1 / 28

A recording of these lectures will be available on southwoldlectures

Welcome to the 2019 Southwold Lent Lectures THE LAST ENEMY Dying to Meet You? Old Testament Perspectives Dr Philip Johnston University of Cambridge A recording of these lectures will be available on www.southwoldlectures.org, and they will be broadcast on eastpointradio.com.

rsavoie
Download Presentation

A recording of these lectures will be available on southwoldlectures

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Welcome to the 2019Southwold Lent LecturesTHE LAST ENEMYDying to Meet You?Old Testament PerspectivesDr Philip JohnstonUniversity of CambridgeA recording of these lectures will be available on www.southwoldlectures.org, and they will be broadcaston eastpointradio.com

  2. A recording of these lectures will be available on www.southwoldlectures.org There is a plate in the porch for a retiring collection. After expenses the collection will be given to The Amos Trust

  3. Psalm 6:1-5 Pew bibles p. 545 Isaiah 14:3-4a, 9-11 Pew bibles p. 698 2 Timothy 1:9b-10 Pew bibles p. 1195

  4. Dying to meet you? OLD TESTAMENT PERSPECTIVES ON DEATH Philip Johnston, Cambridge

  5. 1. Who was dying? • Pretty well everyone! • OT spans over 1000 years (two ‘peg’ dates: 1000 BC for David, c. 550 for exile)patriarchs, exodus, judges, Eli & Samuel,over 400 years of monarchy, exile, restoration … • Pretty well everyone died – but not quite!

  6. Gen 5:24: ‘Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him.’ • 2 Kgs 2:11: ‘a chariot of fire and horses separated Elijah and Elisha, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.’ • But these exceptional, marginal, and never paradigms for the pious, e.g. never taken up by psalmists. • Apart from these, death came to all: a few hundred names known, many thousands unknown.

  7. 2. Where did they go? • Apart from Enoch & Elijah, only destiny noted is Sheol, the underworld, somewhere deep under the earth. • Very little detail: shadowy, dark, dreary, unwelcome. • These aspects similar to underworld across the ancient Near East. • Main aspect in OT: cut off from God (Yahweh/ Jehovah/ the LORD). • Ps 6:5: ‘In death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who can give you praise?’

  8. Hebrew word ‘Sheol’ • Occurs 66x, + some rare synonyms (cf. 1000x for ‘die/death’) i.e. very selective use • Occurs mostly in ‘personal’ contexts: psalms, wisdom, prophets, not narrative (except direct speech) i.e. term of personal engagement • Occasional description or characterisation • Mostly as a reference to human fate: • Wicked are consigned there • Righteous want to escape it • A few righteous fear it under divine punishment:Jacob (Gen 37-44), Hezekiah (Is 38), psalmist (88), Job • Everyone? Ps 89:48-49; Ecc 9:10

  9. Sheol was shunned, recoiled from, to be avoided; a place for one’s enemies. • NB. Sheol never a place of punishment, never ‘hell’ (≠ AV in c. half of occurrences) • Nevertheless, righteous wanted to avoid it

  10. Only two texts deal with the denizens of Sheol: • Is 14:10, unnamed shades greet the mighty king of Babylon, former world emperor: ‘You too have become as weak as we, you have become like us!’ • Ezek 32, all the slain in a vast underworld cavern, each military group in their area. • Sheol not used in all contexts; a few exceptions. But only fate mentioned to any extent.

  11. 3. Did they think they would meet anyone after death? • Two suggestive phrases: • ‘Slept with his fathers’. Used frequently in accounts of kings of Israel and Judah – but in specific contexts: if violent death: ‘he died’ if peaceful, he ‘slept with his fathers’So phrase had become idiom for peaceful death. • ‘Gathered to his people’. Used of nations’ founders: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then Joshua’s generation, but not uniformly.Perhaps an ancient phrase, which had become vestigial, an idiom used for ‘the ancients'. • Idea of meaningful reunification in afterlife is absent from OT, and unlikely in its ancient context.

  12. 4. Were Israelites ‘dying to meet’ the dead? • in idiomatic sense: eager to meet the spirits of the dead? i.e. necromancy or spiritism • Certainly popular throughout ancient Near East • Repeatedly prohibited in Israel, but often popular : 1 Sam 28, Saul consulted the witch/medium at Endor Is 8:19, ‘if people say to you, “Consult the ghosts and the familiar spirits that chirp and mutter”’ • Denial of faith in Yahweh alone, God of the living: cf. Deut 30:19, ‘Choose life …’

  13. 5. Were they dying to ‘meet God’? • i.e. did they think of a beatific afterlife, with God, something like the Christian heaven? • After all, God could raise the dead: Deut 32:39, ‘I kill and I make alive’ (Moses’ song) 1 Sam 2:6, ‘The LORD kills and brings to life’ (Hannah’s song) • God could bypass death: Enoch, Elijah. • And God did resuscitate the nation: image used in prophets, most famously Ezek 37 (‘Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones …’)

  14. But what about individuals? • Enoch and Elijah were never paradigms. • But a few psalms glimpse being with God, e.g. Pss 16 (quoted in Acts 2 & 13) 49, & 73. • Notably Ps 49: • 8-9, ‘For the ransom of life is costly, and can never suffice, that one should live on forever and never see the grave.’ • 13-14: ‘Such is the fate of the foolhardy … Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; Death shall be their shepherd … Sheol shall be their home.’ • 15: ‘But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me.’ • Alternative fate undefined; God’s presence the essential.

  15. What about resurrection? • Only two references in the OT: • Is 26:19, ‘your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise …’ • ≠ v.14, ‘other lords have ruled us … [their] dead do not live … because you have punished and destroyed them’ • i.e. in context: for the persecuted righteous only

  16. Dan 12:2, ‘Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.’ • Resurrection of both righteous and wicked.Only such text in the OT. • ‘many’ – could be exclusive (= ‘many but not all’) or inclusive (= ‘the great many’) • probably envisages (at least) all the Jewish nation

  17. However, idea of positive afterlife is marginal in the OT. • Whenever the concept emerged, it hardly influenced: • psalms, and personal piety • wisdom writings, and reflection on life e.g. Proverbs, Job (unlikely in 19:25) • post-exilic prophets like Malachi post-exilic books like Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah

  18. Concepts developed in other Second Temple literature • 2 Mac 7:9, ‘the King of the Universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws.’ • Testament of Benjamin 10:6-8, ‘all men will rise, some to glory and some to disgrace.’ • I Enoch 22: three/four places for the spirits of the dead: righteous, sinners, traitors • Wisdom of Solomon 3:1, ‘the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.’

  19. Still unclear in Jesus’ life: • cf. Mk 9:9-10, just after transfiguration:‘he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.’ • i.e. until Jesus’ resurrection and Pentecost, the disciples didn’t understand the concept or its implications.

  20. Christian key to interpreting death in OT is NT: • 2 Tim 1:10, ‘Christ Jesus … abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.’ • To adapt Hamlet: death is now a discovered country from whose bourn a traveller hasreturned.  • But: we know in part, we still ‘see through a glass, darkly’. Many issues about the future remain unclear to us,even if we profess a greater hope in Christ.

  21. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, The love of God And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Be with us all, ever more Amen

More Related