Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
The ghost of Samuel
The dead prophet called up by a medium, in a scene that terrifies the medium herself.
1 Samuel 28:3-25, in every translation this tool compares.
A medium calls up the dead prophet, and the thing that frightens her is what actually comes up. The narrator calls him Samuel, and the message he gives turns out to be accurate. Some later readers argued that a demon was impersonating him. The narrator never says so, and that is the point they have to get around.
The text says Samuel, the medium is terrified by what actually comes up, and the message delivered is accurate. The narrator never says a demon impersonated him; that reading came later. The medium describes what she sees as 'elohim, literally "a god," coming up out of the earth (1 Samuel 28:13), and DDD treats the episode as a plain case of Israelite necromancy in which even the effectiveness of the conjuring is left intact by the editor (DDD s.v. "Dead," 223). The ritual follows the standard ancient Near Eastern pattern for raising the dead through a pit, and nothing in the text says the woman was possessed or spoke in a trance. She conjures the spirit and reports what she sees and hears, which is not a medium in the modern channeling sense (Walton, IVP Bible Background Commentary: OT, on 1 Samuel 28:7-11). Saul recognizes Samuel by his prophet's robe (1 Samuel 28:14).
Samuel or an impersonator. The narrator says Samuel, the medium sees an elohim coming up, and the message comes true. Tertullian argued the opposite: that a demon represented the soul of Samuel, since no demon could drag a prophet's soul out of its rest. DDD treats the scene as plain Israelite necromancy that the editor leaves working.
- 1 Samuel 28:3-25
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/1-samuel-28-13\/","n":"1 Samuel 28:13","s":"The medium at Endor sees an elohim coming up out of the earth, and it is Samuel.","r":"1 Samuel 28:13"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/sheol\/","n":"sheol","s":"The realm of the dead. Not hell, and not nothing.","r":"Genesis 37:35"}
- DDD s.v. "Dead," 223
- Walton, IVP Bible Background Commentary: OT, on 1 Samuel 28:3-14
- Tertullian, *A Treatise on the Soul (De Anima)*, ANF 3
