Texts in Conversation
Revelation and Rabbinic tradition in the Avot of Rabbi Natan share a Jewish tradition that righteous souls are kept near God. Revelation describes souls stored under the heavenly altar, and in the Avot, they are stored under the heavenly throne.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Revelation 6:9
New Testament
9 Now when the Lamb opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been violently killed because of the word of God and because of the testimony they had given. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Master, holy and true, before you judge those who live on the earth and avenge our blood?” 11 Each of them was given a long white robe, and they were told to rest for a little longer, until the full number was reached of both their fellow servants and their brothers who were going to be killed just as they had been.
Avot de Rabbi Natan 12:5
Minor Tractate
Rabbinic
You’ve had enough of this world. The World to Come has been prepared for you since the six days of creation. As it says (Exodus 33:22), “God said, here is a place near Me; stand on that rock.” The Holy Blessed One took Moses’ soul and stored it under the Throne of Glory. (As it says [I Samuel 25:29], “And the soul of my master will be bound up in the bond of life.”) And when He took it, He did it with a kiss. As it says (Deuteronomy 34:5), “[Moses died…] by the mouth of God.” And not only Moses’ soul is stored under the Throne of Glory, but also the souls of all the righteous are stored there! As it says (I Samuel 25:29), “[If anyone sets out to pursue you and seek your life], the soul of my master will be bound up in the bond of life.” Could it be that the souls of the wicked are there, too? The verse continues: “but He will fling away the lives of your enemies like a slingshot.” [(To what can this be compared?) It can be compared to someone who takes a stone and places it in a sling;] even though he flings it from place to place, he does not know where it will land.
Date: 700–900 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In the Hebrew Bible the soul or spirit (nefesh, ruah) of a person, denoting both ‘breath’ and, more generally, ‘life-force’, is understood to be in God’s hands: ‘Into Your hand I entrust my spirit [ruhi]’ (Ps. 31:6); ‘In His hand is every living soul [nefesh kol hai], and the breath [ruah] of all mankind’ (Job 12:10). In later Jewish thought, in concert with belief in the continued existence of the soul after death, individual souls were often said to reside in a ‘treasury’ or ‘store-room’ (otsar) which is in proximity to, or ‘with’, God, as in the following midrashic comment on the phrase elohei haruhhot lekhol basar in Numbers 27:16 ..."
Mandel, Paul
The Sacrifice of the Souls of the Righteous upon the Heavenly Altar: Transformations of Apocalyptic Traditions in Medieval Ashkenaz
(pp. 49-72) Liverpool University Press, 2018
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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