While I am by no means terribly well read on the subject it seems to me that at least part of the problem here is probably that the bible isn't, and never really has been, internally consistent. So what exactly are it's statements on the afterlife? It depends on which parts you want to cherry pick and how you want to interpret them. Of course some arguments are stronger than others and some have the backing of one orthodoxy or another at various points in time but there is no one unassailably correct answer (I suspect by design). That's not to disagree with you though, just to interject that it's all sort of nonesense.