People have asked me where I get the concept of Two Realms.
I admit my terminology is my own, so you can call things what you like. However, it’s pretty simple — read John 3. Jesus tells Nicodemus that there is a distinct division between a realm of spirit and a realm of flesh. Jesus expressed dismay that the senior academic of the whole Nation of Israel had lost touch with this understanding. It did not originate with Jesus; it was inherent in the Old Testament.
So as you read through the New Testament, you cannot ignore the concept as Jesus expressed it. If He discussed it Nicodemus, you can be sure it was common knowledge with His disciples in one form or another. Are we surprised that Paul, an academic who had been training to eventually succeed Nicodemus, would after his conversion begin writing in terms of Two Realms? It’s hard not to notice the very otherworldly viewpoint.
What is a little less obvious is how very much our Western assumptions about reality are so very different from those of the Ancient Hebrew. That’s the reason for the book linked on the lower right side of this blog. Where did I learn that stuff? The chief source for shaping my understanding was Edersheim, particularly in his book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. It’s hosted several places online and sold in various editions in print. Starting around Book I Chapter 2, Edersheim traces, with copious references, how the rabbis themselves reported their own shift from the ANE mystical outlook over to the Hellenized rationalism. Notice how old his book is: 1883.
Where did Edersheim get it his sources? He was a converted Jew, a serious scholar in the orthodox traditions. By the way, he belonged to the Free Church of Scotland, which emphasized the human necessity of living in a small, close-knit community with a very wide degree of individual freedom. That denomination was mostly absorbed back into the official Church of Scotland later, but people still remember the message.
While my particular verbal formulations are my own, the ideas are not at all new.
Thanks for that book reference, Ed. Been meaning to ask if you had any source-ish material for the ANE view.
I imagine there’s a lot of rabbinic literature/commentaries that are helpful…unfortunately I don’t know enough to separate the wheat from the chaff.
From our point of view, lots of rabbinic literature is chaff. I’ve looked at it and don’t particularly enjoy it. Edersheim is by far one of the most accessible; I have a dead tree copy. In my ebook, I made it a point to avoid the more obscure references that require you to visit libraries with big Antiquities collections. I can’t even remember all the names of the major authors for that stuff. A few of the authors also gave us more popular works, but that stuff is now all hidden away in obscure libraries, too. Sadly, some of the best at explaining the underlying philosophical differences are entirely secular, hostile to Christian faith. Part of the reason I wrote that book was an honest concern all that stuff was fading away from human memory again.
I prefer dead tree versions myself, since they are technology-independent.
The wikipedia page you link to has a link to a page (with me so far?) that has the electronic version in a few formats, for those interested:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edersheim/lifetimes.html