Life and Death in the Bible: From Accumulations of Expectant Waiting in Preparation in the Old Testament to its Fulfillment in the New Testament

There is a salient difference in the treatment of life and death in the Old and New Testaments which are edited as a consecutive Book. While there are few appearances of passages in which people yearned for eternal life in the former, plenty such passages are found in the latter. Jesus Christ is truly a son of God and truly a man as the Mediator between God and man, whose resurrection is supposed to have taken place only once in human history. The event of his resurrection led to a leap in understanding life and death among people who received the Gospel which the Old Testament had prophesied. Gerhard von Rad explained the attitude of the Israelites in the Old Testament as ‘this worldliness.’ By opposing this characterization which inevitably severs life from death, and things before God from things before man, I explain why ‘there is no demand of life after death’(Rad) in the Old Testament. God associated with the people in the Old Testament through natural phenomena such as floods and meteorites, by allowing Himself to be described and personified with emotions such as regret and anger. This is an expression of God’s mercy to be understood by those who do not know the Mediator. God is at work here and now through natural phenomena in the Old Testament and through His only son in the New Testament. In the latter, we can understand God not only by His unsevered acts between Him and man through the Mediator here and now, but also by the lucid universal account that shows God’s will and cognition revealed in His son without appealing to Holy Spirit’s work of intercession. Therefore, we can call the God of the Old Testament as ‘God of ergon (being at work here and now)’ and Him of the New Testament as ‘God of both ergon and logos.’departmental bulletin pape