There is quite a bit to address here so I’ll break it up FWIW....
Here is a good article on the vagaries of Jewish belief.
What is the Jewish afterlife like?
The reason I said “ancient Jews” as opposed to 'modern Jews' is addressed in your article....
"What do Jews actually believe happens to them after death?
There is no simple answer: at different times and in different places, Jews had different ideas. These varying thoughts were never reconciled or canonically decided. Thus, even today, Jews believe in different, often irreconcilable, theories of what life after death is like."
That being the case, can we trust the Jews to give us the truth in the way they interpret their scripture on this subject? After all Jesus castigated the Pharisees for "teaching the commands of men as doctrine". (Matthew 15:7-9) According to King Solomon, there is no life after death in Jewish scripture. (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20; Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10)
Did you actually read the article before you posted it?
What is clear is that the soul could be summoned (cf.Samuel and the witch on Endor), so again I repudiate your notion the soul "died." Rather it slept.
Well, I'm afraid you haven't. You see the account of the witch of Endor has some background to it if you cared to read the whole thing. Saul was losing his marbles and he was disobeying his God to the point where God had abandoned him. The living prophets would not speak to him and so, out of desperation, again breaking God's law on communication with the dead ( a practice common in paganism but forbidden in Israel) he sought out the only medium still existing in the land. The irony of that was that Saul had been the one who evicted them at God's command.
If you read the account, you will see that the fortune teller was a spirit medium who could communicate with spirits of the dead, so Saul sought the advice of the now dead prophet Samuel, who had guided him in the past. The account does not say that anyone but the woman saw and heard the supposed spirit of Samuel. She described him to Saul and conveyed his words.
Now ask yourself....if the living prophets would not communicate with this disgraced king, and God had abandoned him, why would the faithful prophet Samuel communicate with Saul and tell him anything?
You do understand why God forbade the practice of consulting spirit mediums I hope.....the only spirits who answered the call were demonic spirits impersonating the dead and leading them astray.
Go back to Eden and see that the very first lie told by the devil was that "you surely will not die"...that is not what God told Adam.
Genesis 3:19...
"In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.” The death penalty was permanent.
Since some humans were repentant and in need of a way to be forgiven, God provided sacrifices so that on the basis of these, he could offer sincere ones a way to be forgiven and to live again. These then paved the way for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ..."once for all time" to guarantee a way out of death by resurrection. There was never a teaching of life after death...that was the devil's lie and an immortal soul just gave humans a way not to die, but to go on living, in another form in another place. The demons would make sure that it was believable...but its a deception.
I see that your rejection of the soul is corollary to rejection of platonism/neo-platonism. IMO you have thrown out "the baby with the bath water." Not everything from paganism is "wrong."
I think that the Bible writers disagree with you....
2 Corinthians 6:14-18...
"Do not become unevenly yoked with unbelievers. For what fellowship do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what sharing does light have with darkness? 15 Further, what harmony is there between Christ and Beʹli·al? Or what does a believer share in common with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement does God’s temple have with idols? For we are a temple of a living God; just as God said: “I will reside among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” 17 “‘Therefore, get out from among them, and separate yourselves,’ says Jehovah, ‘and quit touching the unclean thing’”; “‘and I will take you in.’” 18 “‘And I will become a father to you, and you will become sons and daughters to me,’ says Jehovah, the Almighty.”
Do you see any room in Paul's words for the adoption of paganism?
Sometimes it is just distorted by imperfection. I am not saying every pagan belief about souls is correct. However the bible clearly uses pneuma and psyche as different terms.
"Pneuma" is used in english to describe what is related to air..."pneumatic" or "pneumonia". Lungs, air and breathing.
"Psyche" is also related to things in English...."psychiatry" "psychotic", relating to the brain in which our mind resides. Our mind cannot exist without a body. Our body cannot exist without breathing.
I think Jesus' parable of Lazarus discloses the exact opposite.
"I think" has no place in Bible study. God has no interest in what we think....only that we believe what his son taught us.....because all that he taught came from the Father.
To say that the Holy Spirit is only a force is to deny the Holy Spirit personality. It must have personality where ever it goes out from God, just because it represents God who himself has personality. Arguments about the extent of anthromorphizing the Holy Spirit are separate from attributing personality to it. That it can be blasphemed shows it has personality.
There are many things personified in the Bible. Personification is a figure of speech. We use this when we speak of something inanimate as if it were alive. For example, the Bible tells us, “Death ruled as king from Adam down to Moses”; “grief and sighing must flee away”; “true wisdom itself keeps crying aloud in the very street.” (
Romans 5:14; Isaiah 35:10; Proverbs 1:20) Death, grief, sighing and wisdom cannot
really rule, flee or cry out. But speaking as if they did, the Bible paints vivid mental pictures, easily visualized and remembered.
We believe that the holy spirit is not a person.....it has no personality of its own. It has no name, nor is it ever said to sit at God's left hand. It is sent to accomplish God's will.....guaranteeing its fulfillment.
I believe the Jews believed in the continuation on of the spirit (cf. Samual and the witch of Endor). The distinction between soul and spirit is sometimes arbitary, but spirit infers animation.
Indeed the spirit is what animated Adam from a lifeless state to a "living soul". Adam was not given a soul, but "became" one when God started him breathing. This is the main meaning of the word "spirit". The soul is the whole person...the spirit is what keeps us alive, sustained by breathing.
You are mistaking death of the body for death of the soul. It seems your theology has a conceptual void that cannot distinguish body and spirit. If Jesus distinguished, so can you.
Jesus used the "soul" as Jews understood it from their scripture. In Genesis all the animals that God created are called "souls". A soul is therefore a living breathing creature. Can you show me one instance where a soul was ever a disembodied spirit?
You basically deny the spirit world. May be it's just part of the whole JW problem. Your beliefs are in so many ways superficial childish and immature. It's why JWs are often called a cult. You can't accept what's actually written in the bible. Even Paul the apostle talked about being with Christ on death. Phil 1:23. If his soul died, how could it happen?
Oh please....Christ could have been accused of being a cult leader if that is the case. I find Christendom's beliefs to be childish and superficial TBH.....I grew up with them.
As for believing that Jesus was created: where does it ever say that? It never says it, ever.
Paul described him as....
"the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." (Colossians 1:15)
and the apostle John in his Revelation described Jesus as...
"the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God".
(Revelation 3:14)
Jesus is a created being which rules him out as being the Almighty. He is "only begotten" which is "monogenes" in Greek.....the term used of 'an only child'. The fact that he is "begotten" means that he needed a begetter.....which is why God is called his "Father".
Ghosts exist, but not everyone can perceive them. This is simply a matter of fact. Check out Borley Rectory:
The haunted house where a creepy ghost of a Victorian boy was spotted
These are demons impersonating the dead.....'sucked in' anyone who believes them.
Talk about childish. Gotcha.
Even Jesus and his apostles conceded ghosts.
Since the apostles were Jews, they were under Jewish law which forbade anyone to communicate with spirits. (Deuteronomy 18:19-21) The demons were very active in the first century because that is when Jesus walked the earth and exposed them. But when Jesus died, God's law did not disappear, communicating with spirits was still against God's law and with good reason.
Why do we imagine that angels (who were spirit creatures) never came into contact with humans unless they materialized in human form. It was so that the demons could not repeat what they had accomplished in Noah's day. They materialized and turned the world into a place not fit for decent people to live. The flood was a response to them abusing their powers, so God stripped them of that ability. The only way to communicate with humans now was through spirit mediums...humans who had no respect for God's laws....satan's little helpers.
Even Jesus after his resurrection, (raised as a spirit), materialized human form to "appear" to his apostles and many others.
This is all in the Bible and it is what we believe.
In these last days, the demons are again very active because they know their time is almost up.
Believe them if you wish but you can't say that you were not warned.