Did first century Jews believe in ghosts?

I recently saw a discussion/debate between Bart Ehrman and Justin Bass on YouTube. During the discussion, Ehrman made an interesting argument. He believes that Peter, Paul, James (the Lord's brother), and Mary Magdeline all saw something they took to be the risen Jesus. His explanation for why they interpreted it as the risen Jesus was because first century Jews didn't believe in ghosts, so any seeing of Jesus would've been interpreted as a bodily resurrected Jesus.

If Bart's argument is sound, it would undermine an argument I've been making for a long time. My argument is that grief hallucinations and things like that never lead to belief in resurrections, and given the emphasis in some of the Biblical accounts on the physicality of Jesus (e.g. touching him and him eating), it makes more sense to say their experience was different than a mere hallucination. They must've touched him and/or witnessed him eating or something that would cause them to think he had really risen from the dead because otherwise, they would've interpreted it as just a halluciation, vision, ghost, mistaken identity, dream, Jesus didn't die, etc. There were lots of other ways they'd be more likely to interpret what they saw if it were just a hallucination. Resurrection is the very last thing anybody would think if they saw somebody who appeared to be alive but who they knew had died. The fact that they came to that conclusion probably means they had some real convincing physical interaction with Jesus, just as the New Testament reports they did.

Given the way I've argued for Jesus' resurrection in the past, I found Bart's argument really interesting. But I have two problems with it. First, I don't think Bart is right that first century Jews didn't believe in ghosts. There are a few things that came to mind. First, I remember N.T. Wright going into some detail in his book on Jesus' resurrection about ancient beliefs about the afterlife, and although it's been a long time, I vaguely remember him saying first century Jews did believe in ghosts. My copy of his book is in storage right now, so I can't look it up to be sure.

Second, there are at least a couple of times in the New Testament when it says the disciples thought they were seeing or hearing a ghost. The first time was in Luke 24 when the disciples saw Jesus and thought at first that he was a ghost. The second time was in Acts 12 when Peter escaped from prison and knocked on the door where the disciples were hanging out. They assumed Peter had been killed, and it must be his ghost. Bart could answer that by saying Luke wasn't a Jew, and this represents a later belief of gentile Christians, not Jews. On the other hand, when Jesus walked on water, Mark 6 and Matthew 14 both say the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost at first. Mark's gospel certainly wasn't written by a gentile, and Matthew's probalby wasn't either.

Third, there's that passage in 1 Samuel 28 when Saul has the witch of Endor raise Samuel's ghost. It may have been unusual, but surely any Jew familiar with the story would believe there can be ghosts.

Fourth, Bart may be talking about the official Jewish beliefs held by professional Jewish teachers, not the popular beliefs of every day Jews. Sadduccees probably didn't believe in ghosts, but they didn't believe in resurrections either. I don't know about Pharisees. But considering how there were Jews living all over the Roman empire, and not just in Judea, and the fact that Greeks and most other cultures believed in ghosts, it seems very likely to me that ordinary Jews probably believed in ghosts. At least some of them did.

Fifth, a quick google search found multiple web pages claiming that ancient Jews did believe in ghosts.

Sixth, it at least appears in a few passages written by Paul (like 2 Corinthians 5:1-5 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14) that Paul believed in ghosts or at least a disembodied existence between death and resurrection. Since Paul was a well-educated first century Jew, that surely counts for something.

I will have to look into this subject a little more, but I strongly suspect Bart was just wrong to say first century Jews didn't believe in ghosts. I guess a seventh point might be that if someboddy saw a person they knew to be dead, that very experience could cause them to believe in ghosts even if they didn't believe in ghosts up to then.

The second problem I have with Bart's argument is that even if Bart is right that first century Jews didn't believe in ghosts, we still have to face the fact that grief hallucinations are fairly common, yet they never lead to belief that somebody has risen from the dead. If, as Bart says, the only way the disciples could have interpreted their experience was that Jesus had risen from the dead, and also, as Bart said, hallucinations of dead loved ones is fairly common, then we should expect first century Jews to believe people rose from the dead all the time. Yet that is not what we find. We find, instead, that they believed in a final general resurrection on the last day. So my original point would still stand even if Bart were right about Jews not believing in ghosts. There would still have to be something that was different in the case of the appearances of Jesus that would lead them to believe he had risen from the dead.

While Bart makes an interesting argument that I will probably look into and think about some more, right now I don't think it's a sound explanation for why Peter, James, Paul, and Mary Magdeline thought Jesus rose from the dead.