--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "sparaig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Top posting. No comments at bottom: > > Both Jews AND Christians expoused a belief in reincarnation at some point. > > Some Jews still do. > > L > > A very small percentage. In Catholicism the belief in reincarnation is heretical. As for the very small portion of Jewish mystics that have such beliefs it is not at all like the Eastern notion of a wheel of birth and death. The common Jewish notion of the afterlife is "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust".
Only two characters in the Bible manage to have an afterlife. Elijah and Jesus - who both rise up to heaven with their bodies. For the rests of us we will rise from the graves on Judgment day like in a zombie movie. The concept of a soul surviving the body came from the writings of Greek pagans like Aristotle. He was all the rage of early middle age theologians. Body or no body, the predominant western afterlife myth is a one way street. s.
