huckelberry wrote:mercyngrace, I sympathize with your general position here but think this response to nightlion is problematic. I cannot think of any way to justify a claim Jews did not think eternal life meant primarily life after this life, what is a persons state after the resurrection. To my understanding,in Jesus day, a variety of views of eternal life or the lack thereof competed with each other. It is a Christian interpretation of Jesus phrase to focus its meaning on a new kind of life here. It is normally connected to seeing the kingdom of God starting now but connected to eternity. I think Jesus thought things like that but in the quoted phrase, he specifically refers eternal life to escaping death. Is it not difficult to disconnect that idea from a life after this life? After all, all Christians who have lived so far, have died within the normal time of a lifespan.
I didn't mean to suggest that no Jews believed in an afterlife. Certainly many did - or at least as New Testament Wright describes it, they believed in life after 'life after death'. :) However, it's my understanding that the phrase which we have translated as "eternal life" is idiomatic and primarily implies an abundant life here and now in the same way "Kingdom of Heaven" was an idiom meaning God, just another way of saying hashem without uttering the holy word YHWH.
You can see a good example in 1 John 3 of "eternal life" meaning the kind of life God lives (i.e. abundant, peaceful, holy in the here and now).
14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
We have passed into life
now because of the way we have chosen to live
now. Others, specifically the hateful, do not abide in this eternal life because they have chosen
now, in this life, not to be followers of The Way.
Again in 1 Timothy 6:
11 But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.
12 Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.
Claim eternal life now. That's what is being said here. Can this be disconnected from life after life after death? Well, this idea shows up in the Talmud for centuries after Christ, distinguishing between the rabbinic concept of Hayei Olam (Hi-YAY Oh-LAHM) and Hayei Sha'ah (Hi-YAY Sha-AH). The former being an abundant, godly life now (eternal life) and the latter, a life consumed only with the fleeting cares of mortality. The fact that this persists in the first Talmud through about 500 AD suggests to me that it wasn't only a Christian idea but I am very much still learning so I could be wrong. And when it comes to rabbinic literature, one could spend an eternal life
of either kind studying and still only scratch the surface of the tip of an iceberg.
I also think that while we may read something about the afterlife into these verses, the whole Good Shepherd sermon is more likely a remez referencing Ezekiel 34. It was a condemnation of the men who were supposed to be shepherds. This is why the passage ends with the Jews taking up stones to kill Him. As beautiful and meaningful as this passage is to believers, the message was aimed primarily at those in the temple who should have been good shepherds but ravaged their own flock.
"In my more rebellious days I tried to doubt the existence of the sacred, but the universe kept dancing and life kept writing poetry across my life." ~ David N. Elkins, 1998, Beyond Religion, p. 81