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Loading...In thinking about Sheol and death in the Hebrew Bible, it is worth reflecting on passages where the dead come back to life or are contacted by the living. This does not happen much at all – a couple of instances of resuscitation and one of necromancy.
Probably the most famous resuscitation – the bringing back to life of a dead person – involves the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 17:17-24. Elijah has been helping an unnamed widow from the town of Zarephath, miraculously providing her and her son with food during a divinely-mandated drought/famine (which the prophet brought to teach the wicked King Ahab a lesson). But the boy dies. The widow is understandably distraught – the prophet was supposed to be helping her and now her son has died. Some help.
Elijah takes the boy, though,
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Our porch ceiling is blue to keep the haints away.
“What is one to make of this? Has Samuel been divinized? Is every shade in Sheol a divine being, or is it just great prophets of God who are?”
Or is Saul simply “doing obeisance” in response to what would, we can assume, have been an awe-inspiring experience even for him?
Good Afternoon, Bart,
Last night, I listened to your podcast, ‘Do We Have a Soul?’ and this morning, while I was reciting the 23rd Psalm to myself and said the line, ‘You restore my soul.’ Since the psalm is from the Hebrew Bible, to what do you believe the word is referring?
Thank you.
Jeanne Lane
I think it means something like “you enliven me when I am so down.” Humans do have a “soul” in the Bible: it is an intrinsic part of being human. But it doesn’t exist apart from the body.
The references in the Old Testament to Elijah and Enoch going to heaven must be either typos or mistranslations. As any believing Christian will tell u, the gate to heaven was closed to mankind when Adam and Eve attempted to obtain a knowledge reserved to the gods, i.e., knowledge of good and evil, by eating the forbidden fruit. Said gate was not opened until Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.
Dr. Bart, u ryte, “What is unfortunate is that in none of these cases – the two in the Old Testament and the one in the Gospel of Luke – does the person who is revived tell us anything about what it was like to be dead.” I have always suspected that the authors of these miraculous resurrections subconsciously believed that the resurrected had nothing to tell because when they died, they simply went out of existence (a point with which i fully concur). These authors failed to think through these resurrection stories. They simply wanted to exalt Jesus.
Dr. Ehrman:
The last great prophet Samuel is the one who anointed both Saul and his successor David as King of Israel.
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy (2021):
The historically accurate King Saul was Labayu/Labaya.
Labayu/a was from the 14th century BCE
David was from the 10th century BCE.
Historical Accuracy, Section B: The Biblical United Kingdom of Saul, David, and Solomon
B1. United Kingdom of: Labayu and Saul
ps 54-67
No prophet could anoint a person from the 14th century B.C.E., then a different person from the 10th century B.C.E.
Historians must use a Post-Rosetta Stone Perspective on the Hebrew Bible, taking into account the value added by Egyptology.
In the case of Labaya/u and King Saul, see: The Amarna Letters. William L. Moran, editor and translator. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1992 (English-language edition).
Also see, Manley, Bill. The Seventy Great Mysteries of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson, 2003.
An interesting side point to the woman of Endor story: necromancy – doresh el-hamaytim (inquiring of the dead) – is explicitly forbidden by the Torah (Deut. 18:11). Yet the author of Samuel writes that it was Saul who had made that law, and in the next verse gives Saul the authority to waive the law. This is good evidence suggesting that the Torah laws were unknown in Saul’s time (or in the time of the author of Samuel, which may not be the same thing). In other words, in Saul’s day, the king, not Moses or God, was the source of the law, just as was the case all through the ANE. (Other texts show the same pattern throughout the lifetime of the two kingdoms.)
Yup, that’s why he goes in disguise! But I don’t think it shows the laws were known in Saul’s time. It shows that they were known at the time the author wrote the story about Saul.