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The Book of the Prophet of Ezekiel displays the first perception of resurrection. Under the Babylonian Empire in 539 BCE, Ezekiel described God's will to revive flesh upon the bones of dead Judeans. However, Ezekiel's narrative of resurrection was intended only as a metaphor for national rebirth, promising the Jews return to Israel and reconstruction of the Temple. Daniel's eschatological prophecy, taking place in the 6th century BCE, promised literal resurrection to the Jews, in concrete detail. Daniel wrote that with the coming of the Archangel Michael, misery would beset the world, and only those whose names were in a divine book would be resurrected. Moreover, Daniel's promise of resurrection was intended only for the most righteous and the most sinful because the afterlife was a place for the virtuous individuals to be rewarded and the sinful individuals to receive eternal punishment.

During the Rabbinic period, beginning in the late first century and carrying on to the present, the works of Daniel were included into the Hebrew Bible, signaling the adoption of Jewish resurrection into the officially sacred texts.

Both Greek and Persian cultures influenced Jewish sects to believe in an afterlife between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE.