No afterlife?

Sheol is the Hebrew word denoting the underworld where all the dead dwell , after a fashion — in a shadowy subexistent state. There is no meaningful life after death in the Old Testament world. We need to pause to let this sink in. Few Christians today (or Jews either, for that matter) fully comprehend the Old Testament’s thoroughgoing renunciation of all speculation about life after death. We are so accustomed to thinking in vague, generically religious, quasi-Hellenistic terms about the “immortality of the soul” that we can scarcely grasp the degree to which the ancient Israelite community was expected, in the name of Yahweh, to relinquish any hope for meaningful in- dividual survival after death. Insubstantial nonexistence in Sheol was the destiny of all.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 399 (emphasis original)