Parable or Fact? question 250
When I started this series, I thought it might struggle to get to 50 questions before I shut down this blog and went on with other things in my life. I am stunned that it continues to bring in questions (tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com) after all this time. Today’s question is really my re-phrasing and distilling of a long email I got from a questioner who is in discussion with a good friend of his. I thought the issue was interesting enough to share.
A lot of people deny the continued existence of the person after death, unless there is some form of special resurrection. When I bring up the case of Lazarus and the woman of Endor, they say those are just literary devices or parables. Really?
I’ve had the same thing happen to me quite a few times. Jehovah’s Witnesses are taught that the story of Lazarus was just a parable. When you die, they say, you are dead like Rover; you’re dead all over. If you have been righteous, God may raise you up in a spirit body (they also claim Jesus’ physical body was never raised). This causes them problems with Lazarus so they write it off as a parable.
Jesus certainly taught in parables, but he usually let them know it WAS a parable. When he spoke of Lazarus, however, he said “there was a man named Lazarus.” Two things leap out here if we are paying attention: instead of saying this was a parable, he said there was a man… as if this was a story he knew about personally. Second, he named the character of Lazarus, something he never does in parables. Taken the passage as read, without preconceptions, we would have to say it looks like Jesus is speaking of a real incident he knew about; something God could see that man could not. When we compare and contrast parables and true stories, this one doesn’t bear the marks of a parable.
The woman of Endor is a different issue and can only be called — if we are honest — problematical at worst, odd at best. The story is in 1 Samuel 28. Saul had been on the outs with God for some time by this point. He saw the Philistines make camp at Shunem, preparing to attack him and his army and he became very afraid. He decided it was time to talk to God again but God was done with him and didn’t reply. Saul asked for an answer in dreams, in signs, or words but… nothing. Rather than waiting on the Lord or trying to parlay with the Philistines, he sent his servants to find a woman in Endor who was known for being able to speak with the dead. Some versions call her a medium while others use the more technically literal translation and say she “had a familiar spirit.” That phrase alludes to a spirit that is known to her and who knows her. In other words, the woman had a demon.
Could she talk to the dead? I very much doubt that. Saul disguises himself and takes a couple of men with him to visit the woman. He asks her to bring up a spirit for her and tells her he will give her the name of the specific spirit he wants brought up. She is naturally suspicious of him and tells him why: King Saul has ordered people like her to be put to death. Is this a trap, she asks? Saul allays her fears by swearing the highest oath he or any Jew could make: “As surely as the Lord lives, you will not be punished by this.”
She seems to have then started her spiel, perhaps the whole shebang with arms waving, incantations, and fire because she next asks him who he wants brought up, he names Samuel, and Samuel shows up immediately. She then freaks, to put it mildly. This would indicate to me that perhaps she really didn’t talk to the dead after all. Perhaps, like all those mediums and spiritualists opposed by Houdini and embraced by Conan Doyle, she was a fake who made money off of gullible folk. When a real… uh… live dead person showed up, no one was more surprised than she. Some, however, read this differently. They believe she only became frightened when she saw Samuel pop up because, somehow, that revealed that she was in mortal danger. Their thinking goes: Samuel was a voice of the God who ordered all witches and mediums killed and now he has shown up!
Samuel gives Saul very bad news indeed but that isn’t the point of this discussion. We wonder: is this real? Did Samuel really pop back into this world for a moment to give Saul a message from or about God? Before we dismiss this as a parable we need to remember that it, like the story of Lazarus, bears no markers indicating it is a parable. It is in the middle of a historical treatise and it sounds like history. We also need to remember that if we don’t automatically dismiss the idea of a person surviving their death, this story gives us little or no problem. Moses and Elijah showed up with Jesus to help him prepare for his approaching death. He spoke to them and they with him. They weren’t literary devises but known individuals acting as living beings would act.
Some try to get around this whole thing and say the woman didn’t call up Samuel at all but a demon who pretended to be Samuel. I’ve never met someone who says this who isn’t also convinced that we are dead like Rover when we die. There is no reason to believe that this was a demon in a Samuel costume unless you are already convinced that Samuel was completely and utterly irretrievable. I’ve even heard them say “see, she calls him up from the grave, not down from heaven” which shows a stunning and terrible lack of knowledge on how the ancient world used those terms.
So does this story encourage us to go outside the boundary lines and ask mediums for information? Not even a little bit. Note that Samuel gives Saul no real new information. What he delivered was just a repeat of the sentence of doom and defeat that Samuel had already given Saul from God before the prophet passed away. Saul already knew his fate; this incident just showed him — and us — that trying to go outside of God’s channels to get more information than God is willing to give us is a futile exercise bound to end in despair.