The Resurrection of the Body and the Immortality of the Soul in the Light of the Old Testament Writings and the Work of Philo

Suppose the hope of the Hellenistic world regarding survival in the afterlife can only be reduced to the belief in the soul's immortality (Plato), which has nothing to do with the belief in bodily resurrection. We can say that the only place where we can find the foundation of the belief in the resurrection of the first Christians is the Jewish world; only here the belief in the resurrection could have any chance of being accepted. The Old Testament texts to which we will refer in this article are Is 26:19; Ez 37:5,10,14; Dn 12:2; 2 Mac 7. A great exponent of Alexandrian Judaism who attempted to create a synthesis between the Mosaic faith and Greek philosophy was Philo of Alexandria. Since he does not refer to the bodily resurrection of the dead in his writings, Philo of Alexandria can support the thesis of the soul's immortality.