@svidgen The mistake you're making is that the Hebrew sky/heaven = an afterlife. It doesn't. It is a place. An afterlife is an ongoing condition. In the examples you have cited, there is no mention of any ongoing life for the humans who were caught up to the sky/heaven. The most reasonable interpretation based on the Hebrew conception of the universe is that these people had a spectacular, supernatural death, not that they went on to live in heaven.
A parallel is the death of Moses, which took place on Mt. Nebo, across the Jordan from Jericho: Deuteronomy 32:48-50; 34:1-5. And then it goes on to say:
> He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day. (Deuteronomy 34:6)
Moses died in a highly elevated position, at the top of a mountain, and no one knows where he is buried. The parallels to Elijah's death by a whirlwind carrying him up to the sky, and the fruitless attempt to find where his body had gone, are clear enough.
These passages are not talking about an afterlife. They are talking about an exalted, even miraculous death befitting a great figure and celebrated prophet of God.
@svidgen You keep saying you've shown evidence of an afterlife. But neither (I think it was only two) of the passages you cited says anything at all about an afterlife.
I think you're getting confused by the identification in Christianity of "heaven" = "the afterlife." But in ancient Hebrew cosmology, "heaven" = "the sky." And I challenge you to find a single passage anywhere in the narrative sections of the Bible that speaks of any human being actually living in heaven/the sky.
That would be the evidence required to show that the ancient Hebrews believed in an afterlife. And so far you have produced zero (0) evidence of that from the text of the Old Testament itself. Only suppositions and inferences for which the text itself gives no support.
@LeeWoofenden So you really think that the take home message for Elijah was that he went up in a chariot of fire, only to perish in a "spectacular death"?
I'm sorry, but that seems a bit dumb. I don't see why that would be the first thought in an ancient Jew's mind.
Even if he doesn't believe in an afterlife, he is aware of beliefs of others in it, I'm sure. So reading about Elijah being taken into the sky in a Chariot of fire.
@Joshua The evidence for my position is extensive. It first starts with the total lack of evidence in the actual text of the narrative sections of the OT for any ancient Hebrew belief in an afterlife. I then also pointed to an answer here on C.SE showing that the ancient Israelites saw "salvation" as something happening on this earth, with many references and quotes to back it up. Here it is again:
Throughout the narrative parts of the Old Testament, there is very little mention of any afterlife. That idea arises mostly later on, in the books of the Prophets.
During the bulk of Old Testament times, salvation had little or nothing to do with:
Heaven or the afterlife, since there was littl...
That, to me, seems like cause to ponder the possibility of afterlife, not dismiss it out of hand, "Oh, well, he still died, but it was a spectacular way to go."
@LeeWoofenden Deut. Simultaneously says Moses dies and no one knows where... And said he's to be gathered to his Fathers. How can he be gathered to his fathers if it is speaking only physically and no one knows where he is (physically)?
Now for another reference, take a look at Deuteronomy 28. The entire chapter is devoted to blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. And if you read the entire chapter, you will not find a single mention of any afterlife. Every single blessing and curse takes place in this world.
The same is true of every other passage in the narrative sections of the OT about blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. Look for yourself. Read every single one of them. They are all about this-world blessings such as long life, many children, fruitful crops, victory over enemies, and curses such as early death, the death of children, failing crops, dying herds, loss to enemies, deportation, and slavery in foreign lands.
@LeeWoofenden That's slightly more reasonable sounding. But, it seems more of a logical leap to suggest that when people go to the heavens (where God is) that it equates to death.
Not one word about blessings or curses in an afterlife.
If they believed in an afterlife, and it was an operative part of their religion, there would be at least something in the earlier sections of the OT about it. But there just isn't. The evidence is overwhelming that even if they may have had some vague notion of the possibility of an afterlife, it simply wasn't an operative part of their religion or their belief.
@fredsbend The manner of a person's death was considered highly significant. If a man died surrounded by many loving children and grandchildren, or in a high and mighty place, or in a miraculous manner, that was considered a final blessing by God upon his life.
Even in NT times, the burial of Jesus is described is a rich man's burial: in a new tomb carved out of a rock owned by a rich man, in whom nobody else had ever been buried. Few ancient Jews could afford such an extravagant burial. Attributing such a burial to Jesus would have been read as a final attribution of exalted status and blessing in the eyes of God, and thus in the eyes of human society.
@LeeWoofenden But Elijah was not yet dying. Old, but not on his death bed. Enoch, we have no details. Only that, relatively, he lived a third of a full life, then was no more.
In fact, the extravagant manner of Jesus' burial is one of the story elements biblical skeptics point to as a demonstration that the story was a made-up one, following all the ancient memes for an exalted burial when it was more likely he would have been consigned to a pauper's grave.
@LeeWoofenden The gospels don't seem to strive to the levels of puffery you're currently claiming. Was he not crucified as a criminal just a chapter earlier? And didn't one of his best disciples abandon faith at this critical hour? There's way more embarrassing moments than proud ones.
@fredsbend Our society has a particular penchant for avoiding death. We hide it away as much as possible, and try not to pay any attention to it. But for ancient societies such as Hebrew society, death was simply a fact of life. It happened to everyone. And the manner of one's death was a final crown, or ignominy, on one's life. A hero who died in glorious battle was celebrated. One who was killed by a woman was derided.
These themes are all through the OT, and are partially turned on their head in the NT in the celebration of Jesus' death on the cross, which should have been an ignominious death, but was turned into a glorious one in counterintuitive fashion.
@LeeWoofenden I'm pretty sure it's roughly the same. War heroes are heralded, while men killed by an angry wife are not.
@svidgen To me, yes, it seems that way. There's nothing impressive about the story, except for the impressive claims (i.e. miracles, resurrection, etc.).
@fredsbend To be clear, Elijah wasn't actually taken into the sky in a chariot of fire. A chariot of fire separated Elijah from Elisha as Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind (tornado).
Frankly, I don't care what you believe about ancient Jews, woof. But, it irks me that you perpetually discount other folks arguments without addressing them directly.
@Joshua Being "gathered to one's fathers" was a common phrase, but it didn't have the "afterlife" connotations that we attribute to it today. It was commonly accompanied by being buried in the burial plot of one's clan. It was an extension of the idea of the honorable death, following in the footsteps of one's ancestors' honorable deaths.
@LeeWoofenden No, the death was made glorious retroactively after the resurrection. Christ's glory, even Christianity itself, hinges desperately on the resurrection, not the crucifixion.
Your strategy is generally to discount them by "misdirection." And I frankly find that unfitting for a site, or even a chatroom attached to a site, that is intended to answer questions factually.
@LeeWoofenden There are no elements of "he died" kind of literature in that passage. Things like "collected to his fathers", "his days were x years", etc.
Equally with Enoch. Very clearly, Enoch did something other than die, while the generations before and after him are listed clearly as "He lived and died".
@fredsbend It is true that the word "death" is not used in connection with Enoch or Elijah. And yet, the point at which God took Enoch, and Elijah went in a whirlwind up to the sky, is the end of their story in the OT narrative. There is nothing more about them living anywhere.
But if he did die, as you say, where are his bones? Why would God hide the bones of a great man from us? We know that the bones were very important to these ancient Jews.
@LeeWoofenden And what are you expecting, at this point exactly? "Lived in heaven with God", maybe? That's a fair note, but using it as evidence that they didn't think he went there is arguing from the absence of evidence, rather that with evidence.
@fredsbend I responded to this before even reading it, a few comments below. Jesus crucifixion, an ignominious death, was turned into a glorious one in the NT narrative and aftermath. And his magnificent burial is one of the first indications of that. Normally crucified people were left to be eaten by the dogs.
@svidgen If you were to actually bring a serious argument, with biblical evidence for it, I might pay attention. But so far you simply haven't done so. Your arguments seem entirely based on anachronistic back-reading of Christian concepts into ancient Jewish texts. That's a sloppy way of reading the text, and an entirely unconvincing way of attempting to establish your point.
@LeeWoofenden wait wait wait. That is not the end of the narrative. The other prophets want to search for him and Elisha basically tells them "he's not here, you won't find him" point being, he's not here
@fredsbend Yes, it took some passage of time to turn the ignominious death into a victory for Christ. And that did require the resurrection to accomplish it. But even in the Acts and the Epistles we already see horribly painful martyr's deaths being celebrated as a triumph of the human spirit over the evil powers of this world. And Christian theology since then has come to celebrate the crucifixion as Christ's final triumph over evil--together with the resurrection, of course.
@fredsbend Why indeed? But as explained, that is precisely what happened to Moses, one of the most celebrated figures--if not the most celebrated figure--in the Old Testament narrative. His burial place was nowhere to be found. His bones were lost. And the fact that Elijah's bones were never found puts him on par with Moses.
In fact, Moses and Elijah are the two figures who appear with Jesus at the time of his Transfiguration. These two greatest figures in the OT--greater, even, than King David--are the representative figures of the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament, which is the core of Jewish sacred scripture.
And both of them died deaths in which their bones were never found.
@fredsbend Absence of evidence is precisely what we have for any notion that the ancient Hebrews believed that people who died in any manner whatsoever, or even were "taken by God" or "carried up into the sky in a whirlwind" had any sort of afterlife. There is simply no mention of it at all in the narratives themselves. Only many centuries later did people start back-reading an afterlife into those stories.
It is precisely the vast lack of evidence of any conception of an afterlife among the ancient Hebrews in their texts themselves that leads me to the conclusion that they had no effective belief in an afterlife, and that if it existed, it wasn't a significant part of their religion or their worldview. Meanwhile, there is massive evidence of their belief in rewards and curses in this life and on this physical plane for good or evil behavior.
The lack of evidence for a belief in an afterlife, and the overwhelming evidence for this-world blessings and curses, is so lopsided that I simply don't see how any serious, objective reader of the ancient texts themselves could come to any other conclusion.
@LeeWoofenden the problem is possibly that you are insisting on this afterlife as existing concurrently with this life. That they would have entered directly into it. Instead of expecting to wait until a resurrection. Afterlife is not necessarily heaven, it can be intermediate state. I don't see a lack of afterlife, I just see a lack of living in Sheol.
The best references you guys have been able to come up with, Enoch and Elijah, make absolutely no mention at all of any afterlife. And if that's the best you can do, I'm ready to rest my case.
This is consistent with Job expecting to be remembered. And with David expecting to go and be with his dead child. You say no afterlife, but I say there is future life.
@fredsbend To be clear: I believe in an afterlife. And I believe that all of the people of OT times are now living in an afterlife. What I'm saying is that they didn't believe in an afterlife. Or if they had any conception or awareness of it at all, it was so weak as not to make any real impact on their religion and their lives, and therefore it doesn't appear in the texts that came from that time period.
@Joshua Yes, the prophets went looking for Elijah's body even though Elisha told them not to. And as he said, they did not find it. But that is still the end of Elijah's story in the OT narrative. Elisha then takes up Elijah's mantle both literally and figuratively, and the story then continues with Elisha's great deeds.
@LeeWoofenden what exactly is the point of this conversation to you? You admit my point of progressive revelation. You admit wet can't draw conclusions on what they believed as definite truth, so why does it matter?
@Joshua If you can find any reference to living in Sheol, I would be most fascinated to see it.
@Joshua And yes, it's true that even today many Christians believe only in a future afterlife, not a present one. They believe that the afterlife will commence only after the Last Judgment, when, they believe, everyone will arise from their graves to be judged. And yet, even this concept is totally lacking in the ancient, narrative sections of the Hebrew Bible.
@LeeWoofenden maybe you need to reread what I said... There is no living in Sheol. No knowledge, no praises. And yet there is existence. The implication of something following that is always there. Otherwise they would just be complete mortalists. But they aren't, they exist on
@Joshua I believe it is important to clearly and dispassionately read what the text of the Bible actually says. If we want to add interpretations to it, that's fine. But for those interpretations to be valid, we must first clearly understand what the text itself says, without all sorts of doctrinal and dogmatic filters being applied to it.
Doctrine should be based on what the text actually says.
And I do not think the text can mean anything we want it to mean. There is a literal meaning of the Bible, and it says definite things. Gaining a clear, unclouded grasp of what the plain, literal text of the Bible says and doesn't say is essential to any sound interpretation of the text, spiritual, allegorical, historical, cultural, social, or otherwise.
I have engaged in many debates here, primarily with Protestants, in which I asked them to show me passages in the Bible that actually state, plainly and clearly, the doctrines they are attributing to the Bible. They have been entirely unable to do so, but have insisted that these doctrines are what the Bible really means. I find that to be a totally untrustworthy foundation on which to build a doctrinal superstructure.
I believe that the Bible is capable of saying what it means, and we must first understand that before we start building our own doctrinal superstructures on the Bible's plain, expressed meaning.
@LeeWoofenden You so do continue to refuse to actually contend with what I'm saying, but instead going into sermons about interpretation and the text and doctrines... The text clearly puts them, their person, in the grave, still existing.
And I believe that traditional Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, has signally failed to base its doctrine on a sound understanding of the plain text of the Bible.
@Joshua But it never talks about any resurrection or afterlife for them. As I've said before, the closest the narrative sections come to speaking of what happens next is the incident of the medium at Endor calling up the spirit of Samuel. And it's clear from the text that Samuel is seen as sleeping in the grave, and is upset at being disturbed. He is not living in some place above. He comes up from below--from the grave.
So the conception presented is that of eternal sleeping in the grave. Where is the mention of any resurrection? I challenge you to find it for me in the narrative sections of the OT.
@LeeWoofenden yeah yeah yeah, heard this rerun before.
Job 14:13-14 13 Oh that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath be past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me! 14If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come.
@Joshua It sounds to me more like he's saying that those who die will not live again. And the word translated "renewal" more likely speaks of "relief" in the sense of others coming to take his place in the battle, like soldiers waiting for the troops that will take their place when their own posting is over, and they can leave the battlefield.
So the whole passage is more likely speaking of death as a finality, at which point others take one's place. And the entire book of Job presents a picture of a man who loses everything in this life, and then, through faith and perseverance, gains it all back, and more, in this life.
We can read some hints of an afterlife into the book of Job if we want to. And Job is a very poetic and evocative book. But the storyline itself suggests that even the writer of Job thought of blessings and curses as things that take place in the present life, not in some future life.
@LeeWoofenden What about how we are told he will receive double everything but gets the same number of children? Only counts as double if the previous children still exist.
It seems you only use the plain meaning when it suits.
@Joshua Either way, they are still seen as existing in this life.
@Joshua I seek to understand the plain meaning first. That's the only sound basis for any further interpretation of the text.
I do believe that the text has deeper meanings. And I believe that to arrive at those meanings requires first a sound understanding of the literal meaning.
@LeeWoofenden For what it's worth, I feel I owe you an apology for the manner in which I've addressed you today. It hasn't been as respectful and thoughtful as I'd like to be. And ought to be.
@svidgen Apology accepted, with thanks. It's easy to get worked up in these debates that cut so close to our cherished beliefs and understanding of the world in which we live. I've been there plenty of times myself.
@LeakyNun Then it will all depend on which half of the brain the person acts upon. Sooner or later the person is going to jump in one direction or the other.
@LeakyNun That is a physical condition. Our eternal fate does not depend upon physical conditions. And the brain, in Swedenborgian thought, is not the mind.
@LeakyNun After a bit of quick skimming, it appears that people with alien hand syndrome still have a will, and that the alien hand operates against that will. It will be the conscious will of the person that determines his or her spiritual course--i.e., toward heaven or toward hell. We are not held responsible for things over which we have no control.
@LeakyNun Malfunctions of the physical brain will affect our ability to function in this world, in relation to people and objects around us in this world. And that may affect our ability to develop spiritually. But there is also a spiritual mind, and that, ultimately, will determine which direction we go. In the afterlife, physical defects are removed, and the person goes on from there.
@LeakyNun I can't say exactly what happens to such a person, or where that person's will resides in relation to the physical brain. Human life is complex.
@LeeWoofenden the left brain and the right brain are separated. they can't communicate with each other. only the left brain can speak, but the right brain does many other things as well
@LeakyNun The general principle is that our spiritual fate depends only on the choices we make within the zone of moral and spiritual freedom that we have. If physical conditions make it impossible for us to make moral and spiritual choices at all, then the default destination is heaven. Hell becomes the destination only if we have the freedom and rationality to freely choose it.
@LeakyNun If they are truly at odds with one another, then it causes an impairment that would invalidate a person's ability to make moral choices. But I would want to see specific cases of people whose brains are making opposing moral choices. Hypotheticals are easy to spin, but life is lived in the actual, not the hypothetical.
If there is no clear base personality, then the case would be similar to severe schizophrenia, which most likely invalidates a person's ability to make free moral choices.
There are many people who die without having had the ability to make a free moral choice. In every case, the default destination is heaven. The physical disability is removed in the afterlife, and the person develops from where his or her spirit, or inner mind, was at the point where his or her brain, or natural mind, became incapacitated.
Children and pre-adult teens, for example, all go to heaven if they die, because they have not yet reached the age of free and independent moral decision-making. Similarly, people with severe mental developmental issues such that even as adults they do not have fully functional adult-level capabilities will have those impairments removed, and will develop into angels of heaven, not devils of hell.
@LeakyNun Once again, if they are truly opposed to each other, then they would in effect cancel the whole person's ability to make moral choices, and the person would go to heaven because s/he as a whole person never had the ability to make moral choices.
@LeakyNun Right. Having a severed brain is an impairment.
But once again, this isn't something that can be decided hypothetically. We'd have to look at actual individuals. And since we humans cannot reliably judge another person's spiritual state, even then we would not be able to come to a definite conclusion about the person's eternal destination. As I said, human life is complex.
@LeakyNun Do you think that would be a good idea?
Should parents kill their children to make sure they go to heaven?
Heaven and hell are not a mere binary on/off situation. They involve many shades of gray and levels of development. People who die as children do go to heaven, and they generally inhabit a fairly high level of heaven, especially if they died very young. But they will never achieve the full human potential they could have if they'd continued on to adulthood, faced and made moral and spiritual choices, and so on. These are the things that develop depth of character in us.
@LeakyNun There is a long tradition of levels and regions of heaven. Paul mentions a "third heaven." And of course, Swedenborg, my favorite theologian, describes the spiritual world as a very complex place--just as complex as human society on earth.
Old notions that heaven is simply a matter of getting in do not reflect the full, complex reality of human existence.
@LeakyNun Many Bible scholars think he was talking in the third person about himself, and that he himself was the one who had that experience. If it was not he, but someone else, who had the experience, then presumably that person told Paul about it.
At any rate, it's fairly common in the history of Christian thought for heaven to be conceived of as having layers, or levels, or rings, or some other form of gradations rather than being a simple, unitary place.
We see human beings operating at different levels here on earth, so it only makes sense, if heaven consists of human beings who have died and gone on to the spiritual world, that the angels in heaven would also operate at different levels.
@LeakyNun Yes. It is our spirit that goes to heaven, not our body. Our spirit can travel to many different places in the spiritual world while our body stays in one physical place on earth, without moving.
In that, it is like our imagination, in which we can travel to the far corners of the earth while our body is sitting in a jail cell.
Speaking of which, my next blog post will be a riff on Edward Snowden and his "snowbot," which allows him to travel virtually all over the U.S., give speeches, and have conversations with people all while living in exile in Russia.
@LeakyNun If the two minds are truly at odds with one another, yes. But I suspect that if we were to talk to and observe actual human beings whose corpus callosum has been severed, we would find that they do have a general will and consciousness that defines them as a person, even if the physical actions of their body are sometimes at odds with one another.
That's why I'm reluctant to make any grand pronouncements in the hypothetical when the reality resides in the actual individuals and their individual mind and situation.
It's easy to mentally come up with a reductio ad absurdum to "show" that some proposition is false. But life is lived in the actual situation, not in the hypothetical one.
"But what if the moon were made of green cheese? What then? Huh!?!"
@LeakyNun For my denomination, evolution is a non-issue. We have never interpreted the early chapters of Genesis literally. The "death" there, we believe, is speaking of spiritual death, not physical death. And that happened "on the day" (or at the time) early humans figuratively ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, as reflected in the story by their loss of innocence and their separation from the garden and from the close relationship they had previously had with God.
Okay, thanks. Unfortunately, that would not be a good question here – Christians disagree on what is "required" in order to get to heaven. Even asking "what does the Bible say" wouldn't be enough, because Christians disagree on what the Bible teaches.
@Nathaniel By the way do you know if eq. in your country they have so called comparative theology in theological seminars or faculties of theology? Do you know if they have courses on comparative theology. And; does this question deal with comparative thelogy?
Instead you could ask for a particular tradition's views on this, such as Catholicism. I don't know if we have anyone here who is sufficiently knowledgeable to compare that to the Qur'an, but it would be an acceptable question here, in my opinion
Yes, this is a pretty basic comparative theology question. Comparative theology is indeed a real thing in the US (where I am); it's a subset of comparative religion, which is something many scholars study.
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