Poor Blogging Attendance – and what happens when we die?

Unfortunately I haven’t been doing much in the way of posting or interacting with other bloggers recently.  I have several excuses, which I shall list in alphabetical order:

1. Annual Review: Yesterday I had to submit materials for an annual review for my PhD – about 20,000 words all up, including a chapter, PhD overview, bibliography, that sorta thing…
2. Conference Papers: In early July I’ll be presenting a paper at the Rome SBL and the Tyndale Conference on different aspects of Paul/1 Corinthians, so I’ve been doing preparatory work on those papers
3. Epicureans & Stoics: I’ve been trying to properly come to grips with these philosophical schools, taking time out to read primary literature and a little secondary literature
4. Uncertainty about soul/body/immortality/resurrection in Paul: I’d like to post about what happens between death & future resurrection.  If I only had to draw from 1 Corinthians, I’d say that Paul expects that when believers die, they are utterly dead, because they are mortal.  And when Christ appears, he will raise the dead bodies and clothe them with his immortality – thus there is nothing to be experienced in between death and resurrection.  I think almost everything else in Paul can be made to fit with this way of seeing things – EXCEPT the one spanner in the works that is 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, where Paul says he would prefer to be “away from the body and at home with the Lord”, implying that he holds to that Platonic-sounding belief that the body is a prison for the soul, which awaits release….