But if the origin of the oral law, in its application at least, can be made clear to ourselves only by means of such imaginative reconstruction, we are helped on the side of Jewish religious development by the possession of at least one fact of prime importance. The religious system of the Bible knows of a life after death, in Sheol, but does not know of a survival of personality. Warlock and witch, by such incantations as were used by Odysseus at the mouth of the dread cave, or by the wise woman at En-Dor, could give the shadowy ghost enough outline to be recognizable under his former name, but for the most part all these flitting spirits were equal and indistinguishable. But about 100 B.C.E. there was current generally, although not universally, a very different belief, to wit, that in Sheol, or the grave, personality was not extinguished, but at most suspended; and that under certain conditions it might, or certainly would, be permanently continued. In other words, between the deportation to Babylon and the culmination of the Hasmonean rule, the belief about life after death had very considerably changed for most people. And the change was of a nature that must inevitably have affected conduct, since the acceptability of man’s life could no longer be proved by the naïvely simple method of Eliphaz the Temanite,[69] nor yet by the austere consciousness of rectitude that was the ideal of the prophets. Transferred to a world beyond perception, reward and penalty gave the Torah a superhuman sanction, which must have been far more powerful than we can now readily imagine. It is idle to look for the origin of this belief in any one series of influences. For many generations poets and philosophers had swung themselves in bolder and bolder imagery up to the Deity, which they, as Jews, conceived in so intense and personal a fashion. Very many passages in the Bible have seemed to imply a belief in personal immortality and resurrection, and perhaps do imply such a belief. Nor is it necessary to assume that these passages are of late origin. Some of them may be, but one would have to be very certain of the limitations of poetic exaltation to say just what definite background of belief metaphor and hyperbole demand. We shall not go far wrong if we assume that even before the Exile, individual thinkers had conceived, perhaps even preached, the dogma of personal immortality. Its general acceptance among the people occurred in the period previously mentioned. Its official authorization took place much later in the final triumph of Pharisaism.