hello amadeus
i read your post and would like to comment if i may.............the hebrews did not think of death as total extinction........in the OT period it was held that the dead continue to exist in the underworld.........they lived in on as unreal,half-material shades in a land of silence and forgetting.
the name for this region was sheol(hebrew) or hades(greek).....another name was the pit...................it was in sheol that a man was gathered to his fathers';the dead may not return to earth,but the living must eventually go to them(II SAM.12:23).
the real horror of death to the religious hebrew mind lay in the fact that all intercourse with Jehovah was at an end;God's presence(or even intrest)did not extend to sheol.
there is little in the OT which even hints at a liberation or resurrection from sheol.........there are only 2 OT passages which speak clearly about life after death in a sense more real than existence in sheol....ISA.26:19(an apocalyptic passage some 400 yrs. later than the historical isaiah)affirms that the righteous dead shall live to share in the coming deliverance..........Dan.12:2-at the very end of the OT period,c.165BC-affirms the resurrection of the righteous dead "to everlasting life" and others to "shame and everlasting contempt."
the pleasant abode of the righteous dead was called PARADISE(luke23:43,IIcor.12:4,rev.2:7)............originally a persian word for a nobleman's park or garden;the term contains a reference to the garden of eden,in which was situated the tree of life.............there seems to have been 2 paradises in the thoughts of the rabbis...............one in sheol(perhaps that of luke 23:43)and one in heaven(IIcor.12:4)................but the expression as used by JESUS(once only)is merely a conventional way of saying "after physical death"....................the opposite of PARADISE is GHENNA,that part of sheol reserved for the wicked.