Book of Life

This article is about the book mentioned in Christian and Jewish religious texts. For other uses, see The Book of Life.

In Judaism and Christianity, the Book of Life (Biblical Hebrew: ספר החיים, romanized: Sefer HaḤayyim; Ancient Greek: βιβλίον τῆς ζωῆς, romanized: Biblíon tēs Zōēs; Arabic: سفر الحياة, romanized: Sifr al-Ḥayā) is a book in which God records—or will record in the future—the names of every person who is destined for Heaven and the world to come.

The Talmud, in tractate Rosh Hashanah 16b:12, relates the teaching of Rabbis Kruspedai and Johanan bar Nappaha—both amoraim, with the latter being the teacher of the former—that the Books of Life and Death are opened every Rosh Hashanah, which, in contemporary Rabbinic Judaism, is known as the Jewish New Year. After he opens the books, God respectively inscribes and seals the fates of entirely righteous and entirely wicked individuals for the new year, but suspends judgment of all other (i.e., 'middling') individuals until Yom Kippur, when all destinies are sealed. The books are subsequently closed until the next Rosh Hashanah.

For these reasons, additional prayers are said for the inscription of one's soul in the Book of Life during recitations of the Amidah (עמידה, 'standing [prayer]') during the High Holy Days, the Ten Days of Repentance (עֲשֶׂרֶת יְמֵי תְּשׁוּבָה, ʿǍseret yəmēy təšūvā, and Hoshana Rabbah, which is the last day of Sukkot and the culmination of the Jewish High Holy Days.

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