The afterlife in the Bible: Is there such a marked shift between the OT and the NT?

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BartholomewB

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Yesterday I came across an old note from a couple of years ago, when I was reading the OT in the Revised New Jerusalem Bible. It has to do with an apparent discontiuity between the OT and the NT on the subject of the afterlife. The RNJB is translated by Dom Henry Wansbrough, a British Benedictine who is widely esteemed for his Biblical scholarship. In his translation, Macc 7:9 reads:

“You set us free from this present life but the king of the world will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, since we are dying for his laws.”

To this verse Wansbrough attaches an unusually long footnote, in which he explains:

A significant advance in belief in the afterlife, toward which Is 25:8, Ho 13:14, and perhaps Job 19:26-27, have been tending. Although written in Greek, this assertion accords with Hebrew anthropology, expressing the resurrection of the martyr and a continued life of the whole person, “ever-flowing life,” v. 36, not merely immortality of the soul, as in the Greek tradition, Wis 3:4. For the wicked there is no resurrection to new life, v. 14, contrast Dan 12:2, which teaches a resurrection also for the unjust.

A separate post will give the full text of each of the seven verses that Wansbrough is referencing in this footnote.

Catholic teaching about the afterlife is stated clearly and unambiguously in the CCC, in paragraph 366:

The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God — it is not "produced" by the parents —- and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.

This Catholic teaching is, needless to say, in full agreement with everything that we read on the subject in the NT, particularly in the teaching of Jesus himself.

Now, if Wansbrough is correct about this difference between the Hebrew and Greek accounts of the afterlife, that would seem to imply that the Catholic teaching — and Jesus’ teaching, too — about the afterlife is of Greek, not Hebrew, origin. So where does that leave the continuity between the OT and the NT? I don’t think it can be enough to say that the authors of the NT books were more familiar with the Greek text of the Septuagint than they were with the original Hebrew scriptures, a consideration that emerges from the wording of the OT quotations and allusions found in the Gospels and the Epistles alike. Any ideas?
 
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Here is the full text, in Wansbrough’s own translation, of each of the seven verses that he referenced in his footnote to 2 Macc 7:9:

Isaiah 25:8:
He has destroyed death for ever. Lord God has wiped away the tears from every cheek; he has taken his people’s shame away over all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

Hosea 13:14:
Shall I save them from the clutches of Sheol? Shall I buy them back from Death? Where are your plagues, Death? Where are your scourges, Sheol? Compassion is hidden from my sight!

Job 19:26-27:
After my skin has been stripped from me, from my flesh I shall look on God. He whom I shall see will take my part: my eyes will be gazing on no stranger. My heart sinks within me.

2 Macc 7:36:
Our brothers, having endured brief pain, for the sake of ever-flowing life have died for the covenant of God, while you, by God’s judgement, will have to pay the just penalty for your arrogance.

Wis 3:4:
... and if in human eyes they (the righteous) were being punished, their hope was rich with immortality;

(Again, another footnote, reading: In the Greek books of the OT, survival after death is conceived in terms of immortality of the soul rather than bodily resurrection, cf. 2 Macc 7:9.)

2 Macc 7:14:
When he was nearing his end, he cried, “It is the better choice, to meet death at men’s hands, yet relying on God’s promise that we shall be raised up by him, whereas for you there can be no resurrection to new life.”

Dan 12:2:
Of those who are sleeping in the Land of Dust, many will awaken, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting disgrace.

(Plus one more footnote: The martyrdom of the persecution provoked the decisive advance in belief in the resurrection, see Num 16:33, 2 Macc 7:9. Here alone in the OT is exoressed belief in the resurrection of both just and unjust, but still only “many” will arise, not all.)
 
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Is any perceived difference not that of differing covenants? As well, how well do Wansbrough's comments align with the Rev. George Leo Haydock Bible Commentary and/or the Catena Aurea?
 

po18guy said:
Is any perceived difference not that of differing covenants?
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That is an interesting question, but I don’t know the answer. If I did, I probably wouldn’t have needed to ask the question I’m asking in this thread.

po18guy said:
As well, how well do Wansbrough's comments align with the Rev. George Leo Haydock Bible Commentary
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They’re commentaries of a different kind. I see no conflict beteen the two. Judge for yourself. Here is Haydock’s comment on this verse:

Ver. 9. Most wicked, The martyrs have sometimes been inspired by God to speak in harsh language to magistrates; though their office generally commands respect. H.—Life. The resurrection is clearly specified in all these answers. The Redeemer was near at hand. C.—Christiant fuerunt... factis. S. Aug. ser. i. 2.


po18guy said:
and/or the Catena Aurea?
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Isn’t the Catena Aurea a commentary, or a collection of commentaries, on the four Gospels? Where would I find 2 Macc 7:9 in it? Kindly explain.
 
Saint Peter writes of the spirits in prison since the days of Noah in 1 Peter 3:18-22 and 1 Peter 4:6. Although in retrospective revelation, it reveals the reward for those who, although long dead, would hear the Gospel directly from Christ. There is no purpose in hearing the Gospel if it will have no effect in that hearing.

Since God is immutable, the perception of the afterlife must reflect differences bot in covenants as well as revelation. The concept of resurrection developed over time and was more fully fleshed out in the Deuterocanon. As to commenters, I tend to prefer the accumulated wisdom of the doctors and early fathers of the Church to any given commenter, but that does not necessarily exclude any of them. However, I tilt away from most all modern commenters, as the the Church suffers from modernism, a pernicious influence in our age. I have both the 1966 and 1985 Jerusalem bibles, but much prefer Vulgate-based translations.

As to the Catena aurea:

"John Henry Newman, in his preface to Thomas Aquinas' Catena Aurea, explains that a "Catena Patrum" is "a string or series of passages selected from the writings of various Fathers, and arranged for the elucidation of some portion of Scripture, as the Psalms or the Gospels"

Just my personal thoughts and nothing more.
 
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@po18guy, what do you think of this as evidence for the belief in the afterlife in ancient Israel? It's the Witch of Endor episode in 1 Sam 28. Whether or not it's theologically correct, surely the author and the readers alike must have accepted it as a true story. If they didn't, it wouldn't even be in the Bible at all, would it?

The witch sees Samuel’s ghost rising up out of the ground, evidently coming from Sheol, though the name is not mentioned in this chapter. In Wansbrough’s own translation the story continues:

13 The king said to her, “Do not be afraid! What do you see?” The woman replied to Saul, “I see a god rising from the earth.” 14 “What is his shape?” he asked. She replied, “It is an old man coming up; he is wrapped in a cloak.” Saul then knew that it was Samuel and, bowing to the ground, prostrated himself. 15 Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by conjuring me up?” Saul replied, “I am in great distress; the Philistines are waging war on me, and God has abandoned me and no longer answers me either by prophet or by dream; and so I have summoned you to tell me what I ought to do.”
 
@po18guy, from your link:

Ver. 11. Samuel. Here we behold the antiquity of necromancy, which is a proof that people believed the soul’s immortality; animas responsa daturas. (Horace, i. sat. 8.) (Calmet) — Protestants sometimes deny (Haydock) that souls appear again, contrary to this history and Matthew xvii. (St. Augustine) (Worthington)

Thank you for that! So now we know. I wonder why Wansbrough didn't include this passage among the references he quotes in that footnote to 2 Macc 7:9. Possibly because it conflicts with his assertion that immortality of the soul alone was a Greek belief, unlike the Hebrew belief in the "continued life of the whole person"?
 
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BartholomewB said:
@po18guy, from your link:

Ver. 11. Samuel. Here we behold the antiquity of necromancy, which is a proof that people believed the soul’s immortality; animas responsa daturas. (Horace, i. sat. 8.) (Calmet) — Protestants sometimes deny (Haydock) that souls appear again, contrary to this history and Matthew xvii. (St. Augustine) (Worthington)

Thank you for that! So now we know. I wonder why Wansbrough didn't include this passage among the references he quotes in that footnote to 2 Macc 7:9. Possibly because it conflicts with his assertion that immortality of the soul alone was a Greek belief, unlike the Hebrew belief in the "continued life of the whole person"?
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Rather than "new" or "modern" commentary, perhaps we need only an AI language update of the classical commentaries(?)
 
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