced veneration of ancestors, but no judgment of the dead. If this ancestor worship becomes weaker or ceases, in addition to pronounced ideas of gods and often in connection with vegetation cults, concepts of a dark underworld develop. The social stratification of this world is reflected in the differentiation of the dead, which ultimately leads to ideas of paradise, initially only for the leading strata, later on an ever broader basis. This results in the need to establish a selective intermediate instance. It takes into account the increasingly powerful ethical demands of the deities and gradually replaces the old, ethically indifferent ancestor cult. In the Eastern religions with a pronounced doctrine of wandering souls, internal mechanisms that correspond to a judgment of the dead develop on the basis of the idea that evil is embedded in the law of karma.
- The judgments of the dead are often accompanied by eschatological concepts, either linear, as in the monotheistic religions, or cyclical, as for example in Central America and partly in Hinduism.
Typing of concepts of the judgment of the dead and the emergence of religious awareness
In religious studies, conceptions of the judgment of the dead are often viewed and typified in connection with the “emergence of religious consciousness”. This evolution- theoretical concept is used to understand the different ideas. In the course of history, therefore, together with the emergence of religious consciousness, pictorial ideas about the afterlife , death , hell , paradise or the migration of souls often emerged .
The Belgian religious scholar Julien Ries conceived six stages in the development of religious awareness based on authors such as Mircea Eliade and Jacques Cauvin . These are also important for the training of funeral rituals and courtship presentations:
- The first experience of the sacred through nature (sky, weather, day and night, sun, moon, stars, etc.). This phase of the early hierophany is closely connected with the discovery of transcendence and the creation of the first cultural phenomena. Naturally, these were brought about early on by the compulsion to master the environment and inevitably had certain cognitive concepts as the basis for explaining the inexplicable.
- The thinking about death and the afterlife. The first burials and grave goods in Moustérien, for example with the Neanderthals or Homo sapiens sapiens (e.g. Qafzeh ) are signs of this.
- The emergence of mythograms , for example in Franco-Cantabrian cave art . The religious consciousness of a community manifests itself very concretely before it settles down .
- The first representation of the deity . It appears as a male-female dualism, especially in Venus figurines and depictions of bulls from Natufia on the threshold of the Neolithic Age . See the sculptures by Göbekli Tepe and Nevalı Çori . In Europe, the Vinča culture belongs in this context. For the first time, there is a symbolic implementation of transcendence in Homo religiosus : depiction of praying people, funeral rites with clearly religious references. The settling down changes culture and religiosity dramatically.
- The personification of the divine and its representation in statues in the great religions of the old polytheistic high cultures. Temple and priest. The gods, often influenced by animals, speak to the believers.
- In the great monotheistic religions, God becomes a single, omnipotent being who interferes in the lives of believers. He no longer speaks through oracles, but directly through revelations and prophets and becomes a demanding God. Hierophany become theophany .
In the context of this sequence of stages, the following phenomena in particular provide indications of ideas about the judgment of the dead and the possible underlying figures of thought:
- Primarily the forms of burial . However, measures on this side such as grave goods, especially in the late Paleolithic , in the early and middle Neolithic, give no information about how this afterlife was imagined. The same applies to the frequent and proven use of ocher , the use of which can also be interpreted as a practical measure due to its antibacterial , anti-parasitic and hygroscopic properties. Secondly, a symbolic meaning is obvious, just as mummification in ancient Egypt developed from the natural drying in the graves of the desert and was only secondarily religiously charged. From around the 3rd millennium, however, a religious interpretation is also permissible, not only in the case of excessive grave goods and burials such as princely graves, according to which "the religious hope of salvation in a new way included the dimension of eternity in the form of an explicit afterlife". This is all the more true if there was a cult of the dead that was on the eternal fate of the deceased.
- In the mummy cult , this world is presented as continuing in the hereafter. The mummifications served to enable the body to survive in the hereafter. This means, however, that without such massive interventions, the world beyond was not considered capable of ensuring the continued existence of the soul . The old idea of the ancestors had thus strictly secularized and focused on influences from this world. Since the Neolithic Age, this idea has been shaped by the idea of a general manipulability of the world that extends into the hereafter and is often determined by the status of the world and the economic possibilities of the dead. Similar ideas existed, for example, among the Mayas and Aztecs , as well as in the Chinese religion, which was merged from Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian concepts, and they became manifest very early on, for example through grave goods and manipulation of the dead. These were originally reserved for the nobility. Inequalities in this world were transported to the hereafter. The state graves generally point to this fact, even where no or hardly any written evidence is available. In such a secularly oriented world of the dead, a judgment of the dead according to the principle of hope acted as a filter that compensates for the injustices of the world and suggests the certainty of salvation (with an appropriate lifestyle).
- The same applies to the fact that in Egypt the judgment of the dead, supervised by the goddess of justice Ma'at and directed by the ancient vegetation god Osiris , could also be magically influenced or even tricked (cf. the pyramid texts and books of the dead ). The penalties were brought Uschebti taken -Tonfiguren to the dead to allow a comfortable, even luxurious life in the hereafter. The exception was the pharaohs, who were believed to travel directly to the gods they belonged to. However, according to other texts, they had to appear before the judgment of the dead.
- The underworld , the afterlife sometimes contained a special prison for titans and other undesirables, an arbitrary place of punishment. This later influenced the idea of the Christian-Judeo-Islamic hell . There are seven of them in Islam, but Christianity also has the idea of purgatory with seven circles. Hell at Dante (cf. The Divine Comedy ) even had nine.
- These and other ideas, like the transmigration of souls of the Orphics and the Pythagoreans , but above all of the Eastern religions Hinduism and Buddhism, are structurally integrated into the belief systems via the Dharma and Karma thoughts in such a way that the ethical dualism of good and bad or the spiritualistic of Here light and dark are transformed into an ontological dualism of fleeting being and eternal order and harmony. A funeral judgment would no longer be “necessary” under these conditions, but there is a funeral judge Yama .
The phenomena mentioned are symptomatic of the desire for a path of redemption that can already be determined in this world , as presented by Max Weber in his sociology of religion . Weber took this idea even further, taking into account social factors:
“The rule, especially with religions that are under the influence of ruling circles, is… the idea that in the hereafter, too, the differences in class on this side will not remain indifferent because they, too, were willed by God, down to the Christian 'most blessed' monarchs. The specifically ethical concept, however, is 'retribution' of concrete right and wrong due to a judgment of the dead, and the eschatological process is therefore normally a universal judgment day ... Heaven, hell and judgment of the dead have achieved almost universal significance, even in religions whose very essence they originally were were alien like ancient Buddhism. "
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Remarks
- ↑ Brockhaus, Volume 28, 1995
- ↑ Brockhaus, Vol. 22, 1993, p. 271; Britannica (numerous sources, see below in the individual sections).
- ↑ E.g. for Egypt: Helck / Otto, p. 106.
- ↑ It is sometimes adopted for very early religions and totemic cultures that are regarded as animistic . Britannica, Vol. 26, pp. 537 ff., 540 ff., 1013 ff .; Tworuschka, p. 406 f .; Ries, pp. 18-25. - A fully developed ancestral cult also occurs in socially less developed, predominantly egalitarian societies. The focus there is on the personal relationships between the living and the dead, while there are no concepts of a judgment of the dead.
- ↑ This is the case in stratified societies after the dissolution of the continuum from this world to the hereafter. Britannica, Vol. 26, p. 544.
- ^ Britannica, Vol. 26, pp. 555-560.
- ↑ Britannica, Vol. 26, pp. 516 f., 521 f., 528; Ries, p. 115.
- ↑ Höffe, pp. 13-20.
- ↑ Kelsen, p. 27.
- ↑ Schaller, pp. 264–277.
- ↑ Herzog, pp. 78 ff., 99; but above all Weber, p. 688 ff.
- ↑ Kelsen, p. 26.
- ^ Tokarev, p. 428.
- ^ Britannica, Vol. 17, p. 413.
- ↑ Britannica, Vol. 17, pp. 412-416.
- ↑ Helck / Otto, pp. 134-137; Breasted, pp. 120-123; Britannica, Vol. 24, pp. 106-111; Baines / Málek, p. 218 f.
- ↑ Baines / Málek, p. 220 f.
- ↑ Lamb, pp. 138-141, 142; Schwarzbach, p. 224 f .; Britannica, vol. 18, p. 108 f.
- ↑ Helck / Otto, p. 137.
- ^ Tokarev, p. 400.
- ↑ a b c d Britannica, Vol. 26, p. 546.
- ↑ Helck / Otto, p. 213 ff.
- ↑ Schaller, p. 140 f.
- ↑ Brockhaus-Enzyklopädie, 19th ed. 1990, Vol. 12, p. 258.
- ↑ Schmökel, pp. 102, 307 f.
- ↑ Schmökel, pp. 292-295; Tokarew, p. 426 ff .; Cavendish, pp. 88 ff., 95.
- ↑ Gilgamesh Epic: Twelfth Table .
- ↑ Ries, p. 90.
- ↑ Schmökel: Epic of Gilgamesh , p. 121 ff.
- ↑ Tokarew, p. 426 f.
- ↑ Schmökel: Epic of Gilgamesh , pp. 118 ff.
- ↑ Schmökle, p. 291.
- ↑ Britannica, Vol. 26, p. 808; Helck / Otto, p. 186 f.
- ↑ Cavendish, pp. 90 f.
- ↑ Schmökel, p. 294 f.
- ↑ Hierzenberger: Faith in the old high cultures , p. 44 f .; [1] .
- ↑ Ries, p. 103 ff .; Tokarew, pp. 435-448; Tworuschka, pp. 251-256; Cavendish, pp. 40-48; Hierzenberger, pp. 81-118; Britannica, Vol. 29, pp. 1083-1088.
- ↑ Schweid, p. 27.
- ↑ Schweid, p. 21.
- ^ Tokarev, p. 445.
- ↑ Tokarev, pp. 440-448.
- ↑ Tokarew, p. 440 f .; on the original meaning of the Cain-Abel myth s. however Beltz, p. 66 f.
- ↑ Tokarew, p. 446 f.
- ↑ Hennig, pp. 344, 354 f.
- ↑ Hennig, p. 354 f.
- ↑ Hennig, pp. 605 f; Negev, pp. 24, 34, 113.
- ^ Britannica, Vol. 24, pp. 119-124.
- ^ Britannica, Vol. 24, p. 122.
- ↑ Schmökel, pp. 425-441, 627-637; Eliade, pp. 135-143.
- ^ Britannica, Vol. 18, p. 799.
- ↑ Krefeld, pp. 62-67.
- ↑ Bellinger, p. 263.
- ↑ Eliade, Vol. 1, pp. 115-119; Cristofani, pp. 136-167; Britannica, Vol. 18, p. 793.
- ^ Britannica, Vol. 18, p. 791.
- ↑ Krefeld, p. 68.
- ↑ Golther, p. 537.
- ↑ Cavendish, pp. 188-191.
- ↑ Demandt, pp. 37-48; Cavendish, pp. 170-177; Britannica, Vol. 18, pp. 764-767.
- ↑ Parzinger, pp. 95-119.
- ↑ Wolfram, pp. 58-64; Golther, pp. 104-108, 471-477; Britannica, Vol. 18, pp. 767-774.
- ↑ Golther, p. 475.
- ↑ Cavendish, pp. 192-197; Tokarew, pp. 258-274; Britannica, vol. 18, p. 782 ff.
- ↑ Britannica, Vol. 18, pp. 774-781.
- ↑ Historiae V, 4.
- ↑ Eliade, Vol. 2, pp. 151-158; Cavendish, pp. 192-197; Tokarew, pp. 258-274; Schneider, pp. 490-495.
- ↑ Hierzenberger: Faith in the old high cultures , pp. 140–170; Cavendish, pp. 242-259; Eliade, Vol. 4, pp. 13-54; The Splendor and Fall of Ancient Mexico , pp. 120–154; Coe et al. a., pp. 96 f., 103 f., 113, 138 f., 148 ff., 159, 170, 181 f., 198 f.
- ↑ Britannica, B. 26, p. 4 f.
- ↑ Britannica, Vol. 26, pp. 15 f.
- ↑ The Splendor and Fall of Ancient Mexico , pp. 128–131.
- ^ Weber, Part 2, pp. 285-314.
- ↑ Scholem, p. 265.
- ↑ Assmann: Monotheism and the language of violence , pp. 20, 22 ff., 36, 53 u. ö.
- ↑ Hennig, pp. 89 ff., 111 ff., 354 f., 531 f., 895 f., 898; Tworuschka, pp. 11-25; Tokarew, pp. 449-485; Britannica, Vol. 16, pp. 988 f. For archeology see Finkelstein / Silberman and Negev.
- ↑ Coward, pp. 21-41.
- ↑ Tokarew, p. 453 ff.
- ^ Britannica, Vol. 16, p. 988.
- ↑ Laube, pp. 13-29.
- ↑ Tokarew, p. 468 ff.
- ^ Tokarev, p. 473.
- ↑ Tokarew, p. 474 ff.
- ↑ Hertzberg, pp. 354-363.
- ^ Tokarev, p. 479.
- ↑ a b Maimonides' Introduction to Perek Helek, ed. u. trans. v. Maimonides Heritage Center, pp. 22-23.
- ↑ Schweid, p. 53 f.
- ^ Tokarev, p. 481.
- ↑ Ovadja Josef ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Coward, pp. 42-61; Hennig, pp. 89 ff., 111 ff., 354 f., 531 f., 895 f., 898; Tworuschka, pp. 57-164; Tokarew, pp. 602-651; Britannica, Vol. 16, pp. 992 f.
- ↑ Eliade, Vol. 3, p. 97.
- ↑ Tokarew, p. 631 f.
- ^ Tokarev, p. 690.
- ^ Tokarev, p. 625.
- ↑ Schmidt, pp. 208-220.
- ^ Arnold / Eysenck / Meili, pp. 1226-1234.
- ↑ Laube, pp. 78-81.
- ^ Britannica, Vol. 16, p. 992.
- ↑ Laube, pp. 82 ff., 85 f., 102 ff.
- ↑ Hennig, p. 860 ff.
- ↑ Literally after Kürschmann: Geflügelte Words , 2002, p. 476: So soon the pfennige thrown into the pool un clunge, so soon the sele, for which it was laid, were gen hymel.
- ^ Coward, pp. 58-61.
- ↑ Hennig, p. 646.
- ^ Tokarew, p. 639.
- ↑ Küng: Christianity , p. 339.
- ↑ Cavendish, pp. 162 f .; Britannica, Vol. 7, p. 175.
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