Resurrection (1)

Now at that time Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued.  And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.  Daniel 12:1-2  NASB

Will awake – “But the Tanakh really has nothing to say about the end of death.”  I wrote this sentence a few weeks ago in a post called “Overload.”  It prompted one reader to write a challenging email.  She claimed that I had overlooked numerous verses in the Bible that clearly demonstrated the truth of a general resurrection of the dead and a subsequent judgment.  She provided a list of these verses.  I decided to answer her by examining each of the verses.  Since I believe the topic of resurrection is not only of interest but also pertinent  to each of you, I decided to share the reply with you via Today’s Word.  But it’s long, so it will take a few editions to cover all the ground.  Bear with it.  I’m sure you’ll find it helpful.

Here’s how this began:

Shalom once more, Prof. Moen.

Realizing your questions are likely on the side of rhetorical, encouraging readers to think, forgive me if I’m becoming a nuisance, but it’s winter here and I’m more cooped up than during the warmer weather.  So, until you speak plainly and tell me to “cease and desist” (my older brother used that one on me when I was getting annoying), I’m finding said questions a challenge to my knowledge/understanding of what has been written : )

I’ve noticed you most often quote rabbis in your Today’s Word.   Again, what/who do you believe?  I really want to know, because at this point, I’m uncertain.  When I read the rabbinical commentary in the Chumash, I find it disturbing that far too often, their comments contradict what is written in Scripture.

You wrote, “But the Tanakh really has nothing to say about the end of death.”  I beg to differ, based on the words of the Master, both in the beginning, and after His resurrection.  The question of death as an enemy that would be defeated ultimately, seems apparent to me from just a handful of verses, which I am confident you are well aware of:

[Then she added these verses]

Gen. 3:15

Heb. 11:1-11:13, 14-16, 39-40 

Luke 24:45  

So, I wonder if your frequently posed Today’s Word questions are prompting readers to be as the Bereans, searching the Scriptures ‘to see if these things be so’?  That is a good motive, IMO, as I have found too many professing believers in the living Word, to be ignorant of His written Word.

Shalom, shalom.

Respectfully yours,

Anita

[Then she added another series of verses – see below – which will be examined in detail in this study]

My reply:

Dear Anita,

It will take some time to respond to each of these proof texts.  Thanks for sending them.  By the way, the exegesis of these verses does NOT mean that I don’t believe in a general resurrection.  I do.  And certainly the apostles did, as did the entire Messianic community and many orthodox Jews.  That isn’t the issue here.  The issue is whether or not there is indisputable evidence for a belief in a general resurrection of the dead prior to the development of Hellenism in the 4th century BCE.

Let’s lay out some ground rules in this investigation.

Since we are trying to determine if there is indisputable evidence for personal resurrection in the Tanakh, we should use the following:

1. No verses from writings later than the end of the prophets should be used as they could be influenced by the development of Hellenism and import ideas into the text.
2. Even if a verse from the Tanakh is cited in apostolic material, it cannot be used as a proof that the Tanakh itself endorses personal resurrection since the apostolic writers often cite passages from the Tanakh modified to meet their own agenda.
3. Rabbinic sources are not exempt from the above two points.
4. Each verse offered from the Tanakh must be viewed within its own context, that is, a post-prophetic general resurrection paradigm cannot be applied to the verse prior to exegesis.
5. Verses must be examined in all their meanings, not just in a particular meaning that either endorses or debunks the idea of a general resurrection.
6. Verses should be examined according to source criticism and textual criticism.

With these rules in mind, let’s look at the verses you offered.

First, of course, any verse from the “New Testament” is excluded, even if it supposedly cites older material.  Why? Because by the time the “New Testament” was written and codified, the idea of a general resurrection was already theologically acceptable and used as an interpretive lens to re-read verses in the Tanakh.  This was a very common occurrence as we can see with Matthew’s use of the prophets.  Of course, this doesn’t mean that the verses from the Tanakh can’t be used to support apostolic arguments about the resurrection.  It just means that the apostolic arguments aren’t proof that these verses must be resurrection verses.  The paradigm of the apostles simply means that this is the way they interpreted the verses.  We sometimes do the same thing, but that doesn’t mean that the original audience believed the verse endorsed a doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, and what we are asking in this little study is not what later audiences believed about these verses but rather what the original audience believed about these verses (i.e., if the Tanakh endorses a general theory of resurrection).

Applying this rule, we will examine the following verses you supplied (I have excluded all the verses you offered from the New Testament):

Genesis 3:15

Job 14:14-15

Psalm 17:15

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Zechariah 14:1-9

Isaiah 26:19

Isaiah 25:7-8

Daniel 12:1-2

I will first list the verse as you sent it to me (your translated English text) and then follow with my comment.

There is something to notice immediately about this list.  With the exception of Genesis 3:15, there are no passages from the Torah of Moses.  This is important.  It demonstrates why the Sadducees rightly claimed the idea of resurrection was false.  They accepted as authoritative only the five books of Moses and in the five books of Moses there is no mention of a resurrection (we will deal with Genesis 3:15 in a moment).  We accept many more books in the modern Hebrew canon, but the point needs to be stressed that Moses does not speak of a resurrection.  That means no one in Israel prior to the conquest of the Land wrote about this idea.  It was not in the belief system.  If we claim that there are verses in the Tanakh that endorse a general personal resurrection, we need to explain what occurred after the conquest that altered the silence of texts before the exodus.  We would want to know why God did not reveal this crucial fact to Moses.

Gen. 3:15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.

Genesis 3:15:  And I will make enemies of you and the woman, and of your offspring and her Descendant; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.  NASB

I have cited this verse from the NASB in order to make a point about translation bias.  You will notice that the first occurrence of zāraʿ (offspring) is not translated the same way in the second occurrence (Descendant).  This is linguistically completely unjustified.  The second occurrence with a capital D is nothing more than theology written into the text.  In actual fact, both occurrences use the Hebrew word for “seed,” a metaphor for offspring.  Both are singular common nouns that can legitimately be translated as “descendants.”  There is no difference between them linguistically, neither is there any linguistic support for capitalizing “He” or “Him” in the second phrase.  All of this is theological manipulation of the text based on Trinitarian doctrine.  No one in the original audience could have possibly imagined these changes to be true.

Now we must ask: Does this text actually say anything about a resurrection?  I realize that Christians have adapted this verse for their own agenda as if it were Messianic, but even if that is the case (and the text itself doesn’t make that claim), it still says nothing about a resurrection.  In the Christian view it is about the role of the Messiah overcoming Satan (none of this is found directly in the verse, even the idea of Satan is imported into this text).  But the Hebrew makes only the claim that human beings and snakes will not be friendly toward each other.  While previously there was no fear between the “serpent” and the woman, now the two will seek each other’s harm.  Anything else is addition via theological paradigm bias.

Job 14:14 If a man dies, shall he live again?

All the days of my hard service I will wait,
Till my change comes. (what change?)
15 You shall call, and I will answer You;
You shall desire the work of Your hands.

Job 14:14-15  I’m not sure which translation you cite, but as you can see, the word “again” is in italics, indicating that it is not in the Hebrew.  The question in Hebrew is simply, “Will he live?”  The verse continues with the answer, “All of my hard service days I shall hope until my vanishing comes.”  Alter notes that the Hebrew word means “to slip away,” with “change” as a secondary sense.  Read plainly, all Job says is that he will disappear in death.  There is no indication that he expects to live again.  Verse 15 is that same thought.  “Call out and I will answer you, for the work of Your hand You should yearn,” may mean nothing more than Job’s spirit returning to the God who gave it.  It is not the work of Job’s hand that God desires, but rather God’s own work, that is, the animating breath God gave Job in the first place.

Psa. 17:15  As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness;

I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness. (King David)

(Awaken on a regular morning? every morning?)

Psalm 17:15  Once again, without a paradigm of personal resurrection, why would this verse be read as anything other than the king’s expression of joy over God’s justice.  Notice Alter’s translation:

“As for me, in justice I behold Your face, I take my fill, wide awake, of Your image.”

There is no mention of death and resurrection at all.  It is clearly about a living experience of God’s great justice.  The translation you offer treats יָקַץ (yāqaṣ) awake as if it were a conjugated verb (present tense) when in fact it is an infinitive in the construct state.  Notice Alter’s translation, which is not about waking up but rather about a fully-awake experience.  Furthermore, the preposition “in” isn’t in the text.  It literally reads “when wide-awake image Yours,” using the verb from the first phrase applied to the second, that is, “When [I behold] wide-awake Your image.”  Once again, there is nothing explicit about a resurrected state.

To be continued