In an
article I wrote in response to a Seventh Day Adventist critic of LDS theology, Response
to Douglas V. Pond on Biblical and LDS Anthropology and Eschatology, I
interacted with, and critiqued, the doctrine of “soul sleep.” I encountered the
following discussion of an often overlooked text and have added it to the
article, but am reproducing it here, too, as it provides strong Old Testament
evidence that the biblical authors did not believe that the dead in Sheol were
unconscious:
This verse states that the person who has
paid the tithe of his produce should say:
I have not eaten of it while in mourning;
I have not eaten any of it while I was unclean;
and I have not given any of it to the dead.
I have not eaten any of it while I was unclean;
and I have not given any of it to the dead.
The last phrase “to the dead,” is the
singular Hebrew לְמֵ֑ת (lemēt), LXX τῷ τεθνηκότι. It most probably refers not to food for
mourners, but to placing food in the grave of a dead person for its journey to
Sheol, the underworld, or also or its stay there. This was known for example,
as a common practice in Thebes and
elsewhere in ancient Egypt. However, holes in the floors of some graves found in
Samaria are also thought to have “served as receptacles for food and drink
offerings to the dead” in Sheol. The term “to” (ל [l]) can just as well
mean “for” or “on behalf of” the dead, i.e. for their consumption. (Roger David
Aus, Two Puzzling Baptisms: First
Corinthians 10:1-5 and 15:29. Studies in Their Judaic Background [Lanham, Md.:
Hamilton Books, 2017], 80-81)
