Anabaptists on Soul Sleep

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Unconcerned about setting clear timelines, the aging leader gently reassures believers that they “shall rest in peace” and be “summoned to the eternal, holy Sabbath.” “[Their] souls are in lasting rest and peace in the Paradise of grace” under the throne of God “waiting henceforth until the number of their brethren be complete.” Then finally it will be their delight “joyfully to enter the eternal marriage feast, prepared in heaven for all the chosen ones by the blood and death of Christ.”
Direction: Is the Search for the Anabaptist Soul a Dead End? Historic Anabaptism Meets Nancey Murphy's Nonreductive Physicalism

"Thnetopsychism" – A possibly contrasting phrase is thnetopsychism (from Greek thnetos [mortal] + psyche [soul, mind]).[33] The term has its origin in the descriptions of Eusebius of Caesarea and John of Damascus of mortalist views among Arab Christians,[34][35] In the 1600s also this phrase was applied also to the views of Tyndale, Luther and other mortalists, from awareness that Calvin's term Psychopannychia originally described his own belief, not the belief he was calling error.[36] The term is also used of the view of the Anabaptists. Their view is that the soul dies, with the body to be recalled to life at the resurrection of the dead, or that the soul is not separate from the body and so there is no "spiritual" self to survive bodily death. In both cases, the deceased does not begin to enjoy a reward or suffer a punishment until Judgment Day.
Christian mortalism - Wikipedia

The important thing to remember is that we were created in order to have glorified bodies on the last day, not to spend eternity as disembodied spirits in a Platonist world of forms, which would be contrary to ancient Jewish thought.

Theory of forms - Wikipedia

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL - JewishEncyclopedia.com

Not only did the Anabaptists believe in soul sleep, but Martin Luther did as well, as did ancient Arab Christians.

Martin Luther and William Tyndale on the State of the Dead.

If you were to die tomorrow and then be raised again on the last day, you would perceive no sense of time whatsoever in the intermediate state. This was exactly the point of Luther, based on the many passages of scripture which suggest that soul sleep is true.

Luther quoted Ecclesiastes 9:5, “The dead know nothing,” among other scriptures, partly in order to defend his rejection of purgatory and of praying to Mary and the saints.

Since there were no commas in the original Greek, Luke 23:43 can be read like this:

Luke 23:43
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise.”

Just one placement of a comma makes a world of difference.

The phrase translated "Amen I say to you today you will be in paradise" in Luke 23:43 ("Ἀμήν σοι λέγω σήμερον μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἔσῃ ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ."[8] Amén soi légo sémemeron met' emoû ése en tôi paradeísoi) is disputed in a minority of versions and commentaries. The Greek manuscripts are without punctuation, so attribution of the adverb "today" to the verb "be", as "Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise" (the majority view), or the verb "say", as "Amen I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise" (the minority view), is dependent on analysis of word order conventions in Koine Greek. The majority of ancient Bible translations also follow the majority view, with only the Aramaic language Curetonian Gospels offering significant testimony to the minority view.[9]
Penitent thief - Wikipedia

Since Aramaic was the language spoken by Jesus and the apostles, it shouldn't be surprising if Aramaic translations of the Gospels retained the original, intended meaning of Luke 23:43.

Ancient Arab Christians accepted the doctrine of soul sleep, perhaps because they weren't influenced by Greek philosophy.

The earliest unambiguous instance of Christian mortalism is found in Tatian's Address to the Greeks from the second half of the second century. Tatian writes: "The soul is not in itself immortal... If, indeed, it knows not the truth, it dies, and is dissolved with the body, but rises again at last at the end of the world with the body, receiving death by punishment in immortality. But, again, if it acquires the knowledge of God, it dies not, although for a time it be dissolved."[78] Tatian's contemporary Athenagoras of Athens came close to mortalism by teaching that souls sleep dreamlessly between death and resurrection: "[T]hose who are dead and those who sleep are subject to similar states, as regards at least the stillness and the absence of all sense of the present or the past, or rather of existence itself and their own life."[79] However, the best-known case of mortalism in the early church is that recorded by Eusebius of Caesarea:

The Dissension of the Arabians. About the same time others arose in Arabia, putting forward a doctrine foreign to the truth. They said that during the present time the human soul dies and perishes with the body, but that at the time of the resurrection they will be renewed together. And at that time also a synod of considerable size assembled, and Origen, being again invited there, spoke publicly on the question with such effect that the opinions of those who had formerly fallen were changed.

— Ecclesiastical History VI,37
This synod in Arabia would have been during the reign of Emperor Philip the Arab (244–249).[80] Redepenning (1841)[81] was of the opinion that Eusebius' terminology here, "the human soul dies" was probably that of their critics rather than the Arabian Christians' own expression and they were more likely simply "psychopannychists", believers in "soul sleep".[82]

Some Syriac writers such as Aphrahat, Ephrem and Narsai believed in the dormition, or "sleep", of the soul, in which "...souls of the dead...are largely inert, having lapsed into a state of sleep, in which they can only dream of their future reward or punishments."[83] John of Damascus denounced the ideas of some Arab Christians as thnetopsychism ("soul death"). Eustratios of Constantinople (after 582) denounced this and what he called hypnopsychism ("soul sleep").[84] The issue was connected to that of the intercession of saints. The writings of Christian ascetic Isaac of Nineveh (d. 700), reflect several perspectives which include mortalism.[85]
Christian mortalism - Wikipedia

It was because it contradicted praying to the saints that soul sleep was ultimately condemned.

This is from the Aramaic Peshitta translation:

http://www.peshitta.org/pdf/Luqach23.pdf

We should also keep in mind that the Bible forbids communicating with the dead and that accounts of near-death experiences all seem to contradict each other, reflecting their personal religious backgrounds.

When Saul consulted the sorceress to conjure up the ghost of Samuel, it was likely a demon and not the real Samuel.

She falsely predicted that Saul would be killed by the Philistines when, in reality, he ultimately killed himself.