Jesus
disagreed with the Saducees, a body of Jews who did not
believe in life after death (Matthew 22:23-33). The apostle
Paul went so far as to say that if there was no resurrection,
then Christ was not risen and the Christian faith was in
vain. (1 Corinthians 15:12-19). The Old Testament, however,
says plenty against the idea of life after death:
O
spare me, that I may recover strength,
before I go hence, and be no more. Psalm 39:13
Put
not your trust in princes,
Nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth;
In that very day his thoughts perish. Psalm 146:3-4
For
him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a
living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living
know that they shall die; but the dead know not any
thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the
memory of them is forgotten. Also their love and their
hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have
they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is
done under the sun. Ecclesiastes 9:4-6.
Whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there
is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the
grave, whither thou goest. Ecclesiastes 9:10.
Similar
denials are to be found in Psalm 6:5 and Isaiah 38:12. But
the Saducees don't get it all their own way in the Old
Testament. There is the story of the witch of En-dor calling
up the ghost of Samuel (1 Samuel 28:7-20), and the
translations of Enoch (Genesis 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings
2:11). Nevertheless it should be pointed out that the
supposedly pro-resurrection passage in Job (Job 19:25-27)
disappears in modern translations, while the passages
doubting the resurrection of the dead remain. (Job 7:9,
14:7-12).
