The origins of the doctrine of the “immortality of the soul”
We have seen in the article: “
Resurrection or life immediately after the death?” that the Bible clearly and unanimously presents the dead as sleeping and having no consciousness. Just to give again some of the related passages:
Daniel 12:2 says:
“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.”
Everlasting life starts not with death but with the resurrection! Till then those who have died are presented as “sleeping in the dust of the earth”. See that God did not tell Daniel “and many of them whose souls are now in heaven”.
Same also with Paul: when speaking to the Thessalonians about the dead and the hope we have in the resurrection he spoke about those “sleeping”: In every verse of 1 Thessalonians 4:13-16 he mentions the dead. See the terms that he uses:
1 Thessalonians 4:13-16
“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:”
Paul’s hope, the hope that God gave to us in his Word has only one name: resurrection. Sometime between now and the resurrection some of us, perhaps all (depending on when the Lord will come – this time nobody knows), will die. We will not then enter into a blissful state in heaven or in paradise. Instead we will be sleeping. Where? In the dust of the ground, or as it is usually called in the Word “Sheol” or “Hades”, the gravedom ). This is the simple and easy to grasp truth of the Word of God.
https://www.jba.gr/The-origins-of-the-doctrine-of-the-immortality-of-the-soul.htm