[Vision2020] Response to Nisbet

[Andreas Schou]

On 8/29/05, Ralph Nielsen <nielsen at uidaho.edu> wrote:
> 
> I called the Tanakh the Hebrew Bible but Phil Nisbet objected
> passionately. What would he call it in English? I quoted from a
> Jewish source:
> 
> "Christianity, since it claims to be a fulfillment of the
> Jewish scripture, accepts the sanctity and normative nature of the
> books of the Hebrew Bible" (The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish
> Religion, article on BIBLE, by Baruch J. Schwartz, Tel Aviv
> University, p. 121).
> 
> Regarding the absence of the idea of life after death in the Tanakh
> generally and in the Torah specifically, I also quoted from a Jewish
> source:
> 
> "There is not a hint of [life after death] in the Torah, or in most
> of the [Hebrew] Bible. There, human death is final. ... With the
> possible exceptions of Elijah and Enoch, all biblical personalities
> die and their death is final." (Etz Hayim; Torah and Commentary.
> Jewish Publication Society, 2000. p. 1436).
> 
> I also challenged Mr. Nisbet (or anyone else) to show us one single
> person in the Tanakh who died and went to heaven. We are still waiting.
> 
> I am fully aware of the fact that in the Second Temple period Jewish
> thinking began to adopt the idea of an afterlife. This is also
> mentioned in the Christian New Testament. The conservatives, who were
> known as Sadducees, many of whom were Temple priests, held to the old
> Hebrew belief that death is the end. But the Pharisees adopted new
> ideas of life after death and spread their beliefs through rabbis and
> synagogues. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. we hear no
> more from the Sadducees.


The Karaites, a sect of Jews who reject the Prophets and the rabbinical 
tradition dating back to the Talmud (dubiously) claim descent from the 
Sadducees.

-- ACS
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