Does Jesus' Use of the Sleeping Terminology Have Anything to Do with Resuscitation?

Video/audio transcript

00:0000:00 - hey guys so tonight we’re going to be doing a follow-on video to a previous one we did talking about Jesus’s use of
00:0700:07 - sleeping terminology in John chapter 11 and Matthew chapter 9 and now we’re just going to be looking at a couple things
00:1300:13 - in a bit more detail so here are the topics that we’re going to be going over here uh the
00:1900:19 - follow on question that we’re going to be talking about is does Jesus’s use of the sleeping terminology have anything
00:2600:26 - to do with resuscitation so basically is he using uh the word sleep rather than death simply because we know that these
00:3400:34 - people will be resuscitated and we’re going to talk about the two cases that we’ve already been focusing on so
00:3900:39 - lazarus’s case in John chapter 11 and gyrus daughter’s case in Matthew chapter 9 and uh we’re going to argue that
00:4700:47 - sleeping is actually primarily associated with death not resuscitation so the answer to this particular
00:5300:53 - question is no not really um Jesus is using sleep as a euphemism for death and then taking advantage of the
01:0001:00 - associations there rather than really it having very much to do with resuscitation directly and then we’re
01:0501:05 - just going to talk a little bit about that linguistic connection between death and sleep and so this isn’t just Greek
01:1101:11 - and Hebrew this is sort of most languages in fact kind of have a tie between these two concepts and that kind
01:1701:17 - of explains why Jesus uses death for or sorry sleep for death in these cases as well so it’s kind of nothing out of the
01:2401:24 - ordinary we would say okay so first thing just going over that question again in a little bit more
01:3401:34 - detail here um we’re just going to pose it as this could the reason that Jesus used sleeping terminology in John
01:4301:43 - chapter 11 and Matthew chapter 9 so that is with Lazarus and gyrus his daughter have anything to do with the fact that
01:5001:50 - these individuals would be resuscitated and wake up again as opposed to people who die but are not resuscitated and so
01:5701:57 - the idea here behind this question is sort of of if Jesus knew that these people would wake up and we know that
02:0502:05 - people from sleep wake up then maybe that’s why he would use the word sleep here instead of death like it could be
02:1102:11 - sort of foreshadowing if you will the idea that these people would uh be raised from the dead resuscitated come
02:1802:18 - back to life in a way that most people who die are not and so could Jesus have been using this uh sort of to say that
02:2602:26 - no these people aren’t Dead uh they are going to come back to life as sort of a a like a word choice to reflect that for
02:3502:35 - knowledge um and so could that be why Jesus used this terminology of sleeping rather than just coming right out and
02:4302:43 - saying directly that they were dead and so the short answer to this question is I really don’t think this is
02:5202:52 - the case I think Jesus’s use of the sleeping terminology in John 11 and Matthew chapter 9 is actually completely
03:0003:00 - separate from his foreign knowledge that these folks would be resuscitated rather than staying dead so Jesus obviously
03:0603:06 - knew that he was going to raise them from the dead but I don’t think that he was using this terminology of sleep
03:1203:12 - rather than death uh just because he knew that they would be resuscitated I think he’s using it as we shall see just
03:2003:20 - because that is such a a common Association uh between these words between sleep and death so in Greek and
03:2703:27 - Hebrew and English in most other languages too presumably that he’s using this because sleep is so tightly coupled
03:3303:33 - with death and it really doesn’t have very much to do with resuscitation on the whole of
03:4103:41 - it so in the case of Lazarus in John chapter 11 the euphemism uh that is using sleep as a euphemism for death
03:5103:51 - well it would actually be just as true in their culture if Lazarus was never resuscitated and stayed dead that is as
03:5803:58 - we went over in the previous video we know that um perhaps in the Hebrew culture at the time in which Jesus was
04:0504:05 - around they had this association between sleep and death kind of in a way that we don’t so much in English it’s not that
04:1204:12 - that is never used as an association but it’s just probably not as common in our everyday speech as it was for them as a
04:1904:19 - a euphemism so you know we say things like someone passed away um and things like that but for them this was a pretty
04:2604:26 - common euphemism for death and so the point I’m making here is that most of the time when people use this euphemism
04:3404:34 - the person who they were using it of they they didn’t come back to life so in fact this is kind of an atypical case
04:4204:42 - because mostly when people said that they meant that someone is dead like is in very dead and not coming back and so
04:4804:48 - it would kind of almost undercut the exact question we’re asking here of would Jesus used this specifically to
04:5504:55 - foreshadow or uh kind of make it clear that these people were going to be awakened from their quote unquote sleep
05:0205:02 - the answer is kind of no because the very fact that he uses this the very fact that it’s a thing in their culture
05:0805:08 - that Association like 99.9% of the time doesn’t refer to people who are resuscitated because you know across the
05:1705:17 - entire biblical narrative there aren’t very many people who are ever raised from the dead um so Jesus it wasn’t just
05:2205:22 - Lazarus and Gus’s daughter there was the Widow’s son um a widow of of nine in in uh forget where exactly that is I think
05:3205:32 - it’s in Luke Luke chapter 7 I want to say um we went over that in the previous video but there really aren’t very many
05:3705:37 - instances of this so for the most part culturally they would use this expecting the person who they say is quote unquote
05:4605:46 - sleeping to stay dead um that is the euphemism that they would be using most commonly applied in the case of people
05:5405:54 - who wouldn’t be resurrected and so you can kind of see how that that means that this question I mean it’s a it’s a
05:5905:59 - reasonable question because people do wake up from sleep and people don’t come back from death and so you can kind of
06:0506:05 - see well maybe the word choice would be special because of that but actually just because of how this this euphemism
06:1006:10 - would be used culturally that kind of isn’t the right way to think about it um and so all this to say this particular
06:1906:19 - case with Lazarus um it would be more normal for people to expect Lazarus not to come back and so when Jesus says this
06:2706:27 - everyone would know that he was using it as a euphemism because as we discussed previously by the time Jesus got to
06:3406:34 - Bethany where Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived uh Lazarus had already been in tuned for four days and so
06:4206:42 - everyone clearly knows that Lazarus is dead um and so that’s why when Jesus says this they would know that he’s
06:4706:47 - using this as a euphemism for death and it wouldn’t have any significance like they wouldn’t look at him and be like
06:5406:54 - well he said he’s sleeping so that must mean that it’s something different like oh what’s Jesus going to do do now they
07:0007:00 - would understand this as a clear reference to Lazarus actually being dead now when it comes to the case of
07:0907:09 - gyrus daughter it’s basically the same thing that we talked about before so I argued in the previous video that even
07:1707:17 - though Jesus knew that she was actually dead he said what he did that is he took advantage of this association between
07:2607:26 - sleeping and death that was this common euphemism especially in their culture to kind of make things purposely ambiguous
07:3207:32 - to others so that neither he nor the girl and her family would receive as much negative attention from it and we
07:3907:39 - went into the reasons for that in the last video but the point is here that Jesus used the Sleep
07:4707:47 - terminology not because you know he was making the point that she was going to be awakened as opposed to most other
07:5407:54 - people but he was using it in association with the euphemism that we’ve gone over um specifically to make
08:0108:01 - it unclear in this particular case whether she actually was dead or not um playing off this idea that um there is
08:1008:10 - this association between these Concepts well people who weren’t in the room with them when Jesus raised her from the dead
08:1608:16 - would hear this well you know people thought she was dead her family had called the professional mourners there
08:2308:23 - was there they were mocking him saying no she’s actually dead silly why are you going in there and then Jesus does this
08:3008:30 - and says no she’s just asleep purposefully to kind of Muddy the water so that it would kind of run this
08:3708:37 - interference uh between his ministry and these people who would be wowed by the celebrity of it and the same thing with
08:4508:45 - the girl and her family like we argued in that other video uh to kind of keep all of the attention and the pressure
08:5108:51 - and even the uh you know potential for the rulers of the Jewish people at the time to Target them specifically because
09:0009:00 - um as we learn in John 12 they were seeking to kill Lazarus because his testimony basically of well I was dead
09:0909:09 - and Jesus raised me was causing people to believe and so obviously these folks had uh a personal stake in making people
09:1909:19 - not believe um you know Jesus’s uh uh the gospel was not it wasn’t subversive politically but it turned people away
09:2809:28 - from the ruling powers that be basically they couldn’t control people if people were believing the truth and so they
09:3609:36 - would seek to actually put Lazarus to death like we talked about in last video and so to spare this family that Jesus
09:4309:43 - would use this Association to make things less than clear right so people might say well uh you know people don’t
09:5009:50 - rise from the dead there’s no way he did that so she must actually only been sleeping and you know they just made a
09:5509:55 - mistake she wasn’t actually dead she just looked dead people would kind of start that rumor because of this and so
10:0310:03 - as we’ve said that’s kind of my take on why Jesus did this why he used that terminology in this case in Matthew
10:0910:09 - chapter 9 but the point is it’s still not specifically because Jesus fornew that she would be raised um as in he
10:1810:18 - would have said this you know regardless it wasn’t to foreshadow the fact that she’d be resuscitated so much as it was
10:2510:25 - to play into this whole purpose that we talked about previously all right so to finish off this video
10:3410:34 - we’re just going to talk a little bit more about the associations between sleeping and death and how that’s kind
10:4010:40 - of the relationship here not so much between sleeping and resuscitation so kind of what we just
10:4710:47 - talked about in these two cases was how in neither in John chapter 11 or Matthew chapter 9 was Jesus’s use of the
10:5510:55 - terminology kind of directly tied to the resuscitation even though it ended up turning up in both of these cases where
11:0211:02 - resuscitation was present and so that kind of what that means is that I see the association of sleeping as being
11:1011:10 - primarily with death not with resuscitation so kind of the sleeping terminology showed up here because these
11:1711:17 - people were dead in the case of Lazarus or because Jesus was trying to make it purposely ambiguous for practical
11:2411:24 - reasons in the case of Gus’s daughter not because these people were going to be
11:3011:30 - resuscitated and so further evidence that this is kind of the case that is that the association goes that direction
11:3711:37 - is that there’s actually places where sleeping is mentioned alongside death but not resuscitation so in First Kings
11:4511:45 - chapter 2 verse1 uh this reads then David slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David and so that
11:5211:52 - is a way of saying well David died and then was you know buried in the city of David um so this is a clear reference to
11:5911:59 - sleep being used for death as a euphemism but there is no Resurrection after this David was not one of the
12:0512:05 - people in the Bible that was raised from the dead so this is an example of sleeping being mentioned alongside death
12:1212:12 - in a case that has absolutely nothing to do with resusitation and there’s also kind of the reverse
12:1812:18 - case here there’s also places where resuscitation is mentioned but no mention of sleeping at all and so an
12:2512:25 - example of this comes in Acts chap 20 when Paul raises a young man named udus from the dead after he falls out of a
12:3312:33 - window when Paul was teaching late at night um so this particular story I’m not really going to pull it up but you
12:3912:39 - can check the references here acts chap 20: 7-2 uh gives this account of Paul
12:4512:45 - raising this this young man from the dead and nowhere in that account is sleeping mentioned and so uh kind of the
12:5312:53 - thesis of the question here was well could the sleeping related language be related to this idea of resuscitation
13:0113:01 - well if that were the case you know maybe we’d expect it to show up here as well so kind of runs counter to that
13:0613:06 - idea and so these observations are just kind of pointing out how the evidence here uh really does show that the Sleep
13:1513:15 - references are primarily associated with death not resuscitation and so that’s kind of how we should think about this
13:2213:22 - topic that’s where the evidence of scripture points
13:2913:29 - finally we’re just going to go into a little bit more detail about this Association here that we just introduced
13:3513:35 - between sleeping and death so first off uh kind of speaking in terms of linguistic associations the verb for
13:4413:44 - raising someone from Death so someone who has died raising them from the dead is actually the same verb as Awakening
13:5213:52 - or rousing someone from sleep in both Hebrew and Greek so this verb here C in Hebrew and a in Greek um these are the
14:0314:03 - verbs in question here and the relevant concordance entries uh for this particular type of usage that is uh when
14:1114:11 - the verbs are being used to raise people from the dead rather than waking them up from sleep um you’ll see that it’s the
14:1614:16 - same verb for both of these cases actually and so kind of why this is relevant is then you can see how closely
14:2514:25 - the concepts of sleep and death are related to each other in both Hebrew and Greek then and so that is sort of
14:3214:32 - indirect evidence we can actually see s sort of some direct references to this that kind of pushed the metaphor or push
14:4014:40 - the euphemism even further here so we’re going to look at some passages here from Jeremiah and job and just kind of show
14:4614:46 - how this association between sleeping and death is it’s mentioned right there in the Bible you know very
14:5214:52 - unambiguously so here’s one of those verses from Jeremiah Jeremiah 51:39 says this when they become heated up I will
15:0215:02 - serve them their banquet and make them drunk that they may become jubilant and may sleep a Perpetual sleep and not wake
15:1015:10 - up declares the Lord so this Perpetual sleep that they don’t wake up from that is what death would be and then another
15:1915:19 - verse same chapter a few verses later Jeremiah chapter 51: 57 says I will make her princes and her wise men drunk her
15:2815:28 - Governors her prefects and her mighty men that they may sleep a Perpetual sleep and not wake up declares the king
15:3515:35 - whose name is the Lord of hosts and so again we see this reference to a Perpetual sleep that people won’t wake
15:4115:41 - up from and this is how we clearly see that sleep is being used to refer to death and that there’s this strong
15:4815:48 - association between the concepts finally this passage here from Job chapter 14 job
15:5515:55 - 14:12 says so man lies down and does not not rise until the heavens are no longer he will not awake nor be aroused out of
16:0316:03 - his sleep so again this idea that people who are dead are sleeping until the resurrection actually um you know shows
16:1216:12 - up elsewhere um but this concept again just showing that this idea of sleeping is used of people who are dead and then
16:2116:21 - sort of similar concept here we have some passages that talk about how people who are buried uh you know as was the
16:3016:30 - funerary custom of the ancient Hebrew people as in they buried their dead rather than cremating them for example
16:3716:37 - um well it describes people who are buried as actually sleeping in the ground so Daniel chapter 12: 2 says many
16:4616:46 - of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake these to everlasting life but the others to disgrace and
16:5316:53 - everlasting contempt so actually sort of a side note here this is a reference to the resurrection here in the Book of
17:0017:00 - Daniel so not even new testament old testament here but you can see clearly that this verse is referencing those who
17:0617:06 - sleep in the dust of the ground I.E people who are dead and so again just strengthening that association between
17:1317:13 - the two concepts and so sort of where we’re going with all this is that it’s not
17:1817:18 - just by accident that these verbs overlap in usage but because of an enduring semantic relationship between
17:2517:25 - the concepts of sleeping and death that’s actually present in English as well and so to talk about this uh we’re
17:3217:32 - going to be looking at AET here from a guy named John dun um so this one’s pretty famous poem you may have heard of
17:4017:40 - it before it’s called Death be not proud so I’m gonna just going to go ahead and read through this briefly here and then
17:4717:47 - we’ll talk about several of the lines that are kind of related to uh this conceptual Association that we’re
17:5317:53 - talking about so death be not proud by John dun death be not proud though some have
18:0018:00 - called thee Mighty and dreadful for thou art not so For Those whom thou thinkest thou Dost overthrow die not for death
18:0918:09 - nor yet C thou kill me from rest and sleep which by thy pictures be much pleasure then from thee much more must
18:1718:17 - flow and soonest our best men with thee do go rest of their bones and souls delivery Thou Art slave to fate chance
18:2718:27 - Kings and desper men and dos with poison war and sickness dwell and Poppy or charms can make us sleep as well and
18:3618:36 - better than thy stroke why swellest thou then one short sleep past we wake eternally and Death Shall be more no
18:4418:44 - more death thou shalt die okay so obviously poetic language here but some of these lines that we are
18:5318:53 - going to talk about uh this line here from rest and sleep which which by th pictures be so not so much a metaphor
19:0119:01 - there but clearly linking the concepts of rest and sleep with death and then uh you know rest of their bones in this
19:1019:10 - line uh that is definitely poetic language here but you know laying someone to rest we have that turn a
19:1719:17 - phrase just in kind of normal English parlance laying someone to rest I.E burying them well that is an association
19:2419:24 - there um but perhaps most clearly we have this Poppy or charms can make us sleep as well well this is actually
19:3219:32 - directly associating sleep with death right if we’re saying that um as well here you know that is poppies and charms
19:4019:40 - can make us sleep just like how death can make us sleep that’s the association here um and then of course final line
19:4719:47 - one short sleep past we wake eternally um to the resurrection like J like Daniel chapter 12 talked about actually
19:5619:56 - um but you can kind kind of clearly see that this is an English poem um and clearly has this association between
20:0320:03 - sleep and death here in English so not that we’re going to build our theology um off of John dun sonnet but you can
20:1020:10 - kind of get the idea that the association is there even in English as well now just to close I would actually
20:1820:18 - probably think that this association between sleep and death is present in most human languages I haven’t done a
20:2420:24 - formal study of it but it kind of just makes sense for us humans to to associate these two concepts because
20:3020:30 - they do have similar surface appearances so if someone is kind of looking at someone lying on a bed from a distance
20:3820:38 - can be kind of hard to tell if the person is living or dead or if they’re just asleep um so I mean obviously
20:4520:45 - people’s chest rising and falling from breathing that’s one sign you know do they have breath because as we talked
20:5020:50 - about in our last video uh breath is actually synonymous with life um so people are alive when they have breath
20:5720:57 - that uh signifies the presence of the human spirit and when people die physically they no longer have breath
21:0421:04 - and that’s because the word for spirit and breath are synonyms in both Greek and Hebrew it’s the same word you use
21:1021:10 - the same word in Greek and Hebrew to denote uh uh breath and spirit the presence of the spirit so that’s where
21:1821:18 - we’re going to close this one um again not such a revolutionary Point here we’ve just gone through and shown that
21:2421:24 - there is a clear association between sleep and death in both Greek in Hebrew gave some examples um how the verbs are
21:3221:32 - actually the verb to wake people up is actually the same as the verb to raise them from the dead and some of these
21:3721:37 - textual examples that just show that the concepts are clearly associated in how they think about them as well as in
21:4321:43 - English and presumably in most other languages but this is all why we say that the associations are between sleep
21:4921:49 - and death much more than they are between sleep and resuscitation which was kind of the main thrust of the
21:5621:56 - initial question here all right so just to briefly recap what we’ve gone over in this video we kind of
22:0522:05 - raised the question upfront of could Jesus have been using this this language of sleep because he fornew that these
22:1222:12 - people would be resuscitated and sleep is less permanent than death um so that was kind of the question we started with
22:1822:18 - here we talked about lazarus’s case how he’d already been dead for four days between Jesus got there so when he used
22:2522:25 - that word uh people would have obviously taken it they would have known that he was referring to death in Gus’s
22:3022:30 - daughter’s case which as we talked about previously in the other video um Jesus did this primarily to kind of leave
22:3722:37 - strategic ambiguity in that situation to kind of run interference both for himself and his own ministry as well as
22:4522:45 - uh this girl and her family um so those are Jesus’s purposes in using the terminology like we argued in the last
22:5222:52 - video um but kind of more to answer the point of the question we said that sleeping is primarily associated with
22:5922:59 - death and not resuscitation so we talked about how the verbs in Greek and Hebrew for waking someone up are actually used
23:0723:07 - uh to signify raising someone from the dead the same verb is used for both things um and then we actually talked
23:1223:12 - about how that Association is present in English as well um so this is kind of closing off that question to say that
23:2123:21 - actually it’s much more likely in fact it is the case that the Sleep references here that Jesus uses uh have much more
23:2823:28 - to do with death that is the relationship that’s why he’s using these words than they did with the fact that
23:3523:35 - these particular people would be Resurrected