Thanks peacefulpete for what you said about John 3:13 including a metaphor.
Readers, in agreement with Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 (NKJV), Psalms 146:4 (which is not a part of wisdom literature) says the following.
"His spirit departs, he returns to his earth;
In that very day his plans perish."
In a post in a different topic thread I said in part the following.
'The Bible thus expresses a range of views of what happens to humans after their bodies die, and in regards to whether humans have an immortal component or not. Furthermore, when it says or suggests there is an immortal component, it also states competing views of whether it is conscious or not. These observations are further mentioned in another book I own, one called THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE BIBLE, Edited by Metzger and Coogan. This book is copyright 1993. Note some of what it says, in the following.
The entry of "Afterlife and Immortality" "consists of two articles on views of life and death within the historical communities of Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity." Some of things said in the first article of that entry say the following.
'Israelite views of the afterlife underwent substantial changes during the first millennium BCE, as concepts popular during the preexlic period eventually came to be rejected by the religious leadership of the exilic and postexilic communities, and new theological stances replaced them. ...
Because many elements of preexilic beliefs and practices concerning the dead were eventually repudiated, the Hebrew Bible hardly discusses preexilic concepts at all ....
Like all cultures in the ancient Near East, the Israelites believed that persons continued to exist after *death. It was thought that following death, one's spirit went down to a land below the earth, most often called Sheol, but sometimes merely "Earth," or "the Pit (see hell). In the preexilic period, there was no notion of a judgment of the dead based on their actions during life, nor is there any evidence for a belief that the righteous dead go to live in God's presence. ...
The exact relationship between the body of a dead person and the spirit that lived on in Sheol is unclear, since the Bible does not discuss this issue. ... during the late eighth and seventh centuries' [BCE] there were 'laws against necromancy' which 'assume not that it was impossible to summon the dead from Sheol but that it was inappropriate. ...
During the exile, when the "Yahweh alone" party finally came to control the religious leadership of Judah, a further step was taken', and several texts from that period 'suggest that it is not only improper to consult the dead but actually impossible to do so.' [Note that the WT also teaches that only Yahweh is God (at least in the full sense) and it teaches that it is both improper and impossible to consult the dead - except possibly those they consider to be resurrected anointed JWs in heaven.] 'A new theology developed that argued there is no conscious existence in Sheol at all. At death all contact with the world, and even with God, comes to an end.' [This is what the WT teaches, except they don't say it is a new biblical theory, and furthermore they teach the hope of a resurrection.]
The second article in the entry describes how the Jews, "owing to the widespread influence of the platonic idea of the immortality of the soul (see Human Person)" came to believe in immortality and resurrection and that there would be "reward or punishment" for those who die, and that those ideas were adopted by Christianity. That article also says that such ideas created a tension between ideas both in Judaism and in Christianity.
The entry/article called "Human Person" says the following.
"The Hebrew word for the human being is nepeš, which among its wide range of meanings connotes both flesh and soul as inseparable components of a person." But how [can] they be viewed as inseparable, since later on the article says the following. "At death, the person's flesh dies, and the soul dwells in Sheol, a shadowy place for the dead (see Afterlife and Immortality; Hell)." Perhaps the explanation lies in the next two sentences of the article which say the following. "There is no notion in what may be called orthodox Israelite religion of a separate existence for the soul after death. Death is accepted as a natural part of the life cycle, but it is not welcomed, for the person who dies loses his or her being." After referring to Psalms 30:9 the paragraph later by says the following. "Death is thus perceived to be the end of all sentient life. [ " ]
Later the article says the following. "In the New Testament, the still prominent idea of bodily resurrection (see especially the resurrection narratives in the Gospels and also 1 Cor. 15) implies that the soul and body are inseparable, but the notion of a human being composed of a separate soul and body slowly gains ascendancy."
Note that parts of the Bible teach that humans do have an immortal soul, but that some of those parts teach the soul of the human dead is unconscious whereas some other verses teach that is conscious. Furthermore, note that other parts of the Bible teach that humans do not have an immortal soul at all.
The above content to me is enormous further proof that the Bible's theological teachings are not the word of God, but merely human ideas of theology, and that such human ideas evolved over the centuries. The Bible are the words (and ideas) of humans (including conflicting views between various human writers of the Bible, not just pertaining to the topics mentioned above) and not the Word of God. Since the Bible is not the word of God, of any god, humans should not feel obligated by the Bible to believe anything the Bible teaches. People thus should feel free to decide which teachings of the Bible, if any, are correct - just as we would do for any nonreligious secular writing or teaching. I encourage believers in the Bible to question what the Bible teaches.'
Everything above in this post, except for the first paragraph of this
post, is a copy of part of what posted in an earlier post in a
different topic thread (plus some corrections in brackets).
In addition to what I quoted from the Oxford book in that earlier post of mine, the Oxford book (on page 16) also says the following (which includes parts of what I quoted earlier).
"Necromancy was particularly opposed by the religious group that supported the worship of Yahweh alone. The popular views of afterlife and the dead came under increasing attack during the late eighth and seventh centuries. The laws against necromancy date to this period, and a number of outright attacks and satires on the older ideas about the nature of existence in Sheol appear in the literature of this time (e.g., Isa. 8.19-22; 14.9-11).
... These laws apparently did not have the desired effect on the Judean population." The next three sentences of the article says the following (which I partially quoted in my earlier article). 'During the exile, when the "Yahweh alone" party finally came to control the religious leadership of Judah, a further step was taken. Several texts appearing to date from the exile and postexilic periods suggest
that it is not only improper to consult the dead but actually impossible
to do so.' ... 'A new theology developed
that argued there is no conscious existence in Sheol at all. At death
all contact with the world, and even with God, comes to an end.'
That quote from the scholarly Oxford book agrees completely with what I said in an earlier post in this topic thread. Notice that it says when there came to be Jewish religious leaders who preached that "Yahweh alone" should be worshiped that 'theology developed
that argued there is no conscious existence in Sheol at all. At death
all contact with the world, and even with God, comes to an end.' That view was apparently started by the "Yahweh alone" group of religious leaders. The WT, which stresses worship of only Yahweh/Jehovah, also says that the dead are completely unconscious. The WT even says the ones who have died are completely dead - except for those whom they say have experienced a resurrection to life in heaven.
Note the scholarly book by Oxford indicates
that the "Yahweh alone" religious leaders (ones who supported worship of
Yahweh alone) wanted people to stop making efforts to contact to dead,
and that after those efforts (which consisted of laws that are stated in the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus) failed, a new theology was developed which
said that the dead are completely unconscious. It thus appears that the later Jewish religious teaching (apparently by the "Yahweh alone" religious leaders) was created to convince Jews to no
longer attempt to communicate with the dead.
