intrepidlover
Melchizedek
I could do this the easy way and check Wikipedia, but I would like Jewish people to tell me the Jewish view of life after death.
Life after death
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intrepidlover
Melchizedek
Of course it is in the OT, where else would it be? But I was hoping someone would give me a summary, not just a few key words.
As I said, I could take the easy route and use Wikipedia, but I prefer to hear from an individual.
But thanks for giving some kind of answer.
I am specifically interested to know if there is mention of eternal heaven or hell, or immortality. I wish to compare Jewish views with those of Christianity.
Well, no, the afterlife is discussed very little in the Tanach. Most discussions are found elsewhere. It's not all nearly as set in stone as the afterlife beliefs in many other traditions but it also doesn't typically get a lot of emphasis, although during some periods it has received a huge amount of emphasis. Some formulations are extremely complicated. Sometimes there is an eternal hell but in the vast majority of cases, no. I think the beliefs in eternal suffering probably surfaced due to the influence of other religious traditions. But arguably the same is true for most Jewish afterlife beliefs.
So to give a very basic schema: you die and then then you're judged. You go to either gehenna which is a sort of purgatory and then to Gan Eden (equivalent to heaven) or you go directly to Gan Eden. Time in Gehenna lasts no longer than a year. The truly wicked have their souls extinguished rather than suffer eternal torment. There is also the possibility that one returns to this world in another life.
Hope that helps.
So to give a very basic schema: you die and then then you're judged. You go to either gehenna which is a sort of purgatory and then to Gan Eden (equivalent to heaven) or you go directly to Gan Eden. Time in Gehenna lasts no longer than a year. The truly wicked have their souls extinguished rather than suffer eternal torment. There is also the possibility that one returns to this world in another life.
Hope that helps.
intrepidlover
Melchizedek
Thank you dauer. Yes it helps to confuse me.
I have resumed posting at this board after being banned from one Christian forum because of my heretical beliefs, and made a rapid exit from another after being called a devil and all manner of things. So I am very familiar with Christian beliefs on life after death. Eternal torment is going out of fashion to some degree.
Recently because of certain stresses in my life I felt suicidal and asked for prayers. A lass who had become a very good friend totally freaked out because she genuinely believed I would go to eternal torment. She became irrational in personal emails and sought to provoke me in open forums and it was my response to all this that got me banned. I was told by another member that a Christian had a duty to bear the burden of worrying about potential eternal torment for a person who might suicide.
I am most interested to learn that reincarnation is an option because to my mind, this is the most reasonable after-death theory other than total annihilation.
I have a Jewish friend who, among other things, has intimate knowledge of OT Hebrew. But she is an atheist so of course doesn't personally believe in any kind of after life.
Anyhow you have answered my question and whetted my curiosity to investigate further.
I have resumed posting at this board after being banned from one Christian forum because of my heretical beliefs, and made a rapid exit from another after being called a devil and all manner of things. So I am very familiar with Christian beliefs on life after death. Eternal torment is going out of fashion to some degree.
Recently because of certain stresses in my life I felt suicidal and asked for prayers. A lass who had become a very good friend totally freaked out because she genuinely believed I would go to eternal torment. She became irrational in personal emails and sought to provoke me in open forums and it was my response to all this that got me banned. I was told by another member that a Christian had a duty to bear the burden of worrying about potential eternal torment for a person who might suicide.
I am most interested to learn that reincarnation is an option because to my mind, this is the most reasonable after-death theory other than total annihilation.
I have a Jewish friend who, among other things, has intimate knowledge of OT Hebrew. But she is an atheist so of course doesn't personally believe in any kind of after life.
Anyhow you have answered my question and whetted my curiosity to investigate further.
I am sorry to hear that you have been having a difficult time lately and hope that you can make your way through it without doing anything rash.
Let me offer you a few resources in case you're looking to read more about reincarnation in Judaism:
About Gilgul Neshamot - Transmigration of Souls
Gilgul
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gilgul
Let me offer you a few resources in case you're looking to read more about reincarnation in Judaism:
About Gilgul Neshamot - Transmigration of Souls
Gilgul
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gilgul
intrepidlover
Melchizedek
If I do it I will do it.
I only mentioned that to illustrate how seriously one particular Christian believes in eternal torment. I have never believed in eternal torment and wonder how a person who believes in a loving God could contemplate such a view.Aha, the Kabbala. Now we are talking. I regret that in my early days of earnest search for truth I never got around to studying Kabbala.
I believe in eternal torment as a possibility, although I cannot bring myself to believe that anyone would choose it ...
On the other hand, I have spent time with a potential suicide, so I keep an open mind to every eventuality.
Well I contemplate it as a sign of God's gift of 'freedom' to His creature, that the gift is not relative nor conditional, but absolute.
I draw strength from Julian of Norwich's vision of hell as empty.
I think many Christians stay locked into a vision of hell that has more to do with the medieval imagination than Scriptural revelation. Jesus himself talks of Gehenna, a place of abandonment, and that is my view of hell, a condition in which the self has, by its own will, severed every connection to that which is real, true, beautiful, and finds itself simply with no place to go, as it were, except to its own extinction.
And how does one measure 'eternal', outside of time?
And if the punishment is eternal, with no hope of remorse, then it is in itself a bad thing — there is little point in punishing a creature that cannot learn, change, make good, apologise, etc.
I don't think Jesus meant Gehenna to signify an infernal region inhabited by demons employed in the creative torture of its occupants — rather he meant Gehenna as Gehenna was, a place where the rubbish of the city ended up when there was no more use nor want of it ...
If Christ were around today, I think he would point to the mountains of detritus dumped by the First World in the Third, and the lost souls who eke out an existence there, with the proviso that those who live on the discarded waste of 'civilisation' are the first in line to receive the gifts of divine mercy when they make their transitus.
The rule against suicide was because it was seen as the waste of the most precious gift of all — life — throwing this life away is not the method to go about attaining the next one.
Having said that, we are a lot more understanding of the psychological condition today than we were, and a lot more forgiving.
And I realise I have posted a Christian response in the Judaism forum, so mea culpa if I have upset anyone.
Thomas
intrepidlover
Melchizedek
Thank you Thomas for your detailed and thoughtful post. It is way past my bedtime in Sydney so I will address your post perhaps tomorrow.
intrepidlover
Melchizedek
Spending time with a suicidal person doesn't count. The suicidal mindset can only be understood by someone who has personally had those feelings. But apart from that, I do not wish to discuss the subject of suicide which, as I said, I gave only as an example of a person who believes in eternal torment.
Take it from me. Christians have no problem talking about eternal or everlasting.
Agreed.
Who knows what he meant? But he used the term everlasting in both contexts:
Matthew 25:41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
Matthew 19:29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.
Matthew 25:46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
And there are many similar statements by Jesus in the gospels.
I can relate to that because I have friends in Africa. In fact I publish a website about orphans in third world countries. It is definitely my opinion that today's third world countries were created in the past by European colonizers who ravaged the resources of these countries (and continue to do so) and destroyed the social fabric, leaving power in the hands of indigenous despots.
If it is what you believe, then what does it matter where you post it?
Jayhawker Soule
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Saltmeister
The Dangerous Dinner
A few weeks ago while doing a search on the concepts of eternal life and/or afterlife in Judaism, I came across articles saying that ideas about the afterlife or eternal life in Judaism didn't develop until after the Babylonian Exile, when Jews had contact with Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans. What served as a catalyst was domination by foreign powers, which gave the Jews a sense of hopelessness from which they hoped that someone (the messiah) would come and deliver them from the oppression and domination by foreign powers. In addition to the messiah, there would be a "general resurrection" where the prophets and Maccabean warriors would be brought back to life, thereby signalling the beginning of an era where the tables would be turned and the Jews would triumph and prevail over their enemies.
Judaism
Hellenistic Effects on Judaic Literature
c0de
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This website has made some pretty weak claims, e.g.
But heaven is present in the Psalms itself.
Psalm 139:8:
"If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there."
http://bible.cc/psalms/139-8.htm
^^Compare all the translations if you wish.
As for psalm 6, it is actually an argument against the website's thesis:
A careful reading of this passage shows three distinct states evoked:
- "save my soul" = is itself a cry for heaven
- death = a state of no remembrance/consciousness
- sheol = is a place where there is no praise of God
after which he will have no chance to repent. Compare with this passage:
This passage makes it clear that Sheol is a place of utter despair.
As such, it is synonymous with hell.
This passage from Ecclesiastes isn't a denial of an afterlife.
It is a simple statement of fact: that all humans will die.
Another point which this source tries to argue is this:
What does being immortal have to do with an eternal afterlife?
Immortal means never dying. Clearly, the Abrahamic view is that we will all die
and that afterwords experience eternity.
----
A point about the nature of death/soul/immortality here, on which I disagree with the mainstream views:
Ecclesiastes 12:7 makes it clear that when we die, the soul is taken away by God. It is clear from the passage that this "taking away" would equal the state at which the soul was in before we were brought to life.
Since it is a principle of Abrahamic faith that before we were alive, there was nothing of us that existed, the passage is basically saying that when we die, our "soul" ceases to exist. Soul, is most likely synonymous with consciousness here.
The soul is therefore not immortal. It is deactivated at the time of death and activated against at resurrection. The fact that we will die means that we are not immortal, even in heaven we have been resurrected and are therefore disqualified from being labeled as immortal.
In fact (this might be mentioned in the OT/NT as well) the Quran clearly states that there will come a time where everything will perish except God, making it clear that only God deserves the title "immortal"
intrepidlover
Melchizedek
To all who have contributed so far, thank you for your thoughtful and detailed response. I am so glad I asked this question because obviously there is no simple answer. But much food for further thought has been provided.
I am not a traditional Christian, but that is my background. I have never understood Jewish beliefs about the afterlife. Nearly all the Jews I have known personally were agnostic or atheist, following only some of the cultural traditions.
Keep 'em coming.
I am not a traditional Christian, but that is my background. I have never understood Jewish beliefs about the afterlife. Nearly all the Jews I have known personally were agnostic or atheist, following only some of the cultural traditions.
Keep 'em coming.
c0de,
You're assuming that the word "shamayim" is equivalent to the contemporary concept of heaven. It's not and Jews don't refer to the afterlife as shamayim. It really would be better to say, "If I go up to the sky" . You'd have to show that shamayim and sheol and identified in the Tanach as afterlife locales. I believe that Sheol may be in relatively late source seen as a sort of resting place of the dead. As my Tanach teacher in the 9th grade explained it, it's like our world is a plane supported atop two pillars and beneath them is Sheol where the dead go essentially into an eternal sort of slumber. A better translation of Sheol might be "the grave".
Not quite. You're applying the modern concept of soul. Where ever is nefesh identified with the soul concept we have today in the Tanach? You're applying concepts that aren't evidenced by the text. There is a really great analysis by Joel Hoffman in his And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible's Original Meaning of the words lev and nefesh which are usually translated as heart and soul. He looks at the ways they're used in context instead of projecting a contemporary meaning. Nefesh based on his close analysis of its use in the Tanach is closer to physicality, the body. Lev at least metaphorically is the nonphysical, both heart and mind.
I don't know about that. Certainly "the grave" is a place of despair. Nobody can praise God from there. They're in a state of lifeless slumber. That doesn't make it equivalent to Hell. But it doesn't even say Sheol in the Hebrew. It says Tachtiya. The root implies something under or beneath. As I think you've picked up, it's probably being used euphemistically for a low point in his life. Anyway one more reason you can't trust translations. Yours at least says Sheol when a different Hebrew word is used.
Okay, but the burden of proof is upon the person trying to show an explicit afterlife belief when none is apparent. The above passage is a statement of worldview. Can you find a place Ecclesiastes where it says something along the lines of, "But everything that lives will eventually go to a place of fire and suffering unless they are good and enter paradise"? No, you can't.
That's not so clear from the text. Sheol as it's described sounds pretty boring. And earlier sources don't make mention of it.
But in this case it doesn't even say nefesh which you'd translated as soul (this is certainly its later meaning, but not clearly the earlier one.) Here it says ruach. In lieu of actually performing a time-consuming dig through my concordance I will only say that I think the attempt would reveal a different meaning entirely. Ruach is related to breath, to wind (perhaps this is the closest meaning of God's ruach during creation). On the other hand there is a ruach hakodesh associated sometimes with religious ecstasy and sometimes with prophesy. But if it means soul there then it's not like most souls known in Abrahamic traditions. It could be closer to the neshama yeteira or additional soul that Jews receive on Shabbat but I think it's probably not.
Sorry for the doublepost. Wanted to make one other comment on the "go up to the sky" question. In the biblical worldview there is a rakeea or firmament surrounding the world that rotates around it. The stars etc are all holes in its surface. YHWH's throne sits atop the firmament. I wrote an analysis of sources related to this a number of years ago on this site but can't be bothered to find it. Anyway, one could argue that the psalmist is really saying that if you go up to where God is assumed to be, God's there, and once you're dead, God's there too, perhaps as a countertext to the belief that God's presence is limited along the lines of "the whole world is filled with His glory." Thus the second half of the parallelism might be seen as extending God's presence from where it is most obvious to the reader to that places where it is least obvious. It's not clear to me but relating it to the afterlife seems suspect.
edit: This is an illustration of biblical cosmology that made the rounds a while ago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelpaukner/4077736695/sizes/o/
edit: This is an illustration of biblical cosmology that made the rounds a while ago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelpaukner/4077736695/sizes/o/
Last edited:
c0de
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??? That makes no sense D
How can despair exist in place where consciousness doesn't?
Clearly, your interpretation of Sheol can not stand.
The only reasonable interpretation of Sheol is Hell, i.e. a place of despair.
Taking this into consideration, the next point becomes clearer:
The verse that directly precedes this one (139:7) shows that "the psalmist" is saying there is no way to escape the presence of God, agreed?
But think about this: if there was no afterlife, and death equaled a cessation of consciousness ("no remembrance") forever, then that would be an escape from the presence of God, by definition.
That's the whole point of the passage. There is NO ESCAPE, because the state of "no remembrance" is not going to last. Therefore, according to the Psalms, death (i.e. "no remembrance") can NOT be all there is
As for the rest:
So what? The Quran has mutiple names to refer to Paradise/Hell that Muslims don't actually use to refer to them in common usage either. The content+context of the verses makes the meaning clear.
I wasn't using Ecclesiastes to prove the afterlife. I was using it to show how that website clearly misrepresented the meaning of a text to suit its own agenda. And you yourself have admitted that it did. Therefore, you should also agree that it's an unreliable source.
You can translate it as whatever you want, "breath", "soul," "conciousness" whatever. My point lay elsewhere and is unaffected by semantics.
But since this part doesnt directly relate to this discussion (and was a side note on my personal views on death) I wont bother with it.
c0de said:
If you don't like the word despair we don't have to use it. It was your interpretation of the text. As I said, he's using it euphemistically to refer to a low point in his life as the surrounding verses indicate. The actual verse doesn't mention despair. It's connected to threats to David's life from which he was protected, as is another case of the word Sheol below.
"David (pbuh) is asking God to save his soul before he dies,
after which he will have no chance to repent"
Praise isn't repentance. The two are not conflated in the biblical text. If he had meant repentance he would have said it. But let's look at the the whole of the psalm in context and we see his real concern is physical death, is his enemies. He says to God that he's not much good to Him if he's dead. God then answers his call and he's assured that his enemies will flee before him.
In this verse he's saying that the presence of God is everywhere and as I mentioned earlier in this post and previously, Sheol appears as a place where the dead rest in some sources. It isn't described as a place of punishment or a place where the wicked go or as one possible place that man ends up. All of these notions are foreign to the text.
And you continue to insist that Sheol is no afterlife at all. What I said at the start of the post to which you responded is that Sheol is sometimes indicative of a later belief in a place of eternal rest. Yet you argue against Sheol as the absence of the self entirely. In some sources Sheol does resemble something more like "the grave", like the place where the body goes into the earth. In other sources it's a place where the person remains in a sort of slumber. The problem with asserting that Sheol is hell isn't that Sheol is the absence of any self at all: it's that it's nowhere described as hell. The closest you have gotten to even a suggestion that it's like hell is that nobody can praise God there. It doesn't follow that it's equivalent to hell.
Only if you atomize the verse for exegetical purposes instead of reading shamayim as its used throughout the text. You come to the text with your own associations with the word heaven that don't appear in the source itself and so make connections not suggested by a close reading of the use of the word shamayim in context.
The site may not be entirely reliable, but what I also said is that it's a statement of worldview. He didn't refer to heaven or hell because that wasn't part of his worldview. On the other hand, that the body goes back to the earth and God removes one's breath, one's life, from one's body was something he could relate to. If more important to him was a belief in heaven and hell it would show up somewhere. It doesn't.
It's actually quite important because if nefesh is really related to physicality then he's not saying "save my soul", he's saying essentially "save my body." His concern is most likely related to his knowing that he, like everyone, is heading off to Sheol when he dies.
c0de
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D you are arguing unfairly, and dare I say, hypocritically.
You accuse me of infusing my own meanings into a text
when you yourself are doing exactly the same thing. For example:
I interpreted as the speaker saying there is no escape from God based on the verse that directly precedes this one, which is:
Yet you disagree and infuse your own meaning on the following verse.
And then at the same time you accuse me of this:
The verse which directly follows is:
14 Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God;
ruthless people are trying to kill me—
they have no regard for you.
Obviously, he is still being attacked and fears for his mortal life. Yet, in verse 13 before this, the speaker is clearly thanking God because he has already been delivered "from the depths".
Despair is a perfectly reasonable word to use here and it makes more sense in every way. So there can be no despair in the grave, because there is no consciousness. My argument still stands. The grave can not be the end for "the psalmist" as that would be a contradiction (as it would be an escape).
I said that DEATH=no afterlife, not sheol.
I used Psalm 6 for this purpose, to highlight 3 different states.
"Shamayim" is a crucial concept in the Bible. There are at least three different shamayim or "heavens" in the bible: 1) The atmosphere where birds fly and clouds wander above the earth; 2) The heaven where the celestial bodies wander (wandering stars = planets) and stars reside; 3) The heaven where God and "the hosts of heaven" reside (Psalm 90:4; 2Peter 3:8; Isaiah 57:15), also called "paradise," the "heaven of heavens,"shamayi h'shamayim (םשמיה שמי) in scripture or in Hebrew (cf. Deut 10:14; 1Ki 8:27; 2Ch 2:6, 6:18; Neh 9:6).
You accuse me of infusing my own meanings into a text
when you yourself are doing exactly the same thing. For example:
I interpreted as the speaker saying there is no escape from God based on the verse that directly precedes this one, which is:
Clearly, my interpretation is closer to the DIRECT meaning of these words.
Yet you disagree and infuse your own meaning on the following verse.
And then at the same time you accuse me of this:
Are you actually claiming that you are completely unbiased? That you have no subjective point of view here? You are the one who is applying the verse in some cosmological sense, as if the speaker of the verse was an astronaut, waiting to travel "up to the sky" via Apollo 13. As if that makes much more sense?
Let's take a look at those surrounding verses, shall we?
The verse which directly follows is:
14 Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God;
ruthless people are trying to kill me—
they have no regard for you.
Obviously, he is still being attacked and fears for his mortal life. Yet, in verse 13 before this, the speaker is clearly thanking God because he has already been delivered "from the depths".
Despair is a perfectly reasonable word to use here and it makes more sense in every way. So there can be no despair in the grave, because there is no consciousness. My argument still stands. The grave can not be the end for "the psalmist" as that would be a contradiction (as it would be an escape).
??? What !!
I said that DEATH=no afterlife, not sheol.
I used Psalm 6 for this purpose, to highlight 3 different states.
But I am using it as it is used in other parts of the text. This is from wikipedia:
"Shamayim" is a crucial concept in the Bible. There are at least three different shamayim or "heavens" in the bible: 1) The atmosphere where birds fly and clouds wander above the earth; 2) The heaven where the celestial bodies wander (wandering stars = planets) and stars reside; 3) The heaven where God and "the hosts of heaven" reside (Psalm 90:4; 2Peter 3:8; Isaiah 57:15), also called "paradise," the "heaven of heavens,"shamayi h'shamayim (םשמיה שמי) in scripture or in Hebrew (cf. Deut 10:14; 1Ki 8:27; 2Ch 2:6, 6:18; Neh 9:6).
in Hell there won't be either, so...
If a source is clearly misrepresenting text material then it is most definitely unreliable. Yet you still back it?
??? This doesn't even relate to what I was saying or using that passage for. And I don't know how you're getting that interpretation from ECC 12:7 anyway. But whatever...