Abandoned among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You no longer remember, and they are cut off from Your hand. Psalm 88:5 NASB Abandoned – What an interesting choice of words! Sometimes translated “forsaken,” the Hebrew root is the verb ḥāpaš. Here it is ḥopšî, an adjective. What’s interesting is the basic…
If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. 1 Corinthians 15:32 NASB Raised– You hope it happens. You hope that the dead are raised, that there is something after the grave, that what you do now will matter later. But you don’t know, do you? You don’t really know,…
Soon afterwards, He began going around from one city and village to another, proclaiming and preaching the kingdom of God. The twelve were with Him, Luke 8:1 NASB The kingdom of God – “The kingdom of heaven [of God] resembles a concept in rabbinic Judaism called tikkun ha-olam, which literally means ‘mending the world.’ When one enters (or…
Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. Genesis 50:2 NASB The physicians – The NASB translation of the Hebrew ha-rof’im misdirects us. David Fohrman points out that the word actually means “healers.” The fact that we think of healers as physicians means that our conception of the…
For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, 2 Corinthians 5:1-2 Earthly tent – Mas. Chagigah…
This world is like an anteroom before the world to come. Prepare yourself in the anteroom so that you may enter the banquet hall. Rabbi Ya’akov, Pirke Avot 4:21 Prepare – “The nature of the afterlife has never been clear in Judaism.”[1] In contrast to the highly developed ideas of the afterlife in Christian literature…
we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. 2 Corinthians 5:8 NASB Absent – Investigating the Greek verb, we come upon a rather interesting remark: “ekdēméō, endēméō. These two terms denote being abroad and staying at home. Not used…
FOR EVERYONE WHO LISTENED TO the discussions recorded in Israel about the afterlife, the influence of the Cult of Souls, Dionysus worship and the development of Christian and Jewish thinking about death and the olam ha’ba, here is the last lecture covering the origins of the popular Greek belief in the eternal soul, life after death and…
“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Matthew 25:46 NASB Eternal life – There is no doubt that Christianity embraces a robust doctrine of the afterlife. In fact, I suspect that if you asked the common believer or non-believer about the most important teaching of the Church, it…
Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth? Ecclesiastes 3:21 NASB Ascends upward – “Ecclesiastes, alone in the Bible, is aware of the belief that at death the soul goes upward to the heavens, rather than down to Sheol. This idea is not…
