1) Ancient Judeo-Christians believed in a spirit that still lives and thinks beyond death of the Body
Alter2Ego (post 538) said: “You have to remember, members of Christendom believe in the immortal soul. They claim that the instant the physical body of someone dies, the immortal and invisible soul continues to live and feel and think, etc. That falsehood is debunked by Ecclesiastes 9:5-6.”
I think you are correct that the early Judeo-Christians did believe that there was a spirit placed into each individual and that at death, the body returns to the ground from which it originated and the spirit in the individual will return to God from which it originated.
However, Ecclesiates does NOT debunk early Judeo-Christian belief.
When you are reading your English text, you must remember both the ancient language the text was written in as well as paying attention to the historical context.
Alter2Ego (post #541) said: “I backed up my statement regarding the condition of the dead by quoting scripture from Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 that says the dead know nothing. Those verses can only have one meaning, …”
Remember, you are reading a text written by ancient individuals that belonged to a different religion that yours with different beliefs than your beliefs. YOU MUST take into account the historical context as well as what the text meant to the people who wrote the text.
You cannot simply interpret a text without some reference to historical context.
2) ANCIENT HEBREWS DISCUSSED WHAT ECCLESIATES 9:5-6 MEANT TO THE ANCIENT HEBREWS WHO WROTE THE TEXT.
While you were correct that ancient Christendom (and the Hebrews) believed in a spirit placed in man that, upon death, enters a process of returning to God, the Jews discussed the meaning Ecclesiates 9:5-6 had
FOR THEM.
For example, the Jehovahs’ witnesses created and adopted a theory of “soul sleep” where nothing happens, while the inert body decomposes. However, the ancient Jewish belief about both death AND sleep are very, very different and their interpretation of this scripture was quite different. For examples:
The Jewish Talmud discusses at length, this scripture and how THEY interpreted Eccle 9:5-6. For example :
The story of R. Hiyya and R. Jonathan walking through a cemetary introduces this scripture in a quaint, anecdote. While walking about in a cemetery, and the blue fringe of R. Jonathan trailed on the ground. R. Hiyya said :
“Lift it up, so that they [the dead] should not say: Tomorrow they are coming to join us and now they are insulting us! He said to him: Do they know so much? Is it not written, But the dead know not anything? He replied to him: If you have read once, you have not repeated; if you have repeated, you have not gone over a third time; if you have gone over a third time, you have not had it explained to you. For the living know that they shall die: these are the righteous who in their death are called living as it says.
The reason given for not allowing the fringes to touch the ground (just as one is not supposed to read the torah aloud in a cemetary) is that it reminds the cognizant spirits of the dead of things they no longer are able to do (thus “mocking them”). While YOUR beliefs do not make this important distinction regarding the state of the dead, the ancient Jews AND the ancient Christians DID make distinctions about what the dead can and cannot do.
This respect for and respectful actions toward the cognizant spirits of the dead is both manifest and explained in other examples. For example the Talmud relates that the sons of a dead Rabbi (R. Hiyya) went out to cultivate their property, and they began to forget their learning.
“They tried very hard to recall it. Said one to the other: Does our father know of our trouble? How should he know, replied the other, seeing that it is written, His sons come to honour and he knoweth it not? Said the other to him: But does he not know? Is it not written: But his flesh grieveth for him, and his soul mourneth over him? And R. Isaac said [commenting on this]: The worm is as painful to the dead as a needle in the flesh of the living? [He replied]: It is explained that they know their own pain, they do not know the pain of others. Is that so?”
The gist and purpose of such stories in the Talmudic literature is NOT to establish the doctrine that the dead are cognizant and communicative or that they have knowledge, (that was already a clear and widespread belief). Rather, such teachings seek to clarify WHAT knowledge the dead actually have. Can they visit and know of our troubles? Can they see how their inheritance is being used? Do they know if we as their children are keeping the torah? Etc.
As another example from the Talmud involves a righteous farmer who heard a conversation between two spirits who had died. The story is as follows :
Has it not been taught: It is related that a certain pious man gave a denar to a poor man on the eve of New Year in a year of drought, and his wife scolded him, and he went and passed the night in the cemetery, and he heard two spirits conversing with one another. Said one to her companion: My dear, come and let us wander about the world and let us hear from behind the curtain10 what suffering is coming on the world.11 Said her companion to her: I am not able, because I am buried in a matting of reeds.12 But do you go, and whatever you hear tell me. So the other went and wandered about and returned. Said her companion to her: My dear, what have you heard from behind the curtain? She replied: I heard that whoever sows after the first rainfall13 will have his crop smitten by hail. So the man went and did not sow till after the second rainfall,14 with the result that everyone else's crop was smitten and his was not smitten.15
The next year he again went and passed the night in the cemetery, and heard the two spirits conversing with one another. Said one to her companion: Come and let us wander about the world and hear from behind the curtain what punishment is coming upon the world. Said the other to her: My dear, did I not tell you that I am not able because I am buried in a matting of reeds? But do you go, and whatever you hear, come and tell me. So the other one went and wandered about the world and returned. She said to her: My dear, what have you heard from behind the curtain? She replied: I heard that whoever sows after the later rain will have his crop smitten with blight. So the man went and sowed after the first rain with the result that everyone else's crop was blighted and his was not blighted.
Said his wife to him: How is it that last year everyone else's crop was smitten and yours was not smitten, and this year everyone else's crop is blighted and yours is not blighted? So he related to her all his experiences.
The story goes that shortly afterwards a quarrel broke out between the wife of that pious man and the mother of the child,
"...and the former said to the latter, Come and I will show you your daughter buried in a matting of reeds. The next year the man again went and spent the night in the cemetery and heard those conversing together. One said: My dear, come and let us wander about the world and hear from behind the curtain what suffering is coming upon the world. Said the other: My dear, leave me alone; our conversation has already been heard among the living. This would prove that they know? — Perhaps some other man after his decease went and told them.
The anecdote is meant to elucidate the concept that spirits are alive in that they are cognizant and communicate and, though they do not know about their children and their jobs and the typical things of the world (the Εις τον αιωνα εν παντα τω πεποιημενω υπο τον ηλιον which your defective quote somehow leaves out of verse six) adding context that what they do not know is what is happening "under the sun" (i.e. during mortality).
The final comment, that perhaps the dead discovered what the man knew was probably because a person living had died and then told the dead what he knew as yet another confirmation they believed in cognizant and communicative spirits.
The historical point is not that the ancient Jewish or the ancient Christian doctrines and worldview are either more or less correct than yours, but that they are
different than your doctrines and your interpretations. While I make no claim that the early Christian doctrines are more or less correct than your belief system, I do think that the ancient Judeo-Christian doctrines seem (to me) more rational and logical than the doctrine and theories found in modern Christian movements.
To make this point that the ancient Jews DID believe in an afterlife of cognizant and communicative spirits, let me give another example from the Talmud. It involves a man Samuel whose father died while in the possession of money for orphans. Samuel is blamed as a thief. Samuel the tries to contact his father to find out where the money is, to try to return it and when communicating with the dead father, finds out more than he wanted to know. The Talmudic story is as follows:
Come and hear: The father of Samuel had some money belonging to orphans deposited with him. When he died, Samuel was not with him, and they called him, 'The son who consumes the money of orphans'. So he went after his father to the cemetery, and said to them [the dead]. ...I Want Abba b. Abba the father of Samuel; where is he? They replied: He has gone up to the Academy of the Sky.24 Meanwhile he saw Levi sitting outside.25 He said to him: Why are you sitting outside? Why have you not gone up [to heaven]? He replied: Because they said to me: For as many years as you did not go up to the academy of R. Efes and hurt his feelings,26 we will not let you go up to the Academy of the Sky. Meanwhile his father came. Samuel observed that he was both weeping and laughing. He said to him: Why are you weeping? He replied: Because you are coming here soon. And why are you laughing? Because you are highly esteemed in this world. He thereupon said to him: If I am esteemed, let them take up Levi; and they did take up Levi. He then said to him: Where is the money of the orphans? He replied: Go and you will find it in the case of the millstones. The money at the top and the bottom is mine, that in the middle is the orphans' He said to him: Why did you do like that? He replied: So that if thieves came, they should take mine, and if the earth destroyed any, it should destroy mine. “
The next Talmudic sentence is : “
Does not this show that they know?” The point the Hebrews are making is that the scripture is speaking of what the dead do not know and knowledge which they no longer had access to what was happening "under the sun".
The very purpose of the anecdote is to demonstrate that there ARE
certain things that the dead know (yet there are many things regarding mortality that they cannot do nor gain knowledge of.)
It is in tractate Berakoth that R. Samuel b. Nahmani said in the name of R. Jonathan:
“Whence do we know that the dead converse with one another? Because it says: And the Lord said unto him: This is the land which I swore unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying.28 What is the meaning of 'saying'?29 The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: Say to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: The oath which I swore to you I have already carried out for your descendants.”
The discussion continues
“Now if you maintain that the dead do not know, what would be the use of his telling them? … — So that they might be grateful to Moses?
R. Isaac said: If one makes remarks about the dead, it is like making remarks about a stone. Some say [the reason is that] they do not know, others that they know but do not care.
In all cases, the ancient Jewish AND ancient Christian literature make very clear that
in their belief system, the spirits of the dead are living in that they retain their prior knowledge, they are cognizant and they communicate with each other.
Their religions were not the same as your religion. Their interpretations of their sacred texts were not the same as your interpretations. They were different. If you cannot allow them to have different beliefs than yours, then you will never get very far in the study of historical religion.
3) ANCIENT TEXTS DO NOT MERELY HAVE A SINGLE MEANING AND THE MEANING OF THE TEXT TO THE ANCIENTS IS OFTEN DIFFERENT THAN THE LATER TRANSLATIONS MEAN TO MODERN INDIVIDUALS
Your statement that
“Those verses can only have one meaning, …” is somewhat naïve in the face of multiple translations of ancient texts and in the obvious fact that your interpretation is different than that of the Hebrew inside whose theology the text was written.
One difficulty lies in using incorrect translations and incorrect assumptions.
4) THE ANCIENT ORIGINAL HEBREW VERSION OF “SOUL SLEEP” VERSUS THE VERSION OF “SOUL SLEEP” CREATED BY THE MODERN JEHOVAHS WITNESS MOVEMENT
For example, if one uses a Jehovahs Witness theory of “soul Sleep” rather than the Hebrew theory of “soul Sleep” in describing the Hebrew tradition of “soul Sleep” results in a terrible distortion of this Hebrew principle.
Remember,
the religion of the ancient Judeo-Christian movement did not have the same doctrines or beliefs as your modern religious movement and they did not use your faulty english translation of their scriptures in their early religion.
For example, I noticed Walter used an incorrect translation english version of
Psalms 146:4-5 to support the modern J.W. religious theory.
He quoted the verse as telling us that all "thoughts" cease (
gk …απολουνται παντεσ οι διαλογισμοι αυτου…), but in fact LXX
Psalms 146:4-5 of early Christianity does NOT say our “
thoughts” perish
and there is no greek base version that says thoughts cease at death.
The translation of διαλογισμοι as “thoughts” is incorrect. You will notice that many english versions have attempted to correct this mistake.
For example, Doug Moo and his group also noticed this mistake in
psalms 146, and now render the greek as “plans” in the NIV (as do many of the later corrections of this verse). That is, when the spirit departs the body upon death, any “plans” made during life come to nothing is their revision.
The word Διαλογιζομoι (
Dialogizomoi) is related to the English word dialogue and exhaustive treatments of the word by early Koine linguists, showed that it was, anciently,
never given the discrete meaning of “thought” (i.e. “cogitation”) in any Koine text found up to the 19th century, but instead has judicial usage as its base historical context.
For example, in P Ryl II. 74 (133 a.d.) it is used in it’s typical meaning of holding a discussion and examination upon a subject. It meant holding "court" of some type (whether one is making his own judgment or an official court judgment).
In P Oxy. III. 484:24 (138 a.d.)
"...the praefect Avidius Heliodorus holds his auspicious court…”,
διαλογιζηται was used for “court” or “examination” of a premise.
In Vettius Valens p. 245:26 it is used to mean “discuss” or “examine” which also was part of the process of considering through dialogue and coming to a decision (a judgment).
The common relationship in all of its uses in such ancient literature was that it referred to an examination of a premise which undergoes “deliberation” or “questioning” in the process of coming to a decision or judgment. Thus, when the word is used in
James 2:4 the translation is, again, faulty. It is not “
evil thoughts” (KJV) that the judges are guilty of, but rather, the judges are guilty of making corrupt and "
evil decisions” and "
corrupt judgments”. Are you starting to see why your statement that texts only have one correct translation is naive and incorrect?
My point in this post is just as Ecc 9:5-6 did not mean the dead know absolutely “nothing” but instead, were no longer aware of things pertaining to mortality, similarly,
Psalms 146:4-5 does NOT tell us that “thoughts perish”.
The concept of deliberations and further interactions and discussions and plans for mortality ceasing can certainly be argued, but the term does not refer to simple "thought" or "cognition".
Why would your more modern religious theory and your interpretations of english texts take priority over the more original Judeo-Christian religion with its doctrines and its different interpretations of its more original texts?
4) PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO ANSWER MY PRIOR QUESTIONS FROM POST 532
CLEAR ASKED:
1) Regarding the resurrected body in Jehovahs Witness Theology
Since, upon the death of a person, absolutely nothing remains of the dead person, I assume that, in Jehovahs Witness theology, resurrection of the person who had been annihilated consists of God creating a different body (i.e. one capable of a heavenly existence).
Is this correct or do I misunderstand?
2) Regarding the resurrected personality, intelligence and emotions placed into a resurrected body
Since the original personality, intelligence and emotions no longer exist, I assume that, in Jehovahs witness theology, that God places another set of personality, intelligence and emotions into the resurrected body.
Is this correct or do I misunderstand?
Again, Alter2Ego, thank you so much for a simple and clear answer and for your insightful posts.
