[BlueDragon]

Well, it was a tall order but I already answered such a qualification in post 198.

Then why not a yes, or a no to a direct question?

I had to go searching for 198. After finding it MEGO (my eyes glazed over).

I'll not go digging around in further effort, where I would need read from in-between-lines in order to venture guess to answer a question for you, on your behalf.

If you want for us to play those kind of games, then you really should play it from your own end, too. Dig around through my own past comments in order to divine answers to the questions you have posed -- regarding a parable now still under discussion, and there you will find the answers you seek.

Nonetheless, I will offer this, food for thought as it were;
Abraham's bosum. Should that be taken entirely literally?
Perhaps better to ask oneself, should it HAVE TO be taken entirely literally, when what was being highlighted were conditions after death, either repose, and being comforted (while awaiting God's promises to come to yet fuller fruition) with the very one who God had promised He would make a nation, or else as in the instance of "the rich man" in the parable, a place of unbridgeable divide away from such comfort and repose -- a place of torment and suffering?

No need to write up and send to answer to what was a 'feeding time' sort of question, when here it is as dinner banquet where we're all lounging around, reaching to the food with our own hands. For the moment, all one need do further is not be sluggardly, and allow oneself be grieved by needing bring food from a dish, grasped by one's own hand, to their own mouth...

[af_vet_1981]

Abraham's bosum. Should that be taken entirely literally?

Yes, it was a real place.

Paragraph 1. Christ Descended into Hell

632 The frequent New Testament affirmations that Jesus was "raised from the dead" presuppose that the crucified one sojourned in the realm of the dead prior to his resurrection.478 This was the first meaning given in the apostolic preaching to Christ's descent into hell: that Jesus, like all men, experienced death and in his soul joined the others in the realm of the dead. But he descended there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there.479

633 Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, "hell" - Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek - because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God.480 Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into "Abraham's bosom":481 "It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham's bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell."482 Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.483

634 "The gospel was preached even to the dead."484 The descent into hell brings the Gospel message of salvation to complete fulfilment. This is the last phase of Jesus' messianic mission, a phase which is condensed in time but vast in its real significance: the spread of Christ's redemptive work to all men of all times and all places, for all who are saved have been made sharers in the redemption.

635 Christ went down into the depths of death so that "the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live."485 Jesus, "the Author of life", by dying destroyed "him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and [delivered] all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage."486 Henceforth the risen Christ holds "the keys of Death and Hades", so that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth."487

Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. . . He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow Adam in his bonds and Eve, captive with him - He who is both their God and the son of Eve. . . "I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. . . I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead."488

IN BRIEF

636 By the expression "He descended into hell", the Apostles' Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil "who has the power of death" (Heb 2:14).

637 In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven's gates for the just who had gone before him.