Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [283]
Stephen has a vision of the “Glory of God” which contrasts strongly with the Pauline view of the heavenly economy. Paul identified Christ with the “Glory of God.” Luke describes the scene in terms given him by the early Christian tradition, directly from Daniel 7:9-14, so the “Glory of God” is identified with the Ancient of Days. The next verse identifies Jesus (not explicitly the Christ) with the “Son of Man” in the Gospels. But unlike the Daniel 7:9-14 scene in which the Son of Man is seated next to the Ancient of Days, Jesus as Son of Man is standing at the right hand of God. Likely, Jesus’ standing (as opposed to the enthronement of the Son of Man in Daniel) is to greet the martyred Stephen as he is exalted into heaven after his martyrdom. Stephen’s death is explicitly described as “falling asleep,” linking it firmly with the promise of resurrection in Daniel 12. Without Daniel 12’s prophecy of resurrection and exaltation, the Christian kerygma is incomprehensible. Conversely, Christianity is a specific figuration of Daniel’s promise that those who make others wise shall shine like the stars. In effect, they are the angels. Here we see Stephen achieve that reward.
Certainly, Luke understood this vision as the fulfillment of Stephen’s martyrdom, exaltation, and heavenly transformation, as his appearance at the trial makes clear: “And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15). For Luke, martyrdom was certainly one path to angelic transformation. But it seemed clear that all who are believers in Christ will receive that title, even those who are still on earth.
An Anomalous Reference to the Afterlife in Luke
THERE IS ANOTHER anomalous reference to the afterlife in Luke which may imply yet other notions of the afterlife as well. Luke 23:42-43 implies an intermediary stage to the afterlife as a spirit or soul. Jesus said to one of the thieves crucified with him: “And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And he said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’” A number of theologians have used this passage to demonstrate that the notion of an immortal soul is antique within Christianity.19 And it could mean that; indeed likely it was interpreted in this way when the notion of the immortal soul was strongly fixed in Christianity.
But it would be unwise to conclude too much from this one, anomalous saying. It only assumes the Jewish notion of nefesh or the apocalyptic notion of the righteous souls being held in heaven until the end-time began, as we have seen in the early Enoch material. It is similar to the apocalyptic statement in Revelations 2:7 that the righteous will eat from the Tree of Life in Paradise until the end comes. Note that the passage in Revelation, which contains a reference to eating, is so dramatically physical that it cannot support any notion of the immortality of the soul. None of this dissuades the Apocalypticist from his expectation of bodily resurrection; at best it explains that the dead remain in a privileged, intermediate state until the final resurrection.20 They exist as bodies that can eat, “souls” in the ancient Hebrew sense of “ghosts,” “spirits,” or “shades,” and can remain secreted in Paradise. It does not change the impression that the missionary thrust of the earliest church was for the physical resurrection of Jesus, his physical presence in the liturgical life of the church, and the physical resurrection of all who believe in him, and no more suggests immortality of the soul than did such details as the faithful’s acquisition of crowns and thrones in apocalyptic literature.
The Gospel of Thomas and Q
Q IS THE NAME given to all the traditions that Luke and Matthew have in common but which are missing from Mark. (Q stands for Quelle, the German word for source.) Some scholars believe that this represents a separate document equal to Mark in importance to the Early Church but now lost in its original form. Given the evidence, Q would have had to be a bare-bones