In the Jewish tradition, belief in life after death was quite vague.
In the days of Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, or Isaiah, the Jewish people did not really believe in life after death. They thought that when people died, only their memory lived on (that, by the way, is why it was so important to have children, and why it was considered a curse to be childless).
The first Scriptural evidence of Jewish belief in life after death appears in the Book of Daniel, which was written only about 150 years before Christ. The author is speaking about what will happen some distant day in the future - the end of time. Here is what he wrote:
"Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake. Some shall live forever...and shall shine brightly like the splendor of the heavens...and shall be like the stars forever." (Daniel 12:2-3)
The description in Daniel is that after people die, they more or less sleep until the end of time. Therefore, the Book of Daniel describes a delayed life after death.
By the time of Jesus, this belief was commonly help by the Jewish people, although some (such as the Sadducees) did not believe in any kind of afterlife.
From The Little Black Book: Six-minute meditations on the Sunday Gospels of Lent (Cycle A).
