How will God judge the dead? The body will claim innocence—it is just dirt without a soul. The soul will claim innocence—it is pure spirit without a body. Neither sinned alone. According to Sanhedrin 91a, God's solution is elegant and devastating.
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi taught a parable, attributed to Antoninus, the Roman emperor who studied with him. A king owned a beautiful orchard full of ripe figs. He set two guards over it—one blind, one lame. Neither could reach the fruit alone.
The lame man said to the blind man: "I see fine figs. Carry me on your shoulders, and I will guide us to them." The blind man carried the lame man. They ate the figs.
When the king returned and found the fruit gone, each guard protested innocence. "Do I have legs?" said the lame man. "Do I have eyes?" said the blind man. The king placed the lame man on the blind man's shoulders—recreating the crime—and judged them as one.
So too with body and soul. On the day of judgment, God will reunite them. He will cast the soul back into the body. Then He will judge them together, as they were when they sinned. The proof text is (Psalms 50:4): "He calls to the heavens above"—this is the soul—"and to the earth, that He may judge His people"—this is the body.
The same passage records another question from Antoninus: when is the soul placed in the body? From conception or from the moment the embryo takes shape? Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi initially said: from the moment of formation. Antoninus objected: "Can meat stand for three days without salt and not rot? The soul must be present from conception." Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi accepted the correction—one of the rare moments in Talmudic literature where a rabbi admits a non-Jewish thinker was right.