Job 3 indicates that SHEOL is a place for both the wicked and the righteous to "sleep." In the midst of bemoaning his pitiable earthly existence, Job lamented that he had not perished after coming forth from his mother's womb--saying: "For by now I should have lain down that I might be undisturbed; I should have slept then; I should be at rest . . . There the wicked themselves have ceased from agitation, and those weary in power are at rest" (Job 3:13-20). Additionally, Job also depicts SHEOL as "the land of darkness and deep shadow" and as "the land of obscurity like gloom, of deep shadow and disorder, where it beams no more than gloom does" (Job 10:21, 22).
It's of interest how the signifier hADHS is used in Revelation too. In Rev. 6:8, John sees a pale horse with a rider that has hADHS closely following him. Later in the same book, the sea, death and hADHS are said to give up the dead in them (KAI EDWKEN hH QALASSA TOUS NEKROUS TOUS EN AUTHi KAI QANATOS KAI hO hADHS EDWKAN TOUS NEKROUS TOUS EN AUTOIS); then the dead are judged according to their deeds and death along with hADHS is subsequently hurled into the lake of fire which signifies the "second death" (Rev. 20:13-15). John then reports that "death is no more" (since it was hurled into the lake of fire). See Rev. 21:3-4.
"there shall be no more death] More exactly, death shall be no more, having been destroyed in the Lake of Fire, Revelation 20:14 : not that the personification is put forward here" (W.H. Simcox, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges).
Based on the aforesaid information, I conclude that hADHS is identical to the Hebrew SHEOL (Cf. Ps. 16:10 and Acts 2:27ff). hADHS being thrown into the lake of fire evidently means that it is no more just as death is no more after being cast in the famed "lake." The lake of fire appears to symbolize eternal destruction (annihilation) and not eternal torment.
3 comments:
Claramente ese texto refuta la doctrina del alma inmortal.
Yo siempre les pregunto que que si Dios puede destruir el alma... Si me dicen que no entonces no es todopoderoso si me dicen que si es porque el alma no es inmortal.
When the Jews of Alexandria almost forgot their original language (because they used Greek), it was necessary to translate the Bible into Greek. The first translation, which left the prison of monolingualism, was the SEPTUAGINT. Lo and behold: the Jewish translators of the SEPTUAGINT translated the Hebrew word SHEOL to HADES. For the Greeks, HADES was the god of the underworld, the son of the chief god ZEUS. HADES was the place where, according to them, the souls of people went. This is what they understood under this word. So not only were the Jews of Alexandria spiritually infected by the surrounding Greek world, but they even inserted such spiritualist words into their Bible translation. AND NO ONE PROTESTED AGAINST THIS. The Greeks would have had other words too, because the word GRAVE (into which people were buried) could have been such a word in Greek. But the Jewish translators still thought that the word HADES most closely represented what the Jews thought under the word SHEOL. If we compare all this with the fact that Jesus also used Greek mythology, then we are forced to conclude that something is wrong with the chalk circle.
Why do you think Jesus used such a story as the framework of his parable (Luke 16:20-26), which is essentially a spiritualist story? After all, Hades, in Greek mythology (which was the spiritualism of the time) was the name of one of the sons of Zeus, the chief god, who had an underworld kingdom of the same name where the souls of the dead went. According to Greek mythology, this Hades was divided into two parts. In one part, evil people suffered, in the other, good people enjoyed their afterlife. This appears in several old literary works. The only "fault" of this parable of Jesus is as much as a Bible bound in a canvas binding that has spiritualist symbols as decoration. Do you think that today's Jehovah's Witnesses could use imaginary but instructive stories that take place on a UFO or during a spiritualist séance in their preaching? Because when Jesus said that someone suffered in hell, then - if he only intended this as a parable - couldn't he have thought of a less spiritualist story? If you want to have a Bible bound by a bookbinder, does it have to be bound in a skin with dwarfs, witches, and demons from fairy tales? Isn't it enough that Jesus used the fairy tale world of Greek mythology, and on top of that, the word HADES itself is a mirror image of such a fairy tale world!
Dear Nincsnevem, you keep making the assertion that Jesus/the LXX translators used hades for sheol and this somehow means that they did not equate either sheol or hades with the grave. That is the height of grasping at straws. Your point cannot be demonstrated this way. As a matter of linguistic fact, sheol and hades are equivalent, but that doesn't mean they share the exact same range of meaning. Have you ever thought that two groups of people can use the same word but signify different concepts via their employment of the same word? It happens all the time, even in the GNT.
As for the rich man and Lazarus story being "spiritualist," that is your spin on the parable. I don't believe it's any such thing.
Regarding hades, look at how Revelation uses death and hades in tandem. Some have compared Homeric poetry and its similar language; however, one must be careful when drawing parallels.
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