In various discussions, the concept of spiritual death rises to help explain inconsistencies between Bible authors.
My contention is that the Old Testament prophets and writers of the Torah do not present a concept of spiritual death. I feel that the spiritual death concept is a later concept influenced by Greek philosophers. I’m not even sure that the current usage of the term spiritual death is the same as the Greek concept of material and spiritual.
One example of this issue are the verses Exodus 20:5 and Ezekiel 18:20
Exodus 20:5
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me
Ezekiel 18:20
The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.
It has been argued that the punishment in these verses may deal with spiritual death and not real time physical punishment or death.
I feel that the verses show a change in the society. The Priestly Exodus verse is corporate oriented and pertains to those who supposedly hate God. Probably written before the fall of the southern kingdom.
The later Ezekiel verse deals with individuals and administering punishment.
Zoroastrians and Judaism, to 400 BCE Ezra's laws were presented as Yahweh's laws. This included the traditional eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. The custom of an entire family being considered guilty for the act of any one of its members was discarded in favor of individual responsibility: the father was to continue to have supreme authority within the family, but a father would not be punished for the sins of a son, or a son for the sins of the father.
According to the author of John, even the disciples of Jesus associated physical afflictions with sin of the individual or their parents.
John 9:1-41
His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
I don’t feel that either verse is referring to a spiritual death or a future ethereal punishment. I don’t feel that the prophets or the Torah writers referred to spiritual death. Punishment and death were real time and physical.
The threat of death for eating from the tree of life is also attributed to spiritual death and not real time physical death.
Show me that any of the plain text readings of the prophets or the Torah writers speak of spiritual death or future ethereal punishment without invoking later concepts or adding to the text.
(I request this be placed in "The Bible: Accuracy and Inerrancy" thread. - Thanks)
Edited by purpledawn, : No reason given.
™ Version 4.2