Rosenritter,
I thought this was a very well-written post! I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but you did a good job of explaining your position with scripture--something that is lacking in much of this thread--not that the scripture is lacking, but the arguments are mostly emotional with some scripture sprinkled in.
The description is so vivid, surely the Lord Jesus would not have attempted to present a picture He would know would drive people to believe in such a picture of hell, or pre-hell, perhaps, while not meaning to?? There's an interesting treatise about Hades, sometimes ascribed to Josephus, which seems to be lifted straight from Jesus story of the rich man and Lazarus. It's a short read:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/josephus/hades.htm
My point here is that if it was written by Josephus, it gives a Jewish, perhaps Jewish-Christian, perspective, that aligns very well with Jesus story. If it was not by Josephus (and I have my doubts), it at least shows fairly early evidence for Christians using the story as a description of Hades.
I think your point here is important, and I'll try to return to it--maybe tomorrow.
This is a great quote! But I think it could be easily over-mined for truths about death. For one, it is certainly poetic in nature. But if it is taken literally, then it describes something that doesn't make sense--it describes a place where all the bodies, or all the souls, perhaps, are after death. Job says he would have been "with" kings and counselors and princes, and "there" wicked cease from troubling and weary be at rest. "There" prisoners rest together, and they don't hear the voice of the oppressor.
Are we really saying that there is a repository of bodies or souls that are not feeling? Maybe we could say that, but it seems a stretch.
But Job does mention his ghost being given up. His spirit separates from his body in some fashion. Does it go to a certain place? not sure from this.
Again, David waxes poetic here. The context is in what princes can do for the author--their "thoughts" are likely what they intend to do, which ceases when they die. I don't think it is trying to say there it no after-death consciousness, though it certainly doesn't confirm that there is any...except the the "breath goeth forth", which I think is reference to a man's spirit again. Where is it going?
But we shouldn't read it too literally, else we won't be trusting in the Son of Man (vs 3)!
Yet God promised Abraham something he never saw, and never will see, if this is true. Poetic again? I think so.
But even here, there is a place of the dead. Ecc 9:3, which introduces your quote, mentions it.
Hezekiah was also being poetic, and using the contrast so often used in Hebrew poetry. But here again is an idea of a place--"the pit"--into which the dead go, and cannot come back out again--"cannot hope for thy truth". Was Hezekiah so fatalistic that he had no hope of resurrection at all? I doubt it.
True--they have no voices. The people on earth cannot hear them. just like the rich man's brothers couldn't have heard him if he had tried to talk to them, and Lazarus would have had to return from the dead to tell his brothers anything. But the rich man communicated with Abraham and Abraham communicated with the rich man. I don't see any contradiction here.
Interesting that these people are described as "twice dead" already. Yet they are described in previous verses as "filthy dreamers" (meaning they still have thoughts) in Jude 8, they corrupt themselves in "what they know" in Jude 10, and they "speak evil" in Jude 8 and 10. How is that possible if their thoughts have already perished (a la David), they "know not anything" (a la Solomon) and they have no voices (a la Hezekiah)
David, as well as the other kings of Judah, "slept with his fathers" (1 Kings 2:10) Jesus seems to take the euphemism a step further, as you pointed out, to suggest that there was something less final about the girl's and the other Lazarus's death. But that seems to me to be more a statement about the finality, or lack thereof, of their deaths, rather than the state of their mental activity during it.
And after judgment, death again? How then are men appointed once to die if they can now die twice? This is a question whether ECT is true or not. I'm wondering if the "second death" in Rev 2:11, Rev 20:6 & 14, and Rev. 21:8 might be vastly different from the first death.
Good points!
Not to nit-pick, but I think you've left off a few choices. I'd like to add these two:
4) There's a distinction between what the living experience when a person dies and what the dead person experiences (@Lon mentioned this one). I'm not sure I can tell who's experiencing what, but it explains the poetics mentioned above.
5) Something might have changed between the old testament and the new--this wouldn't explain all the seeming discrepancies, but it might explain some.
Imo, the Lazarus story is a parable, and it's not a parable. For one thing, despite Abraham's insistence that Lazarus' resurrection wouldn't help, Jesus resurrected Lazarus anyway. (Some would argue it was a different Lazarus, but the name in Jesus' story, which he told to the Pharisees, couldn't have been a mere coincidence.) And it seemed to prove that it wouldn't help the rich man's brothers (John 12:10), but it no doubt helped some--leading to the triumphal entry.
I don't agree that Lazarus was "without Moses and the prophets". That's a bit speculative.
