John Aquila:
"The Ancient Jews did not believe in an after-life as far as I can tell, correct me if I'm wrong."
Not quite. Ancient Hebrews believed in a eternal spirit (ruach) that upon death would descend down into Sheol which was considered to be the underworld were the spirits of all persons, good and evil, went. They were to be in a spiritual coma so to speak, sleeping - not conscious but living.
At some point Judaism (except for Sadducees) borrowed the concept of a resurrection from the Zoroastrians and divided Sheol, known as Hades in the Greek, in which the immortal spirits were to be eventually united with their bodies. Those spirits or souls were later considered to be conscious in anticipation of their resurrection.
Hades was then divided into two sections, one for the righteous and one for the evil. The area of the underworld that was reserved for the righteous was called "Paradise" and the area for the evil was called Gehenna. Both were to be a small foretaste of the post-resurrection afterlife. Now recall Jesus telling the thief on the cross that he would be with him in "Paradise" on the same day.(The New World Translation fucked that verse up by placing the comma where it doesn't belong in Luke 23:43).
It was later on that Paradise was transferred to heaven giving us the simplistic concept of the afterlife that most people currently believe in.
