Immortality of the Soul in the Bible?

[Jonathan_Burke (Jon)]

@Vouthon

You have probably forgotten our earlier conversation but if it suits you, I’d like to revive it!

No I haven’t forgotten. In particular I haven’t forgotten that you didn’t respond to the link I gave you previously which took you to a summary of the scholarly consensus on the topic with regard to both the Old and New Testaments.

@Vouthon

Simply put, for Jews there was no universally agreed upon canon to include or exclude the “deuterocanonical” books in the first century CE.

This isn’t in dispute, so we’ll skip this.

@Vouthon

(I get the impression that you think these texts weren’t well-read among first century Jews).

You get the wrong impression. If you have read any of my work touching on the influence of Second Temple Period Judaism on first century Judaism and early Christianity, you will see me take the completely opposite position. In my examination of the satan in the synoptic wilderness temptation pericope, for example, I cite Apocalypse of Sedrach, 1 Maccabees, Story of Ahikar, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, 1 Enoch, Slavonic Enoch, Jubilees, History of the Rechabites, Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Testament of Job, Pseudo-Ezekiel, Ascension of Moses, Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah, Life of Adam and Eve, Philo, and the Qumran literature.

@Vouthon

Basically, populist first century Judaism had inherited notions of an intermediate disembodied state in Hades (“Abraham’s Bosom” for the righteous and punishment for the wicked), immortality of the soul, disembodied spirits and the resurrection of the dead from influential earlier texts (i.e. the Book of Daniel, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra etc.) that had become very widespread among the Pharisees, Essenes and others such as Philo. This forms an important backdrop to the popular culture of the New Testament authors, with St. Paul having actually been a Pharisee and Jesus himself having had much in common with this school (certainly over against the Sadducees).

This isn’t in dispute either. But it is not enough to say “We find X in Second Temple Period Judaism of the first century, therefore Jesus and the apostles believed X”. The wide gulf between the views of the Pharisees and the Sadducees reminds us that first century Judaism was highly variegated, and far from uniform. So if you want to argue that Paul believed in an immortal soul which went to heaven or hell at death, then you need to actually do the exegeetical work to demonstrate this. As I said previously, “Where’s this stuff when Paul is teaching about sin, death, judgement and resurrection?”.

“There is no concept of an immortal soul in the Old Testament, nor does the New Testament ever call the human soul immortal.”, Alister E McGrath, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995), 101.

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“Indeed, the salvation of the “immortal soul” has sometimes been a commonplace in preaching, but it is fundamentally unbiblical. Biblical anthropology is not dualistic but monistic: human being consists in the integrated wholeness of body and soul, and the Bible never contemplates the disembodied existence of the soul in bliss.”, Allen C. Myers, The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 518.