From the most superficial look at the Jewish acceptance of heaven as a reward; by the time of 2 Maccabees the heroine mother of her seven tortured and executed sons refers to both the mythical Moses and to heaven's hope as a justification for suffering the most excruciating torture and death. Incidentally they were scalped, hands and feet removed and then fried to death still defending their faith. Over egging the cake somewhat to make the point that heaven is the answer to everything humans have to put up with.
This Greek text comes from the late second century BCE well into the Classical period. By this time Judaism had become more cosmopolitan and less insular because of the exposure to foreign thought introduced by their political masters and in Greek speaking Egypt: the new Mediterranean philosophical discourse.
Four and a half centuries earlier, the Jews were ruled by the Persians after 539 BCE and that would have introduced the polarized ideology of heaven and hell through Zoroastrianism. Those tenets would have been in the Jewish consciousness but not expressed as a canonical belief until the second century BCE. (If you will allow Maccabees to be canonical and that we are only talking about heaven).
It was probably in Greek Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, the most cosmopolitan city in the world in the last centuries BCE, where the fusion of Greek thought and Jewish messianism met and melded. The population of Alexandria remarkably, was one third Jewish and like the rest of the city's inhabitants; progressive, open minded, intellectual in outlook and not at all traditional.
There were a number of pre-Jesus messianic sects of Jewish origin and one of the threads of belief is seen in the Maccabees with reference to extreme suffering for immortal rewards in heaven. Jewish belief never originally looked to heaven or indeed masochism, yet these ideals were adopted with rigour in the early church.
"Self-denial" became the model Christian ethos, become a slave of Christ, don't reason; grovel to your masters instead, and go to heaven.
This new religious tack led to the creation of saints, self flagellation and eventually to Monasticism. Which reinforced its total power by hellish threats and heavenly rewards . By so doing it added an enormous damper to creativity and progress in the cloistered medieval world. Thank God for the Renaissance! (But I digress)
