AΘANAΣIA / ANAΣTAΣIΣ: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Abstract

In this essay in speculative biblical theology on immortality/resurrection, the anthropological presuppositions need to be examined in both Hebrew and Greek usages, requiring an understanding of the absolute nature of death in its biblical context. While the notion of the resurrection took hold in post-Exilic Palestine, Socrates exulted in the immortality of his soul and the body–soul dichotomy, in terms of which early Christianity read the NT. Yet the NT itself neither teaches nor presupposes this immortality of the soul, but rather that identifiably the same ‘I’, who dies wholly and totally, is raised up to a newness of life, a new creation.