The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2 Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner3/10/2016 Courts can be rather intimidating places. They should be - after all the dispensation of Justice is extremely important. The judges are usually imposing figures, the courtrooms are hushed and respectful, the clerks and officials note and record everything and dispense justice quickly and efficiently. There is no room for disagreement with the final decision or sentence and bad behaviour in the courtroom is not tolerated. Even the furniture of the court emphasises the solemn importance of what is going on there, with the judge usually seated 'up on high' and the accused 'spotlighted', sat or stood separately, in a place reserved for them, alone and isolated from family and friends. But all of this is nothing compared to the scene of post-mortem judgement described in the Jewish/Christian writing known as the Testament of Abraham. At one point in this ancient Jewish story, in which Abraham tries (with great comic effect) to evade Death, we read how Abraham follows the archangel Michael through the gates of heaven and find himself at the tribunal where the dead are judged. There he finds an awesome, even terrifying vision of divine justice in action, a scene that includes a magnificent judge, gigantic books, glowing tables, scary angels and of course thousands of souls being weighed, burned and whipped! And this, he is told, is just the first stage! This wonderful comic novel originally written by a Jewish writer and then used and preserved (and perhaps adapted) by Christians, dating from perhaps the first or second centuries A.D., provides a wonderful insight into how ideas about heaven and hell and the judgement that sends us there, were developing in the first centuries after the birth of Jesus. In this post I try to describe the elements of divine justice as shown to Abraham and what they mean and why they are there.
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Once upon a time, the bible tells us, Abraham the great patriarch of the Hebrews was visited by God. The story says that God came to Abraham in the form of three 'men' (who were, in fact, divine messengers or angels) and without knowing who these three men were, Abraham welcomed them into his home and fed them. This was a sign of Abraham's holiness and generosity of spirit. If he had known who it was he was entertaining and was lavish with his hospitality then that would be unremarkable. Everyone would put on a special spread for God! But Abraham didn't. What made the story so special was in being hospitable to three complete strangers Abraham was in fact being hospitable to God. And so the story became the basis for a whole tradition of seeing God in 'the stranger', which we find again in the New Testament story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection, who unwittingly entertained Jesus, and which in the last century found it's best known moral expression in the work of Mother Teresa of Calcutta who famously said that when she took care of the destitute in Calcutta she saw in each one 'Jesus in disguise'. For the rest of us mere mortals, we are reminded by the writer of the letter to the Hebrews that when that unwelcome knock comes on the door, late on a friday night when we are ready to go to bed or entertaining friends Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13.1-2) But this story also became the basis for a wonderful comedy-fantasy adventure based on Abraham's life (or more precisely, his death) called the Testament of Abraham. It was written sometime in the first or second centuries A.D. by a Jewish writers for a Jewish audience, but the story also found a home in Christian groups and it was in fact they who preserved the story so that it reached us today. The story is about God's desire to prepare Abraham for his death. Most of us assume that we would appreciate the chance to know when we are going to die so that we could come to terms with the fact and put all our affairs in order. But I wonder if that's really true. Wouldn't most of really prefer just to go quickly, peacefully and unexpectedly? Wouldn't we prefer ignorance? Well, despite his best intentions, that's what God discovers in this wonderful, irreverent and hilarious story. First of all God discovers that it's almost impossible even to tell Abraham (how do you tell someone you love that they are going to die . . . many of us have been there and know how hard that is!). Next he discovers that even the godly Abraham doesn't want to leave his life behind and God is forced to grant him a 'last wish' which turns out to be a disaster and has to be cancelled. And then, thirdly, when eventually God sends Death (yes a figure called Death . . . . and with a scythe!) to wrap things up, he discovers that Death just isn't up to the job! This whole idea of telling his friend he is going to die to allow him time to come to terms with it gradually unravels as the story goes on and begins to look like a very bad idea! The reader is left with the impression that God made a big mistake by telling his friend the news of his impending death. The story is really about how messy death is (I don't mean blood and gore but socially and psychologically). We talk about a 'good death' and 'preparing ourselves' and 'letting go', but in reality death is chaotic and terrible. We poor human beings hold on to life for as long as we can and even the best laid plans (even God's, it seems) can go terribly awry in the face of the grim reality that faces all of us. When faced with the prospect of leaving 'all this behind' even the best of us can become irrational, fearful, angry and manipulative. Even the greatest of the great heroes of faith, Abraham is no exception. We don't like death. It's not natural. There is something deeply wrong about it. The story is a great insight into this struggle between the reality we all face and our stubborn, powerful hold on life. But the story (because it is about death) is also a fascinating insight into the attitudes of some Jews in the first two centuries after the birth of Christ (and possibly before) towards the afterlife. Here in the Testament of Abraham souls leave their bodies and face immediate post mortem judgement. Here the writer imagines that post mortem judgement in terms of passing through either the broad or the narrow gates, being weighed in the balance by angels and having our works 'tested by fire'. It is a story that reveals that in this era some people believed that the righteous find eternal life in paradise if the weight of their good deeds is greater than the weight of their bad deeds and that if they don't, their destiny lies in hell, a place of everlasting fire and torture. We discover here that it is possible for God to restore the lives of some who have died before their time and send them back to their lives on earth. In other words it is a story that shows that around the time the New Testament was being written, God-fearing Jews (and the Christians who valued and preserved this story) believed in most of the things that went on to form the popular view of death and afterlife that people believe today! Now of course if you have been following these posts you will realise that I think most of those things just mentioned are not part of the biblical picture of death and afterlife. But the reason for writing about the story (apart from the sheer joy I have found reading this wonderfully witty story) is my fascination in finding so many of these ideas already in currency in such an early story from the Jewish tradition. The point of the blog is not (just) to attack views I think are wrong but to try to understand how we got from the biblical perspective to the place we are today and I think stories like these show that the powerful influence of Greek thought was already having on Jewish (and so christian) thinkers and writers of faith at this time. In the Greek, Hellenistic word-view, souls could be detached from bodies, people could exist in a meaningful way after death and the worth of your soul could be discovered by placing it on a set of scales. None of these ideas is found in the Hebrew bible. But they are found here, in this fantastical Jewish 'fairy story'. Yes all these things are possible here . . . . but before we are tempted to think that this story is a reflection of the authentic biblical tradition we should also remember that the story also asks us to believe that Abraham lived to the age of a thousand years, that he could take a tour of the entire creation in the divine chariot in the space of half a day and that our lives are ended by the arrival at our houses one day of a tall, scary figure holding a scythe! Or maybe it doesn't ask us to believe any of these things. Maybe it is just a wonderful story about an old man who loved his life and didn't want to give it up! Maybe these popular motifs about the afterlife are just the tools the writer uses to tell a far more meaningful story about the tenacity of human life and its deep seated resistance to death. When people talk about being in the 'seventh heaven' they mean they are as happy as they can possibly be. But where did the notion that there are seven heavens come from? What does the seventh heaven contain that should make us so happy and what are the other six like? Sadly there is no one definitive source book we can turn to to explain this but there are some ancient writings from the Jewish-Christian tradition that reveal that during the first century A.D. (if not earlier) some people believed that there were multiple levels of heaven. In the pseudepigraphal writing known as Slavonic Enoch (or 2 Enoch), the writer describes the ascension of Enoch to the throne of God in heaven but in his version, (unlike that of the Book of the Watchers discussed in the previous post), Enoch ascends through seven heavens to find God. Each heaven has its own distinct identity, purpose and occupants. Like the apostle Paul, the writer locates paradise, i.e the garden of Eden, in the third heaven. Alongside paradise, on the same level, there is a place of terrible punishment reserved for the wicked, and staffed by specially prepared 'torture angels'. On other levels Enoch sees the workings of the cosmos, the legions of weeping angels (long before Dr Who was ever thought of) and the gates and galleries where the weather is stored. His may not have been the first account of multiple heavens but the author(s) of Slavonic Enoch provides a fascinating insight into how some Jews and Christians imagined heaven in the first centuries of the Common Era. "At last Enoch arrives in the seventh heaven and sees God. God, of course, is seated on his throne and attended by a vast number of angelic beings, the divine council or court. It seems that their chief job is to come forward in designated ranks and orders to bow before God. This is an image of God as supreme potentate, the imperial ruler, receiving obeisance from the subject kings and potentates. The heavenly beings here represent the 'powers and principalities' who govern the affairs of the cosmos. These are the forces that shape human destiny. What Enoch sees is that they bow before the authority of the Almighty. Enoch reports that they do so 'in joy and merriment'. There is laughter in heaven!"
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Archives
April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
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