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From: mcdaniel@uiucdcsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Re: Afterlife
Message-ID: <27400008@uiucdcsb.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Dec-84 03:57:00 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcsb.27400008
Posted: Sat Dec  1 03:57:00 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 04:57:45 EST
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Nf-From: uiucdcsb!mcdaniel    Dec  1 02:57:00 1984

Thanks, Sher.  I must remember that last line ("Judaism tells us how to
live, not how to die.")  Pithy.

So now that a consensus seems to have been reached on that (and thanks
for the info!), I have come up with one more question.  (Oh, come on,
it's just a little one . . .)

In the text that Christians refer to as "the Old Testament" (I am sorry
that I do not know the Jewish term for it), I think that there is a
Hebrew term rendered in English as "sheol".  Webster's says that it is
"an underworld where according to ancient Hebrew belief the dead have a
shadowy existence".  (Definition 2 is "hell", which is an obvious
Christian corruption of the term.)  The Oxford English says much the
same, without the phrase "ancient Hebrew belief".  What is the precise
meaning of "sheol" in Hebrew, and how does it relate to the rest of
Judaism?  Three possibilities: (1) my memory is bad and "sheol" does
not occur until the NT; (2) "sheol" is apocrypha (not Apochrypha, of
course); (3) Jewish beliefs have changed, maybe???

[To make one thing perfectly clear, let me say this about that :-) :
this is NOT an attempt to pick holes in Judaism.  I am genuinely
puzzled.]

------------------
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Tim McDaniel
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