Sheol the land of the dead has been much misunderstood by JWs and mainstream Xtians. The theology of ancient Canaan and Mesopotamia surprisingly had a very indisticnt impression of life after death. While speaking of a land of the dead the shadowy existance there was not formally developed. Death was viewed as an enemy that swallowed all but what was next is less defined.
Interestingly I was recently reading about the word Sheol. The corresponding Babylonian 'Shuala' is an exact parallel in it's vagueness about what happened there.
According to F.M.Cross and others the word 'Sheol" means, "(place) of Judgement or Questioning".
In many places in ancient literature including the oldest songs and poems in the OT death is described as a river or sea. In other discussions recently it's been detailed how death was related to the Baal combating the sead/abyss/dragon myth. Also Leolaia has adeptly reviewed the cosmic mountain motif wherein rivers and waters are above and below the sacred mountain of the Gods El and YHWH.
What is a new piece of the puzzle is the ancient "trial by ordeal at the river". In very ancient times a person accused of crime was thrown into a river, if he survived he was innocent. Quite efficient, tho barbaric. In Cross's opinion the etymology of the word Sheol is rooted in this trial in the river method of judgement. Then the earliest concepts of death in this region involved the soul of a dead to be tried by ordeal in the rivers at the base of the cosmic mountain, to determine it's destiny. In time the concept morphed into a place called 'place of Judgement' symbolized by a watery abbyss/river. (This maybe why the Mot and Timiat motifs converged???)
From the convergence of these themes we can better understand why OT writers used the language of death likened to drowning so often. (Jonah 2:3-10 (ancient poem reset in late narrative), 2 Sam 22:5-7,Ps 42:7,69:2,3,15,16; 88:5-8,Job 38:16,17;
Sheol, place of questioning
by peacefulpete 8 Replies latest watchtower bible
-
peacefulpete
-
peacefulpete
Sorry about the spelling. I can't edit from home and am in too much of a hurry to proofread for some reason.
-
Narkissos
Interesting. This reminds of Egyptian and Graeco-Roman mythology (cf. the river Styx in Hades). The only ordeal I know in the OT is Numbers 5, implying drinking water...
Is shuala an equivalent to the Akkadian arallu, the domain of Nergal, more commonly held as the equivalent of Hebrew she'ol? As far as I remember, from the descent of Ishtar and Gilgamesh epic, it is a subterranean ocean one has to cross in order to reach it.
About the etymology of she'ol, there are a number of views. The most common is she'ol as the place/god asking for, i.e. claiming, the deceased? The connection to sh`l, "deep", or sh`h, desert, are more unlikely on linguistic grounds.
Another possibility (?) would be the place for the questions or inquiry of the living, connected with the traditional (later forbidden) practice of necromancy: so in Deuteronomy 18:11 "consulting the ghosts" is sh'l 'ôv. This is particularly apparent in the Samuel / Saul (Sha'ul) tradition: Samuel is asked to Yhwh, asked for by Yhwh (1 Sam 1:17,20,27f; 2:20). Israel will ask Samuel for a king, who will be Sha'ul, "asked for" (8:10; 12:13,17,19). When Sha'ul cannot ask anything from Yhwh anymore (28:6), he will ask Samuel from she'ol (28:16; 1 Chronicles 10:13). A similar pun is involved in Isaiah 7:11: "Ask (sh'l) a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as she'ol or high as heaven."
On your thesis, my main problem would be the lack of evidence for "judgment of the dead" in the Bible she'ol. This idea doesn't seem to appear before 1 Henoch or 4 Ezra...
-
peacefulpete
Anyway I'm not the author of this idea. It's F.M. Cross' who appears to concur with Ruth Rosenburg's thesis, "The Concept of Bibical Sheol Within the Context of Ancient Near Eastern Beliefs".
Cross in this book "From Epic to Canon" gives the idea that he has delt with the river ordeal in depth at an earlier time. He understands it to have been the ritual entrance to the underworld. So in this it would seem to closly correlate to the Babylonian and Akadian. This primitive eschatological imagery is not a developed judgement scene or even a determinant for the place of reward/punishment. These are later conceptions as you point out. I get the feeling that the earliest religious concepts simple anticipated some justice in the tragedy of death, and this imagery represented the shadowy idea of being weighed in the scales sort of like the Egyptian concepts. -
peacefulpete
edited for spelling
-
Leolaia
I agree that Sheol likely owes its name to necromancy and ancestor worship. And from what I've read in Isaiah and Ezekiel, the punishment for the proud tyrant seems to be the ignomy and impotence of Sheol itself, and not much else.
About the underworld sea, note that Greek abussos "abyss" is derived from Akkadian Apsu < Sumerian AB.ZU, the term for the primeval ocean.
-
peacefulpete
Why is that preferable over Cross's view that it is rooted in the River ordeal?
-
Leolaia
I will have to look at Cross' evidence on the river ordeal, which surely is relevant to the conception of the underworld -- I just don't yet see how it better explains the etymology of the term, which otherwise comports well with the well-attested practice of necromancy and ancestor worship, in which ancestors interceded between deities and people, brought blessings upon people who beseech them (cf. the Ugaritic Keret Epic), and were thus "asked" for by such people as King Saul in the company of the priestess of En-dor. Maybe it's a combination of both.
-
Narkissos
In the Bible texts I fail to see what the negative outcome of such an ordeal would be. Nothing IMO indicates the possibility of a "death within death", comparable to the "second death" of Revelation. Everyone, whatever his record, seems to reach the shores of she'ol eventually. However, it is certainly possible that the etymology of she'ol points to a still older tradition, more similar to the Egyptian view of the judgment of the dead. Beliefs come and go...