For Patrons: Jewish Afterlife Traditions

My podcast/video for patrons this week is now available. Acts 23:8 has such an intriguing statement on Pharisee and Sadducee views on resurrection that I decided to give some of my old research on Jewish afterlife traditions. The four afterlife positions are: 1) no meaningful afterlife, 2) immediate reward or punishment, 3) otherworldly resurrection, 4) physical resurrection.

Patrons are those who donate at least $5 a month to my Patreon.com page, supporting my daily podcast commentaries on Acts, along with the daily videos on the Greek of these same passages.

S9. The dead in Christ will rise.

This is the ninth post in a unit on salvation in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first section had to do with God and Creation, and I have also finished units on Christology and Atonement.
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The dead in Christ will rise.

1. There are many senses in which we can speak of salvation. When Christ died and rose from the dead, he saved the world, even though perhaps most of those saved were not even born. In a sense, we are saved from the power of Sin the moment the Holy Spirit enters our lives. But we will be saved literally from the judgment of God, we will escape his rejection, on the Day when the judgment takes place.

When the Holy Spirit takes hold of our lives in response to our faith, we are sanctified, we are purified of our past sins and set apart as belonging to God, as God's property. Theologically, we say that God continues to "sanctify" any parts of our life that are not fully under his power. "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8), and we know that there are some who have been initially sanctified to God (1 Cor. 1:2) who still are fleshly (1 Cor. 3:1). [1]

So the Spirit continues to sanctify our lives until, ideally, we come to a place of full surrender. Then we can be entirely his, to the greatest degree we know. We cannot be as empowered as possible until we are as surrendered as possible. [2]

2. John Wesley never imagined that being entirely surrendered and sanctified by God (which he actually called "Christian perfection") would mean that a person stops growing in his or her relationship with God. Nor did he think that a Christian would be unable to sin after that point. There would continue to be what he called "growth in grace" for the rest of our lives on earth, and we would continue to grow for all eternity.

The key here is that there is an infinite amount to know. There is an infinite amount to grow. The person who is fully surrendered to God in every respect they know can still learn more about God. That person can still become better at implementing their love for others. So Wesley did not see Christian perfection as a sinless perfection. Nor did he see it as a return to the perfection that Adam enjoyed before he sinned. He saw it as a certain kind of maturity in faith that was fully surrendered to God and thus fully taken over by God.

3. It is possible that, to some extent, Wesley misread Paul because he was under the influence of Calvin, the Reformation, and ultimately Augustine. Paul did not see Sin as a nature within us. Paul saw Sin as a power over us. In Romans 8, Paul says that the whole creation is currently enslaved to corruption and decay (8:20). Since our human bodies are part of that creation, there is a real sense in which temptation will always be present in our lives.

Much of the Wesleyan tradition has filtered Wesley's teaching in the light of its experiences. We still understand the idea of entire sanctification as full surrender to God. Wesleyan ministers continue to preach full surrender to God with great fervor. We can also preach with great fervor that we will never experience as much of the power of God as he wants to give us if we do not surrender ourselves fully to him. And that final surrender usually takes place in a moment of decision. It is thus often an instantaneous event in which we are filled with the Spirit afresh.

However, as long as we are in our bodies, we will experience temptation. And since the power of sin over the creation is what Augustine took to be a sin nature, there is a metaphorical sense in which even Christians will have the power of Sin as a factor in their lives for as long as they live.

4. Paul does speak of an ultimate redemption from this slavery to corruption, decay, and sin. This is the redemption that will come with resurrection. The resurrection is when the dead in Christ will rise to eternal life. Whatever is left of their mortal bodies will be transformed into a spiritual body (1 Cor. 15:42-44).

Paul teaches that the entire creation will be redeemed. The entire creation will be saved. The entire creation will be transformed.

For those who are alive at Christ's return, their bodies will be transformed to be like Christ's resurrection body (Phil. 3:21). As we have borne the image of the earthly Adam, we will bear the image of the heavenly Adam, the second Adam, Christ (1 Cor. 15:49).

If we should die before Christ returns, then we shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed (1 Cor. 15:51-52). In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we will be transformed from the grave and will be glorified.

This classic, historical and biblical belief in resurrection is not exactly the same as the immortality of the soul. It is not incompatible with that Greek belief, but it is very distinct. In particular, Christian resurrection assumes that we will have a body in resurrection. Christians do not believe that the body of Jesus is still in a grave somewhere. We believe that Christ's body was transformed into a glorified body exactly the same as the kind of body we will have in our resurrection.

The Gospel resurrection accounts also speak of Jesus having a resurrection body. He eats in Luke 24:41-43 and shows that he is not a ghost. He offers his hands and feet to touch in both Luke 24:39 and John 20:27. We are resurrected not as spirits but as bodies. [4]

4. Glorification is a term that finds its origins in Romans 8 as well. The background is arguably Psalm 8, which originally pondered the prominence God has given humanity within the creation. However, some early Christians saw in this psalm a glory that God intended humanity to have but that we do not currently experience. "We do not yet see everything in subjection" to humanity (Heb. 2:5). Humanity "is lacking the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). [3] Once we are justified, "we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God" (Rom. 5:2).

This glorification is what Paul was specifically talking about in Romans 8 when he said that God would work everything together for good (8:28). God has a plan in which all those in Christ will eventually "be conformed to the image of his Son" (8:29), namely, when we are transformed either at Christ's return or when we rise from the dead.

5. What happens to us between death and resurrection? The Bible has little to say on this topic. The Bible does not have much to say about what happens to us between death and resurrection. The Old Testament, of course, has very little to say about the afterlife at all. Daniel 12:2-3 does say that those who "sleep" (i.e., the dead) will be raised either to everlasting life or everlasting contempt. Paul also uses the image of sleep (1 Thess. 4:13; 1 Cor. 15:51), leading some traditions to think that we are in a "soul sleep" between death and resurrection in which we know nothing. [5]

However, few though they be, there are some clear hints in the New Testament that the dead will be conscious in the time between death and resurrection. And this is what most Christians have believed also throughout the centuries. In Luke, for example, Jesus tells the thief on the cross that he would be with him that day in Paradise (Luke 23:43). Presumably, Jesus and the thief were not just going to be sleeping next to each other in Paradise! Similarly, Luke tells us a parable about a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus. They both wake up in the afterlife, while the brothers of the rich man are still alive. By contrast, Lazarus wakes up in pleasure, and the rich man wakes up in torment.

There are other hints. Paul in Philippians 1:23 speaks of dying and being with Christ (cf. also 2 Cor. 5:1). 1 Peter speaks of Christ visiting the dead after his death (e.g., 4:6; also 3:19-20). In Revelation 6:9-10, there seem to be martyred souls present in heaven who are able to communicate with God. So while there are some images of sleep in the New Testament, the position of common Christianity is that we will be conscious in some respect after death, even before the resurrection.

It is difficult for us to say exactly what the difference will be between the blessing of our state immediately after death and the blessing of our eternally transformed bodies. We are not in any position to know what a spirit might be, let alone a disembodied spirit. [6] What we do know, as I have heard my colleague Chris Bounds say, is that the dead are precisely that: dead. [7] They are not alive. They are not yet resurrected. Their bliss is not yet as great as it will be. There is a difference between the resurrection and whatever an immortal soul might be.

The dead in Christ will rise. They will be glorified. They will receive a transformed body. Those in Christ who are alive and remain at his coming will be transformed to have a body like Christ's glorious body.

Next Sunday, S10: Christ will come again to save his people and judge the world.

[1] Wesleyans call this point the moment of initial sanctification.

[2] Wesleyans call this possibility the moment of entire sanctification.

[3] My translation.

[4] Although they may not recognize some conflicting imagery in the Bible, two books that present the case that the Bible is overwhelmingly oriented toward bodily resurrection are Joel Green's Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008) and N. T. Wright's Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2008).

[5] E.g., Seventh Day Adventists.

[6] Some have proposed that we will have some sort of temporary body between death and resurrection.

[7] Chris Bounds is a theology professor at Indiana Wesleyan University.

Sadducees believed in angels (Acts 22b-23a)

1. In the latter part of Acts 22, we learn that Paul was born a Roman citizen. This implies a certain status in the Roman world. It fits with the idea that, back home, he was more the boss of the company than a skilled worker.

2. Paul appears before the Sanhedrin in Acts 23, the Jewish ruling council. He says his conscience is clear. The high priest has him smacked. He says, "The Lord will strike you, you whitewashed wall." Then he realizes it's the high priest and he apologizes, quotes Scripture. I always found that sequence a little funny.

He realizes it's a divided house between Pharisees and Sadducees. He says that he's only in trouble because he believes in the resurrection. That divides the house. The Pharisees start arguing with the Sadducees and Paul just sits back and enjoys.

23:8, however, is a very significant verse, even though hard to understand. It says that the Sadducees do not believe in resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess both. This verse has sometimes been taken to mean that Sadducees did not believe in angels (and, anachronistically, people used to associate them with modern liberals who didn't believe in the supernatural--a good example of how easy it is to infect our interpretation with our own context).

But this would be the only evidence anywhere to suggest Sadducees didn't believe in angels. (the idea that Sadducees only followed the Law and not the other parts of the OT is similarly based on the contested interpretation of a single statement in Josephus. By the way, there are angels in the Law). And what is worse, the "no angels" interpretation of this verse seems wrong.

If you look at the structure of this verse, it seems to go something like the following:

• Sadducees do not believe in resurrection...
• Neither in the angel form nor the spirit form...
• But Pharisees confess both types of resurrection

So the question becomes, what is angel resurrection and what is spirit resurrection? This is a good example of how we read our categories into the biblical texts and say we have a biblical worldview. The distinction between material and immaterial, that we generally apply to these issues, comes from Descartes in the 1500s and not from the Bible. The lines they drew around reality were different in biblical times.

So the difference between embodied/corporeal and disembodied/incorporeal for them was not the same as the Cartesian difference between material/immaterial. Spirits were thinner material for them but still material. Spirit was breath and wind. To be embodied might mean a different material or a thicker material but still material.

So what is the difference between angels and spirits? Some thought of angels as spirits (e.g., Heb. 1:14). But it's possible that Luke thought of angels as more embodied than spirits. NT Wright (Resurrection of the Son of God) has suggested that Acts 23:8 is talking about the intermediate state of the dead. When the house church thinks Peter is dead, they wonder if it is his angel at the door (12:15).

After years of pondering this one, I remain puzzled. Do only special people become angels at death in Luke's thinking?  After years of us telling the people in our churches that you don't become angels at death and that angels aren't good people who died, we see that there was actually a biblical basis for this idea! An angel serves as a messenger of God.

But Luke seems to have another intermediate category for spirits. And neither of these seem to be the same as our resurrection body, for Jesus has flesh and bones in Luke 24:39. In that verse, Jesus contrasts a spirit with his resurrection body, which had flesh and bones.

An important take-away here is to remember that the books of the Bible were revealed in the categories of their day. Just as the universe is not three stories (Phil. 2:10) and the stars aren't in between the waters above and the waters beneath (Gen. 1), we should not confuse the form in which the revelation comes for the substance of the revelation. Biblical cosmologies came in ancient clothing and rarely if ever were the revealed point being made, only the envelope in which it came.

Daniel 12:2-3 and Resurrection

It was 10 years after finishing my doctorate that my dissertation was published.  Trying to beat that pitiful record with the research I did on Jewish traditions about afterlife and resurrection during my 2004 sabbatical. I have a number of "chapters" I've presented here or there already but they need reformulated and edited.

I'm dividing Second Temple Jewish literature on the subject into 4 streams and trying to propose a somewhat developmental hypothesis. But I've decided to complete the writing in part by going source by source. The chapter on the stream that did not accept a meaningful afterlife is largely finished, so I turn here to one of the earliest sources in Jewish literature that holds to a meaningful afterlife, Daniel 12.
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Although others have been suggested, Daniel 12:2-3 is the only passage in the Old Testament that all agree points to a meaningful life after death.  The point at which the historical account jumps to resurrection is somewhere in the years 167-164BC, during the Maccabean crisis. Then, like Mark 13:24 or Matthew 24:29, the account seems to jump to the final days of history in its current form. [1]

The conflict reaches a climax.  There is a time of crisis such as the world has never experienced before. [2] Then Israel ("your people") will experience salvation. What follows seems to be a partial rather than general resurrection of the dead. "Many" of those who sleep in the dust arise either to reward or punishment. Some of these rise to everlasting life and some to everlasting contempt.

It is tempting, as with 1 Enoch 22, to see the criterion for such resurrection in terms of those who have died without receiving justice in this world.  What determines who is awoken and who is not?  In 1 Enoch 22, it depends on whether the righteous have experienced their deserved reward in this world and similarly whether the wicked have received their just deserts. Daniel, however, does not give a clear rationale for the selection, although 12:3 may point to the basis for the righteous. Those who led many people to righteousness, a group called "wise," will shine like the stars forever.

Again, there is disagreement about whether this is now a third group of resurrected or whether this verse refers to those just mentioned who rise to everlasting life. Does Daniel here give us the criteria that has determined the reason for resurrection? It is tempting to fill in the rationale for resurrection with the rationale in other Jewish literature. In 2 Maccabees, for example, it would seem to be those who are martyred exactly for keeping the covenant who are going to be resurrected. Is that what Daniel means when it speaks of leading others to righteousness?

The text is similarly ambiguous both about the state of the resurrected prior to and after resurrection. Those who rise have been "those who sleep in the dust of the earth" (NRSV), an image of death that Paul also uses in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 and 1 Corinthians 15:18. Does Daniel mean to imply that the dead are not conscious in the time between death and resurrection? Similarly, we are told nothing of the fate of the wicked dead.  They rise to everlasting contempt but nothing is said of what punishment or judgment they face.

Finally, it is uncertain how to take the image of the wise shining like the stars. It is a simile to be sure, they shine "like" the stars.  They do not literally become stars.  But how like the stars do they become?  Do they return to the earth for eternity or do they spend eternity in the heavens, like the stars...

[1] Although in the case of the gospels, N. T. Wright has argued that what follows is a highly poetic prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem.

[2] Imagery that Mark also applies to the time around the destruction of Jerusalem (13:19).

NT Wright on Jewish Afterlife

I think if I were working on my doctoral dissertation today, I would blog through my resources. I think best by writing in front of an audience--like thinking out loud--which is why blogging works for me. Teaching is not about talking, but I learn best by talking to others about something I'm trying to learn (my apologies to former students).

I'm trying to get my brain back into the groove of the topic of the afterlife in Jewish literature, which I worked extensively on 10 years ago. I thought I might jot down some notes on some of the key dialog partners to remind myself of thoughts I used to have.  Having notes on the web is much better than note cards, since you can search them. ;-)
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In The Resurrection of the Son of God, Wright's second chapter deals with relevant pagan views of the afterlife, with the conclusion that death is a one way street in them. Chapter 3 then goes through the OT, with a similar conclusion to others, namely, that the OT does not really have a category for a meaningful, personal afterlife, with the exception of Daniel 12:2-3.

He does consider Psalm 73 to say a little more--God receives the righteous person to glory. And Psalm 49:15 speaks of God ransoming the psalmist from the power of Sheol. This last verse in particular might easily be read in terms of some sort of separation of the dead, although it might have referred to being saved from death originally.

Of most interest to me, however, is his classification of afterlife belief in Second Temple Judaism.  His categories are:
1. No future life (Sadducees)
a. Dr. Bauer at Asbury once pointed out to me one thing that Wright says here: "They denied it because they were the conservatives" (131). Pop Christianity has the Sadducees pegged as the liberals, imposing modern social categories on the NT world. But at least on this issue, the Sadducees were the ones most in continuity with the OT as far as the belief (or rather disbelief) itself.

b. This is where Wright treats Acts 23:23, a key verse for processing the spectrum of resurrection belief at the time.  His key insight, in his opinion, is that this verse is about the intermediate state. "What the Sadducees denied, then, was on the one hand the resurrection, and on the other hand the two current accounts of the intermediate state" (133). He is opposing the view of Viviano and Taylor, JBL, 1992. I think he is partially right and partially wrong here.

c. In this section is the quote, "resurrection was from the beginning a revolutionary doctrine" (138). I believe Wright developed this a little in The New Testament and the People of God.  He footnotes here Alan Segal in relation to the rabbis (in The Resurrection, 1997, 113).

d. Other Jewish books he mentions are of course Sirach, Tobit, 1 Maccabees, 1 Baruch.

2. Disembodied afterlife
These are Jewish documents that Wright sees as rejecting resurrection while believing in afterlife. They include Pseudo-Phocylides, Testament of Abraham, 1 Enoch 103:3-8, 4 Maccabees, maybe Jubilees 23:30f.

He sees the dualistic framework that often underlies this view in 4 Ezra 7, perhaps in a comment attributed to Johanan ben Zakkai (bBer. 28b), although presumably these individuals believed in eventual bodily resurrection.  He mentions funerary inscriptions from Williams Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 3, 1999, 90f.  Finally there is Philo.

3. Resurrection
"All the evidence suggests that, with the few exceptions noted already, it was widely believed by most Jews around the time of the common era" (147).

a. He starts with aspects of the Greek translation of the OT that reflect resurrection belief. Hans Cavallin's work (1974) has a section on this as well. Whereas Isaiah 26 was likely figurative originally, in the Greek translation it becomes pro-literal resurrection (26:14, 19).  Hosea 6:2 also, originally figurative, is now literal. Deuteronomy 32:39, Psalm 1:5, 21:30. The LXX of Job 14:14 makes it say exactly the opposite of what it said originally, as does Hosea 13:14. Job 19:26, while ambiguous originally, now clearly refers to resurrection. There is an extra statement of resurrection in Job 42:17.

I personally suspect that reflection on Scriptures like Isaiah 26 and Ezekiel 37 were catalysts for resurrection belief.  What was originally meant figuratively came to be taken literally.

Wright assumes that these are all bodily resurrections. With regard to Isaiah and Hosea he says, "No second-Temple reader would have doubted that this referred to bodily resurrection" (148). I have questions about the evidence for this statement. What does the LXX of Hosea mean when it says we will be raised to live in God's presence?

I also don't buy the old argument that vekroi must always mean "corpses."  This is potentially the etymological fallacy alive and at work in scholarship today. It doesn't matter that the word meant corpses originally. How did the word come to be used in common parlance.

"All the indications are that those who translated the Septuagint, and those who read it thereafter... would have understood the key Old Testament passages in terms of a more definite 'resurrection' sense than the Hebrew would necessarily warrant" (150).

b. 2 Maccabees, of course

c. He treats 1 Enoch here, which I think is mixed.  25:4-7 is fair enough.  In The Parables of Enoch (51), the righteous and holy become angels. Cf. 62:13-17, 91:10.

Wright acknowledges that 103:4 might be more about immortality than resurrection (citing Schurer 2.541).  Cf. 104:1-4.  This is a point where I am arguing for something different (cf. Collins).  I think there may be another category here (cf. Testament of Moses 10:8-10).  Psalms of Solomon 3:11 is less than clear (see p. 162 n. 135).

Apocalypse of Moses is clear resurrection (13.3), as is Sibylline Oracles 4.179-92.  TJudah may have a partial resurrection of the righteous (25.4).  Transformation in TBenjamin 10:6-9.  And of course 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch.  Eventually Pseudo-Philo (189-90) and the rabbis.

Wright changed my mind some time ago on the Wisdom of Solomon. It is not purely dualistic but does seem to look to a physical resurrection.

Josephus gives us the famous passages on the Jewish groups and their beliefs, somewhat hellenized to be sure. The Essenes are portrayed as dualists, the Pharisees are seen to hold to a resurrection of tje righteous but not the wicked. Much to return to here.

Wright wavers a bit on the Essenes. He thinks the external evidence points to resurrection belief and plays up two very exceptional fragments among the DSS: 4Q521 and Pseudo-Ezekiel. He also mentions 4QH 14, 19. John Collins is more definitive here (Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls).

Many thanks to Wright for this superb work.  I gave a paper that ran through Jewish literature on the afterlife and categorized these sorts of positions in 1999, presented at the Historical Jesus section of SBL. Wright came up and asked for a copy of the paper afterwards. He was working on this book at the time. Of course he did a much better job with the topic than I did... ;-)

Psalm 6 Translation

Psalm 1
Psalm 2
Psalm 3
Psalm 4
Psalm 5
Now Psalm 6
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[To the musician leading (those playing) the Neginoth upon the Sheminith, a psalm (attributed) to David]
1 Do not in your anger correct me,
     and do not in your heat discipline me.
2 Be gracious to me, YHWH,
     for I am languishing;
Heal me, YHWH,
     for my bones tremble.
3 And my soul trembles intensely,
     but you, YHWH, how long?
4 Return, YHWH; deliver my soul.
     save me because of your faithfulness.
5 For in death there is no memory of you;
     in Sheol who gives thanks to you.
6 I am weary with my sighing;
     I swim in all [the] night [on] my bed;
     with my tears, I dissolve my couch.
7 My eye is sunken from grief;
     it ages from all my harassers.
8 Go away from me,
     all transgressors of wickedness,
     for YHWH has heard the voice of my weeping.
9 YHWH heard my mercy-cry;
     YHWH will receive my prayer.
10 Let all my enemies be very ashamed
     and let them be terrified;
Let them return,
     let them be suddenly ashamed.
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A couple items of interest here.  First, there is the explicit denial of any meaningful afterlife in 6:5.  If I were to guess (unprovable, I suppose), I would date the psalm to the same basic period as Ecclesiastes and the Writings in general.

6:8 would seem to be alluded to by Matthew 25:41, where the messianic king tells those who have not helped those in need to depart to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  In the psalm, the speaker is clearly oppressed by enemies. It is not clear what of the psalm Matthew 25 considered relevant.  Perhaps it is no more than the fact that the psalmist is in need and those who do not help those in need but could are in one sense their oppressors.

Pharisees, Afterlife, Paul

I have been writing yesterday and today on what Pharisees likely believed about resurrection at the time of Paul.  My argument is that Pharisees and the populace were moving toward a general resurrection of all the righteous in all history but that it is also likely that some Pharisees at the time only pictured a resurrection for those who died prematurely out of faithfulness to the Jewish Law.

My argument is also that while we find an increasing sense that the wicked suffer in the afterlife from about 200BC on, belief in a resurrected return to the land of Israel was at first restricted to those who died as "martyrs," so to speak.  The premise is, for Essenes and others, that the "normal" righteous have a blessed afterlife under the earth or, perhaps for some, in the stars.  Resurrection belief arises as a function of the problem of evil, against the backdrop of deuteronomistic theology, to explain how the righteous can die because they are righteous.

The question then comes to Paul.  Does he think of resurrection in terms of Old Testament people like Abraham or only in terms of those "in Christ"?  Does he picture a time when the wicked will return to the earth for judgment?  It is a question of silence.  He makes no comment on either topic.

Jewish Literature and the Afterlife

They say the last 20% of any project is often 80% of the work. I did a Fulbright in Tuebingen in the Winter of 2004, partially to finish a little book on Philo I wrote and also to continue some research I had done on afterlife traditions in Second Temple Judaism. I gave three lectures in Germany on my research, a couple more when I got back. But alas, I never put it into publishable form.

So here's twenty minutes hoping to add a few hours next week to make a viable proposal to someone (T & T?) before the end of the month because of something else I'm applying for.

Die, shadowy and meaningless afterlife
1. Torah and Former Prophets - shadowy afterlife, similar to the Homeric afterlife, deuteronomistic theology
2. Latter Prophets, Psalms, Wisdom Literature - no meaningful afterlife, no resurrection
3. Tobit, Sirach - no sense of afterlife, Sirach's solution to problem of evil
4. Sadducees

Die with reward or punishment elsewhere
5. Jubilees - spirits will have great joy
6. Philo - reward and punishment at death, some later Greek
7. Pseudo-Phocyclades - same
8. Essenes - reward and punishment after death?
9. later Paul - we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ (at death?)
10. 4 Maccabees - spiritual afterlife
11. John - I go to prepare a place for you?
12. 1 Peter - made alive in the spirit?
13. Hebrews - spirits of the perfected righteous?
14. Apocalypse of Abraham - reward and punishment at death

Some in future will go somewhere
15. Book of Watchers (22) - some in reward and torment, future moment to settle with those who did not
16. Daniel - some to life, some to contempt, shine like stars
17. Epistle of Enoch - spirits in heaven
18. Some Pharisees may have believed in a kind of spirit resurrection
19. 4 Ezra = at point in future, righteous and wicked get theirs

Return to the earth in future
20. Animal Apocalypse - maybe physical resurrection?
21. LXX of Job - physical resurrection
22. 2 Maccabees - partial bodily resurrection of righteous martyred
23. Pharisees - resurrection of more than one sort perhaps
24. Book of Wisdom - spirits but with resurrection to the earth
25. early Paul - bodily resurrection of dead in Christ
26. Luke - spirits but with resurrection to the earth
27. Revelation - two resurrections to earth
28. Mishnah - all Israel have place in life to come

Quote from Alan Segal

From Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion, p.179. Segal is a genius, and the usual idiosyncratic professor. I once heard him read an SBL paper from his lap top, no doubt finished on the plane (if indeed it was finished :-). He is hilarious and generally on the list for a party of any significance at a scholarly convention. Jewish scholar of all things Jewish, including the New Testament, professor at Columbia in New York.
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"Though many think that dualism and monotheism are opposing phenomena, dualism actually seems to be a consequence of some difficulties with monotheism. From the perspective of ethics, monotheism is in opposition to polytheism, not to dualism. Once there is one god, he or she must be the author of all evil as well as good. Indeed, one might argue that dualism is not a stage on the way to monotheism so much as a stage beyond it, a strategic retreat from monotheism governed by the recognition that monotheism makes the explanation of evil problematic. In these dualisms, good will eventually conquer evil."

This passage appears in his treatment of Zoroastrianism.

Life Beyond Death 4

Previous posts include:

1a. Born at a Time and Place 1; 1b. Born at a Time and Place 2
2a. A Change in Life Direction; 2b A Change in Life Direction 2; 2c A Change in Life Direction 3
3a. The Unknown Years 1; 3b. The Unknown Years 2; 3c. The Unknown Years 3

The previous posts for the current chapter are Life Beyond Death 1; Life Beyond Death 2; and Life Beyond Death 3.

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[Some scholars have also suggested that Paul's thought underwent development between 1 and 2 Corinthians on the question of when resurrection takes place. [2] Whereas in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul clearly thinks of us receiving our resurrection body at the time of Christ's return, 2 Corinthians 5 says that if the "earthly tent we live in is destroyed," if we die, then we have "an eternal house in heaven," our resurrection body. It would be easy to read this statement to indicate that we go to heaven when we die and get a spiritual body immediately at death. We want to please Christ whether here in the body or in heaven when we die (2 Cor. 5:9). And one might argue accordingly that our appearence before the judgment seat of Christ in the next verse (2 Cor. 5:10) is what happens immediately at death.]

Although this is a possible interpretation of Paul, most scholars have not opted for it. It is possible to interpret Philippians and Romans with this slightly different understanding of the timing of resurrection (i.e., that it takes place at death). But it does not seem the most natural reading of, say, Philippians 3:11. These two letters were written either about the same time or a little later than 2 Corinthians. On the other hand, 2 Timothy 2:18 warns of those who say the resurrection has already happened. Could it be a warning against the kind of teaching we are talking about?

***

Looking at these sorts of questions in detail can be a little startling. For example, popular thinking usually stops with "you die and then either go to heaven or hell." Some so equate the idea of the immortality of the soul with bedrock Christian faith that they might even react with anger to hear what resurrection was really about in the Bible. [1] Meanwhile, the notion that we will reunite with our bodies is not attractive to many today, just as it wasn't to some in Paul's own day. The idea of resurrection was foolishness to some Greeks--why would I want this "prison house of the soul" back again. And the idea that the resurrection is an event still on the horizon can disrupt some comfortable sense of dying and then immediately going to our "final resting place."

Scholarly debates over the meaning of various passages can also be confusing, even disturbing. You mean those who know the most about these issues find room in the evidence for disagreement? Did Paul's thought develop in some ways over time? It implies a rethinking of the Bible as a single, static book whose "chapters" all say the same thing. It pushes us to read the Bible more as a library of books than a single one. Now we have to get a sense of the biblical trajectory rather than assume Genesis teaches exactly the same things as Revelation.

For example, on this particular issue, the Old Testament as a whole has little to say about the afterlife at all (e.g., Ps. 30:9; Eccl. 9:4-6). The only passage in the Old Testament that everyone agrees points to a meaningful, personal, conscious life after death is Daniel 12:2-3. The New Testament thus seems to take us further along on a trajectory of revelation than the Old Testament on this issue.

Many of the beliefs we have on issues like the afterlife seem obvious to us in Scripture. But the reason is not always because it really is clear but rather because of a certain common sense we have inherited from the Christian traditions of which we are a part. Some of these traditions are rather recent, like the idiosyncratic beliefs of churches that only came into existence in the last century or so. By contrast, the best "common sense" readings are those that the Christian Tradition (big T) arrived at by hashing out these sorts of ambiguities throughout the ages. Presumably God's Holy Spirit has had something to do with such common Christian faith, such Spiritual common sense.

On the afterlife, Christians have affirmed since the beginning, "I believe in... the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting" (the Apostle's Creed). We have affirmed this resurrection as something that is yet to come (except for Christ, the first fruits of the dead; 1 Cor. 15:20) and that will involve continuity with our human bodies as possible, although transformed into something that cannot decay. Christians throughout the centuries have affirmed that our souls will continue to exist and be conscious in between our deaths and our resurrections.

Christian tradition throughout the centuries has generally looked to a similarly transformed creation, a new earth. Paul is not entirely clear where he thinks we will spend eternity, but he does clearly speak of the redemption of the creation along with the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:19-23). It is perhaps more likely than not that he saw us living out eternity on a new earth with new bodies not made of the old flesh and blood (1 Cor. 15:50). Many Christians think of us spending eternity in heaven, and there are some New Testament passages that can be read this way (e.g., John 14:3; Heb. 12:26-27; 1 Pet. 1:4; 2 Pet. 3:10). But perhaps throughout the centuries, more Christians have believed we would spend eternity on a new earth (e.g., Rev. 21:2). God will clarify all these ambiguities when He ushers in His kingdom.

[1] Although he possibly makes things a little more tidy than they really were, an excellent introduction to this entire topic is N. T. Wright's, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2008).

Friday Paul: Life Beyond Death 3

Previous posts include:

1a. Born at a Time and Place 1; 1b. Born at a Time and Place 2
2a. A Change in Life Direction; 2b A Change in Life Direction 2; 2c A Change in Life Direction 3
3a. The Unknown Years 1; 3b. The Unknown Years 2; 3c. The Unknown Years 3

The previous posts for the current chapter are Life Beyond Death 1 and Life Beyond Death 2.
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... So we might picture a scenario where Paul has preached that God has raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus has died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice, an act of faithfulness that has made it possible for anyone to be reconciled to the one true God, whether Jew or Gentile. God has enthroned Jesus at His right hand not only as the Jewish king (anointed one, messiah, Christ) but indeed as Lord over all the world. Very soon, Jesus would return from heaven to take his rightful place as king over the world.

The good news Paul preached was thus that the Thessalonians could escape the coming judgment if they were baptized in the name of Jesus. Baptism would appropriate the cross of Jesus and they would be saved from God's coming wrath (e.g., 1 Thess. 1:9, 10). Then, perhaps, someone who had accepted the good news died. Thinking this scenario through is potentially very eye opening to the difference between how obvious these things are to us and how much the earliest Christians were just figuring out!

So someone is distressed. How sad. Uncle Demetrius was so excited to be part of the kingdom of God when Christ returned. But now he's died and won't be able to see Jesus.

And so Paul fills them in on the nature of resurrection. Don't worry. Uncle Demetrius is not lost. There will be a resurrection at the time of Jesus' return. Indeed, the dead corpses will rise first, even before we who are alive and remain. A couple points of interest here. First, the word for the dead seemed to have exactly this sense--a dead body, a corpse. Paul does not seem to be talking about some immortality of the soul. He is talking about corpses coming back to life.

Second, he includes himself and his audience when he speaks of "we who remain." In his letters he never says outright, "I expect to be alive when Jesus returns." But his earliest letters seem especially to give off this vibe, as do other New Testament letters (e.g., 1 Cor. 7:29; cf. 1 Pet. 4:17). Christians take from this wording a sense that we must always live in expectation that Christ could come back very soon. We are to live in "imminent expectation" of Christ's return.

Paul and the Thessalonians knew some of the details Paul does not mention. For example, Paul says we will be "caught up ... in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thess. 4:17), the verse that stands behind the idea of a "rapture." Paul concludes, "so we will be with the Lord forever." What Paul does not say, though, is where that forever will be. Many scholars believe that we are meeting Christ in the air like you go out to meet a king or important person coming to town. You then go back into town with them. So passages like 1 Corinthians 6:2 indicate that Christians will participate in the judgment of the world. It thus seems quite possible that we are meeting Christ only to come back down for the judgment.

Paul also only speaks of the dead "in Christ" being raised (1 Thess. 4:16). Interestingly, the New Testament never says anywhere that all the dead will rise immediately at the point of Christ's initial return. Indeed, Revelation puts the famous millennial reign of Christ in between a first resurrection of Christian martyrs (Rev. 20:4-5). Paul of course never clearly speaks of a second resurrection where all the rest of the dead, both righteous and wicked, will rise.

This is an interesting observation. As Christians we believe in a general resurrection, when all the dead will rise, some to eternal life and some to an eternal judgment of some sort. But we have not really taken this idea from Paul's writings. Paul never mentions hell, although 2 Timothy 4:1 does mention that Christ will judge the dead, and Philippians 2:10 includes those "under the earth," the dead presumably, among all who will bow before Christ. We get that idea from elsewhere.

Paul never talks about when "every knee should bow... and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord" (Phil. 2:10-11). Certainly the living will when Christ returns to earth. But of the dead, Paul only says that the dead "in Christ" will rise. Perhaps Christian understanding in relation to a general resurrection was still in progress at this time. Christians only affirm that the words that made it to the Bible be right, not necessarily everything going on in Paul's head as he wrote.

If at this point Paul only knew about the resurrection of those "in Christ," it would explain the Thessalonians' disappointment. It might also explain why some Christians were apparently baptizing for the dead (1 Cor. 15:29). They would be trying to do the equivalent of what a man named Judas Maccabeus does in a well known Jewish story of the time. In 2 Maccabees 12:43-45, Judas pays for sacrifices to be made for certain fallen soldiers so that they can be part of the resurrection. [1] In the same way, some early Christians may have thought that they could make sure their loved ones were included in the resurrection--maybe individuals who had never even heard of Jesus--by being baptized for them.

Another issue that Paul is largely silent on is what happens even to Christians in between their deaths and the resurrection. In 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15, Paul refers to the dead as those who "sleep" (e.g., 1 Thess. 4:13; 1 Cor. 15:18). Accordingly, some have wondered if Paul had no sense of conscious afterlife in his earliest writings. Whether or not this is the case, by the time he writes Philippians, he thinks of death as going to "be with Christ" (Phil. 1:23). Slightly more ambiguous, but similar is 2 Corinthians 5:6, where Paul seems to imply that being away from the body is to be with the Lord. Whatever Paul started out thinking, his clearest statement in Philippians implies that we are with Christ in between our deaths and future resurrection.

Some scholars have also suggested that Paul's thought underwent development between 1 and 2 Corinthians on the question of when resurrection takes place. [2] Whereas in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul clearly thinks of us receiving our resurrection body at the time of Christ's return, 2 Corinthians 5 says that if the "earthly tent we live in is destroyed," if we die, then we have "an eternal house in heaven," our resurrection body. It would be easy to read this statement to indicate that we go to heaven when we die and get a spiritual body immediately at death. We want to please Christ whether here in the body or in heaven when we die (2 Cor. 5:9). And one might argue accordingly that our appearence before the judgment seat of Christ in the next verse (2 Cor. 5:10) is what happens immediately at death.

Although this is a possible interpretation of Paul... [next week]

[1] Interestingly, 2 Maccabees--possibly a Pharisaic document--may not picture a general resurrection, only a resurrection of martyred and unpunished wicked.

[2] F. F. Bruce, for example, that great British evangelical of the twentieth century, accepted such a change, Paul, 309-13.