Agnosticism in the Bible...

[cynatnite]

It was Bart Ehrman who brought this passage to my attention while reading his book, "God's Problem".

This is from Today's English Version of the Bible...

But anyone who is alive in the world of the living has some hope; a live dog is better off than a dead lion. Yes, the living know they are going to die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward; they are completely forgotten. Their loves, their hates, their passions, all died with them. They will never again take part in anything that happens in this world.

Go ahead-eat your food and be happy; drink your wine and be cheerful. It's all right with God. Always look happy and cheerful. Enjoy life with the woman you love, as long as you live the useless life that God has given you in this world. Enjoy every useless day of it because that is all you will get for your trouble. Work hard at whatever you do, because there will be no action, no thought, no knowledge, no wisdom in the world of the dead-and that is where you are going.

Ecclesiastes 9: 4-10

It has an almost agnostic feel to it. Anyone else have an opinion about this?

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Ecclesiastes is a great book. Mostly coming out of the wisdom philosophy of Greece.

It's not a very "Jewish" book, in the way that the rest of the Bible is (excepting also Proverbs and some of the Psalms, Song of Solomon, Tobit, Judith, and some others). It shows the heavy influence of post-Alexander Greek thought - the stoics, and so forth - that advanced their way through the Middle-East cultures.

Kind of odd that it ended up in the Old Testament, but that's the way it goes.

I especially love Qoholeth's constant refrain of "vanity of vanities; all is vanity".

[Warpy]

2. No, it just tells you to make your heaven here

because you're not going to get one when you die.

[hyphenate]

5. Which is what most atheists believe

IIRC, "Heaven" was invented by overlords and dictators, because they essentially made those under them into slaves or near-slaves. They needed to keep those peasants and others "happy" so they invented a "heaven" where those who worked hard--very hard--through their lives needed something to hope for, if not in this world, than in the "next."

A lot of the people were not able to lift themselves out of the horror of their lives, and thus they believed in this other "world" where the wicked would go straight to eternal damnation while they went somewhere where the climate wasn't so "hot."

Many things were handed down by unmerciful bastards who ruled, like this, and like not eating meat on Fridays, and not allowing priests to marry. In the case of the "fish rule" for Fridays, it was essentially the result of fishermen petitioning for more fish to be sold to raise their profits, and in the latter case, it was because the Church didn't want priests to be faithful to a wife and family over the church.

[Warpy]

6. A small quibble

Mother church didn't want her priests to marry because the ones who amassed property were leaving it to their offspring instead of to mother church.

It was all about the money, the land, and anything else they had managed to accumulate.

[DCKit]

3. There really is no doggy heaven? n/t

[papau]

4. I read it as "God's happy if you have a good life, but without God, their is no point to life"

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

9:4-10 The most despicable living man's state, is preferable to that of the most noble who have died impenitent. Solomon exhorts the wise and pious to cheerful confidence in God, whatever their condition in life. The meanest morsel, coming from their Father's love, in answer to prayer, will have a peculiar relish. Not that we may set our hearts upon the delights of sense, but what God has given us we may use with wisdom. The joy here described, is the gladness of heart that springs from a sense of the Divine favour. This is the world of service, that to come is the world of recompence. All in their stations, may find some work to do. And above all, sinners have the salvation of their souls to seek after, believers have to prove their faith, adorn the gospel, glorify God, and serve their generation.

[dmallind]

7. Well the whole surviving in the afterlife thing was a later introduction

Not later than Ecclesiastes, but later in the sense of only being included in those texts written in the postexilic period.

The fact that Zoroastrianism contains belief in an afterlife is of course purely a coincidence ;)

IIRC Ecclesiastes is written a couple hundred years after the exile. Maybe a bit more. So at least some sects had it as a belief concept by then.

[Critters2]

8. Belief in an afterlife came late in the Jewish faith.

It was being hotly debated in Jesus' day. So, it's not surprising to find it doubted in Qoheleth.

[pegleg]

9. the Saducees of Jesus' day were atheists.