See Mozley, Essays, 2:171—“These passages often describe the phenomena of death as it presents itself to our eyes, and so do not enter into the reality which takes place beneath it.” Bartlett, Life and Death Eternal, 189-358—“Because the same Hebrew word is used for ‘spirit’ and ‘breath,’ shall we say that the spirit is only breath? ‘Heart’ in English might in like manner be made to mean only the material organ; and David's heart, panting, thirsting, melting within him, would have to be interpreted literally. So a man may be ‘eaten up with avarice,’ while yet his being is not only not extinct, but is in a state of frightful activity.”
(g) The Jewish belief in a conscious existence after death is proof that the theory of annihilation rests upon a misinterpretation of Scripture. That such a belief in the immortality of the soul existed among the Jews is abundantly evident: from the knowledge of a future state possessed by the Egyptians (Acts 7:22); from the accounts of the translation of Enoch and [pg 995] of Elijah (Gen. 5:24; cf. Heb. 11:5; 2 K. 2:11); from the invocation of the dead which was practised, although forbidden by the law (1 Sam. 28:7-14; cf. Lev. 20:28; Deut. 18:10, 11); from allusions in the O. T. to resurrection, future retribution, and life beyond the grave (Job 19:25-27; Ps. 16:9-11; Is. 26:19; Ez. 37:1-14; Dan. 12:2, 3, 13); and from distinct declarations of such faith by Philo and Josephus, as well as by the writers of the N. T. (Mat. 22:31, 32; Acts 23:6; 26:6-8; Heb. 11:13-16).
The Egyptian coffin was called “the chest of the living.” The Egyptians called their houses “hostelries,” while their tombs they called their “eternal homes” (Butcher, Aspects of Greek Genius, 30). See the Book of the Dead, translated by Birch, in Bunsen's Egypt's Place, 123-333: The principal ideas of the first part of the Book of the Dead are “living again after death, and being born again as the sun,” which typified the Egyptian resurrection (138). “The deceased lived again after death” (134). “The Osiris lives after he dies, like the sun daily; for as the sun died and was born yesterday, so the Osiris is born” (164). Yet the immortal part, in its continued existence, was dependent for its blessedness upon the preservation of the body; and for this reason the body was embalmed. Immortality of the body is as important as the passage of the soul to the upper regions. Growth or natural reparation of the body is invoked as earnestly as the passage of the soul. “There is not a limb of him without a god; Thoth is vivifying his limbs” (197).
Maspero, Recueil de Travaux, gives the following readings from the inner walls of pyramids twelve miles south of Cairo: “O Unas, thou hast gone away dead, but living”; “Teti is the living dead”; “Arise, O Teti, to die no more”; “O Pepi, thou diest no more”;—these inscriptions show that to the Egyptians there was life beyond death. “The life of Unas is duration; his period is eternity”; “They render thee happy throughout all eternity”; “He who has given thee life and eternity is Ra”;—here we see that the life beyond death was eternal. “Rising at his pleasure, gathering his members that are in the tomb, Unas goes forth”; “Unas has his heart, his legs, his arms”; this asserts reunion with the body. “Reunited to thy soul, thou takest thy place among the stars of heaven”; “the soul is thine within thee”;—there was reunion with the soul. “A god is born, it is Unas”; “O Ra, thy son comes to thee, this Unas comes to thee”; “O Father of Unas, grant that he may be included in the number of the perfect and wise gods”; here it is taught that the reunited soul and body becomes a god and dwells with the gods.
Howard Osgood: “Osiris, the son of gods, came to live on earth. His life was a pattern for others. He was put to death by the god of evil, but regained his body, lived again, and became, in the other world, the judge of all men.” Tiele, Egyptian Religion, 280—“To become like god Osiris, a benefactor, a good being, persecuted but justified, judged but pronounced innocent, was looked upon as the ideal of every pious man, and as the condition on which alone eternal life could be obtained, and as the means by which it could be continued.” Ebers, Études Archéologiques, 21—“The texts in the pyramids show us that under the Pharaohs of the 5th dynasty (before 2500 B. C.) the doctrine that the deceased became god was not only extant, but was developed more thoroughly and with far higher flight of imagination than we could expect from the simple statements concerning the other world hitherto known to us as from that early time.” Revillout, on Egyptian Ethics, in Bib. Sac., July, 1890:304—“An almost absolute sinlessness was for the Egyptian the condition of becoming another Osiris and enjoying eternal happiness. Of the penitential side, so highly developed in the ancient Babylonians and Hebrews, which gave rise to so many admirable penitential psalms, we find only a trace among the Egyptians. Sinlessness is the rule,—the deceased vaunts himself as a hero of virtue.” See Uarda, by Ebers; Dr. Howard Osgood, on Resurrection among the Egyptians, in Hebrew Student, Feb. 1885. The Egyptians, however, recognized no transmigration of souls; see Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 181-184.
It is morally impossible that Moses should not have known the Egyptian doctrine of immortality: Acts 7:22—“And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” That Moses did not make the doctrine more prominent in his teachings, may be for the reason that it was so connected with Egyptian superstitions with regard to Osiris. Yet the Jews believed in immortality: Gen. 5:24—“and Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him”; [pg 996] cf. Heb. 11:5—“By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death”; 2 Kings 2:11—“Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven”; 1 Sam. 28:7-14—the invocation of Samuel by the woman of Endor; cf. Lev. 20:27—“A man also or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death”; Deut. 18:10, 11—“There shall not be found with thee ... a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer.”
Job 19:25-27—“I know that my Redeemer liveth, And at last he will stand up upon the earth: And after my skin, even this body, is destroyed, Then without my flesh shall I see God; Whom I, even I, shall see, on my side, And mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger. My heart is consumed within me”; Ps. 16:9-11—“Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: My flesh also shall dwell in safety. For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; Neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life: In thy presence is fulness of joy; In thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore”; Is. 26:19—“Thy dead shalt live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the dead”; Ez. 37:1-14—the valley of dry bones—“I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, O my people”—a prophecy of restoration based upon the idea of immortality and resurrection; Dan. 12:2, 3, 13—“And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.... But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and shalt stand in thy lot, at the end of the days.”
Josephus, on the doctrine of the Pharisees, in Antiquities, XVIII:1:3, and Wars of the Jews, II:8:10-14—“Souls have an immortal vigor. Under the earth are rewards and punishments. The wicked are detained in an everlasting prison. The righteous shall have power to revive and live again. Bodies are indeed corruptible, but souls remain exempt from death forever. But the doctrine of the Sadducees is that souls die with their bodies.” Mat. 22:31, 32—“But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
Christ's argument, in the passage last quoted, rests upon the two implied assumptions: first, that love will never suffer the object of its affection to die; beings who have ever been the objects of God's love will be so forever; secondly, that body and soul belong normally together; if body and soul are temporarily separated, they shall be united; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are living, and therefore they shall rise again. It was only an application of the same principle, when Robert Hall gave up his early materialism as he looked down into his father's grave: he felt that this could not be the end; cf. Ps. 22:26—“Your heart shall live forever.” Acts 23:6—“I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees: touching the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question”; 26:7, 8—“And concerning this hope I am accused by the Jews, O king! Why is it judged incredible with you, if God doth raise the dead?” Heb. 11:13-16—the present life was reckoned as a pilgrimage; the patriarchs sought “a better country, that is, a heavenly”; cf. Gen. 47:9. On Jesus' argument for the resurrection, see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 406-421.
The argument for immortality itself presupposes, not only the existence of a God, but the existence of a truthful, wise, and benevolent God. We might almost say that God and immortality must be proved together,—like two pieces of a broken crock, when put together there is proof of both. And yet logically it is only the existence of God that is intuitively certain. Immortality is an inference therefrom. Henry More: “But souls that of his own good life partake He loves as his own self; dear as his eye They are to him: he'll never them forsake; When they shall die, then God himself shall die; They live, they live in blest eternity.” God could not let Christ die, and he cannot let us die. Southey: “They sin who tell us love can die. With life all other passions fly; All others are but vanity. In heaven ambition cannot dwell, Nor avarice in the vaults of hell; They perish where they had their birth; But love is indestructible.”