Life after death?

[WoundedEgo]

In Judaism, is death final? Ie: Is Moses dead and gone forever? [I realize that there is probably not consensus on this matter].

Thanks.

[Tanakh Keeper]

In Judaism, is death final? Ie: Is Moses dead and gone forever? [I realize that there is probably not consensus on this matter].

Thanks.

No, Judaism has a strong and healthy belief in the afterlife. Our beliefs of the afterlife are WAY different from the Christian version(s).

You are correct that there is not a single consensus regarding the afterlife within Judaism on many of the details. The Torah is remarkably silent about the afterlife, there are only a few oblique statements about it. From this, we know that G-d doesn't consider the afterlife to be of high importance. G-d considers this life that we have on Earth to be of supreme importance. G-d talks about life on Earth a lot and barely mentions the afterlife.

The "core" belief of the afterlife in Judaism is that there are two destinations, Heaven and Gehinnom. Gehinnom is a temporary destination in which the longest time a soul can be there is one year. It is a place of cleansing. After the soul is clean, it goes to its permanent destination in Heaven. Heaven is for everyone, not just Jews.

Once you go beyond this core, I've heard many different opinions about various details from many different sages.

The soul of Moses is currently in Heaven along with everyone else.

[WoundedEgo]

I'm amazed to hear that Jews would have such a view, when the scriptures seem clear that their hope would not be "going to heaven" but rather living in the promised land.

And Gehinnom is a Greek term, not a Hebrew one.

??

[Tanakh Keeper]

I'm amazed to hear that Jews would have such a view, when the scriptures seem clear that their hope would not be "going to heaven" but rather living in the promised land.

And Gehinnom is a Greek term, not a Hebrew one.

??

I don't understand your amazement. You asked about the afterlife. Sure, we await the Messianic Era when all Jews will live in the Promised Land, but humans will still be mortal.

I guess the Greek took it from us. The original etymology of Gehinnom is the valley Gei of the son of Hinnom. I generally call it Sheol, but thought you would be unfamiliar with that term.

[WoundedEgo]

I don't understand your amazement. You asked about the afterlife. Sure, we await the Messianic Era when all Jews will live in the Promised Land, but humans will still be mortal.

I guess the Greek took it from us. The original etymology of Gehinnom is the valley Gei of the son of Hinnom. I generally call it Sheol, but thought you would be unfamiliar with that term.

As I read it, death will be ended:

Isa 25:8 He will swallow up death for ever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of His people will He take away from off all the earth; for the LORD hath spoken it.

As I understand things, SHEOL was simply "the grave":

Ge 37:35 And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said: ‘Nay, but I will go down to the grave to my son mourning.’ And his father wept for him.
Ge 42:38 And he said: ‘My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he only is left; if harm befall him by the way in which ye go, then will ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.
Ge 44:29 and if ye take this one also from me, and harm befall him, ye will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.
Ge 44:31 it will come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he will die; and thy servants will bring down the gray hairs of thy servant our father with sorrow to the grave.
Nu 16:30 But if the LORD make a new thing, and the ground open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down alive into the pit, then ye shall understand that these men have despised the LORD.’
Nu 16:33 So they, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit; and the earth closed upon them, and they perished from among the assembly.
De 32:22 For a fire is kindled in My nostril, and burneth unto the depths of the nether-world, and devoureth the earth with her produce, and setteth ablaze the foundations of the mountains.

Gehinnom was a valley outside of Jerusalem where the wicked exterminated their unwanted babies as an offering to Topheth:

2Ki 23:10 And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.
2Ch 28:3 Moreover he offered in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.
2Ch 33:6 He also made his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom; and he practised soothsaying, and used enchantments, and practised sorcery, and appointed them that divined by a ghost or a familiar spirit; he wrought much evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him.

It apparently later became Jerusalem's incinerator.

[Tanakh Keeper]

As I read it, death will be ended:

I s a 25:8. He has concealed death forever, and the Lord God shall wipe the tears off every face, and the shame of His people He shall remove from upon the entire earth, for the Lord has spoken.

From my bible, it says "concealed death", not "swallowed death". I don't know what this particular verse means.

As I read it, I would guess that G-d would minimize the grief that we feel from death.

[sylvius]

[I]I From my bible, it says "concealed death", not "swallowed death". I don't know what this particular verse means.

.

Hebrew "billa hamavet lanetzach"

בִּלַּע הַמָּוֶת לָנֶצַח

"bala" = to swallow, devour, eat up, gluttonize, gormandize; to absorb, gulp, gorge , bolt.

Translation "concealed death" is seemingly based on Rashi's comment:

http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_...showrashi/true

He will cover it and hide it forever from Israel

[WoundedEgo]

If I'm not mistaken, the authoritative text for Jews is the very same one that Christians translations use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_Codex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo_Codex

Modern Jews have standardized but there is no credible evidence that it was static prior to the 10th Century CE.

[Tanakh Keeper]

If I'm not mistaken, .

You are mistaken. Even with casual observance, the Hebrew bible and the Christian bible are very different. They have additional books and they switch around the order of the books.

[WoundedEgo]

You are mistaken. Even with casual observance, the Hebrew bible and the Christian bible are very different. They have additional books and they switch around the order of the books.

What I said was:

Well, okay, they use the ordering from the LXX rather than that of the TNK, however, the autographs would have been unordered, as they were originally scrolls, rather than a codex, so that is irrelevant.

The additional books, of course, are considered separately.

But the *point* is that the source text for modern "OT," both Jewish and Christian, is the Masoretic text:

The Masoretic Text (MT) is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible regarded almost universally as the official version of the Tanakh. It defines not just the books of the Jewish canon, but also the precise letter-text of the biblical books in Judaism, as well as their vocalization and accentuation known as the Masorah. The MT is also widely used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles, and in recent years (since 1943) also for Catholic Bibles.[1] In modern times the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown the MT to be nearly identical to some texts of the Tanakh dating from 200 B.C.E. but different from others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretic_Text

[footwasher]

If I'm not mistaken, the authoritative text for Jews is the very same one that Christians translations use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_Codex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleppo_Codex

Modern Jews have standardized but there is no credible evidence that it was static prior to the 10th Century CE.

See:

Quote
What happened to this Torah of Moshe is unclear, although there are rumors of it resurfacing later in history. However, the history of the text continued. Crucial to this development of the text of the Torah was the Babylonian exile which was really much more than the word exile connotes. It was the total devastation of a civilization. Scholars and leaders were killed; homes and cities were destroyed. The survivors of this long and brutal struggle were forced to leave their homes with what they could carry and move to a foreign land. It was at this point, Radak in his introduction to Yehoshua tells us, that "the books were lost and dispersed and the sages who were skilled in Bible were dead." All the people had was what little they had brought with them and what they remembered. Many of the texts were damaged due to the battle and travel conditions. Of the texts available, some were actual Torah scrolls while others were vulgata which, as we discussed, were never intended to be exact replicas of the Torah. However, each community had to make do with what they had and they courageously tried to fix their Torahs based on the best information available. As Radak suggested, it was at this point that multiple spellings and even word differences were introduced into the biblical texts. The nation was roiling in shock from its terrifying losses and was not able to recreate the centralized Torah leadership it once had. But complete Torah scrolls were an immediate need and could not wait for a new generation of leaders to organize a unified text. Therefore, each community acted on their own to fix their scrolls of missing words and portions.

http://www.aishdas.org/toratemet/en_text.html

[Tanakh Keeper]

See:
http://www.aishdas.org/toratemet/en_text.html

LOL, that is some very selective quoting footwasher. Here is the very NEXT paragraph, starting with the last sentence that you quoted.

...Therefore, each community acted on their own to fix their scrolls of missing words and portions.

It was not until decades later, when the Persian government allowed the Jews to return to Israel, that talented leaders could once again assert authority and try to unify the people under a single text. Such a unifying gesture would surely have been viewed with suspicion by a hostile Babylonian overlord. However, the benevolent Persian kings encouraged Jewish unity and thereby gave the Men of the Great Assembly, as the leading rabbis of the time were called, the opportunity to gather the Jewish people together under the banner of Torah. We are told in Masechet Sofrim 6:4:

Three books were found in the [Temple] courtyard - the maon book, the za'atutei book, and the hi book... so they retained the [majority] reading of the two and abandoned the [minority] of one.
In each of the three Torahs that were found, there was a unique textual variant and the sages followed the majority. In other words, when Ezra returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple, he was able to find three reliable scrolls with minor differences. The differences were as follows. In one, the word נערי was written in its Aramaic translation זאטוטי. In another, the word מעונה was written מעון without the final ה. And in the third, the word היא was written as הוא (but vocalized as 'hi') in eleven places. Other than these, the texts matched exactly which, frankly, is outstanding for texts produced by human hands.

[Tanakh Keeper]

BTW, here is the conclusion of the article that you linked:

We have traced the history of the Torah from its writing by Moshe, through its recreation based on manuscripts by Ezra, until its present form. We have seen questions arise from non-normative and non-Jewish sources like the Samaritan Torah and the Septuagint. And we have seen issues come up from the Talmud and Midrash. Through all this, the only issue that raised serious questions about the textus receptus of the Torah is that of chaser and yeter, vowelizations spelled with and without an assisting letter. This is acknowledged in halachic sources (see Yad Malachi, 1:283) but does not pose any serious limitation on our understanding of the Torah that G-d wrote through Moshe. While there are doubts whether a handful of letters (less than 0.01% of the Torah) were actually placed there by G-d or not, we have no compelling reason to doubt that the overwhelming majority of the Torah text (over 99.99%) has remained in its original form throughout the thousands of years of transmission.

[Rainbow Brite]

I s a 25:8. He has concealed death forever, and the Lord God shall wipe the tears off every face, and the shame of His people He shall remove from upon the entire earth, for the Lord has spoken.

From my bible, it says "concealed death", not "swallowed death". I don't know what this particular verse means.

As I read it, I would guess that G-d would minimize the grief that we feel from death.

Adam's curse was death, which we inherit from him.

Genesis 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

The Serpent IS death swallowing Adam who IS dust in death

Genesis 3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

Same imagery as the fish swallowing Jonah.

Jonah 2:2 And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

So when death is swallowed up, it is swallowed up by death. It swallows itself. Which is the mystery of the Ouroboros.

Attachment 74289

[WoundedEgo]

>>>...we have no compelling reason to doubt that the overwhelming majority of the Torah text (over 99.99%) has remained in its original form throughout the thousands of years of transmission.

The existence of the Dead Sea Scrolls is good evidence that the text varied over time. But my original assertion is that there is no compelling evidence that it did NOT change.