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  • From: furuli AT online.no
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: RE: [b-hebrew] [b-hebrew nefarious nefesh
  • Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 11:37:08 +0100

Dear Peter and Liz,

There is no evidence in the Tanach that its writers believed that
dead persons were alive in a spiritual or literal body. And
similarly, there is no such evidence in the Christian Greek
Scriptures. The writers of the Tanach believed in the existence of
$DYM (Deut 32:17; Ps 136:36,37) - spirit creatures that were enemies
of YHWH. When the people sacrificed to idols, in reality they
sacrificed to living gods, the SDYM. Exactly the same view is found
in 1 Corinthians 10:19,20, where the Greek word corresponding to $DYM
is DAIMWN.

When we interpret a text we should, from the point of view of the
writer, differentiate between two situations:

1. Visions. (Matt 17: 1-9. Moses and Elijah were not present in
person with Jesus, it was a *vision*, v. 9)

2. Spiritistic séances. The situation with the medium in En-dor.

A question to consider is: Why should the things or persons a
spiritistic medium sees be more real than what is seen in a vision?
And if not, is it at all meaningful to discuss whether the medium saw
a literal body or a spirit?


Best regards

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo



Liz, where in the gospel of John or elsewhere in the NT do you find the
concept of a disembodied spirit or disembodied god? I ask because I wonder
if there is really a difference here between Jewish and early Christian
beliefs. The only reference I can think of is to the "unclean spirits" in
the gospels, but 1) these are earlier than the gospel of John 2) while they
could be expelled from one body, they had to immediately find another body
as they could not exist apart from a body. I won't go into more detail only
because this tends to go off topic.

Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/






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