Hi Dondi,
Yep I have absolutely no issues with “some form of conscious existence after death”… what I’m not finding as clear is any notion of prayers offered towards or on behalf of the said “dead” anywhere in the OT; unless of course I’m just not aware of it… is there such that you are aware of?
The most famous instance in the Old Testament is the story of Judas Maccabaeus (2 Macc 12:38-46):
Uh, no, I can’t buy that for at least two reasons:
1.) Stylistically it would be, so far as I can tell, absolutely unique. The {amên soi legô} is a characteristic style for Jesus to talk, not only across the Synoptics but also in GosJohn (though there with a double “amen” usually) – it’s so characteristic, and almost or totally unique among ancient Jewish or Christian figures, that even hypersceptics who admit the existence of Jesus at all tend to regard the Amen sayings as historical. Adding a “today” to it for emphasis would be grossly unusual for His style. While that’s not strictly impossible, your defense seems to rely on accepting the phraseology as a fairly normal way of adding emphasis, over against the idea that He’s saying something is going to happen today – and for Jesus it wasn’t a normal way of adding emphasis.
1.5.) Relatedly, phrase sets are a common way in Biblical Greek of approximating what we’d use punctuation for, and {amên soi legô} is one of those phrase sets, much like {kai eipen aut(i)ô} which precedes it, “And he said to them”, the main difference being that the “amen” saying is uniquely characteristic to Jesus in the Gospels (and in ancient literature more generally).
2.) Precisely because the saying is so very typical of Jesus’ style, the only feasible way to argue that “today” modifies the verb “I am saying”, would be for “today” to be clustered inside the saying. {soi} and {legô} can change places (they do in different textual families of this verse for example), but the clause indicates the start of a declaration, what Jesus is saying to them.
Admittedly, “today” {sêmeron} is the very next word after the signaling declaration clause, and it’s immediately after the verb of the clause and not next to {es(i)ê} “you shall be”, so I can understand why from a mere lack of punctuation you could argue (apart from ideological preferences either way) it was part of the declaration phrase this time. On the other hand, “with me” fronts the verb “you shall be”, so it isn’t like “today” would be out of place in the construction of this side of the sentence by fronting its verb – though again I’ll admit the immediate grammatic issue would be clearer if “today” was farther down the sentence (as it would also be clearer if it was inside the declaration clause).
The grammar per se can go either way, as you acknowledge when you appeal to a lack of punctuation; so the decision has to be made on stylistic grounds, as you also acknowledge by appealing to a particular style for comparison – but Jesus doesn’t use that style elsewhere.
The stylistic ground weighs strongly, if not deductively, in favor of “today” being the start of what is being declaration, not a modifier of the announcement that Jesus will say something true.
Granted, Knoch punctuates it as “to you I am saying today”, but he has no grammatic reason to do so, and I’d say no stylistic reason either.
That being said, I’ll allow that in some other cases though not entirely parallel, for example Luke 4:21, a {hoti} is added to help distinguish when the speaking starts. Mark 14:30 might count as some slight evidence in your favor, since two words {hoti} and {su} separate the declaration introduction from “today”, i.e. “Amen I am saying to you that you today this night” will be denying Jesus before the rooster crows. A {hoti} fronts “today” before the speaking starts in Luke 19:9, too.
A {hoti} isn’t always used to clearly signal the start of the actual speaking, Luke 23:43 itself being the most pertinent obvious example 
, but without the {hoti} the stylistic understanding would be that the speaking starts after the declaration that Jesus is going to tell them something truly.
I have a lot of ‘work’ work to do today {sêmeron} , so I’ll have to get back to the other points of discussion later.
I am interested in the ‘today’ portion of that scripture verse - ‘today’ you will be with me in Paradise.
When Christ died - was that Jesus the man, or the Eternal Word? Or both?
That aside, when Christ died, did He then go directly to Paradise, or was he dead? Was there just an eyeblink that was the moment of death, then straight to Paradise? Did the eternal Word, the Logos, die, cease to exist, for even the blink of an eye? Or was he truly dead until raised on the third day?
Sincere questions, btw, not playing theology here…(as I’ve been known to do)…
David, if one believes that the Council of Chalcedon got things right, then the answer to your question is … yes, with one qualification: the Eternal Word dies on the cross in his assumed human nature, not in his divine nature.
Fr. Kimel - but His consciousness, his thinking and feeling, his awareness, that he had from the beginning - died? He did not exist for a period of days?
Dave, should we even be speculating on that? An answer would require access to an area of God’s life to which we have no access. But do not the Scriptures speak of Christ preaching to the souls in Hades on Holy Saturday (1 Pet 3:18-21)?
If we have no access to it, then being dogmatic about it one way or the other seems misguided, that’s what I was getting at.
Of course it is a GREAT mystery. And I think our God is plenty big enough and generous enough that our little questions don’t bother Him a bit.
Though Chalcedon seemed to think there was access to it, and laid down the dogma…
Pretty sure the orthodox position is that Christ did not cease to exist (and then start up again later, nor tunnel between the timepoints as we might say today) once He finished physically dying.
(I think the miaphysites would agree, and at worst the Nestorian party would say only the human nature of Christ ceased to exist – but I gather they’d insist the divine nature of Christ stayed with the human nature whatever happened, so still not ceasing to exist.)
Doesn’t mean other people don’t temporarily cease to exist or tunnel forward through time however, Christ being a special-case situation.
Dave, check out this article by Hilarion Alfeyev on the Harrowing of Hell: orthodoxeurope.org/page/11/1/5.aspx
Who died?
edit: sorry Fr. Akimel, we must have posted at the same moment. I will read that article, thank you.
^^ Not sure who you’re asking there, Dave, or in what regard. Edit, never mind.
I have the book that that article is a precis of, and it’s quite interesting and impressive. 
Whilst I’m passing through on pseudo-lunch – if my reading of Ephesians 3:7-11 is accurate, Paul emphasized the scope of evangelizing Gentiles by a ‘greater includes the lesser’ comparison using evangelization of rebel angels as the greater standard!
i.e., we’re even supposed to be evangelizing rebel angels, so of course we’re supposed to be evangelizing all the Gentiles, duh. 
Evangelizing one kind of rebel spirit doesn’t necessarily mean another kind of rebel spirit even exists after death to be evangelized, but the theme is at least suggestive. (Also probably connected with who and what exactly was being evangelized by Christ in 1 Peter 3 and 4.)
The OT tells us little about practices in relation to the dead among for the Israelite community as a whole, just elements to do with purity, with the aim at least in part of re-visioning the right order of creation which is part the pre-occupation with keeping certain things distinct and separate with things being okay one place but not another, as a liturgical re-ordering of the world to reestablish order and ideas of right order, health and functionality from the disorder and chaos and keep these present in Jewish minds, requiring the important of separating out things (drawing on Genesis separating light from darkness), which goes with their calling as God’s people to restore the human calling. But apart from the purity instructions it tills us little of their practices in relation to the dead, burial practices, rites and rituals given, some references to the tombs in 1 and II Kings gives us some historical record, as well references in some prophets, beyond that we leave chronicle history which contains references to Abraham, Issac and Jacob using a cave, and Joseph brought back to be buried there, but whether this is a concrete historical referent retained and embedded in memory of the oral traditions that came down the generations in Israel we can’t know now. Even if it’s the case, there seems no clear consistent practice, and the archaeological record shows no unique Israelite burial custom throughout the Biblical period, they used the same practices and the people around them, burial with grave goods, without, in caves, in mass burials, and all the likely various customs that go along with that. Further, this doesn’t even get into the differences between north and south as ancient Israelite culture developed, between the Temple with the acceptance of the cherubim (the winged creatures that had grown popularity in the Middle East) and it’s use as a central part within Holy of Holies, vs the use of the golden calves used to frame places of worship in the north, and what effect that might have had on approaches to the dead (for instant Hosea 6:2, that after two days He will revive us, on the third day He will raise us up, was originally a likely denial of any return to life in it’s original context but was already being taken in the complete opposite meaning by the time of Isaiah (or Isaiah 2) showing a somewhat radical move in development with the beginning of the affirmation of the belief in resurrection emerging as creational monotheism together with election as God’s people met justice and eschatology leading to resurrection (a uniquely Jewish belief). Yet it was a radical new one, we need to remember the Sadducees were the conservatives, they rejected resurrection both because they saw it as new and because it was political dynamite, it denied tyrants their final weapon and was the driver of revolution (such as Maccabean rebellion during which there was a great development in resurrection ideas). So you already have competing ideas of resurrection vs non-resurrection, survival vs none, and the exact details and interaction between such ideas and customs we know little to nothing much about, apart from the fact that they used the same burial practices as their neighbours (which we might not unreasonably assume included a number of similar practices in relation to the dead apart from the purity requirements). And we must not make the mistake of mixing the idea of praying for the dead (such as the Maceabees did above) with necromancy that is divining and using the dead, those are different categories that were not the same in the ancient world Jewish or pagan (or today for that matter) and should not be confused (such confusion causes to much harm already).
To use the OT texts as a definitive statement on ancient Jewish approaches to the dead is simply not possible, the texts in question are not interested in providing us with those details. Furthermore, which OT texts, in the NT times there was no agreed OT, you have a number of different traditions of both Torah and prophets and Psalms, without any way for us to know which was the ‘original’ the Dead Sea Scrolls attest to various versions of Jeremiah, some with more aspects, and different, one with a Psalter in a different order from either the Masoretic or the LXX we have and contains to additional Psalms previously only referenced in the Syrian Christian tradition, and witnesses to both Masoretic (the most popular) tradition and the LXX Hebrew tradition and non-aligned, and then there are the Samaritans with their own version of the Pentateuch who saw themselves as from the lost ten tribes and having the original forms of worship (and probably do contain a thread of non-Temple practices. And then there are the apocryphile works, some of which are sited authoritatively in NT works (there is Jude and Paul referring to the names of the Egyptian magicians for instance). There just wasn’t an agreed set of writings, the NT shows a preference of the LXX tradition, though Judea itself it seems the Masoretic was at the time of Jesus and into the destruction of the Temple coming into the ascendance. But it wouldn’t be till centuries latter both Christians and Jews would agree to a canon, at the time competing groups had different authoritative writings, and the most conservative Sadducees denied all but the Torah itself (and we don’t know if they had one preferred type of tradition). The same problem also to the NT, all documents are first century, yes, but so are others, and none of it was ever all together for the first few centuries, 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Diadache were also regarded as authoritative by a number of Christians, the West was suspicious of Hebrews while the East was suspicious of Revelation, both agreeing to accept them in the end. Most Christian groups would only have one gospel or an epistle, or none at all, this was before printing, all the ancient world were fundamentally oral societies, it was a long time before an agreed canon of OT and NT writing were accepted as authoritative and others in the end left out, and with no clear idea on who wrote Hebrews, suspicions over the authorship on some Pauline letters, why accept them over others, it was the Church who accepted or rejected them, which reveals problems in suggesting as hinted above ideas that the Church fell away or deviated (suggesting the Holy Spirit went to sleep, and then woke up again and found everything wrong). If we trust the Christians of the 2-4th centuries (and later on some issues) on decisions on such things as the canon, why in the same place where they made such decisions there do some reject other decisions made, and why, why accept arbitrarily one bit, and reject the other bits they might not like and don’t fit their own theology. And if it is responded that scholarship has made our trust in the reliably of accepting the NT documents more confident, this was not an option of earlier Christians, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern or Oriental Orthodox, but further, if we say that scholarship validated the methodology (that of the tradition and liturgical worship and the consciousness and witness of the Church as a whole, as St Irenaeus sights in facing the Gnostics the tradition of apostles handed down through Christian communities represented by named bishops, and says that without this basis of interpretation anyone can make anything they wish out of the Scriptures, sighting an example of a mosaic of a king, which someone takes apart and remakes into an image of a fox, and declares that is what it always represented), then why is the same methodology not trusted on other matters and wider practices, and why, if the methodology is so flawed, and the Holy Spirit so limited His work? This seems more than a little arbitrary to me, and is one of a number reasons as an aside as to why I had to leave Protestantism behind, even if someone rejects them as Orthodox or Catholics, the early Christians were not proto-Protestants (they didn’t possess for a long time a single Bible to be so, and affirmed ecclesiastical structures and practices from the end of the first century onwards that nearly all Protestantism largely refutes or regards as non-essential but was so for them, and fundamentally different views on Eucharist and so on, and how different Protestantism seems to either this or NT studied at the background of 2nd Temple Judaism and their world-view and ideas).
But my own misgivings aside, that brings two important points, first even if we accept the OT references to Sheol as near sleep, that says nothing to humanity after the Resurrection. With Jesus the resurrection of the dead has happened, Hades has been broken and emptied, with resurrection began death is does not dominate us anymore, nor does it does it hold any captive, what was the case prior to the resurrection is not the case post resurrection. But it also brings a more fundamental problem, for the early Christians the OT was about Jesus Christ and the Church, and was always read in that light, it was the hypothesis, the starting point for all things, and all interpretation about OT Scripture, drawing on incidents as the Emmaus road where the Messiah opened their eyes to see everything in the Law/Instructions, Prophets and Psalms that were written about Him, and with the disciples. It is in the earliest Christian creed repeated by Paul to the Corinthians, that Christ died ‘according to the Scriptures’ repeating this phrase, and He died, buried and rose according to the whole Scripture, for the Christians of the first centuries, the first millenium, it was all about Christ, even bit was to be interpreted through Him, about Him and the gospel. Paul does this in his letters, it’s woven in the Gospels where Scripture is sighted that read in context seems to have no immediate Messianic or even prophetic meaning, but that is because neither the early Christians or Jews engaged Scripture as many do today, and Paul refers to veil of Moses, that without the illumination of Christ you will not truly understand the OT. Each book of Scripture in that sense in not equal, it’s not a case of putting some OT next to NT, the OT for early Christians was a commentary on the Gospel, on Jesus Himself and the Church and what happened there, not a strict record and equal texts, just to comple (when they did final agree to the canon that is). The prophets and apostles both testified to Christ Jesus and were founded on Him, their corner stone, and what they really meant only made sense through Him, through the Church which was the pillar and foundation of truth. The text was part of the community, and came from them, inspiration being the act of it being read by and in the church as much as it’s original writing and transmission, it was a whole, with the Holy Spirit the guardian and teaching through the Body, in all the various arguments, conflicts and divisions present from the beginning. This perhaps also indicates some of the differences between those in this argument, different foundational understanding of authority and where it founded, and what this role play in the wider understanding of the Christian community and witness which read it, but in some respects this a false idea, since all different communities read the Scripture within the witness and understanding of their own inherited tradition (or rejecting that, bring than the context of their age and part of the culture to it). The Scriptures do not explain themselves, their are interpreted, and it is that interpretation system and context, not the Scripture itself that is the highest authority for Christians (or anyone else, for that matter) no matter their deepest assertion that Scripture is their highest authority (as if it explained itself, it doesn’t), which brings the question, as St Irenaeus put it above, the context we place, read and interact with the Scriptures through determines utterly how we read them, and live with them, one person sees a king, another a fox and someone something completely different.
Bringing this back to the subject at hand, prohibitions against necromancy says nothing to praying for the dead, which were from early on an inherit part of the conviction of resurrection (thus not a pagan falling away), it was why particularly notable rabbis and Jewish martyrs’ tombs were venerated, and why this practice continued among Christians (and why the fact Jesus’ tomb was not venerated is quite notable and important, He was no longer there so venerating His was pointless, as the angel said, ‘why do you seek the living among the dead’). But even more so, the resurrection of the dead, the fact it has began has changed everything, no longer to people truly die, though they die they live on in Christ, resting with Him and will rise again to full existence and Life, they continue and Acts itself is a witness to both the first disciples and Pharisees not only believing this continuity but believing witness and interaction with and form the community asleep was possible. More so, Christians are united to Christ, and He to us, we are members of His body, our bodies are for the Lord and will be raised by Him, a person can’t be part of Christ, living in Him and then suddenly stop at death, with the Incarnation the Son of God joined Himself to both humanity and creation in the deepest way possible, and joined us and it to Him, Christians once asleep remain held in and with Him, and that theology, that there were part of Christ, that they remained in communion with Him and therefore with the Church is the foundation behind such practices as praying for and with those asleep, and venerating (honouring) the remains and tombs of Christian martyrs and saints. It is founded from Jewish practices, and is founded in the very concepts of creational monotheism, Incarnation and Resurrection, in particularly the belief that the resurrection of the dead had happened and began. There is nothing either pagan or non-Christian (or for that matter Jewish, at least for those that affirmed resurrection) about it.
They only ones who definitely refuted it at the time were the Sadducees, and that was because they denied the resurrection and therefore any survival, not because they thought it violated any OT commandment as such (rather they viewed the whole belief system as a heretical innovation, and dangerous political one at that). Needless to say, their view is not a Christian option.
No, Dondi, I am forgetting nothing. Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah was part of the vision which Peter, James, and John experienced. Remember that Jesus (who was FULLY human while on earth) was seen in the vision as transformed: “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” After the Father addressed them from a cloud (which may or may not have been part of the vision), and the vision was over, Moses and Elijah were gone, and they saw Jesus only as he appeared to them normally.
It’s true that she wasn’t expecting this spirit to appear. It is also true that the author calls the spirit “Samuel”. However, many believe that it was an evil spirit impersonating Samuel.
My sister-in-law’s friend, a teen-age girl (whom I’ll call “Sally”) was visiting her friend (whom I’ll call Jane). Jane’s mother regularly used an ouiji board for advice in living. On this particular evening Jane and Sally were alone in Jane’s house with nothing to do. So they decided to check out the ouiji board. To their amazement, the board spelled out messages. It claimed to be the spirit of a particular man a century earlier, and that he had been imprisoned for a long time. It gave the girls his name. The girls asked him why he had been imprisoned, and the whole ouiji board moved in such a way that the girls thought the spirit was angry at being asked this question. Then the spirit asked THEM a question, “Is there still a God?” That’s a question that no living human being would ask. They might ask, “Is there a God?” But, “Is there still a God?” seems to indicate that the one who asks such a question once experienced God, but no longer does so. Wouldn’t that be precisely the case with a fallen angel, which is what many consider demons to be?
Later, the girls looked up in an encyclopedia the name that was given to them. They found it, although the one the spirit had given them was an older form of spelling of the name. It was stated that the man was a murderer.
So I think it must be fairly common for evil spirits to impersonate living people.
When my maternal grandfather was a teen-ager, he and a friend of his went to see a medium, just for fun. His friend asked to speak to his dead mother. An apparition appeared that looked and talked exactly like his mother! The friend was stunned, and felt that it was indeed the spirit of his mother. Then my grandfather asked to speak to his mother. Sure enough an apparition that looked and talked like his mother appeared. The only thing was, my grandfather’s mother had not yet died! I guess the demon didn’t know that. How it was able to impersonate her, I don’t know.
Paradise being Eden and after the general resurrection Paradise being where the Tree of Life will be, ( Rev 2:7) I’d have to say no, Jesus was not in paradise on that day 2000+ yrs ago.
The question is was Jesus in Heaven during those three days.
Jesus said in John 20:17 that He had not yey ascended to the Father
Here I think the burden of proof has shifted over the years from the Ealy church who spoke the biblical language of Jesus ‘dying’ for our sins; His soul poured out for our transgressions; His ‘death’ being the propitiation, ect.That’s all Scriptural language and we should have to go beyond what Scripture says. The burden ought to be on the modern church who’s dualist anthropology has only one aspect of Jesus dieing while the other aspect goes up to heaven to oversee the events.
If the idea of Jesus being unconscious during that time bothers us; it shouldn’t. When Jesus slept, His soul didn’t go off somewhere to do divine paperwork. Or during Mary’s pregancy, what percentage of Him was on earth and in what form of consciousness.
I hope this doesn’t sound too irreverent. I’m sure others on here can do a better job.
Just as a side note – when Jesus spoke of “Paradise” to the thief, what did He mean by “Paradise?” He used “Hades” for “the grave” presumably, as that’s the word used by Jewish translators of the LXX for Sheol (which means grave or hidden, right?) But when He said “Paradise,” was that the good side of the Greek underworld, or would it have meant something else?
Paradise wasn’t so much to Greek underworld, there was at this time quite diverse views among Greeks and Romans, Platonic escape to non-body reality, soul transmigration or reincartion - sometimes combined with the former - cycles of rebirth which included gods as part of the universe, not God though that is a different category of meaning - astral immortality - joining the stars - to Epicureanism which is largerly the secularism we know today and Paul quotes from them to the much more common still strong Homeric despair and fatalism in face of death, where Patroclus shade is just that a gibbering shadow and fragment of true self, removed from muscle and flesh he was not truly human anymore, to the Odyssey which has Achilles shade in Hades state to Odysseus that it is better to be the poorest slave among the living than king in the realm of the dead, the dead were barely shades, erratic whisps of gibbering memory, and to this exposed the horror and fear in the face of the abyss and all-powerful authority of death in the ancient world. There was off course much cross-over with only a few in the other beliefs achieving the hoped for stated, the fear exposed in Homeric despair haunted the world where death could not so easily hidden though the means to try and pretend and avoid that horror are in many ways similar to that those take today.
Paradise instead belonged to a rang of expressions within 2nd Temple Judaism(s) to talk about and refer to the intermediate state between now the resurrection of the dead (those who denied resurrection such as the Sadducees had reason for it). The drive to have systematic system where the term has exact and defined meaning in larger theological system, but that exactness just wasn’t the case in the 1st century, and the Jews had a number of ways to refer to this intermediate state. Paradise was one drawing the expression from the concept of an oasis stop, a place to rest and refresh before continuing on a journey, in the Wisdom of Solomon it refers to the booths the souls of the righteous deal in waiting, in John’s Gospel there are the temporary dwellings (misleading translated for our ears as mansions), while in Acts such a state they are referred to as someone’s angel (both by the early Jewish Christians when Peter is set fred from prison and appears at John Mark’s house they believe it is his angel and with Paul before the Sanhedrin where the Pharisee party puts this way of describing the intermediate state forward for Paul’s witness of Jesus, to Paul’s being with Christ which is much better to Revelation’s souls before the altar. There was a diversity of language to discuss this state and even these weren’t exhaustive. It important to remember that Jews and early Christians (nor should Christians now) did not have a dualistic concept of human beings of soul and body as separate and two different things, which are different and opposed but a holistic whole, where psyche (soul) is an aspect and way to look at the whole person (similar to talking about mind and brain but they are one thing and can’t be separated).
Like I said, others ( like NightRevan) can do a better job. But let me overgeneralize a bit. Sheol was the general pre resurrection destination for all. Job longed for Sheol and the subsequent appointed time when he would be remembered by God and he would live again, renewed. David viewed Sheol as a general destination for the wise and the fool ;for the pompous and also of himself It was a dark, dank place where the dead know nothing and even their thought are no more.
Then along comes Hades; who was Poseidon and Zeus’ brother and ruled the underworld. Some believed ( Essenes)that Hades handed out refreshment or retribution ‘beyond Oceanus’. All in all, tracing Hades is a jumbled mess. But Hades certainly has a lot more going on in it than Sheol. Punishment precedes judgement here, which I think is a problem.
Most of Jesus’ usage of Hades was not an affirmation of all the differing activities going on down there but a promise of His doing away with it. Even the one traditionalists go to the most, Dives and Lazarus, isn’t about post mortem continuance. If this idea makes people sad, it shouldn’t; especially at Easter. Mainline Christianity has watered down the resurrection into an anticlimatical whisper.The main thrust of Jesus’ teachings on the afterlife, was on resurrection. Resurrection of the whole person, a la Sheol. I am the resurrection and the life, do you believe this Martha? Paul offer up only ‘one hope’ that of resurrection.
So yes, I believe Paradise refers to more. Eden. J Milton’s Paradise Regained.
I agree with Paidion here. Again remember that the Jews didn’t think in dualist terms. The thief didn’t ask ‘take me with you when you fly up to heaven’. He asked that Jesus remember him (this presupposes a period of time would elapse) when He came into His Kingdom. ( Jesus’s Messianic Rule)
Jesus answered the thief, “Verily, verily I say onto thee today…”
To paraphrase: I don’t have to hold you in suspense until then or rely on a later remembrance of you before I make my decision. I can tell you right here and now that “thou shalt be with me in Paradise”
At the general resurrection, the Penitent Thief will find himself in the Garden of the Lord.