<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/29/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Ralph Nielsen</b> <<a href="mailto:nielsen@uidaho.edu">nielsen@uidaho.edu</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I called the Tanakh the Hebrew Bible but Phil Nisbet objected<br>passionately. What would he call it in English? I quoted from a<br>Jewish source:<br><br>"Christianity, since it claims to be a fulfillment of the<br>Jewish scripture, accepts the sanctity and normative nature of the
<br>books of the Hebrew Bible" (The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish<br>Religion, article on BIBLE, by Baruch J. Schwartz, Tel Aviv<br>University, p. 121).<br><br>Regarding the absence of the idea of life after death in the Tanakh
<br>generally and in the Torah specifically, I also quoted from a Jewish<br>source:<br><br>"There is not a hint of [life after death] in the Torah, or in most<br>of the [Hebrew] Bible. There, human death is final. ... With the
<br>possible exceptions of Elijah and Enoch, all biblical personalities<br>die and their death is final." (Etz Hayim; Torah and Commentary.<br>Jewish Publication Society, 2000. p. 1436).<br><br>I also challenged Mr. Nisbet (or anyone else) to show us one single
<br>person in the Tanakh who died and went to heaven. We are still waiting.<br><br>I am fully aware of the fact that in the Second Temple period Jewish<br>thinking began to adopt the idea of an afterlife. This is also<br>
mentioned in the Christian New Testament. The conservatives, who were<br>known as Sadducees, many of whom were Temple priests, held to the old<br>Hebrew belief that death is the end. But the Pharisees adopted new<br>ideas of life after death and spread their beliefs through rabbis and
<br>synagogues. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. we hear no<br>more from the Sadducees.</blockquote><div><br>
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.<br>
<br>
-- ACS<br>
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