[Vision2020] A little educational assistancve for Nielsen

[Phil Nisbet]

Ralph

I know I am breaking what I said to Andreas and answering you, but heck, 
maybe this will solve your problem.

Books of Samuel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_Samuel

“Modern criticism holds the view that the books were not to have reached 
their final written form until the 7th or 6th century BC, whereas the events 
they describe come from around the year 1000 BC. They do of course preserve 
a detailed older (oral or written) tradition to which the traditional 
authors may have contributed; it seems certain from the books' level of 
detail that that tradition did indeed originate during the time the books 
describe.”

So with that you would have to acknowledge that these particular religious 
texts were indeed written in the period of the First Temple.

Please head to chapter 28 of First Samuel.

In this particular chapter, it is clearly stated that Samuel is dead and has 
been buried.  Yet Saul in sore distress at the advent of superior forces of 
Philistines has a diviner bought to him and this woman calls up the spirit 
of Samuel, bringing him from the other side of death.

I would return once more to also noting in what you folks call Eccleseates 
and we call Kohelet, that was written almost immediately following the fall 
of the First Temple, Solomon (Who is assumed to be Kohelet) writes, "The 
dust will return to the ground as it was, and the spirit will return to G-d 
who gave it."

Since both of these references to Olam HaBa are from the period prior to the 
construction of the Second Temple, there was obviously Jewish thought older 
than the Sadducees call, rejecting the immortality of the spirit and the 
resurrection of the soul, which recognized a life following death.

The reality is that this particular religious party was also noted by all 
the other sects in Judaism as having been exceptionally Hellenized and to 
have taken many Greek customs and practices to themselves.  It is not too 
amazing that as a consequence they rejected the idea of an afterlife, since 
they were also the party of the rich, the nobles and the Priestly classes 
who sided with the Greeks prior to the Maccabean wars.

The only real ideas we have of their actual beliefs are filtered through the 
screen of the fact that they disappeared and only the Rabbinic Party ended 
up surviving.  We have things written either in Talmud or in the writings of 
the Pharisee apostate Josephus and perhaps a much later possibility in the 
Karaite text Sefer Zadok.  For all we know they simply POed so many folks, 
they attributed to them ideas that were offensive to the bulk of the 
population.

So, by what I have just given you, you will hopefully have found that Tanakh 
does indeed contain reference to people who do more than simply die and 
become dust and that this belief was indeed around since the time of the 
First Temple.  This safely places that belief prior to any potential 
introduction from some other source, as a uniquely Jewish idea of life after 
death.  In other words, if it’s borrowed from somebody, it was more likely 
the Egyptians than the Persians.

Shalom

Phil

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