Do you think Job 14:13-15 is speaking about a hope of a resurrection?
Also, In one of your presentations you spoke of everlasting fire for the wicked spoken of in the book of Revelation.
How do you explain Revelation 20:14. Their the lake of fire means the second death. Not eternal torment.?
Research if your questions are directed towards Prof Ehrman be aware he doesn’t come over to this side much. This area is for discussions among members of the blog. If you want to address your questions directly to Prof Ehrman your best bet is to respond to one of his regular posts. However if you’re just throwing this out to us regular folk…
I think the Job reference reveals the fairly standard view of ancient Hebrew writers and thinkers, that all we really have is this life followed at best by a shadowy existence of some sort in Sheol, which in a lot of instances seems nothing more than a metaphor for the silence and emptiness of the grave. In v14 when the writer says, “If a man die, shall he live again?” I think he is being rhetorical and proverbial and the expected answer is “no”. This life is all there is.
I look forward to Prof Ehrman’s discussion in his new book of the apocalyptic language of the reference in Revelation and its significance. His book comes out next week.
I respectfully disagree. It seems that Job was asking the question as a rhetorical statement that he was NOT going to be left in the grave, but that God would resurrect him when he came to establish his kingdom.
And the Revelation passages have nothing to do with eternal torture. I believe Isaiah 34 has the major key to interpret it.
Both require a colossal amount of foundational knowledge to understand.
100% my friend. Ok, so for the record, I am trilingual, English, obviously, Spanish, and Greek.
Soooo, let’s talk a bit about Job. I was actually commenting about it in a thread with Prof Ehrman, but I can’t seem to copy the exact link to it. I have this, which was Prof Ehrman’s reply to my comment:
** you do not have permission to see this link **
If you scroll up, you can see mine under “Mellon”. Prof Ehrman’s commentary is that he believes the Hebrew is not translatable. So I can’t answer that question specifically, but I do know what the Septuagint says, which I commended there.
Feel free to take a look at that, and if you have questions let me know.
The eminent literary critic and Hebrew scholar Robert Alter just published his complete three volume translation and commentary of the Hebrew Bible which he has been working on for twenty years and releasing in installments sans the long anticipated work on the Prophets included in this completed ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
His translation of Job 14:10-14 as follows. (I provide the other verses for context.)
But a strong man dies defeated,
man breathes his last, and where is he?
Water runs out from a lake,
and a river is parched and dries up,
bit a man lies down and will not arise,
till the sky is no more he will not awake
and will not rouse from his sleep.
Would that you hid me in Sheol,
concealed me till your anger passed,
set a limit and recalled me.
If a man dies will he live?
All my hard service days I shall hope
until my vanishing comes.
In his commentary Alter points out that the reference to Sheol is not about survival after death but a cry for the grave to hide Job from Yahweh’s wrath. In v14 the verbal root of chalifati , (“vanishing”) is best translated “to be gone, or to slip away”. “Change” is only a secondary sense of the root.
So it appears my original perception was correct. Job is giving the traditional Hebrew view of man’s post-mortem fate. Sheol as an image of the grave.
I suppose I should note that Alter is himself Jewish and so not predisposed to read Christian concerns back into the Hebrew Bible.
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