Texts in Conversation
In Plato’s Apology, Socrates argues that death is either dreamless sleep or a journey to a better place, and so would be a benefit. Paul echoes the same idea in Philippians, writing that dying will bring him union with Jesus.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Plato, Apology 1:52
Classical
Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making.
Date: 395 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Philippians 1:21
New Testament
20 My confident hope is that I will in no way be ashamed but that with complete boldness, even now as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether I live or die. 21 For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. 22 Now if I am to go on living in the body, this will mean productive work for me, yet I don’t know which I prefer:
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Notes and References
... So too in a famous passage in Plato’s Apology, Socrates, prior to ending his life by drinking hemlock, reflects that "the state of death is one of two things: either it is virtual nothingness . . ., or it is a change and a migration of the soul from this place to another. And if it is unconsciousness, like sleep in which sleeper does not even dream, death would be a wonderful gain." It is striking that in Philippians, Paul indicates that for him "to live is Christ and to die is gain" (1:21). Is he contemplating suicide? Before making a snap decision that he could not have been (on the ground that suicide is a sin), it is important to remember that there were numerous instances of self-death that were "approved" in ancient texts: pagan (e.g., Socrates), Jewish (e.g., the martyrs discussed in the Maccabean literature), and Christian (e.g., early martyrs; and compare Jesus himself, who is said in the Gospel of Mark to have "given his life" and in John to have "laid down his own life") ...
Ehrman, Bart D.
The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
(p. 315) Oxford University Press, 2000
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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