Resurrection in the Old Testament?
We are all familiar with the resurrection of Jesus in the NT, but what about it in the OT?
As a guide to help us focus, consider the following questions:
1. Are we reading into the OT (about resurrection) what promised in the NT or is it continuing an established truth?
2. What hope or belief did the people in the OT had beyond the grave? I don't mean life after death. To be clear, are the two the same?
3. What are the key passages in the OT, on the resurrection, if any?
4. Is resurrection just an NT doctrine, if not, what OT references are made to reflect its continuity and hope.
5. What do the Deuterocanonical Books have to say about the resurrection? Is there any truth to be had here?
Let's resurrect this topic to bring new hope of the promise, to those us who are alive, until the return of Jesus. CM
Comments
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Thanks for the question. I believe the "foreverness" of God's promise to Abraham demands something blissful far beyond Canaan's limitations, and earth's then perceived temporality. Job expected his own resurrection from the dead. David fully expected one of his offspring to reign forever on his throne. Probably in a new heaven and earth since whoever wrote Psalm 102:26 speaks of the temporality of the universe.
We gain further insight of the OT when the NT writers and prophets interpret it for us.
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Is it true the Old Testament has little or nothing to say about the resurrection from the dead? I don't believe has no such promise and hope. So far, two scholars think not and one slightly disagreed:
Thomas Ridenour said, “There is no ‘uniform and certain doctrine of the afterlife’ offered in the Old Testament.”
Manfred O. Meitzen, to cite another example, “The Old Testament teaches virtually nothing about resurrection or life after death.”
R. H. Pfeiffer [A well-known scholar] a little more positive, than the first two on the doctrine of the resurrection. He said “a doctrine unknown in the Old Testament before the third century.”
I am aware of Ezekiel 37:1 to 14. This passage is sometimes used to support bodily resurrection in the Old Testament. However, it does not speak of a personal or individual resurrection but of the resurrection of Israel from exile, a national restoration. One should note imagery of Ezekiel 37 that appears on the wall of an ancient synagogue from Dura-Europas to illustrate the promise of a bodily resurrection from the grave. Lamar Cooper points out: “While clearly the prophet had a national resurrection for Israel in mind, it also is but a small step from what he saw concerning Israel to the realization that the same God who could resurrect a dead nation also had the power to conquer humanity’s greatest enemy, death.” [Lamar E. Cooper, Ezekiel, The New American Commentary, 17 (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman and Holman, 1994), p. 321].
It's imperative that we know whether the Old Testament clearly teaches bodily resurrection, as long as it is taught in the New Testament. We will not stop here. The search continues... CM
Sources:
-- Thomas Ridenour, “Immortality and Resurrection in the Old Testament,” Dialog 15 (1976):109.
-- Manfred O. Meitzen, “Some Reflections on the Resurrection and Eternal Life,” LQ 24 (1972):254.
-- Robert H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), pp. 478, 479. -
I think when spiritually understood the OT pointed to a resurrection, Heaven, and a New Heavens and Earth. But to the unspiritual, it held forth only temporal material blessing. I used Job as an example. Also Hebrews suggests Abraham saw much more in God's promise than Canaan. And the OT's stress on "forever" in contrast to its stress on the temporality of this universe points the spiritual minded to draw greater conclusions than the literal can provide.
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@C_M_ said:
We are all familiar with the resurrection of Jesus in the NT, but what about it in the OT?Great topic and great questions! First I would like apologize because I do not have the time at the moment to give your questions and this thread the treatment deserved. This answer is a quick and hasty answer:
Here are a 'few' (there are more) of the verses that some have traditionally seen reference to the afterlife in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) specifically the resurrection( I do not have the time to explain the various interpretation of these verses at the moment):
Deut. 32:39
1 Sam. 2:6
Isaiah 26:19
Daniel 12:2
Job 19:25-26
Psalm 16:10-11
Psalm 49:16
Psalm 73:23-24
Psalm 85:7-8
Hosea 6:1-3
Ezekiel 37:6A few quick reads that touch on some the verses listed above:
A Journey to Heaven:
The Jewish Search for Life Beyond
By Leila Leah Bronner
http://www.bibleandjewishstudies.net/articles/afterlife.htmResurrection
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/resurrectionOlam Ha-Ba: The Afterlife
http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htmTHE RESURRECTION MOTIF IN THE HEBREW
BIBLE: ALLUSIONS OR ILLUSIONS?
LEILA LEAH BRONNER
http://www.jbq.jewishbible.org/assets/Uploads/303/303_bronner.pdf -
Thanks, Mitch for your contribution. Good sources. I understanding the time restraint. When you are able, your insights are welcome. CM
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@Dave_L said:
I think when spiritually understood the OT pointed to a resurrection, Heaven, and a New Heavens and Earth. But to the unspiritual, it held forth only temporal material blessing. I used Job as an example. Also Hebrews suggests Abraham saw much more in God's promise than Canaan. And the OT's stress on "forever" in contrast to its stress on the temporality of this universe points the spiritual minded to draw greater conclusions than the literal can provide.The objective here is to verify bodily resurrection, not to spiritualize it. CM
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@C_M_ said:
@Dave_L said:
I think when spiritually understood the OT pointed to a resurrection, Heaven, and a New Heavens and Earth. But to the unspiritual, it held forth only temporal material blessing. I used Job as an example. Also Hebrews suggests Abraham saw much more in God's promise than Canaan. And the OT's stress on "forever" in contrast to its stress on the temporality of this universe points the spiritual minded to draw greater conclusions than the literal can provide.The objective here is to verify bodily resurrection, not to spiritualize it. CM
Job believed in a literal resurrection from the dead.
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@Dave_L said:
Job believed in a literal resurrection from the dead.
Yes. Job’s hope to be in the flesh and see God (Job 19:26). Some of Job’s words seem to undermine any hope of bodily resurrection. After Job acknowledged that God has appointed man’s days, stating clear limits that cannot be passed (Job 14:5), Job says, “As waters fail from a lake and a river wastes away and dries up, so a man lies down and rises not again; till the heavens are no more he will not awake or be roused out of his sleep” **(14:11-12). Later, he raised question anticipating a negative answer, Job asks,_ “If a man dies shall he live again?” (14:14a). But these are not Job’s last words on the subject.
Job’s friends were calling into question his integrity and blamelessness before God. But Job is confident his vindication will come. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth! And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (Job 19:25-27).
At the beginning of the book Satan struck Job with _“loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7).
As his great suffering has persisted, he tells of his physical turmoil: “My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother” (19:17), “Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me” (19:18), “All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me”_ (19:19).
This physical trial sets up the confidence expressed toward the end of that discourse. His flesh will be destroyed, yet in his flesh he shall see God (19:26).
But scholars do not agree on what is happening and what the character believes in Job 19:25-27, for the passage contains interpretive difficulties, but Job’s language in 19:26-27, is:
- Personal (“I shall see God,” 19:26; “I shall see for myself,” 19:27; “my eyes shall behold,” 19:27).
- Physical (“my skin,” 19:26; “my flesh,” 19:26; “my eyes,” 19:27).
Francis I. Andersen says, these references “make it clear that Job expects to have this experience as a man, not just as a disembodied shade, or in his mind’s eye.” Likewise, so said John E. Hartley, who does not believe Job’s hope is postmortem, when he said, “Job hopes to see God from his own body.”
The LXX of Job 14:14 is “if a man dies, he shall live”, and the LXX of 19:26a is “will resurrect my skin”. Kaiser connects Job 14:7 and 14:14 because of the verb in 14:7 and the in 14:14. Job 14:7 says “there is hope for a tree” because “it will sprout again,” and in 14:14 Job says “All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come.” He further states, “For often around the base of a felled tree, one shoot after another will spring up as a continuation of the otherwise dead tree. So it is with man in Job 14:14. . . . Job 14:14 stated in terms analogous to what happened to felled trees! Very few commentators will connect the two verses, but the writer intended his audience to do so. He did it by using the same Hebrew root in the same context in Job 14:7, 14”. If Kaiser is correct, then Job 14:7, 14 would be further support for resurrection hope on the lips of the Job himself.
Wright says “whoever drafted the translation of LXX Job had no doubt both of the bodily resurrection and of the propriety of making sure the biblical text affirmed it.” He adds, “All the indications are that those who translated the Septuagint, and those who read it thereafter (i.e., most Jews, in both Palestine and the Diaspora), would have understood the key Old Testament passages in terms of a more definite ‘resurrection’ sense than the Hebrew would necessarily warrant, and might very likely have heard overtones of ‘resurrection’ in many places where the Hebrew would not have suggested it”.
When Job expresses that in his flesh he shall see God (cf. Job 19:26), William Green cautiously affirms a hope for resurrection:
"The resurrection of the body was probably not present to Job’s thoughts, certainly not in the form of a general and simultaneous rising from the dead. And yet it is so linked, seminally at least, with our continued spiritual existence, and it is so natural and even necessary for us to transfer our ideas of being, drawn from the present state, to the greater hereafter, that it may perhaps be truly said that the germs of the doctrine of the resurrection may likewise be detected here." [William Henry Green, The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded (1874; repr., Minneapolis: James & Klock, 1977), 216-17].
SOURCES:
-- Francis I. Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: Inter- Varsity Press, 1976), 193. See Hamilton, God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment, 302.
296.
-- John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1988), 296
-- Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Toward an Old Testament Theology [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1978],181.
Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 148, 150 -
@C_M_ said:
@Dave_L said:
Job believed in a literal resurrection from the dead.
Yes. Job’s hope to be in the flesh and see God (Job 19:26). Some of Job’s words seem to undermine any hope of bodily resurrection. After Job acknowledged that God has appointed man’s days, stating clear limits that cannot be passed (Job 14:5), Job says, “As waters fail from a lake and a river wastes away and dries up, so a man lies down and rises not again; till the heavens are no more he will not awake or be roused out of his sleep” **(14:11-12). Later, he raised question anticipating a negative answer, Job asks,_ “If a man dies shall he live again?” (14:14a). But these are not Job’s last words on the subject.
Job’s friends were calling into question his integrity and blamelessness before God. But Job is confident his vindication will come. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth! And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” (Job 19:25-27).
At the beginning of the book Satan struck Job with _“loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7).
As his great suffering has persisted, he tells of his physical turmoil: “My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother” (19:17), “Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me” (19:18), “All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me”_ (19:19).
This physical trial sets up the confidence expressed toward the end of that discourse. His flesh will be destroyed, yet in his flesh he shall see God (19:26).
But scholars do not agree on what is happening and what the character believes in Job 19:25-27, for the passage contains interpretive difficulties, but Job’s language in 19:26-27, is:
- Personal (“I shall see God,” 19:26; “I shall see for myself,” 19:27; “my eyes shall behold,” 19:27).
- Physical (“my skin,” 19:26; “my flesh,” 19:26; “my eyes,” 19:27).
Francis I. Andersen says, these references “make it clear that Job expects to have this experience as a man, not just as a disembodied shade, or in his mind’s eye.” Likewise, so said John E. Hartley, who does not believe Job’s hope is postmortem, when he said, “Job hopes to see God from his own body.”
The LXX of Job 14:14 is “if a man dies, he shall live”, and the LXX of 19:26a is “will resurrect my skin”. Kaiser connects Job 14:7 and 14:14 because of the verb in 14:7 and the in 14:14. Job 14:7 says “there is hope for a tree” because “it will sprout again,” and in 14:14 Job says “All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come.” He further states, “For often around the base of a felled tree, one shoot after another will spring up as a continuation of the otherwise dead tree. So it is with man in Job 14:14. . . . Job 14:14 stated in terms analogous to what happened to felled trees! Very few commentators will connect the two verses, but the writer intended his audience to do so. He did it by using the same Hebrew root in the same context in Job 14:7, 14”. If Kaiser is correct, then Job 14:7, 14 would be further support for resurrection hope on the lips of the Job himself.
Wright says “whoever drafted the translation of LXX Job had no doubt both of the bodily resurrection and of the propriety of making sure the biblical text affirmed it.” He adds, “All the indications are that those who translated the Septuagint, and those who read it thereafter (i.e., most Jews, in both Palestine and the Diaspora), would have understood the key Old Testament passages in terms of a more definite ‘resurrection’ sense than the Hebrew would necessarily warrant, and might very likely have heard overtones of ‘resurrection’ in many places where the Hebrew would not have suggested it”.
When Job expresses that in his flesh he shall see God (cf. Job 19:26), William Green cautiously affirms a hope for resurrection:
"The resurrection of the body was probably not present to Job’s thoughts, certainly not in the form of a general and simultaneous rising from the dead. And yet it is so linked, seminally at least, with our continued spiritual existence, and it is so natural and even necessary for us to transfer our ideas of being, drawn from the present state, to the greater hereafter, that it may perhaps be truly said that the germs of the doctrine of the resurrection may likewise be detected here." [William Henry Green, The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded (1874; repr., Minneapolis: James & Klock, 1977), 216-17].
SOURCES:
-- Francis I. Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: Inter- Varsity Press, 1976), 193. See Hamilton, God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment, 302.
296.
-- John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1988), 296
-- Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Toward an Old Testament Theology [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1978],181.
Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, 148, 150The Pharisees also believed in the resurrection. They were the supposed experts in the Law. So maybe they saw what I'm talking about. That is, the contradictions in God's promise to Abraham when viewed at face value. And the harmony in the promises when "forever" really means "forever". And the fact that the Jews knew the universe would wear old like a garment.
