[Vision2020] And clearing out just one more problem for Ralph

[Phil Nisbet]

This was actually an interesting challenge and one which is designed to 
confound as was the challenge given to Hillel by the scoffer, so perhaps I 
can give it a whirl, though obviously not with the alacrity and beauty of 
language of Hillel.

"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.”

You actually provided your own answer Ralph.  Enoch.  Nice going.  It’s 
actually verse in B’Rashit that sends him directly to G-d without dying.  
What’s fairly interesting about that of course is that actually, considering 
when the final version was redacted, it may have been more influenced than 
the stronger statements in Samuel, which was redacted to its current form 
much before it.

Your reference from the Conservative volume is also interesting in what if 
fails to insert.  It mentions that Elijah is taken whole to G-d, but fails 
to mention that during his life Elijah resurrected a person already dead.  
If there is no after life, no Olam HaBa, then where was the dead person 
prior to returning from something deemed to be final?  How can death be 
final if Elijah can bring you back from it or if like Samuel you can speak 
as a spirit to those who are in the land of the living?

Your challenge is also interesting in another respect.  What is it that you 
assume to be ‘heaven’?  Of course it is difficult to suggest that anybody 
has ever gone to ‘heaven’, since we have no idea what that place is.  There 
are lots of speculations as to what happens, yet all we are actually told is 
that we can be gathered unto our people, taken to G-d as spirit or be 
punished in the pit.  The reference to what sort of existence the after life 
is, is left vague and there are as many opinions as there are individuals.

That is plainly different than insisting that there is no life after we die, 
just not telling us what that life will be.  Just as Stephen Hawking 
suggests, we can not hope to see beyond the singularity and even if we were 
told what the great beyond was, what relative referent would we have to 
comprehend it.

“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.”

I think I covered this problem for you.  The first references in Tanakh are 
First Temple of a certainty.  The people you refer to as conservatives, were 
not, they were the Hellenized Jews, the Sons of Zadok and also termed 
Sadducees.  Since the Greeks did not even arrive until well after the 
destruction of the First Temple, the group you speak about was heavily 
influenced by their Aristocratic ties to the Greek invaders, acting as 
satraps to the Seleucids from 321-165 BCE.  The Second Temple was not even 
begun by Herod until 19 BCE.  So the group that you refer to were not some 
sort of ‘conservative” group who were conforming to the “old Hebrew belief”, 
they were the rich and famous and jaded folks at the top of the pile who had 
been collaborators during the Greek occupation.  The ideas of the Sadducees 
were the new ideas, a melding of Greek culture with some of their own older 
norms.

And the idea of a Beth HaKeneset with a reading of the different portions of 
Torah each shabbas was not new at the time of the Sadducees.  It actually 
dates to the destruction of the First Temple and it is in the setting up of 
these institutions that Rabbinic Judaism gets its start in 562 BCE.  The 
Rabbi, Teacher or learned master, was no more than a person with a strong 
understanding of the law who was held in esteem by his community.  Pharisaic 
Judaism has its roots in that community based organization following the 
destruction of the First Temple.  It takes its political overtones as a 
religious party from affiliation with the Maccabean revolt, when the people 
of the country side in the small communities banded together to eject both 
the Greeks and their sycophants the Sadducees.  The Pharisees were the 
community based rather than the temple based party, the rural dwellers who 
did not cotton to the city slickers.  It is that group who represent the 
ideas of the older faith, at least the faith as it managed to survive after 
the end of the period of the Northern Kingdom.


As Andreas mentioned to you, there is some suggestions that the Karaites may 
have been related to the Sadducees, a kind of die hard later day bunch.

I am so glad I could clear up your misconceptions and lack of understanding 
of these issues.

Have a wonderful day.

Phil Nisbet

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