A Lesson from Dr. Manor's Traveling Archeology Show

Sitting cross-legged on the print carpet in my family’s den sometime during the latter days of the Nixon administration, my father mused, “Some day, if the world goes on, I will no longer be here…and if the world goes on even longer, there’ll come a time when no one remembers that I ever was.” There was more to that conversation, but that particular moment is frozen in memory—perhaps because, to a child, any thought of a parent’s death is startling, and perhaps because Dad said it so matter-of-factly. He wasn’t given to melodrama, but he thought deeply about great truths and didn’t back down from sharing with a kid after he’d ruminated on them for a while.

Tonight was what, being a history teacher,  I have affectionately dubbed “Biblical Archeology Wednesday.” For six weeks, my church has been the recipient of lessons at our mid-week meeting from the intrepid Dr. Dale Manor, a professor of archeology.  He arrives each week wearing a memorable tie, with a laptop and slides and a stainless steel case, foam-lined. In it, he transports artifacts, which he displays with little labels on a piece of fabric on the communion table. It’s a dog and pony show he’s done many times before. One thing I have learned from him:  it’s a cliche of the trade, but for guys in his discipline, one man’s trash truly becomes another's proverbial treasure, if it’s buried for a millennium or two. In a way, looking at someone's discards from long ago compels us to put our own lives into perspective.

For thousands of years, people have contemplated their own demise, as Dad did that night.  Tonight’s presentation by Dr. Manor explored how people of the ancient world viewed the idea of an afterlife. He surveyed Canaanites, the Mesopotamians, and Egyptians – all of whom clearly believed that they would live somewhere after death. The evidence? Burial artifacts and cultural documentation, such as the Egyptian scroll depicting the scene of final judgment – the “weighing of the heart” ceremony. The Egyptians believed that there was a correlation between our worthiness and our eternal destiny, the end of which would be revealed in a ceremony where the heart was weighed against a feather on a scale of justice to reveal one’s fate in the afterlife. An impossible standard.  Not many would pass the test, I’m thinking.  Perhaps none.

We looked at some signals the Hebrews had given us in scripture; there were signs that they, too, believed that somehow they would go to rest “with their fathers” after death. David the king took comfort in the belief that he would see his dead child again. Various figures in the Old Testament are described as being “gathered to their people” after death. Job said, “after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.”  Christ reminded the Sadducees that God claimed to be “the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob,” and that He was clearly not the God of the dead, but of the living.  Of course, the New Testament is filled with resurrection talk and promises of an afterlife.

The most fascinating tidbit tonight was an artifact found in a Jerusalem escarpment burial cave called Ketef Hinnom. In the burial trappings of a Hebrew family was a silver amulet, and inside was a rolled-up sheet of silver which, when unrolled, revealed the “Priestly Benediction,” Numbers 6:24-26:

The LORD bless you and keep you; 
the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
 the LORD turn His face toward you and give you peace.

This find was significant for dating the writing of the Old Testament and for confirming the reliability of existing manuscripts. At the time it was found, it was the earliest occurrence of a Biblical text in an extra-Biblical document, significantly predating the earliest of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Tonight it is significant to me for another reason. We were encouraged by Dr. Manor to consider this scripture that we have read and sung as a benediction for so many years -- not as a parting blessing from an assembly-- but as a processional for loved ones who stand on the doorstep of the next life, waiting to see the Lord’s face and confident that they will be graciously received. If we all relied on the weight of our hearts to balance some supposed scale at that time, we would surely be without hope. But through the Lord’s provision in the perfect sacrifice of Christ, Christians can have faith that we will be seen as “holy and blameless” by the loving Father who greets us there. Yes, someday you and I may die, and no one here may even remember that we lived.  But there is something better waiting through that door.