Having established communities of Christ followers throughout the cities of the Mediterranean Roman world, the apostle Paul returned to Jerusalem to present to the 'mother church' there the collection that his new-found communities had raised for its support. When he went to the Temple (at the suggestion of the Jerusalem church leaders) he was attacked by Jewish zealots who accused him of undermining the Mosaic Torah. He was arrested by the Roman authorities and put on trial before the High Priest and Temple authorities. At one point during the trial Luke tells us that Paul noticed that there were both Pharisees and Sadducees present among those judging him. Paul declared 'I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead' (Acts 23.6-8). This set the two main parties among his accusers, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, against each other. As Luke explains 'The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, or angel, or spirit; but the Pharisees acknowledge all three'. They started arguing among themselves with Paul's fellow Pharisees taking his side. Of course that in itself didn't save Paul - he wasn't released (in Luke's account he was destined to travel to Rome to stand trial before the emperor) but the point is that when Paul said he was on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead it was clearly an idea with which a significant group of fellow Jews identified. Clearly then, belief in the resurrection of the dead was an important part of the faith of at least some Jews in the first century A.D., to some extent defining the identity of the parties active within Judaism, and yet, as I have suggested in previous posts, the Hebrew Bible actually says very little about life after death (of any kind). For the most part, the hope of a godly Jew was a long life lived in harmony with God, with the land and with his or her community. 'Afterlife' consisted in having a good name and many descendants. Death was a terrible thing because it destroyed all of those relationships (for some, even with God - Psalm 6.5). The dead were silent, mere shades, forgetful and insignificant. At least that's how most of the texts in the Hebrew Bible regard it. It's virtually impossible to reconstruct now what the majority of 'ordinary' Hebrews really believed and it could well be that many were much more affirming of life after death than the biblical texts suggest. But my aim here is to try to describe 'what the bible really says about the afterlife' (see the header above!), and what the bible 'really says' is that the silent, shady Sheol was the common destination of all, and that wasn't something people looked forward to. So the obvious question is, how did Judaism get from the position of believing that death inevitably led to permanent sleep in Sheol, to the situation where some Jews could respond positively to Paul's claim that he was on trial because of his belief 'in the resurrection'? How did it get from being a religion with little or no hope of 'after-life', to one rich in resurrection hope and imagery? That is actually a complicated question to answer because the process was a subtle and complex one. There is probably no one moment and no one easily identifiable 'reason' why an expectation of resurrection emerged in Judaism. But if we want to understand that development we have to start with one very significant text from the book of Daniel. According to some commentators (but not me!) it is in fact the only biblical text that explicitly talks about a resurrection. It is a text which marks a distinct change in emphasis from the hope for a good and long life well lived to a hope for life beyond (and outside) the grave. It is a text which announces the possibility that the dead will rise. And yet it is a text which challenges most of our assumptions about what such a 'rising' might entail. To plagarise the famous (apocryphal) words of Spock from the original Star Trek "it's resurrection Jim, but not as we know it". One day as Daniel stood beside the river Tigris the angel Gabriel appeared to him and announced a forthcoming existential crisis in Israels' life. At the end of that crisis says Gabriel, the Lord will send Michael the great Archangel to bring an end to Israel's woes.
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We are justifiably afraid of fire. Fire burns and when things burn they are damaged or destroyed. Fire has ravaged powerful cities such as ancient Rome and seventeenth century London. Wildfires have recently destroyed huge areas in drought-stricken parts of the world, bringing destruction, death and terror to the people who live there. Fire hurts and burns, leaving terrible scars and injuries. Fires destroy our homes and possessions. But the destructive power of fire is also something that can produce life. I was struck recently by the comments of a friend here in Sweden talking about the positive impact of a large forest fire which swept through the forests in the north of Sweden some years ago. It was horrendously destructive, destroying tens of thousands of trees and injuring and killing wildlife and people. And yet my friend, who at that time worked for the organisation that manages the forests, explained to me (an ignorant city dweller) that the forests depend on fires like these to grow and develop. Usually of course the fires are managed and kept within safe bounds and clearly this one wasn't! But the effect of such fires, controlled or not, is to is strip away the dead and old material in the forest, to allow new, young life to emerge. And the trees grow back, stronger and better and the wildlife returns and and forms a new ecology. And life goes on and flourishes better and stronger because of the fires. Something like this effect of fire, the rooting out and burning up of the old and tired, lies as the background for the trial scene in the Testament of Abraham, the ancient Jewish comic novel which describes the attempts of Abraham to escape the inevitability of death. Abraham's angel guide, Michael, shows Abraham what happens to souls after they die and Abraham passes through the gate of heaven at the East of the world, where he sees the souls of the dead being judged. He discovers that their eternal fate is decided partly on the basis of how the record of their lives responds to the divine fire blown from a trumpet held by Puriel, the 'angel of fire'. Their record of actions while alive, their 'works', are subjected to a 'trial by fire'. Good deeds survive the flames. They are clearly made of solid stuff, worthy and true, like a precious metal. Bad deeds are consumed by the flames, burnt up entirely, reduced to ashes. These are the deeds done in disregard for God's Law, the deeds born of selfish desire and Godless passions. So, as the dead and ancient material of the forest which inhibit the growth of the new are stripped away by the forest fires, here Puriel's fire consumes the dead and dying parts of individual human lives. The Testament of Abraham of course is not trying to say that the souls so-judged pass through to Paradise, better and wiser people; rather that those who see their life's work burn up pass directly to a place of horrendous torment and punishment (without passing go!). There is no sense here that these flames are intended to purify the souls who pass through them but, like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter, they decide where the souls belong, in Paradise or in the 'other place'. But it was this very idea of flames that consume the dross, the old, the broken and the godless and leave the good and the new and the Godly unharmed that led some in the early church to imagine that what might happen after death is that souls would face the fire of judgement, not to destroy them but, like the beautiful forests of Sweden, to make them better. It was ideas like those we find in the Testament that led eventually to the birth of the idea of purgatory, to the idea of the flames that purify. In this post we come close to that place where such powerful ideas began to emerge. Some of the most remarkable, wonderful and unsettling images of hell and damnation from the middle ages are found in a 15th century manual describing the apocalypse (the end of the world) produced by Carthusian monks in France known as Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur (The Book of the Vineyard of our Lord). Now held by the Bodleian LIbrary in Oxford its illustrations and are available to view here. This seems to have been the second volume of a larger, two part work, completed some time before 1463 in France. Its author and illustrators are unknown. It's thought to be Carthusian because one illustration depicts two Carthusian monks. These images depict the Antichrist and his war on the Church, the signs of the coming of the end of the world, the Last Judgement and then, in full gory detail, the sufferings of the damned. (I should point out the book also pictures the saints in paradise but these are really boring by comparison!) The whole point of this blog is to argue that our ideas of heaven and hell owe far more to the imaginations of writers and artists in the middle ages and Renaissance than to the bible and here we get a really good feel for the kinds of ideas that were shaping the thinking of Christians bout the afterlife at this time. They are fun, shocking, amusing and very, very interesting.
Hospitals are usually places where people are offered medical care. At their best they may also offer psychological and spiritual care for patients and support for families. Most of the information supplied by hospitals today has to do with visiting hours, procedures for complainst and information on how to use the TV. But in the 15th century one hospital offered, in addition to care for the bodies of its patients, a powerful warning about their eternal fate. The most important information it provided was a theological statement about the need for repentance to avoid the horror of being damned. There was no need for translation into different langauges (or to assume any standard of literacy) because this warning came in the form of a magnificent painting. Above the altar in the chapel of the Hospices de Beaune, within sight of all the patients, hung a magnificent painting by the flemish paínter Rogier van der Weyden, depicting the Last Judgement. The message of the painting was clear. Those who believed in Christ would, at the Resurrection, enter into a joyful life as fully individualised human persons in the eternal city of God, while those who rejected Christ, would find themselves lost in an undifferentiated chaos of broken humanity in an eternity of separation from God. The painting is not just visually striking but psychologically and spiritually profound. Anticipating the insights of modern depth psychology and existential philosophy Van der Weyden depicts the misery of the lost as the fundamental loss of human identity. While those who walk joyfully towards their eternal home with God become more fully human as they approach the gates of the city of God, those who are cast away to the darkness at the edge of the picture become less than human, lost amid a chaotic jumble of limbs and anguished faces. There is no devil and there are no monsters here. The tormentors are the monsters who live within us. Those declared righteous are judged suitable for heavenly bliss and head towards the new Jerusalem, the city of God to the left of the painting (Christ's right). Initially as they come out of their graves and begin to head toward the heavenly city they gaze up at Christ and in attitudes of faith, wonder and gratitude. As they make their way from their graves towards the heavenly city their gaze turns from Christ to the city itself. As they rise and move away from their graves they become more individual and "human". The damned on the other hand, emerge from their graves and as they move towards hell they become hunched, bowed and less human in form. Their individuality begins to disappear. They become part of a mass of undifferentiated humanity. In hell, the damned become a chaotic mass of limbs and body parts.
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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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