John W. Cooper claimed:
Although it has become commonplace for many intellectuals and students of religion to consider “nothingness” or annihilation the Hebrew view of what awaits us at death, this idea was derived neither from reading the Old Testament nor from following the discussions of biblical scholars. To the best of my knowledge, in fact, no recognized Old Testament scholar has ever made this claim. In fact there is virtual consensus that the Israelites did believe in some sort of ethereal existence after death in a place called Sheol.1
Since I’m not really an Old Testament guy I was wondering if this is accurate. Could someone more well-versed in OT scholarship shed some light on the scholarly consensus concerning the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible? Thanks!
N.B. that the first edition was published in 1989 so I don’t know if things changed from the first to second edition.
B”H
1 John W. Cooper. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Antropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 52.
My OT/Hebrew professor in college made the no Hebrew afterlife claim…but I don’t know what her reasons were. My seminary professors seemed to argue otherwise.
I think Stephen Cook (biblische.blogspot.com) has written on this quite a bit since his expertise is Ezekiel and afterlife is pretty prominent in Ezekiel.
Well, I can’t claim to be an expert, but I did take 3 Masters level Hebrew exegesis classes in seminary, one of which was in the Psalms. Nor can I clain knowledge of the scholarly consensus, but yes, the Hebrew people believed in Sheol, just do a searh on that term in the Psalms and it will make that case)
It was my understanding that such claims as seen in
Psalm 6:5 Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave?
for example, reflect basic Hebrew thought about the afterlife – their hope in the resurrection or being with God in death wasn’t the same as it is for Christians today, probably still isn’t (but I don’t know modern Jewish thought on this).
Thus, it helps to explain such Psalms as
Psalm 23:6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
Psalm 84:4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you.
Psalm 91:1
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
etc, make a little more sense – the Hebrew people loved their God and desired to be with him, dwell with him in his “house” and to praise him all their days, or forever.
Did they fear death? Maybe. If so, for the reasons we see in Ps 6:5 – their understanding was that to die was to go down to Sheol and in Sheol there is no praise of God – Hebrews didn’t want to go down to Sheol. They wanted to be with the Lord.
Hope this helps some. Others may see it differently, but this is my understanding of it.
The problem of the Psalms is that its a developing corpus reflecting a number of eras in Israel’s history.
Most likely, early on there was no believe in an afterlife and sheol merely meant grave, but eventually the idea developed. In its middle period, you could probably safely say that while there was an afterlife, it wasn’t much of a life and regardless of whether you were righteous or not, it was impossible to worship YHWH from Sheol – it was an empty existence, you could say.
I wrote a paper on this.
Yes, the image of Sheol I read recently was presumably like that of surrounding cultures afterlife: a deep dark pit that served as a sort of prison for the dead, a grey on grey place with gods for wardens, terrifying guards, and ghostly dead living in near dark, eating dust and dirt.
Sorta like that painting in Lucio Fulci’s “The Beyond”, if you need a horror movie reference.
so I was on track or off track?
Well, in my seminary class in Job, we did discuss Job’s belief in the afterlife. Now, I must get that reference in Job.
Alan Segal has written a book worth reading:”The Afterlife”. While the picture of Sheol is fairly shadowing in the Hebrew Bible, there is alot of evidence to suggest that Israelites believed in difference things – censored. King Josiah destroyed non Jewish deities, approximately 1.8 mother goddess figurines have been found per Israelite house excavated, Saul banned calling spirits of the dead and then went to a witch of Endor when they wouldn’t stop … people believed in things they weren’t supposed to. By pre Macabbean times and 1 Enoch there is belief in final judgement and resurrection.
I haven’t come across any world religion, ancient or modern that doesn’t have some sort of belief in some sort of something after death – except the fundamentalist atheists who belief in nothing. :-)
One and all: Thanks for your answers. Are there any authors any of you would recommend on the subject?
will have to think about it, I learned some from Craigie’s work on Psalms in the WBS series (1-50).
Based on the above repsonses, it doesn’t look like the scholarly consensus is too unified….
oops, meant WBC series #19.
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I probably don’t know much more than the others.
Sheol sometims can simply mean death (as opposed to the afterlife). The scholarship that says there was no Hebrew afterlife, demand that all references are figurative in this way.
Psalm 55:15 and 139:8 (possibly others?) however, suggest an understanding of Sheol as an actual place.
I can’t find any evidence that only select (‘wicked’) go there, and it doesn’t seem to have a ‘punishment’ connotation (in opposition to a ‘good’ afterlife, except in that death itself is a punishment), but it is a place of separation from God (Isaiah 38:18).
Walton suggests it’s a place of negation (no possessions, memory, knowledge, joy), but I don’t know his evidence (apparently it’s this book, which I haven’t read). If it’s a place of negation, it could be interpreted as no afterlife at all.
But, considering the cognitive environment, I don’t imagine that Israel would have rejected the ‘physical afterlife’ that its neighbours had (Egypt and Mesopotamia, for example), in the absence of evidence. And, whilst they had a variance of afterlive beliefs, those that were negative in the sense that Sheol might have been, were still considered places, not simply nothingness (in the Atheist sense, or, for that matter, the Roman).
Most of that was from Walton’s ‘ANE Thought and the OT’, but the Nick Tromp book ‘Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Afterlife’ seems to be the best treatment of ANE afterlives. Hope that was helpful.
Amazon.com: Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (9780385422994): Alan F. Segal: Books
(Alan Segal’s 2004, 880 page tome)
Publisher’s blurb: This monumental study combines history, geography, mythology, archaeology and anthropology with biblical text analysis. Segal, a professor of Jewish studies at Barnard College, spent 10 years on this project, but the erudition he displays is undoubtedly the result of a lifetime of scholarship. In every culture, people ask the same fundamental questions about their existence, including “what happens after we die?” Although Segal maintains that answers to that question lie “beyond confirmation or disconfirmation in the scientific sense,” he offers a comprehensive overview of how the afterlife is understood in the three main Western religions. He thoroughly examines early influences from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan, Iran and Greece, then analyzes Jewish views as expressed in the first and second temple periods, the book of Daniel, the Dead Sea scrolls and writings from and about New Testament times, the early rabbis, mysticism and fundamentalism. For Christianity, systematic attention is given to Paul, the Gospels, the pseudepigraphic literature and the Church Fathers. Segal also scans Muslim beliefs as they appear in the Qur’an and the writings of Shi’a mystics and modern fundamentalists. The introductory and concluding chapters provide the essence of the presentation, enlivened by quotations from Shakespeare. Impatient readers may begin with these two chapters as a guide to determining which other sections of the book warrant further scrutiny. Careful readers, however, will take the trouble and the time to pore over this impressive contribution to our understanding of human belief and behavior
Steph: Much appreciated, and I see it’s affordable as well! Perhaps I’ll pick up a copy after Christmas.
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also found some more references from the web:
there is a pretty clear reference to life after death in Daniel 12:1-2.
in Psalms 17:14-15, David makes reference to those who get their rewards in this life (as opposed to an afterlife?), and then to himself awaking “15As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.”
Ezekiel 18:21-32 seems to talk about this. it seems to be in line with the concept of death meaning separation from God and life being in the presence of God. (Adam’s sin separated him, and even us, from God, and thus those first references to death.)
Ezekiel 37, when taken at face value (especially the end, 37:24-28), seems also to point to a future life after death.
before i found the above references, i found this little article that also referred a few Old Testament verses that similarly seem to point to the possibility of life after death: http://www.biblecodedigest.com/page.php/371 (their site looked to be selling something, but this article and their references seemed sound)
John 5:39 – search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me. And also in the psalms David in 17:15 says he should be satisfied when he awakes seeing Christ likeness in himself. The verse in John make me think that they knew the scriptures could lead them into eternal life. A everalsting existance with God. David seemed as if he were more concerned with Christs second coming than he was what happened immediatly after death
I don’t know if this guy is trying to sound “old” with his “ye,” but I don’t know if he realizes that in “ye” in English orthography of past centuries was not a form of “you” but of “the.” “Y” is the old letter for “th” – hence: “Ye Olde English.”
Mike: I didn’t know that. Interesting.
learned it from my nerdy wife.
I suggest David clearly believed in an afterlife. In response to his servant’s inquiries after the passing of his and Bathsheba’s first child…
1 Samuel 12:22-23
He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The LORD may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”
Thank you all for your informative comments
Sheol just means “the pit.” It refers to death; not a place for an afterlife. Also, Job rejects the notion of an afterlife. Heaven and Hell are essentially Christian constructs.