general goal : cultivation of "the educated imagination"
Thursday, September 20, 2007
What about the afterlife?
I know we're supposed to post meaningful and thought-out (long) items on this (or are we?) but I just wanted to ask a question.. Does anybody know when the afterlife is first mentioned in the Bible... I would really like to dig deeper.. merci!
7 comments:
Anonymous
said...
The concept of Sheol (variously translated as underworld, hell, grave, or simply death) is a complex one in the Tanakh. It first appears in Genesis 37:35, when Jacob mourns the supposed death of his son Joseph and says, "No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning." At times it seems to be a physical place, as in Numbers 16:33, "So they with all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol; the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly." Sheol is also mentioned various times in the Psalms and Proverbs, but the fate of the soul after death is never spelled out clearly.
Later writings contain a more familiar version of the afterlife. Daniel 12:2 (which was probably set in its final form in the 2nd century BCE) says, "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." The apocryphal Book of Enoch, which dates to about the same period, contains a detailed description of Sheol in which people are divided into four moral classes and punished (or not) respectively.
To this I'll add that the question of whether there IS an afterlife was to become a bone of contention between different Jewish sects. Some (the Saducees) denied that there would be a resurrection of the dead, while others (the Pharisees) endorsed it.
The Christian Apostle Paul (whose Letter to the Romans we will read) uses this dispute at one point reported in the Acts of the Apostles (in the NT, though we will not read it for class). Paul, who was educated as a Pharisee before becoming a Christian, is brought before a Jewish council critical of his new-found Christian teachings. Recognizing that he is among a mixed group of Pharisees and Saducees, he says, "It is with respect to the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial here!" THis rallies the Pharisees in attendance to his side -- they say, in effect, "Hey, who's to say that this Jesus WASN'T raised from the dead?" and Paul escapes trouble because the trial turns into a big rabbinical argument.
Christianity endorsed life after death, but CHritians would in turn differ over whether this would take the form (a) of the soul being transported to heaven or hell sans body, or whether life would be renewed only in a future bodily resurrection, or some combination of the two. The former (especially the idea that the soul can exist disembodied) probably reflects some Platonistic influence, and was among the things rejected by most Protestants during the Reformation. However, there are canonical and deuterocanonical texts that seem to support both interpretations.
7 comments:
The concept of Sheol (variously translated as underworld, hell, grave, or simply death) is a complex one in the Tanakh. It first appears in Genesis 37:35, when Jacob mourns the supposed death of his son Joseph and says, "No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning." At times it seems to be a physical place, as in Numbers 16:33, "So they with all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol; the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly." Sheol is also mentioned various times in the Psalms and Proverbs, but the fate of the soul after death is never spelled out clearly.
Later writings contain a more familiar version of the afterlife. Daniel 12:2 (which was probably set in its final form in the 2nd century BCE) says, "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." The apocryphal Book of Enoch, which dates to about the same period, contains a detailed description of Sheol in which people are divided into four moral classes and punished (or not) respectively.
thank you very much... Would you have any more information on where I can find this detailed description you speak of? This is great!
Here are two interesting links. I'm not sure how much weight they hold, but they I thought they were good reads.
http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/future.html
http://www.ewtn.com/library/SCRIPTUR/DOCIMMOR.TXT
OK. Well that didn't work so well. Just add an 'ml' to the end of the first link and a 't' to the end of the second.
An online translation of 1 Enoch is at http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/boe/
Enoch's journey to Sheol is described in Chapter 22.
To this I'll add that the question of whether there IS an afterlife was to become a bone of contention between different Jewish sects. Some (the Saducees) denied that there would be a resurrection of the dead, while others (the Pharisees) endorsed it.
The Christian Apostle Paul (whose Letter to the Romans we will read) uses this dispute at one point reported in the Acts of the Apostles (in the NT, though we will not read it for class). Paul, who was educated as a Pharisee before becoming a Christian, is brought before a Jewish council critical of his new-found Christian teachings. Recognizing that he is among a mixed group of Pharisees and Saducees, he says, "It is with respect to the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial here!" THis rallies the Pharisees in attendance to his side -- they say, in effect, "Hey, who's to say that this Jesus WASN'T raised from the dead?" and Paul escapes trouble because the trial turns into a big rabbinical argument.
Christianity endorsed life after death, but CHritians would in turn differ over whether this would take the form (a) of the soul being transported to heaven or hell sans body, or whether life would be renewed only in a future bodily resurrection, or some combination of the two. The former (especially the idea that the soul can exist disembodied) probably reflects some Platonistic influence, and was among the things rejected by most Protestants during the Reformation. However, there are canonical and deuterocanonical texts that seem to support both interpretations.
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