Spiritual Death is Not Biblical

Yes of course, that's the whole point of the story. Can you not read?Maybe I'm not being fair. Religious issues stir people up and cloud their thinking, they put a lot of pressure on a person. So let's sort of take the same kind of content and make a different word problem with it, one that won't be so controversial.We have two statements, that disagree, and then the outcome, with commentary by one of the speakers. So let's say that one speaker, let's call him George W, says that some other country, call it Iraq, has WMD's. Another speaker, let's call him David Letterman, says not only do they not have WMD's, but if we waste money on a big war right now our economy will end up collapsing. So then (in this hypothetical case) what happens is, there turn out not be any WMD's and furthermore the economy does in fact collapse.In a case like this, is George W then going to get away with saying something like "Uh, what I really meant was spiritual WMD's? Nope. And if we happen to have something like a tape of him saying something like "You can fool some of the people all of the time; and we are going to concentrate on those." Well then. It's not hard to tell who is lying, right?So now let's walk through it again from the Bible. First we have one statement. Now here we have another statement which is contradictory. And now here we have the outcome You see that? Not only does he not die "on the day he eats thereof", he's in real danger of living forever, something that apparently wouldn't otherwise be going to happen! So who's telling the truth, and who's lying?Don't be surprised by this, guys. God lies all the time. That's the whole crux of the plot of the story of Jonah! Here's another nice bit about Jonah. He that hath an ear to understand, let him hear Pop quiz: those of you who can do the simple math required to count days and nights from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, is Jesus in this passage saying that the story of Jonah and the whale is literally true or not?

Exactly! But then that wouldn't be a plain reading of the text at all, would it?Earlier in the thread someone was using "Sheol" as an example of the idea of spiritual death and/or existence of the soul separate from the body. But when I was growing up I learned (in church!) that sheol was actually the Hebrew word for "the grave". Speaking of people as being in The Grave and having certain experiences could be interpreted, even in a plain reading, as meaning something more than literal. But I would call it metaphorical, rather than spiritual.That doesn't mean it couldn't later be interpreted as a spiritual existence, of course. Or, it could later be interpreted as an allegory for the retroactive feelings of the resurrected person. Or, it could later be interpreted as mere poetic language. But at best, without such development, on a plain reading of the original text independently of commentary, it has to be interpreted as a contradiction or a metaphor.I don't see even this difficulty with Genesis 2&3. On a plain reading of the text, God says someone's going to die on a particular day, and they don't. The snake says not only are they not going to die on that day but in fact what will actually happen on that day is that they will get smart. They try it, and get smart. God says oh no, they've gotten smart, there's a real danger now of them Not Ever dying. We need to get them out of here!This reads as a vary familar story type characterizing adult / child relations. Farmer Brown says Stay out of my tomater patch kids, or I'm gonna kill you! The kids steal some tomatoes anyway, and Farmer Brown doesn't actually kill them, he just chases them off. I don't believe the contemporary reader would have seen this as an example of God's spiritual plan for redemption, so much as an example of God's mercy.This is part of why I drag Jonah into the question. Sure, God says he's going to do awful things. But his bark is worse than his bite. God's motto appears to be, never put off til tomorrow, what you can put off for hundreds of years.Later, when the people are smarter, or at least less grateful for the mercy, then there may come various "spiritual" interpretations. Oh, that was just a "spiritual" death (or creation?) It doesn't mean an actual 24-hour day!

This is good! out of all the examples that have been cited, this is the one that I think comes the closest to showing that there were at least some people in Israel at the time when the Torah and Nephibim were being written who believed in spirits, ghosts, some form of life after death or existence separate from the body.Of course it's very strongly associated with the exact kind of superstition and demonolatry which the Law most vehemently condemns! But it's still better than anything else I've seen. Just as a side question, what do you really think was happening in this story? In terms of an interpretation, I mean, do you believe Samuel was actually in Sheol and was actually let out to fool with Saul and the witch? Nope, I would take that as a metaphor. The fact that the metaphor is immediately explained in the same phrase helps a lot, though. Metaphorical eyes, knowing-good-from-evil eyes, all good. But it takes some interpretation outside the story to advance those up to being spiritual eyes.If the death in this same story is to be seen as a metaphorical death, that's in line with a plain reading. When Johnny says "Dad's gonna kill me when he sees this F" he is speaking metaphorically. He is using death as a hyperbole to represent Extremely Bad Consequences.Interestingly though, he may not have known this the first time he said that! It may have taken some time for him to get to know his father properly, and develop enough faith in him to know that his bark is worse than his bite. This is important because events in Genesis are represented as all happening For The Very First Time. Again, I see a strong lesson about forgiveness here. It takes later apologetics to interpret "spiritual death" into it.

Hi Buz! I kind of like this reading, a little. Not as much as the Witch of Endor! But it does say something about progressive revelation. The way you are looking at it, from a late vantage point, kind of puts more into it than the reader would see back then. But it's something!Let's walk through it as if we were reading the book for the first time. First the reader sees what I've pointed out, in the story of the Fall: God says they are going to die, and then they don't actually physically die. Then the Curse follows here, and in the background, too subtle to pay much attention to, God kills some animals and skins them. Adam and Eve don't die, but some animals do.Then in the story of the Sacrifice, it's Abel who kills some animals. Some firstborn animals. Cain doesn't, he offers some vegetables instead. First fruits, sure, but it doesn't help, Abel wins. So then at this point Cain does some killing of his own, he kills Abel. A theme is developing here, yes? It doesn't by any means come out and say "spiritual death", but it does say Something Is Going On.This reminds me of a novel I had the good luck to read when I was much younger. I don't recall the title, but it was an attempt to do "historical fiction" or whatever with the Eden story. Anyway, Abel keeps yammering on about how important it is to kill the firstborn. Cain, being the firstborn himself, identifies with the lamb Abel is going to whack and tries to discourage him. Over time he gets the idea that Abel is implying that for his own offering, he ought to kill himself!His paranoia increases as his fruit offering is rejected, and he ends up killing Abel. Then he gets cursed and spends a long long time alone. Eventually he meets other people, later descendants of Adam, and gets married and has a son. And he kills that son, and builds a city over him, and starts the whole reputed ancient religious tradition of literally killing the firstborn son which turns up later in tales of Baal and Moloch. He hopes this will get him off the hook, so he wont't have to die, but it doesn't, eventually Lamech kills him anyway.The reason I mention this story is because I want to draw attention to the fact that the people in the story, and the original readers as well, could have certainly got some ideas from the events depicted. But they could have been different ideas from the ones you are getting. The implication that there is Something Special playing out is one thing; Paul's final version of "spiritual death" is a whole lot more, and later, and very hard to see until the Greeks have been arguing philosophy with you on Mars Hill for a bit, for example?

I don't think this is a good argument. It sounds like it might be, because "cherubim" is a strange word. But it's untranslated Hebrew! There's no reason to believe that the original Hebrew-speaking reader wouldn't have a concept of "cherubim".Let's use "griffin" as a cognate. If we have griffins in our folklore, and then we read a story that says a garden was guarded by griffins, we understand the plain reading just fine! If later we read another story that says there are griffins on poles as part of a magic box, or a diatribe that refers to an unliked king as "an oily griffin", it may add to our interpretation of the original garden story, sure. But we could read it just fine without the extra commentary.It's a particularly bad argument because we do have an idea of "cherubim" in common English. We think they are fat little cupid angels! When we read the garden story, we don't have any trouble thinking of the guardians as angels, if vacuous ones. When we read about the poles and the King of Tyre, we may still have this idea, without it messing us up too much.If, later, somewhere, we learn that cherubim aren't actually cupids but rather supernatural beings having attributes of both bird and beast (griffins!) it may deepen our understanding. But we still had the right idea all along, it's just a matter of detail.This is rather different from thinking death means real death, or at least the threat of real death, or at least a metaphor for really bad consequences; and then being told that it really means something about mortal ghosts that don't appear in the story at all and that we are stupid for not seeing it that way.

I suggest that you don't want it in A&I because you don't like the constraint of having to debate honestly. Why not? You respond to attempts to get you to do so by the OP in a very revealing fashion Message 188This cherubim question is a great example of bad argument. Pick a hard word, claim we need later uses of the word to understand it, argue that because your translation leaves the word in Hebrew instead of paraphrasing it there's a danger that I'm claiming it's only written for Jews! It's pure sophistry ... Why not? It's a word in English, not just in Hebrew! You may not know what a garden is, from the Old High German garth, an enclosed place. But that doesn't mean you need a later book in the Bible to explain it to you, you can either know the language you are reading or else use a dictionary. ForbiddenEdited by Iblis, : No reason given.

Thanks for your generous answer, I'm going to walk through it point by point for places where I think there may still be some confusion Yes, here, provisionally Message 1Exodus and Ezekiel are then produced as good places to start. Yeah, this bothered me too at first. Of course, it's a lot smoother read than "Spiritual Death is not Torah-Nephibim-y". But still, I thought it was kind of inflammatory.But I dropped this objection when I realized that purpledawn was perfectly willing to discuss further hagiography once the Law and the Prophets were dealt with thoroughly. The intent was just to facilitate an attention to the plain reading by excluding later interpretations from the original texts.There's some question as to what order the information attributed to Moses and the various prophets becomes available; for example Deuteronomy was probably not available to some of the earlier prophets, regardless when it may have been written. This becomes even more complex when one looks closely at the scribal markings and tries to determine when various texts may have been compiled together to produce the composite of speeches, censuses, laws, chronicles and generalogies we now have in our hands.So let's take the Law and the Prophets as our starting point and not quibble about it, but leave out the Psalms and Gospels and Epistles and so forth that we know were still being developed at a much later date until we are sure what the plain reading of the older texts is saying. This way, we won't confuse ourselves with anachronisms too much. Not at all! What I'm trying to impress on you is that "cherubim" is a perfectly good English word. It means, loosely, a kind of angel; and lots of people know that! If the word isn't in your vocabulary for some reason, you can look it up.Sure, Webster refers to the Prophets when he defines it (along with art and culture.) The Bible is a core document for ideas about angels! But the reason he's defining it for you is because you missed out on it somewhere growing up, you weren't exposed to the art or folklore or sermons that would have made it a familiar word.The reason I'm making this point is because I think Moses or Jasher's audience would have known perfectly well what a cherub was! If for some reason they didn't, they could have researched it somehow and discovered it was an angel or supernatural being represented as a man/bull/lion/eagle chimera. Their V'BSTR'Sh scroll might have shown them a picture of one of those annoyed looking sphinxes that sat out in front of the temple of Babylon.But a lot of them stood outside that temple themselves! They were like "Look, meet me over next to the cherubim and we will go get us some pulse and water at Belshazzar's place." And a lot more probably got told by their mom that if they didn't stop bugging her while she was trying to count the shekels, she was going to feed them to the cherubim. They knew what they were.

So Adam was something like a golem? (A soulless construct made from clay for a specific purpose, and having no share in the world to come) All the geneaological material (toledoth) start with Adam though. When if ever did Adam's descendants get souls? Did they get them by interbreeding with the real people or by some other means? Is there some special significance to all the Bible heroes being descended from the golem, did it make them particularly suitable for being drowned and chased back and forth through deserts and massacred in various ways? The one that still had a hole in its side from being speared that was so big you could stick your hand in there? (Or did you mean some other resurrection, that happened in some other verse?)

This doesn't seem to be a valid question in reference to the plain text. Here, let's look at the story again We aren't told that the tree of life is made for man at all. In fact, we are quickly given the idea that it has another purpose, and is not intended for the gardener in any way. This becomes even clearer once they have eaten the fruit of one of those trees. They have become a sort of partial god, having superior knowledge; and there is a real danger that they will also make themselves unkillable, and enter into full godhood. This can't be stood for, it upsets some sort of hierarchy, the creatures are overturning the order of creation, and drastic steps have to be taken to stop it, involving other members of the heavenly court stepping up and taking a watch. Edited by Iblis, : splelign

I'm really glad you mention this passage in the New Testament context, it makes an excelllent example for use in discussing the reading vs the interpretation. You seem to be taking the position that the text isn't talking about Jesus preaching to the actual physically dead in his near future or contemporary age, but rather that it is a metaphor for his living audience's state of separation from God or "spiritual death".But is that the way the original audience and readers of the Gospel, unmediated by Augustine, Calvin and Billy Sunday, would have taken it? Here's the same doctrine again in another passage If the death is in the flesh, and the life is in the spirit, then where is the "spiritual death" in this story? Luckily Peter has already told us what his real context is What do you think this passage is saying in plain language? As opposed to what you might want it to mean from a modern perspective.What I'm really asking you is, where do you think Jesus was during those mysterious "three days" when he wasn't physically alive? What do you think he was doing? Do you somehow have the idea that he came back from Hades alone? The early church had a very firm opinion as to what these passages were talking about. Before the Gospel or even many of the Epistles were written, they already knew what they believed, and it wasn't some watered-down apologetics about Jimi Hendrix not feeling quite whole without a personal deity. Harrowing of Hell - Wikipedia

Wouldn't part of the appeal for using this phrase be the fact that it's a way of getting back behind our logical faculties and making an emotionally compelling argument? We can talk about alienation or bad tendencies or lack of self-control all day long without really waking up our audience, but when we start crooning about "speerachool DAYUTH" we can get them foaming pretty quick.We don't mind being "depressed" or even "imbalanced" if that's what it takes to get the dope we want from the monopolistic psychiatry / insurance / pharmaceuticals cartel; but we don't want to be DEAD. We fear the very mention of, you know, "passing on", the same way we fear snakes and spiders and things that go *bump* in the night. It activates our fight-or-flight response, marginalizes our critical thinking, and makes us easy marks for snake-oil salesmen and cult recruiters.If Sun-Myung Moon's followers were to come up to us talking about "spiritual death" we might well say No Thanks Man and go on about our business. Why shouldn't we do the same thing when it's one of Billy Graham's converts?Edited by Iblis, : titleEdited by Iblis, : goety

I'm happy to get to this, now that we've done some of the groundwork. First, let's look at the next verse to get an idea of the context Again we find John commenting on a doctrine that already exists in the church. In this case it's one of the loggia or Dominical Sayings, something which would have a great priority among believers.Let's look at the original saying as Matthew gives it This is normally preached in conjunction with the parallel teaching on adultery that follows its exposition in the Sermon In other words, just as lust is "heart" adultery, so also hatred must be understood as "heart" murder. This is the doctrine that John is expounding in this passage. Notice that he doesn't say "dead" in 3:14, but rather "of death" and "in death." Hatred is the same sin as murder, though perhaps to a lesser degree. The intention is the same, whether it is carried out or not; and the effect on the sinner is qualitatively, if not quantitately, similar.We see this in real life a lot. Just as murderers feel guilty, repress their guilt, fear discovery, and may react to attempts to reach them with violence; so also people repressing hatred are likely to suffer guilt, fear, and uncontrollable reactions. It often happens that someone who hates in their heart without acting on it will feel a terrible irrational sense of guilt when the object of their hate suffers an unrelated death. "I killed them! I wanted them dead! It's my fault!" is the sort of thing we tend to hear, often about a parent or spouse.But John is clearly going beyond this, he's developing further doctrine in addition to the plain reading of the saying. He seems to be postulating something like the "culture of death" we tend to talk about in modern philosophy. That makes this verse a great choice on your part to find some basis for the tentative ideas you are expressing about what "spiritual death" might mean.The kill-and-be-killed cycle of crime and punishment, atrocity and vendetta, striving and failing, that produces such intellectual nausea in us in modern times isn't new, though we may hope to have some new thoughts about it. The feeling of alienation and impending doom that it inspires in us is exactly what Jimi Hendrix is singing about, and the philosophers are canting over, and the street preachers are appealing to to get our attention, souls, money, or whatever it is they might be trying to acquire.This is a close cognate to the Buddhist idea of the chain of causation (nidana) which characterizes our material reality as a cycle of suffering (samsara). One popular poetic expression of this quandary is as a "Wheel of Horrors" (karma) which we must somehow find a way to stop, cease contributing to, and escape from. ’ You may have noticed that I'm not the least bit shy about using other texts to help show the meaning of the one we are touching on. This may seem like a violation of the principle of the "plain reading" that we are trying to adhere to, but it isn't. And it isn't just that these texts are closer together in time, similar to the way the Law and the Prophets might be seen as being. Purpledawn may be allowing us to use Zechariah to explain Genesis or whatever, but that's just a mercy, it's not good use of the peshat principle.The reason I'm doing it is because it seems clear to me that the passages in question, which are written before John, and which he either had available to him or at least was intimately familiar with the doctrines expressed in, are what John is talking about. In other words, it's no good using Paul to explain Adam until we are sure what Adam is about on its own. Then we can see whether Paul is saying something new which was hidden from us in the text (sod), or simply appealing to what Moses or one of the prophets has already told us.This is why I refer to Peter in conjuction with the earlier passage from John. When John talks about the gospel already having been preached among the dead, and some of them being raised back to life in the process, he is making reference to something the early church believed was real and actual, not metaphorical, something that had genuinely happened in literal terms and many people had witnessed.He may be saying something more; he may be saying we are a lot like those dead patriarchs, we may have to wait and be patient, we may have to be faithful and believe like Abraham, and have that belief be the sum of our righteousness for right now. He may be saying that our life in this world is a lot like the "Hades" that Noah and David were waiting in until they got harrowed the hell out of there, and that we will too.But he can't be saying anything less. He can't be saying it didn't happen, it's only a metaphor, in short, that the plain meaning of the doctrine is false and only the hidden things he is revealing now are true. Can he? Sure, some weak brother who doesn't want to rationally believe in the harrowing of hell might still get some value out of John's further exposition. But that's just a mercy; it doesn't mean it didn't happen does it?The principle of peshat is not just an interesting critical tool for understanding ancient documents, it's an absolutely essential approach to the scriptures if we want to show proper respect to the original authors and their inspiration. Moses had something important to say, and he said it. He doesn't need Paul to make his message clear for us. Paul also has something to say; and if what he is talking about is what Moses said, then we ought to take a good look at what Moses said so what Paul says can build on that properly.This goes back to what I was saying about the cherubim. Sure, in a perfect world we would all know every word in our language, but if we don't, we can use a dictionary. In a perfect church, we might all have the loggia and related doctrines memorized; but if we don't, we can look them up. But we can't look them up in some book that didn't exist at the time the author was writing, or the doctrines of men are liable to confuse us. This is why I started off by talking about griffins, they are a derivative of the Akkadian term kiribu which cherubim also descends from, and which predates or is contemporary with times as early even as Moses. Cherub - Wikipedia

I suppose it's time to get down to the verses actually specified in the OP. Notice that the Exodus quote doesn't even mention death at all?Ezekiel is writing as a priest deprived of his temple, among a people who have lost their country and been carried away captive to a totally different culture into which they are forcibly being assimilated. Let's look back toward the beginning of the passage, to get the context Ezekiel isn't writing in a vacuum here, having served under King Jehoiachin in the ruins of the "good kingship" of Josiah, one of the most profound influences in his life would have been the prophet Jeremiah I wish we knew the source of the "sour grapes" reference, it doesn't appear to be related to Aesop; I expect it is a Babylonian proverb of some kind.But we do know what the business about how everyone should die for their own iniquity is about. The reforms instituted under Josiah which made Jeremiah's ministry possible were inspired by the introduction into common usage of the book of Deuteronomy. Ezekiel, being a priest, would have been intimately familiar with these words Now that we have gotten a foothold in the actual Torah, it may be tempting to drag Exodus right in and let Moses fight it out with Moses. But we aren't really justified in doing this yet, we have no reason to claim that Ezekiel or Jeremiah had it available to them.It took Ezra and company 12 years of very rigorous scholarship to compile together the complete Torah in 5 books that we have now. The Exodus passage may have been part of the law that was forgotten during the reigns of King Manasseh and his son Amon; but if so, it was forgotten. What we know was found or restored was simply Deuteronomy.I would settle for a textual indication that Ezekiel or Jeremiah had the Exodus passage in front of them. Something like a reference to yet a further "generation" would be perfect. But, it simply isn't there.There are other things that these prophets most certainly were able to read and make reference too, though. In the previous "good kingship" under Hezekiah in the prior century, Isaiah had written extensively about the kingdom that was now their primary problem This is one of the prettiest parts of Isaiah, by the way. It's from that wonderful diatribe against the prince of Babylon that Origen highjacked to dress up his brilliantly evocative myth about fallen angels and Jerome subverted into a political attack on one of the enemies of his mentor Athanasius, the conservative bishop Lucifer of Caligari. We don't have any doubt that Exekiel loved it too; he modeled his own poetic attack on the king of Tyre directly after this passage. Now, do we have anything in this part of Isaiah to indicate that he may have been familiar with the Exodus text?Could be So, having a gotten us a preponderance of the scriptures, rightly divided, we should be able to settle this question without appealing to any post-Biblical "magic bullet" solution at all.What is it that Babylon is notorious for; that Ezekiel and Jeremiah had every reason to worry their countrymen were going to fall down into; that Isaiah is certain of the consequences of; that is the subject of the condemnation in Exodus? Idolatry.The rule of law is what punishes individual crimes. Fairly applied, it punishes only the individual criminal. But idolatry brings bad consequences down on more than just the individual, it affects whole nations and their posterity.If I steal something, or kill someone, I'm the one who is at fault. I should accept responsibility for my actions and bear the consequences.But if you subvert the rule of law and take time and money that should be used to feed the hungry and heal the sick and clothe the poor; and use it instead to set up stone tablets in the courthouse in direct violation of the laws of man and God; or to try to replace the living word of truth that is available in every library in America with some apologetic pseudo-science that you lie about buying and blame on one of your fellow church members; or in short, to try to replace the God of the bible with some idol created by Augustine to help hold a wicked empire together; well then, the consequences of that are going to affect more people than just you, they are going to bring misery down on your children and their children and everyone else who falls under the influence of your hypocritical vain self-righteous idolatry.But as for the actual application of the justice system, in that sense we are just going to punish you. Edited by Iblis, : get the message?