Josephus in "the Jewish War" remarks on the nature of eternal life

by kepler 39 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  kepler

  There is a corresponding topic on science and the immortal soul that reminded me of something that I had encountered in the 7th chapter of Josephus's history of the Roman campaigns in Judea, "The Jewish War". One version of this is available in Penguin Classics, for example.

  "Among the Jews are three schools of thought, whose adherents are called Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes respectively..."

  There is a lot to say about each, but the discussion about immortality or the lack of it has some bearing for this forum, considering how much of the theological arguments are predicated or extrapolated from Jewish beliefs - and how practices or documents of the Essenes are cited in defense of positions taken by religious thinkers of our own day. For the sake of discussion, we will include residents of Brooklyn with large printing presses.

  Now it is reported by Josephus as well that the Pharisees are "held to be the most authoritative exponents of the Law and count as the leading sect. They ascribe everything to Fate or to God: the decision whether or not to do right rests mainly with men, but in every action Fate takes some part. Every soul is perishable, but only the souls of good men pass into other bodies, the souls of bad men being subjected to eternal punishment.

  "The Sadducees, the second order, deny Fate altogether and hold that God is incapable of eitehr committing sin or seeing it; they say that men are free to choose between good and evil , and each individual must decide which he will follow. the permanence of the soul, punishments in Hades and rewards they deny utterly."

  Now back to the Essenes:

  "It is indeed their unshakable conviction that bodies are corruptible and the material composing them impermanent, whereas souls remain immortal forever. Coming frort from the most rarefied ethe they are trapped in the prison house of the body as if drawn by one of nature's spells; but once freed from the bonds of the flesh, ais if released after years of slavery, they rejoice and soar aloft. Teaching the same doctrine as the sons of Greece, they declare that for the good souls there waits a home beyond the ocean, a place troubled by neither rain nor snow nor heat, but refreshed by the zephyr that blows from the ocean. Bad souls they consign to a darksome, stormy abyss, full of punishments that know no end. I think the Greeks had the same notion when they assigned to their brave men, whom they call heroes or demigods, the Islands of the Blessed, and to the souls of the wicked the place of the impious in Hades, where according to their stories certain people undergo punishment - Sisysphus and Tantalus... and the like. They tell these tales firstly because they believe souls to be immortal, and secondly, in the hope of encouraging virtue and discouraging vice, since the good become better in their lifetime in the hope of a reward after death, and the propensitites of the bad are restrained by the fear that, even if they are not caught in this life, after their dissoluiton they will undergo eternal punishment. This then is the religious teaching of the Essenes about the soul, providing an inescapable inducement to those who have once tasted their wisdom."

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  I would say that Josephus here gives us a minimum of three views of Jewish thought contemporary to Jesus with regard to eternal life and the immortality of the soul. There were probably more, but what is significant here is that NONE of the groups named put any stock in the idea of bodily resurrection and life on a paradise earth. In fact, here is Josephus suggesting that many of the ideas about this matter came from the Diaspora or else directly from the Greeks, perhaps arising over the century and a half of their rule after the reign of Alexander.

  From my own view, the accounts in the OT of the immortality of the soul are infrequent. Hezekiah in Isaiah seems to ruminate about an afterlife, but it never seems to occur to Job something of that nature. Separate from that, the Egyptians were obsessed with bringing the existing order into eternal life, but the Mesopotamian people seemed sceptical.

  The NT certainly is about eternal life, but there are mixed signals about its nature. Yet in Mark 12:18 and onward, Sadducees confront Jesus about what is supposed to happen in the afterlife, the afterlife in which, according to Josephus, the Sadducees do not belief. Jesus replies that they "do not understand the scriptures or the power of God. For when they rise from the dead, men and women do not marry; no, they are like the angels in heaven."

  Paul and the apostolic writers elaborate on Christian beliefs of the resurrection, of course, but to me the descriptions of the beliefs of the Essenes match the words of Jesus more closely than the other two principal belief systems.

  Comments?
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  mP

  Do you believe everything Josephus said ? Would you believe something even if he told you something that might shock you about ancient jews ?& their religion ?
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  hannes

  @ kepler

  You mentioned Job. I must disagree. In the 14th chapter he speaks of God remembering him once he has died. It is perhaps the most beautiful of all scripture regarding the hope of living again.
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  mP

  kepler:

  Paul and the apostolic writers elaborate on Christian beliefs of the resurrection, of course, but to me the descriptions of the beliefs of the Essenes match the words of Jesus more closely than the other two principal belief systems.

  MP:

  Thats befcause Paul did not know or teach jesus teachings. P is a rebel against the old ways of Judaism. J on the other hand is completely the opposite. At every opportunity he reinforces the old ways remain, the only new thing he introduces is his message to pay taxes, be obedient slaves and obey government.
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  kepler

  Hannes,

  Saw your note this morning. Thanks for pointing out chapter 14 of Job. As a result I did read over it and probably not for the last time. And rather than say, "Well, there's Hezekiah in Isaiah( 38: 9-12) and Job in 14 Job. That's 2...", I would like to ask if you or anyone else would like to add some more examples? The mother of the seven brothers in II Maccabees chapter 7 is one that comes to mind, though this is considered by most "deuterocanonical" at best.

  Erroneously or not, I had come to regard Job as an OT explanation of why bad things can happen to good people. This implies that the readers of a certain era were probably thinking of covenants with the Lord in terms of a place on earth, prosperity and things that Job once had and regained. The prose introduction and summary seem to indicate those things were restored - even his children. So some editor of the inner kernel of poetry must have bought into the rewards of serving the Lord were in this life after all. Job in chapter 14 appears, at least, to raise the issue.

  Elsewhere, the wisdom books such as Ecclesiastes should be examined in this regard as well. Are they speaking of final rest in peace with the Lord in eternity or stoicism in this life?

  mP,

  Does that second letter stand for Provocateur? Does Josephus saying something automatically make it a lie? Speaking on JW-net, I would think that what would stand out in his three divisions of Jewish thinking circa 65 AD was the fact that none of the descriptions seem to be congruent with a bodily resurrection on a Paradise Earth.

  Does anyone get it? None of the Jewish groups were contemplating a return to Eden! And if you were to believe Josephus - true - they were even thinking of reincarnation. And the Essenes point of view, for which we have little other non Josephus information about save Essene library remains - our source thought they got their ideas from the Greeks. Well, the Greeks had been there all right. As had the Jews gone into a Diaspora about the Hellenic world. And there was the LXX...

  Frequently, I had been told by JWs that the troubles Christianity had had was due to its submission to Greek influences. It had somehow gotten away from its roots.

  Really?
• 

  Cold Steel

  Kepler: The NT certainly is about eternal life, but there are mixed signals about its nature. Yet in Mark 12:18 and onward, Sadducees confront Jesus about what is supposed to happen in the afterlife, the afterlife in which, according to Josephus, the Sadducees do not believe. Jesus replies that they “do not understand the scriptures or the power of God. For when they rise from the dead, men and women do not marry; no, they are like the angels in heaven.”

  Your best bet for ascertaining what the ancient Christians believed about the afterlife can perhaps be found with more accuracy through Christian writings which once were considered scriptural by some Christian sects, but not others. Relying on Josephus’ explanation of what the Jews, which were in a high state of apostasy, believed most likely is not pertinent to what the Christians believed.

  Your point in Mark 12:18 is significant given the Sadducees didn’t believe in an afterlife or a resurrection. So why were they asking Jesus a question based on something they did not believe in? Simple. They were asking a question based on something the Christians believed. It would be like an atheist asking a Jehovah's Witness a question about the 144,000. They don’t believe in the 144,000, but the Jehovah's Witnesses do. So also in this case the Sadducees sought to entrap Jesus in a Christian belief in a resurrection and even a concept of marriage throughout the eternities.

  Jesus answered them truly, saying that in the resurrection there is no marriage or giving in marriage, a reference to the act of becoming engaged or married which, he tells the Sadducees, cannot happen once a person is resurrected. (Though there is no denial of marriage before the resurrection.)

  There is significant evidence that the ancient Christians believed not only that man would live beyond his life on Earth, but that he existed before birth in a premortal existence, which to some extent determines the nature of our existence in this life. For example, the disciples asked Jesus regarding a man blind from birth. “Master,” they said. “Who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind.”

  Jesus, nonplussed by the question, did not issue a rebuke or a correction in doctrine. He simply said, “Neither this man nor his parents have sinned, but that the works of God might be manifest through him.” If the doctrinal assumption was incorrect, we might expect Jesus to correct them, like saying, “You do not understand the scriptures....” But no correction was forthcoming. After all, the Lord had declared to Jeremiah, “ Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. ” (Jeremiah 1:5) The act of ordination is not merely a reference to fate; it was a holy act secured by the laying on of hands and conferred authority and a calling. And Jeremiah was told he had been ordained before he came to the earth.

  Some of the early writings of the first generation of church fathers also point the way to ancient Christian beliefs. One of these fathers was Origen, who stated: “After death, I think the saints go to Paradise, a place of teaching, a school of the spirits in which everything they saw on earth will be made clear to them. Those who were pure in heart will progress more rapidly, reaching the kingdom of heaven by definite steps or degrees.”

  One scholar notes:

  In Origen’s universe there are more exalted beings who leave the less exalted beings further and further behind. He compares their advancements to a series of examinations and makes much of the three degrees of glory—“three celestial levels, like the sun, the moon, and the stars.” According to him, the visible world is only a small fraction of the invisible world, which in turn is only a small fraction of the potential world that is to become reality in the aeons ahead. In Origen’s universe there are more exalted beings who leave the less exalted beings further and further behind. He compares their advancements to a series of examinations and makes much of the three degrees of glory—“three celestial levels, like the sun, the moon, and the stars.” According to him, the visible world is only a small fraction of the invisible world, which in turn is only a small fraction of the potential world that is to become reality in the aeons ahead.

  The notion of a premortal existence also is found in an increasing number of near death experiences, where people report meeting people in the spirit world which they knew before they came to the earth and, in some cases, lived hundreds if not a thousand or more years before the present.

  John, in the book of Revelation, also encounters an angel whose brightness and glory are so intense that John falls on his face to worship him, thinking that he is his Lord. But the angel raises him up and tells him he is but a “fellowservant and of his brethren, the prophets.” In other words, the angel was simply a former prophet, now raised in glory and light. If so, it would clearly indicate that people don’t just fall asleep until awakened by Jehovah.
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  mP

  Kepler:

  Does Josephus saying something automatically make it a lie?

  mP:

  Well the reason to trust Josephus is he was highly educated and as a gift from V got given the holy writings when the temple was destroyed. He had a passion for jewish history and hence wrote a lot about it. I am saying actually the opposite J is one of the best sources of Jewish tradition that we have. He wrote a lot and told us a lot of things. Rather than speculate we can accept the facts given to us by someone who was tehre.
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  mP

  Kepler:

  John, in the book of Revelation, also encounters an angel whose brightness and glory are so intense that John falls on his face to worship him, thinking that he is his Lord. But the angel raises him up and tells him he is but a “fellowservant and of his brethren, the p

  mP:

  Maybe John is talking about the sun ?

  Kepler:

  In Origen’s universe there are more exalted beings who leave the less exalted beings further and further behind

  mP:

  Given that Origen's name includes Horus its quite evident from this and other stuff that xians were sun worshippers. Eusebius admits that xians also worship the sun just like pagans.
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  mP

  Kepler:

  Paul and the apostolic writers elaborate on Christian beliefs of the resurrection, of course, but to me the descriptions of the beliefs of the Essenes match the words of Jesus more closely than the other two principal belief systems.

  mP:
  Paul is talking about the glory, death and resurrection of the Sun. The Sun is the light of the world, and gives us everything.
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  mP

  The Pharisees were Persian like religious group, their name Pharisee comes from persian. The problem was the Pharisees were evil for their religious fanaticism. AS we all know religion is a terrible disease to be sick with.