EDWARD T. BABINSKI: I agree "under the earth" trades on burial imagery; but such usage does not preclude additional understandings. It's not a matter of being forced to choose between totally metaphorical usage versus all other understandings. The point is that there were other understandings in Paul's day, and Paul's Hellenistic and Jewish readers were familiar with underworlds in which beings lived, i.e., the Greek Hades, the Roman Tartarus (both terms appearing in the Gospels themselves) and the shadowy Sheol of the Hebrew Bible.
http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2010/10/evidence-of-belief-in-three-tier-cosmos.html
That simply pushes the same question back a step. You’re assuming that Hellenistic descriptions of the Netherworld were meant to be taken at face value. Where’s the argument?
i) For instance, the Aeneid has a scene of the Netherworld, but that’s not there because Virgil believed in the Netherworld. (Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.) Rather, that’s there because the Odyssey has a scene of the Netherworld, and Virgil is writing in self-conscious emulation of the Homeric tradition.
ii) The fact that the NT uses conventional Greek terms for the Netherworld is hardly significant. After all, the NT was written in Greek, to a Greek-speaking audience.
In our own culture, writers frequently use conventional terms for heaven and hell, whether or not they believe in heaven or hell.
iii) ”Tartarus” doesn’t occur in the Gospels. It only occurs in 2 Pet 2:4.
iv) NT writers aren’t borrowing the concept of Hades from Greek mythology. Rather, that’s a Septuagintal loanword for Sheol.
"The departed spirits tremble under the waters and their inhabitants. Naked is Sheol before Him [Yahweh]." Job 26:5-6
Job is chock-full of poetic imagery.
A witch in Endor calls up Samuel from Sheol. (She is not calling him up from his personal burial site because he was not buried in Endor.) 1 Sam. 28:3,12ff
“Where” he was buried is irrelevant. The point is the use of conventional imagery.
The dead are not simply lying dead in the earth but "under the earth" and remaining active in some sense, if only in a shadowy sense in the case of early Greek and Hebrew views of Hades and Sheol. Below are verses from Paul and Revelation that mention beings living under the earth. Consider them from the viewpoint of a first century Hellenistic convert.
Not surprisingly, you've muddled different issues:
i) The afterlife is not the question at issue. The question at issue is biblical cosmography. Try not to get your wires crossed.
ii) I don’t think there’s anything “shadowy” in the OT view of the afterlife. But in any case, that’s a side issue for now.
iii) Quoting Biblical imagery about the Netherworld proves nothing, for the question at issue is not whether Bible writers use certain types of imagery, but what that imagery signifies. You just don’t get it, Ed. You’re begging the question. Quoting Paul or Revelation does nothing to advance your argument, for the question at issue is what they meant by that imagery. Try to clear the cobwebs from your brain long enough to at least understand the question at issue.
You might as well cite Neverwhere’s “London Above” and “London Below” to prove that Neil Gaiman believes in a two-tier cosmography. But the fact that Neverwhere has a two-tier cosmography doesn’t mean that Gaiman believes a two-tier cosmography. That’s a fictitious depiction.
Also consider how a Hellenistic convert might read these verses, starting with talk of a "prince of the power of the air," and also about "descending into the lower parts of the earth"
While you’re at it, you might also consider if Hellenistic converts took that picturesque imagery at face value. I already did a post on Augustine and Basil the Great in which pagan critics lampoon details of a triple-decker cosmography as quite infeasible.
People back then could and did ask common sense questions about the logistics of this or that cosmographical model.
Sheol is typically depicted as a place to which one "goes down" (urd; see Num 16:30;Job 7:9; Isa 57:9; cf. Isa 29:4; Ps 88:3-4).
Which, once again, completely begs the question of how the authors understood that imagery. You’re not making any progress, Ed. Your wheels are stuck in the mud. Kicking up lots of mud is not an argument, Ed.
As already stated, it is not a matter of being forced to choose between totally metaphorical usage versus all other usages or understandings. In early usage Sheol is like a metaphor for the Uber-grave, but even metaphors do not preclude other meanings, depictions, definitions rather than purely "burial imagery." In fact, recognition of ideas shared by biblical and ANE sources makes the likelihood of belief in a three-tier cosmos more likely, not less so. Same goes for NT conceptions, see below.
No it doesn’t. It only pushes the same question back a step. As I already demonstrated in my review of your klutzy chapter (from TCD), ancient people were already in a position to know that a flat-earth/triple-decker cosmography is infeasible. It doesn’t take modern science to figure that out. Try to keep up with the state of the argument, Ed.
Tartarus is described as a prison with gates and sometimes personified (as was Hades, and also Sheol in the OT). The author of 2 Peter 2:4 mentions rebel angels being cast into Tartarus…
Of course, angels are discarnate spirits, so a physical “gates” and “chains” can’t really restrain them, any more than you could keep a ghost behind bars. That’s picture-language, Ed. But thanks for constantly reminding us that there's no correlation between infidelity and high IQ.
See also this new book on the afterlife, L’homme face à la mort au royaume de Juda: Rites, pratiques et représentations by Hélene Nutkowicz. Cook comments: "Nutkowicz suggests that the Hebrew people believed in amortality.
How do you know what she suggests? Have you read the book? Do you read academic French literature?
Are there no ends to which Babs will go to prove he is beat? Just when you think there are no more areas to which his ignorance extends he makes a comment which shows that, indeed, the depths are unmeasurable. And I mean depths in a purely metaphoric sense.
ReplyDeleteSteve.
ReplyDeleteNumbers 16:28-34. Here the descent is clearly not metaphorical. You can certainly argue that "sheol" here means "grave" or "place of physical burial" and nothing more, but on what basis?
Compare this text with Isaiah 14:9-11. The following pericopes (12-15, 18-20 especially) are full of apparent spatial metaphors. It would appear unlikely that the spatial language in 14:9 is to be taken literally either. Presumably we should take the language in 11b as a metaphor. What about the "spirits of the departed" rising from their thrones in 9b? Are they metaphors? For what? Or are only the "thrones" and the "rising" metaphors? And should we take the description of their "speaking" metaphorically as well, as we would the trees in v. 8?
If you want to take the entirety of 14:9-11 as picture language meaning simply that the Babylonian Empire will be destroyed and remembered by succeeding generations as a catastrophic failure borne of overweening arrogance, you have ally here. If you want to take some elements of 14:9-11 literally but not the spatial language of 9a, how do you decide?
DEAN DOUGH SAID:
ReplyDelete“Numbers 16:28-34. Here the descent is clearly not metaphorical.”
True, given the genre. A historical narrative description.
“You can certainly argue that ‘sheol’ here means ‘grave’ or ‘place of physical burial’ and nothing more, but on what basis?”
It doesn’t detail a subterranean necropolis–with shades going to and fro. Rather, the offenders are buried alive by a miraculous crevasse that suddenly opens beneath them, then closes over them.
“What about the ‘spirits of the departed’ rising from their thrones in 9b? Are they metaphors? For what? Or are only the ‘thrones’ and the ‘rising’ metaphors?”
The passage exploits popular beliefs regarding the afterlife to fashion a satirical taunt-song. Beyond that, I don’t think we can say much one way or the other given the parodic genre of the passage. Although it’s consistent with belief in the afterlife, I wouldn’t say it endorses the postmortem imagery beyond the intended moral of the story: death is the great leveler.
“If you want to take the entirety of 14:9-11 as picture language meaning simply that the Babylonian Empire will be destroyed and remembered by succeeding generations as a catastrophic failure borne of overweening arrogance, you have ally here.”
Commentators are divided on whether or not it singles out a particular king, targets a stereotypical king, or personifies a kingdom.
“If you want to take some elements of 14:9-11 literally but not the spatial language of 9a, how do you decide?”
I think I’ve answered that. (See above.)
Steve,
ReplyDeleteSo you see my point? The literal referent for both texts could be that there exists a realm of departed "spirits" which possibly retain some "consciousness," possibly occupy space, possibly have some communal interactions resembling earthly society, and possibly is located in the ground beneath our feet. Nothing in Numbers 16:28-34 excludes this. Or, the literal referent could be nothing more than the fact that the bodies of dead people are buried in the ground beneath our feet. Nothing in Isaiah 14:9-11 excludes this.
You have been beating up on Ed Babinski for insisting that the spatial language of the OT cosmography should be taken literally. Is language about the post-mortem status of human beings different? If not, why not?
The Biblical doctrine of the afterlife is a theological construct. It isn't based on any one verse.
ReplyDeleteSome passages have more informational content than others. Some passages use concrete, picturesque language while other passages use abstract terminology.
The question at issue is not what a given passage allows, but what it disallows or what it positively teaches.
i) I've already explained the cosmographic metaphors in terms of temple imagery.
ReplyDeleteii) Spatial metaphors can illustrate general/abstract concepts which are not dependent on the specific details of the graphic illustration. For instance, in the separation of the sheep and goats, the abstract idea of what it means for one group to be kept away from another doesn't rely on that specific imagery. Same thing with the parable of Lazarus and Dives. Or the damned who are banished from the precincts of the New Jerusalem.
iii) Likewise, mental states can be expressed in figurative terms without the underlying idea being dependent on the figure of speech. Taking "hungering" and "thirsting" for God. That uses sensory metaphors to illustrate an emotional/psychological state. And we can easily abstract the intended concept from the metaphor.
iv) Part of sound theological method is to begin with a fairly prosaic passage, like 1 Cor 15 (on the resurrection of the just), and use that as a general framework. Other passages can help to fill in some of the details. 1 Cor 15 helps to delimit the options.
Steve,
ReplyDelete"positively teaches" -- exactly. Numbers 16:28-34 positively teaches that Moses's opponents descended alive into "sheol." How do you know what the author meant by "sheol?" The absence of a detailed description indicates only that the intended audience would understand his point without further explanation. And the exact point is a matter of dispute.
Walton, for example, believes Ps 55:15, using language almost identical to that of Numbers 16:30, refers to the realm of the dead, not just the grave: "It would be difficult to imagine that the psalmist hopes for his enemy to be buried alive." (ANE Thought and the OT, p. 320). In your favor, I don't agree with Walton that it is difficult to imagine the psalmist wishing his enemies would be buried alive.
But you get the point, right? We don't have a sound basis for this distinction: If spatial language is used to describe "sheol," take it literally when "sheol" means the physical grave, and metaphorically when "sheol" means the realm of departed "spirits."
Steve,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the summary explanation. I won't belabor my point any further. We are in agreement about metaphorical language generally, and you were right to criticize Ed for failing to recognize its use in some OT texts.
DEAN DOUGH SAID:
ReplyDelete“Steve, ‘positively teaches’ -- exactly. Numbers 16:28-34 positively teaches that Moses's opponents descended alive into ‘sheol.’"
i) Which is a statement about how they died, and not what, if anything, happened to them after they died. It describes their mode of execution, and not the mode of the afterlife, if any. Like a skier who accidentally falls to his death by stepping into a hidden crevasse. He’s alive on the way down.
ii) They “descended” because that was the particular method of execution in this instance. There are different ways in the Pentateuch that God executes sinners. He may send a plague, or rain down fire and brimstone, &c. yet each mode of execution hardly represents a different mode of postmortem existence.
“How do you know what the author meant by ‘sheol?’”
i) We may not have sufficient information to say. In this case the answer would depend, in part, and what else the Pentateuch may have to say (or not) regarding the afterlife.
ii) There is also the question of cultural expectations, although we have to be careful with that since the Bible is often countercultural in polemicizing against the prevailing cultural preconceptions.
“The absence of a detailed description indicates only that the intended audience would understand his point without further explanation. And the exact point is a matter of dispute.”
It isn’t clear to me what you think you’re opposing vis-à-vis my own position when you make statements like this.
“Walton, for example, believes Ps 55:15, using language almost identical to that of Numbers 16:30, refers to the realm of the dead, not just the grave: ‘It would be difficult to imagine that the psalmist hopes for his enemy to be buried alive.’ (ANE Thought and the OT, p. 320). In your favor, I don't agree with Walton that it is difficult to imagine the psalmist wishing his enemies would be buried alive.”
Different passages focus on different themes. In the case of Isa 14, it depicts death as the great leveler. In life the “king of Babylon” was high and mighty, but in death he’s been reduced to the common fate of mortal flesh.
But even in the OT there are passages that go beyond death as the great leveler to death as a reversal of fortunes. The righteous who suffered in this life will prosper in the next life while the unrighteous who prospered in this life will suffer in the next life.
Cont. “We don't have a sound basis for this distinction: If spatial language is used to describe ‘sheol,’ take it literally when ‘sheol’ means the physical grave, and metaphorically when ‘sheol’ means the realm of departed "spirits.’”
ReplyDeletei) I don’t think there’s a general distinction to that effect. The interpretation is context-dependent.
ii) I don’t have any antecedent objection to sheol denoting a realm of departed spirits. The reason I don’t press that imagery in Isa 14 is due to the satirical genre of the passage.
iii) Scripture uses spatial metaphors to distinguish the fate of the wicked and the righteous. They go to different “places.” That’s a graphic way of indicating divergent destinies. That doesn’t mean the notion of an afterlife is figurative, but simply the imagery which is used to depict the afterlife. Different passages may use different imagery to depict the afterlife, yet they may also share common, underlying ideas. So it’s possible to distinguish the picture-language from the core concept it illustrates.