I have to STOP!!

[Karl Henning]

I understand what's bugging 71dB, but it's just a matter of how you look at differences of opinion.

Certainly where it's about taste in music, it doesn't really matter if someone else doesn't share your preference. He or she is a different person so it makes sense he or she likes something else.

The effort to persuade other people of one's pov is what causes a lot of aggravation. However, one can just say: "interesting you like this or that, chacun son gout.

Truly

[drogulus]

Too much credit for the Greeks. The idea of a soul surviving physical death is already found (although not necessarily the idea of heaven as a reward) in various early strata of the Bible, as well as Egyptian and Persian religion. If anything, the Greeks got it from Egypt and Persia.

     I think it's true the Greeks got it from the Egyptians. Originally the Jews thought souls would merge with their god, separate immortal existence came later. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) says:

The belief in the immortality of the soul came to the Jews from contact with Greek thought and chiefly through the philosophy of Plato, its principal exponent, who was led to it through Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in which Babylonian and Egyptian views were strangely blended

     

[Herman]

     You can ride horses, you can have a concept of a horse, but you can't ride a horse concept.

 

It's kind of ironic to start an argument about religion (on of the most contentious issues) in a topic which 71dB started to say arguments drive him mad (literally).

It's like saying: "we are going to argue and we're going to do it right in your back yard, and if you don't like it, just get out."

[JBS]

     I think it's true the Greeks got it from the Egyptians. Originally the Jews thought souls would merge with their god, separate immortal existence came later. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) says:

The belief in the immortality of the soul came to the Jews from contact with Greek thought and chiefly through the philosophy of Plato, its principal exponent, who was led to it through Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in which Babylonian and Egyptian views were strangely blended

   

In the intervening 113 years since that was written, that idea has been disproved.  The idea of existence in a not clearly defined afterlife (Sheol) was already existence by the time the books of Samuel and Kings were written, which occurred before any contact with the Greeks.  To put in context, Saul and David lived a century or two after the Trojan War; Homer and Hesiod were roughly contemporary with the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel; Plato was roughly contemporary with Nehemiah, Ezra, and the building of the Second Temple.  Even if you think most of the Old Testament was written during the Babylonian Captivity or soon after, that means it was written before anyone outside Greece would ever know anything about Plato, and Jewish contact with the Greeks came mainly  as a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great.  Whereas, aside from any indigenous ideas on the subject, the Hebrews would have known about the Egyptian beliefs on the subject from the time (obviosly) of the slavery in Egypt, and been exposed to Babylonian and Persian beliefs no later than the Babylonian Captivity.

[drogulus]

In the intervening 113 years since that was written, that idea has been disproved.  The idea of existence in a not clearly defined afterlife (Sheol) was already existence by the time the books of Samuel and Kings were written, which occurred before any contact with the Greeks.  To put in context, Saul and David lived a century or two after the Trojan War; Homer and Hesiod were roughly contemporary with the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel; Plato was roughly contemporary with Nehemiah, Ezra, and the building of the Second Temple.  Even if you think most of the Old Testament was written during the Babylonian Captivity or soon after, that means it was written before anyone outside Greece would ever know anything about Plato, and Jewish contact with the Greeks came mainly  as a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great.  Whereas, aside from any indigenous ideas on the subject, the Hebrews would have known about the Egyptian beliefs on the subject from the time (obviosly) of the slavery in Egypt, and been exposed to Babylonian and Persian beliefs no later than the Babylonian Captivity.

     Yes, that's what I read. Then there is this from the Encyclopedia of Religion (2005):

According to the Hebrew Bible, a dead human being remains in possession of the soul upon entering Sheʾol, a shadowy place sometimes synonymous with the grave, where the vitality and energy associated with worldly life are drastically decreased. Since both the body and the soul enter Sheʾol, the later doctrine of the resurrection (as expressed in Isaiah 24–27 and Daniel 12) indicates a reentry into life in both aspects.

     The Greeks brought a sharp dualism of body/soul and soul immortality that was not present in prior Jewish thought. I looked at other sources to confirm that body/soul unity and resurrection of both was the early view. I don't know how this fits with soul merger, it doesn't seem like it does.

It's kind of ironic to start an argument about religion (on of the most contentious issues) in a topic which 71dB started to say arguments drive him mad (literally).

It's like saying: "we are going to argue and we're going to do it right in your back yard, and if you don't like it, just get out."

     I can't argue with that.