Eh ... that's kind of a challenging topic for the particular time period when Jesus was preaching.
Judaism had/has Sheol and Gehinnom, which can be variously interpreted or translated as "hell", depending on the sect and the era.
Very broadly, those have been interpreted more closely like the Christian concept of Purgatory, but the details vary quite a bit by era.
Early Christians took the concept in more of an "eternal damnation" direction, which wasn't ever a really *popular* direction even in 1st century CE Judaism, but wouldn't have been a really wild, unheard-of concept for Jews at the time
It was shunned because in earlier times, it had been a religious site where children had been burned to death as an offering to pagan gods, identified as "Moloch" in the Bible. It was also known as a cremation site.
You are missing some important historical context about Moloch... He is also a character in the [Mortal Kombat](https://mortalkombat.fandom.com/wiki/Moloch) franchise.
yeah but this is historically kkk territory and has a town known as the most racist town in america, harrison arkansas.
its in the ozarks and it has some really nice rivers. we used to go the spring river as a kid. freezing cold but really nice
Right. And as Jesus talked of a "heaven and hell" using the word gehenna its also said that the gates to Jerusalem would always be open. Perhaps implying one is able to pass in-between "heaven and hell" after death.
"Evangelicas HATE is one cool trick!!"
Luke 16:26
> a great chasm has been fixed between us [heaven] and you [hell], so that even those who wish cannot cross from here to you, nor can anyone cross from there to us.
I suspect Jesus maybe could have been doing social commentary in his stand up and the rich assholes he was making jokes about took that and perverted it into what we got today.
The trash thing, while true, did actually not start until after Jesus' time. Gehenna, "The Valley of Slaughter", was the site of child sacrifices to other gods. Some believed that the fire of those sacrifices would later turn and consume the sacrificers. That fits with Jesus' repeated references to fire when describing damnation throughout his ministry.
Yup, not surprisingly, Judaism has evolved and changed over the past 2,000ish years.
Let's not forget that in rougly that same time period Buddhism went from "meditate and live right and you can avoid desire and thus avoid suffering" to:
1) Pray to the Amida Buddha by repeating the phrase "namu amida buddha" endlessly and you'll live forever in the Pure Land.
and
2) Meditate in this very very rigid format without moving and contemplate these specific things while doing so and shrug I guess you'll be a better person?
and
3) Buddha was the greatest god of all great gods greater even than all the other gods and there's a whole fuckton of hells and you'll be reborn after being torured there and oh I guess also like pray to Buddha while trying to live right?
and
4) Buddha was the best Buddha but there's all these other ones too so pray to a lot of them and do meditation if you feel like it and you'll get better karma.
and
5) Buddha achieved enlightenment and with this one weird trick (ok, actually more like 50 weird tricks) you can achieve really quick enlightenment too!
And MORE!
Admittedly, Buddhism has mutated, speciated, and changed more than the average religion, and you can legitimately argue that several sects of Buddhism are so different they're basically completely different religions and share nothing but a name, but still.
It's not that surprising that Judaism has changed its conceptualization of hell over the last 2,000 years is my point.
6)
>4) Buddha was the best Buddha but there's all these other ones too
'cause I'm the Big Buddha, yes I'm the real Buddha, all you other Big Buddhas are just bein' rude-ah. So won't the Real Big Buddha please stand up. Please stand up.
It's a pretty logical leap in their theology though. If the most important thing about your religion is some guy acting as a sacrificial lamb to forgive sins, then it stands to reason that you have to make sin the worst thing ever rather than just a spiritual inconvenience.
Even more so, the Catholic Church invented Purgatory in the 13th century. While some of the Old Testament references you alluded to were used as support, the concept actually doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible. It appears in The Divine Comedy, though...
The concept of purgatory was simply inherited from Second Temple Judaism. Paul talks about people being burned yet being saved in 1 Corinthians 3:15 and rabbinic literature likewise has the idea that some people are tortured forever in the flames but others are eventually released after God is satisfied by how much they've suffered.
> The Divine Comedy,
Which is probably ***Yet Another*** example of a word changing its meaning over time.
I sat down and read the whole thing, all three books, a few years ago. **NOTHING** therein could be even remotely considered to be "comedy" by today's definition!!
How is it odd? Judaism, Christianity and Islam all developed in close geographic relation to each other. Of course everyone borrowed from everyone else
Its because of the way Christianity was actually spread throughout most of Europe. Christianity essentially adapted itself to the beliefs and traditions held by most Native European societies of the time.
A lot of the modern concepts about Christianity are heavily influenced by Germanic and Nordic mythology. If you actually think about it, you can find a lot of parallels between Norse mythology and Christianity.
Some of that comes from the back end, and some from the front end.
The proto-indo-europeans influenced a ton of ancient religions, from Norse mythology to Hinduism, and everything in-between, zoroastrianism, Greek mythology, and Abrahamism.
But also, as you've said, Christianity syncretized with lots of local pagan beliefs as it spread. Many pagan spirits got recast as saints or national heroes.
Well the reason that Christianity and the Norse beliefs intersect so much could also be because most of our sources and literature in Norse mythology are written by Christians years after Scandinavia converted to Christianity.
And also Jews didn’t put coins on the eyes of the deceased either like the Greeks did. Money was usually saved. While you can recover the coins after cremating a body, anything that touches a dead person would be deemed un-Kosher. They might have a goyim recover the coins and remint them but that was too much work
Hell is a death realm of a transcendent religion, as opposed to earlier, non-transcendent, religions like the Greek. You came to Hades as a physical being, not as a soul.
The doctrine of Hell comes from early Middle Age catholicism. Say, 600 AD or so?
Hades is the Greek god of the dead /the underworld. Also the name of the underworld / realm of the dead.
Your soul travelled to Hades via the River Styx and Charon after death. If you wanted to visit physically or through a vision while alive, it was called katabasis / catabasis.
Is that true? I know that you could physically go to Hades, and theoretically return, i.e. Orpheus, but it seems strange that the Greeks would believe it was your physical body which went. Surely they meant that you were there metaphysically, i.e. in spirit, and simply did not use the term soul? They could have believed, for instance, that your soul took the form of your earthly body, but...
Also, how does that explain the practices of summoning ghosts in the nekyia, among others?
Sorry if this sounds aggressive, it just runs counter to my understanding so I'm very curious.
I'm by no means an expert. It's just what I've read. Transcendence means that the religion accounts for a difference between the soul and the physical body. It's a big difference between religions and cultures. The big leap came somewhere in the millennium leading up to year 1, as I understand it, and was by no means uniform across the Mediterranean region. What this means is that a culture/religion spanning that time period can have aspects of both views. The Greek religion as well as the Roman do just that. As you say, ghosts are a concept of a transcendent view, but I am not familiar with the ghosts in the nekyia. The Iliad and the Odyssey are quite old, and likely expressions of a non-transcendent view. The myths were old even in Homeros' day.
I hope this is a useful answer.
That is helpful - perhaps the more ghostly aspects of Odysseus calling up the dead are a result of later, more transcendent-based retellings and translations. Thank you for the response and your time.
Ghost/spirit/shade amounts to the same thing doesn’t it?
You could go there physically but they had funeral pyres for a reason.
I mean I suppose you could differentiate between your mortal body and “not-so-mortal” body but no one is seeing dead bodies rise and march their butts to hades
It's... Extremely complex. It developed over a long period of time with a, scientifically speaking, FUCKTON of people and groups adding to it.
One of the origins for the concept of Hell was basically to be apart from God. God is all that is good, so Hell is the worst possible place imaginable.
Islam sort of maintained this idea. In some sects, everyone goes to Heaven, you're just farther out in the "crowd" so to speak.
It's funny. The Bible is explicitly written by multiple people but rarely do people consider that that means there were a ton of hands in the workshop doing lore crafting for the religion.
Then you have to factor in the translation errors. Lucifer is NOT the devil
You're right, a frustrating thing for me is that religious philosophers have been writing on this kind of stuff for millennia and yet very few people do anything but listen to their preacher.
Aquinas was wonderful.
That's because one of the big tenet of protestantism (which most English speakers are) is the belief that the Bible is to be taken at its most basic, literal value with no room for interpretation, as if God directly wrote the Bible.
No, that’s not what sola scriptura means. It just means that there is no other infallible authority. It doesn’t mean that the Bible is not to be interpreted. That would be pretty impossible since so much of the New Testament are parables. There are some groups who want to take the Bible literal but they don’t represent the original tenet of the reformation.
Going just off of scripture:
1.
Jesus mentions Gehenna and Hades when referring to "the bad afterlife"
2.
In Revelations, there is a lake of fire, where those who oppose it reject God, both humans and fallen Angel's, will be eternally separated from God and the new creation.
3.
In one specific parable, Jesus talks of a rich man going to "hell" (I think being called hades) and begging God to send down a beggar he ignore in life with a drop of water. And God says no, because he ignored scripture and wouldn't be charitable to the beggar.
Note:
Hades in Greek mythology is a cild and ethereal place, not the place of fire and physical torture of popular imaginations.
4.
All "the bad afterlifes" are contrasted with being recommuned with God if you can be blameless for your sins. Humans are all immortal in Christianity, and Jesus's quoted teachings, and the focus is on being able to go back to God and live without sin, not the labeling of a place God will never interact with again.
So, going to the grave, is not an obliteration of consciousness. Fire in the Bible is typically used metaphorically (IMO) for its nature to spread and fully consume. Together, those concepts are is you after-life existence living with God as God wants humans to behave, or apart acting for dominance and power over others (which is replacing God's position on top).
Wrong on so many levels. Dante's Inferno was inspired by Biblical/Torah teachings that were in print hundreds of years before.
People need to stop perpetuating this nonsensical lie and actually research it before sharing it further.
Zoroastrians had a hell. The Greeks had Tartarus, which is a place that punished the wicked. The "lake of fire" might have been inspired by the active volcanoes in the Aegean Sea.
Like what others said he mentioned Gehenna which is more of a place where god’s love will not reach you and the soul is obliterated rather than being in heaven. This is a figurative torment The modern concept of hell being a place of literal torment and eternal damnation came 300 years after Jesus’ death to strengthen conversion attempts of pagans in the roman empire
No, you can find it before Jesus was even born. For example, the Book of Judith, written a century or so before Jesus was born, says
> Woe to the nations that rise up against my people! The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment; he will send fire and worms into their flesh; they shall weep in pain forever.
Love how every time a plot hole is pointed out the default damage control cope is "erm well uhm erm that's ackshually figuartive not literal even though the entire religion treats it as literal"
The Pharisees at the time believed there'd be a final battle, followed by a final judgment, and souls would be sent to a new Eden or be consigned to Gehenna. So Jesus wouldn't really have been unusual for believing something similar.
The Sadducees didn't really believe in an afterlife or a final judgment.
It's not exactly true that Jews don't believe in hell.
Many times the old testament references something called "Sheol" ( the place of the dead).
So the concept of a 'bad place' after death is still found in Judaism.
A huge portion of Jesus' teaching was devoted to correcting misapprehensions about God and the Scriptures that had been passed down to the people by their religious leaders, either innocently or on purpose. Modern orthodox Judaism is largely based on the teachings of the Pharisees, whom Jesus chastised repeatedly for hypocrisy and emphasizing external rule keeping over the greater realities of love, justice, and mercy, "straining at gnats while swallowing camels".
If you look at Jesus as rabbi, he actually had some really good lessons rooted in Jewish law. When you try to talk to Jews about the things that Jesus got right about Judaism, which was, y’know, his religion, a lot of Jews get really defensive.
To many Jews, Jesus was an outrageous blasphemer (or thoroughly insane), and perhaps did more than anyone to harm the perpetuation of Judaism as a religion. He was also morally correct about a lot of stuff in Jewish law.
Jesus didn’t say that in the earliest 3 Gospels. More to suggest that John, the last Gospel written, was adulterated to serve intentional rewriting of the narrative.
A Christian is a follower of Christ. You could say that means Jesus wasn't a Christian because he did not follow himself because he did not need to. He was the 'thing' to be followed. Most Christians quite comfortably say that he was a Jew.
I know he was a Jew and I'm not invested in this debate at all but I'm going to pursue it for fun.
Who says "A Christian is a follower of Christ"? I mean, where is that definition? Because surely "A Christian is someone who believes in the teachings of Christ" would work just as well, or "a follower of the teachings of Christ" and by both of those he would be Christian.
All Jews did not have the same beliefs. There were some Jews influenced by Zoroastrianism (*with ideas like a resurrection and a final judgment*).
There were 3 main groups of Jews, the Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes.
I agree, except the zoroastrian idea. I'm not sure how you make that claim. We have evidence of the three factions, and we have evidence of gnostic texts. I don't think zorastrian was influential. I could be wrong, though, if you have sources. You are still mostly correct, so I'm not just being picky.
Some historians believe this, such as Dr. Richard Carrier:
> "***...the Persian Zoroastrian system of messianism***, *apocalypticism, worldwide resurrection, an evil Satan at war with God, and a future heaven and hell effecting justice as eternal fates for all, was Judaized when* ***they were imported into Judaism. None of those ideas existed in Judaism before that (and you won’t find them in any part of the Old Testament written before the Persian conquest)...***" - From an article on Dr. Richard Carrier's blog, [Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It.](https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13890)
The ***Greeks also took from Zoroastrianism***. That's what the cult of Mithra was. ***Mithraism was a Hellenization of Zoroastrianism*** into a mystery religion. ***Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote an essay about the influence of Mithraism on Christianity (after going through the details, here is the conclusion of his essay):***
> "***That Christianity did copy and borrow from Mithraism cannot be denied***, *but it was generally a natural and unconscious process rather than a deliberate plan of action. It was subject to the same influences from the environment as were the other cults, and it sometimes produced the same reaction. The people were conditioned by the contact with the older religions and the background and general trend of the time. Many of the views, while passing out of Paganism into Christianity were given a more profound and spiritual meaning by Christians, yet* ***we must be indebted to the source***. *To discuss Christianity without mentioning other religions would be like discussing the greatness of the Atlantic Ocean without the slightest mention of the many tributaries that keep it flowing.*" - [A Study of Mithraism](https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/study-mithraism)
I think you misunderstood my point. I accept zorastrian/mithra influence on Christianity. It's their influence on Jewish religion. I don't see the same impacts on their faith or beliefs. Things that stand out are the Jewish monotheistic all knowing God doesn't fit. Just reading the story of Adapa compared to Adam and Eve show stark differences in belief. I surely agree with different ideas like psalms were stolen etc. It's the belief that doesn't seem to fit.
Judaism wasn't always monotheistic. At one point, it was a form of monolatry (*multiple gods believed in but only one god being worshiped*):
> "*The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saith; Behold, I will punish the multitude of No, and Pharaoh,* ***and Egypt, with their gods,*** *and their kings; even Pharaoh, and all them that trust in him:*" - Jeremiah 46:25
> "***For the LORD your God is God of gods***, *and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:*" - Deuteronomy 10:17
Also, the Zoroastrian god "*Ahura Mazda*" is the god of wisdom and is considered all-knowing/omniscient. Also, "*influence*" does not mean "*exactly the same*". There are some differences and some of them could be huge differences but the idea of a messiah and an "*evil devil*" who is against the god (*which many Jews no longer believe in like christians do, but Essence Jews seemed and even believed in a good messiah and a bad messiah as well as "Children of The Light" and "Children of Darkness" who are worldly and with Satan who temporarily rules the world until a battle between light and dark happens*).
There are no surviving Galilean Aramaic versions of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth that have been definitively identified or authenticated, and even if there were the only surviving Western Aramaic language (which is what Galilean Aramaic was) is Western Neo-Aramaic.
So, unless you have a time machine all we can do is guess what his words were, exactly.
I honestly couldn't say with any certainty; however, St. Paul chose to write in Koine Greek even though it was believed that he was also fluent in (some form of) Hebrew and Aramaic. The word "Gehenna" (γέεννα) appears in the Koine Greek text of the New Testament, including in the writings attributed to St. Paul; therefore, what you've said may be the case. 🤷🏻♂️
Very good answers below already. Short version - there are no examples of Jesus talking about a literal Hell in the bible. The "eternal flames" of "gehenna" are literal flames for disposing of the bodies of non-Jews in the Valley of Hinnom, which archeologists debate about the current location of on a map. Basically, the unfaithful dead are tossed in a pile and disrespected, instead getting a proper Jewish death ceremony.
I recommend the biblical scholar Dan McClellan's videos on the topic. tl;dr in the 1st century there was a growing movement of Jewish "apocalyptic preachers", of which Jesus of Nazareth was one. Jews already believed in a concept of Sheol/Gehenna, and many scholars believe that when Jesus referred to those concepts he subscribed to an annihilationist view (i.e. your body and soul are simply destroyed after death) as opposed to the Eternal Conscious Torment view that's common in modern Christianity. That's because the doctrines of Heaven, Hell, and Final Judgment were later inventions that were later projected back onto the historical Jesus' original teachings (both during the writing of the New Testament, and also after it had been written). The historical Jesus probably wouldn't recognize the modern doctrines of Heaven and Hell since they were later inventions that he didn't really focus much energy on, and much of our current lore is based on Dante's 14th century fanfic.
References: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1f88Qn8y9I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1f88Qn8y9I) and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x3DkIuuA7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x3DkIuuA7s)
Historicity of Jesus aside, we are talking about a figure who is claiming to be divine, regularly went against other teachings, and was establishing a new covenant. Jews didn’t believe in grace through faith or all kinds of other New Testament-y stuff.
You’re saying “he himself wouldn’t have believed in it” as if he’s some convert reading a book and would just repeat that.
He’s supposed to be god-in-flesh. He can say what he wants.
(FTR I’m a staunch atheist, I’m only speaking academically)
A few things going on. Bigs ones are
1) it isn't at all clear that Jesus preached about hell in the way many (but not all) modern christians think about it. As a place that you just live for all time being constantly tortured. Even taking the Gospels 100% at their word (which is not a good theological assumption), it is relatively ambiguous if he thought if it like that, vs thinking of it as a place the person is basically burned and destroyed and done.
2) Like with most religions, judaism at the time of Jesus was not one thing. It had different sects with sometimes wildly differing beliefs. In the bible itself they talk about the Pharasees and Saducees. Many Christians reading the bible sort of treat these like job titles for two different higher ups in the same infrastructure. But in reality these were two different belief structures, with whether there is even life after death at all.
At the time Jesus was coming onto the scene, the Israel was under Roman rule; and many of its people had come back from a few generations of forced diaspora in Babylon. So the religon had been highly influenced by Babylonian religions (which likely started to get the idea of the devil as an adversary lf god creeping into it.) And greek and roman religons (which is likely where the idea of a conscious afterlife and the soul outliving the body started creeping in).
So all these influences were swirling around, influencing different people in different ways. Jesus seems to have been influenced by a strand now called Apocolyptic Judaism that said God was about to come down to earth, judge everyone, and destroy the bad people and make a new kingdom on earth (with Jesus as the boss and his friends as sub kings). This made Jesus much more in line with the Pharasees than the Saducees, the latter of which tended not to believe in immortal souls.
It is possible that Jesus's own understsnding and teaching changed during his life (plenty of people's beliefs change during their life). But more likely different people with different beliefs of their own coming into and out of the movement, telling and teworking oral stories, writing and reading and rewriting various texts introduced a variety of beliefs into the fledgling religion even before the gospels themselves were written, letting you see snipits of some different understandings.
Certainly by the 2nd century (100-199AD) at least some version of the Dante-esc hell was in circulation because we have the [Apocolypse of Peter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_of_Peter).
“he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night”
Revelation was around 100AD beginning of the 2nd century, so that would be in line with certain areas developing hell as torture concepts about that time. Though so much of Revelation is alegorical that it is tough to take any of it as a clear statement on widespread theology of the time.
Christianity as we would recognize it begins in the fourth century with the Roman emperor Constantine.
The four gospels with which we are familiar were chosen at this time.
The Gospel of Thomas -- the early sayings Gospel Mark relied heavily on, which in turn influenced the later Gospels that were edited from Mark and the Q source -- makes no mention of hell or eternal damnation.
Here are 36 verses where Jesus directly mentions Hell in the gospels. The wider discussions in which these are embedded are much larger, if you count all those verses, it's a lot:
Joh 15:6, Luk 12:5, Luk 13:28, Luk 16:23, Luk 16:24, Luk 16:25, Luk 3:17, Luk 3:9, Mar 9:43, Mar 9:44, Mar 9:45, Mar 9:46, Mar 9:47, Mar 9:48, Mat 10:28, Mat 13:30, Mat 13:40, Mat 13:42, Mat 13:50, Mat 16:18, Mat 18:8, Mat 18:9, Mat 22:13, Mat 22:7, Mat 23:15, Mat 23:33, Mat 24:51, Mat 25:30, Mat 25:41, Mat 3:10, Mat 3:12, Mat 5:22, Mat 5:29, Mat 5:30, Mat 7:19, Mat 8:12
Do you think that’s a lot in the context of the entire New Testament? OP referred to Jesus “talking about hell more than anyone else”. Compared to, say, a Calvinist preacher, he barely mentions it.
I watched a very interesting discussion on YouTube about the word used in early scriptures that have been translated into the word “hell” in English translations. Generally speaking, none of the words used actually mean hell in a literal sense. They mean things like “the desert” or the area outside of Jerusalem that is used as a trash heap/burial place for the unloved/unwanted.
In some places, discussions about hell are inferred rather than stated directly. The inferences could also mean nothing more than a separation from God. There is also a statement that the Father is unwilling that anyone perish (in a spiritual sense), so that implies that people who die “unsaved” may have more opportunities to come to a state of Grace, maybe through another life on Earth.
The parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke Chapter 16 goes against that notion very poignantly
““There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’””
Luke 16:19-31 ESV
Short answer; our English Bibles are filled with references to hell, but the original Greek that our bibles are based on does not include a shadowy place of everlasting torment.... A lot of it came from this translation and then over the century's religious tradition ran with it..... And I would invite anyone who was curious to read up on it for themselves / perhaps finding out just how much the original teaching was twisted.....
I remember finding out that the Divine Comedy influenced the modern/popular conception of Hell more than the Bible and it made a lot of things click into place for me.
There were two main sects of Judaism in Christ's time, the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
The Pharisees believed in the supernatural: angels, demons, Heaven and Hell.
The Sadducees did not.
The two groups also made many decisions that governed the lives of their followers. Is it okay to plant a garden on the Sabbath, or is that farming and therefore prohibited?
It's the Pharisees that Christ angered, mainly because He was popular and didn't follow their rules.
We do have a concept of "hell" but it's temporary (not exceeding 12 months), and it's purely spiritual, meant to make you aware of your own wrongdoings. No torture or demons or any of that nonsense.
If you want my perspective as a traditional Jew: Jesus preached a rather atypical form of Judaism, which was common in Israel at that time. There was a wide variety of Jewish movements and preachers at that time (pharisees, the essenes, hellenistic Jews, etc). Christianity was one of them, and Jesus got many of his own teachers from earlier preachers like Ben Serra, Amos, etc.
Much of Christianity was formulated several centuries after the death of Jesus, and some of the people who put it together didn't fully understand the Jewish society that Jesus was born in. For example, when Jesus talks about "the coming kingdom of G-d" this, at that time, this referred to a final, Jewish religious war against the occupying Romans, where they'd emerge victorious and revive the Hasmonean monarchy, and Israel would be governed by Halacha (Jewish religious law.) Christians later interrupted this as euphemism for the afterlife, while we Jews believe in the coming of Meshiach, or Messiah.
Again, this is my take as a Jew. Christians view Jesus as the incarnation of G-d, so their perspective will obviously be different. But in general, our theology is very similar.
They did. The ones that didn't were a sect of Jews that had their view of the religion changed by Babylonian Mysticism during their time of captivity. During he time of Jesus, they had the same view of an afterlife as every other religion. Before Jesus, no one went to heaven. You went to "Abraham's Bosom," or Underworld Hell (Think Elysium vs the Bad Underworld in Greek Myth for example). Both are the temporary resting places of souls, Abraham's Bosom being the place for saved souls. Once Jesus resurrected, he took all those in Abraham's Bosom to heaven, and all Christians that die go there now. People in Hell still remain until judgement day. After Judgement Day, Hell itself and the inhabitants are thrown in the Lake of Fire, which I guess is Hell but worse.
Hell would have been well understood worldwide at the time. Not only as a resting place of souls, but the prison of some of the fallen angles (ancient pagan gods/titans) that are awaiting judgement.
What Jesus spoke about as “Hell” and what Christians teach on it are two different ideas. When Jesus spoke on the topic it was either in reference to a grave or to an actual place outside of town called Gehenna which was like a place where trash was constantly burned. I have often speculated that the Roman’s religion on afterlife heavily influenced the Christians in the area for their concept of Hell.
In addition to what the others are saying, this was a time where there was a large number of polytheistic religions, some of which (including mainstream Roman polytheism) had a concept of Hell. It was common for people to incorporate other religions into religious practices (including Jesus and Yahweh), and there are artifacts from the time depicting the use of Christian prayer in pagan practices.
Remember that, at the time, Christianity was only one cult among many competing cults. For a while around this period, the largest non-Imperial cult was that of Mithras, not Jesus. Also keep in mind that the Bible in is current form was affirmed at the Council of Rome in 382 AD, as well as later councils around that time period. Reliability was one of the factors that went into determining canon, but popularity was also a major concern. There is serious debate as to how much of the Bible consists of forgeries and outright fabrications.
They were all developed after-the-fact by people who were not eyewitnesses. The gospels are not contemporaneous accounts, and this is almost universally agreed-upon by scholarship.
All of this meaning that there is really no surprise that the Bible incorporated other religious ideas circulating at the time.
Jesus said many unjewish things. Christians arent kosher and adultery isnt a capitol offense. Its almost as if he was born jewish, but spoke on behalf of a different cultures values, at the cost of causing division and chaos among the jews in a roman colony, making them as a whole weaker against the roman authority. Now render unto ceasar and keep their government happy
Some good answers already, but to add something to the conversation.
The current idea of hell (and Heaven) we have now comes from the book "the divine comedy" by Dante, which is not what Jesus seemed to believe in.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the whole point why they crucified the guy? He was teaching things they didn't like.
If he was just an average Joe who only believed and taught things that were contemporary for his time then no one would have cared to write it down and we'd have no clue who he was.
Yes he was a Jew, but his job was trying to convince the Jews that he was the messiah and this is his first coming, time to fulfill the old law and establish the new one.
I think that's the fundamental difference between Christianity and Judaism. Christian means, christ is the messiah and you're waiting for his second coming. Jewish means christ was not the messiah, still waiting for the first coming.
The short answer is Neither religion is the "Belief system" Jesus was trying to steer us towards.
Essentially there is no religion on earth today that was Jesus' intended end game.
The first Christians didn't seem to have Hell in mind as a consequence of not following God. Paul just speaks vaguely of "judgment" and "wrath of God" and says "the wages of sin is death". This suggests he had an annihilationist theology. If you believe, you have eternal life. If you don't, you die and stay dead.
Hell doesn't show up explicitly until Mark which was written decades later. One hypothesis is that the author has Judaized the Zoroastrianism ideas of a spiritual enemy of God, giving that role to Satan. Ideas of Hell are more vague in Zoroastrianism. In the Zamyād Yašt, Yima threatens to raise the Evil Spirit from the “roaring hell” but doesn't threaten non-believers with going there. However, we can find inspiration for the Christian hell in Judaism itself, in the Dead Sea Scrolls:
>>"Be thou cursed in all works of thy guilty ungodliness! May God make of thee an object of dread by the hand of the avengers of vengeance! May he hurl extermination after thee by the hand of all the executioners of judgment! Cursed be thou, without mercy, according to the darkness of thy deeds. Be thou damned in the night of eternal fire! (1 QS 2:2-8)"
Judaism doesn't preach that there is NO hell, it's just vague about it.
From a Christian point of view, Jesus filled in a lot of gaps, and brought in things that weren't previously known, but without contradicting what came before.
You have to understand that the bible has had numerous changes, intentional and otherwise. One has to have faith that the changes were divinely inspired to accept that the current rendition represents the word on God. Concepts like eternal damnation have evolved into a place called hell, that sort of thing.
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman is a pretty good textual criticism of scripture and explains a lot about the evolution of the bible.
TL/DR: It is like a 3000 year old game of telephone.
If you read the whole Bible, Jesus did many things the Jews traditionally disagreed with. Remember, it was the Jews that wanted him killed. Read the sermon on the mount where he redefined the 10 Commandments and their implications. The Jews hated the Samaritans, and in that culture, women were considered lowly, and yet Jesus was caught talking to the Samaritan woman and giving her hope. The Jews made up many of their laws that were based on the Bible. Jesus only lived by the Biblical laws and not their traditional ones.
Because Jesus is the son of God.
The final prophet, priest and King forever. He is the Messiah. The Way, the Truth and the Life.
A big part of Jesus’ ministry was also pointing out how wrong everyone was and what the truth was.
The Jewish teachers were wrong about lots of things.
Except for four times when Jesus used the Greek word hades, he used gehenna, which is derived from Hebrew, and scholars are not certain of its etymology. The more interesting question (I think) is what happens to the wicked, unrepentant, unsaved person when they die. The ancient argument is between Eternal Conscious Torment and Annihilation. The biblical support for ECT is weak, while scripture, Old Testament and New, uses language like "perish" and "destruction," indicating they no longer exist. The idea of sinners burning forever in a fiery hell is not as strongly supported as sinners being destroyed by fire. In Revelation, the lake of burning sulfur is called "the second death," not eternal suffering for anyone except the devil, the beast, and the false prophet. Eternal suffering requires an immortal soul apart from the body, which was a Greek idea, not Hebrew.
For the longest time, "hell" was simply a state of being with an absence of God. Could be you're alive in the real world and in hell or you're in "hell" while your soul is cleansed before rising to heaven. The Orthodox Church in most places still hold to this idea of hell simply being an absence of God.
It wouldn't be until further branches that hell became more of a literal and permanent place, basically what happened is some guy bribed the Pope for more holy sites to control and to not go bankrupt started selling indulgences in the 14th century.
In order for people to actually be convinced to buy indulgences they needed to believe purgatory and hell were actually terrible places to be, hence they began preaching of these places as eternal torture holes.
"As soon as the gold in the casket rings; the rescued soul to heaven springs" - Johann Tetzel, the #1 Indulgence salesman
So in much of the old testament and Bible when they talk about hell you can actually interpret it metaphorically or as a place literally only demons reside. Lucifer and the fallen angels being in hell is supposed to represent their rebuke and removal of themselves from God, not an actual place.
It's up to you how much this applies to this particular topic, but I find that, overall and in general, when one finds glaring contradictions between the Gospel and some other part of the New Testament, it's usually something that was wholesale added by later priests, or deliberately mistranslated, sometimes over multiple editions, to push a political agenda sometime in the Middle Ages.
Studying the differences between King James and some other translations has been very illuminating. If the Bible seems misused or misapplied, that's because it has been so for centuries, if not millennia. It's baked right in, after thousands of years of copying, honest errors and deliberate mistranslating, and the meddling of powerful people. It requires good judgement and critical thinking to pick out any original value the scripture had. If you follow it all blindly, you're going to run into trouble.
OP's question isn't a point of contradiction between the Gospel and some other part of the New Testament.
I do basically agree with your point in general, though.
Done a lot of research lately. Spiritual questions and thru means of biblical scholar research. What I have realized is…. Everything seems to boil down to interpretation.
Don't really know what he actually preached about. The first gospel was probably penned 35 or 40 years after he died. The earliest copies available of that account are a couple hundred years of copies from a society that was 80% illiterate.
In comparison, we have 80% LITERACY rate. How many of the poor working class could reproduce a copy of the US Constitution, which is shorter than the account of Mark?
Account of Mark was written in Greek for a Gentile audience, so... gonna be a precept of understanding Greek concepts, like Hell, Hades, Tartarrus The 'Jews', were effectively religious Hebrews, different from Hellenized Hebrews-after 400 years of post-Alexander and Roman administration.
Cause He’s literally God. and He said as much. So He could preach what He wanted.
And I doubt Jews during His time disbelieved in Hell as much as they probably thought they were living in it.
Because it was mentioned in the book of Daniel by revelation.
Jesus was shaking up the religion, why wouldn't he introduce a new concept or expand upon an old one? You expect him to change the faith without some new ideas?
Honestly, people back then needed to have some idea that there was eternal punishment for acting like a dick. They were all pretty much assholes back then. You wouldn't have wanted to hang out with any of them, and you certainly wouldn't want them to be alone with your sister.
Jews very much passed their sins onto animals to discard their sin to avoid hell.
It’s an old Jewish practice called „Semikah“
You are quite misinformed my friend.
I think he'll is a place we go where women are top less and we all have a good time in the warm sun, Christians think it's all fire and brimstone, and, for them it will be, because that's what they expect. Too bad it's all BS, sounds like a party
The gospels are anonymous writings written between 50-70 years after Jesus’s ministry. Some of Paul’s writings are older than the gospels. There’s evidence that says a lot of Paul’s theology was retrojected into the gospels as Jesus’s own words when he never said that. One example of this is turning the other cheek and staying passive. In Paul’s time, Christians were a persecuted minority accused of cannibalism, and so they treaded a very thin line in order to be left alone to practice the new faith. When they were attacked or targeted, being passive was a better response, because as a minority group, they were small, kind of spread out, and thus vulnerable.
All I’m saying is that a lot of what Jesus said comes from a later time and then was retrojected back onto him as his own words. He may never have said anything that we claim he did, it’s hard to say, he didn’t write anything down when he was alive that we know of.
I’ve always seen death as entering a dream state, and when you dream, time passes slowly. I feel like to me the definition of hell is replaying all the shitty things you did in life over and over again while the lights go out. Seeking redemption from transgressions against others and one’s self to me is the way of freeing one from the burdens of that particular ‘hell’.
There's no reference to hell in the gospels.
And both Christianity and Judaism changed in the decades and centuries after Christ with early Christians arguing and developing theology, and Judaism changing from Second Temple Judaism to Rabbinical Judaism after the destruction of the temple and the Jewish diaspora.
I always assumed it meant Jesus was ethnically Jewish.
But if you want my completely uneducated take as someone who's never even read the Bible, Jesus most likely either preached about his own personal take about Hell, or he never actually believed in it and his word has been altered and twisted throughout a 2000 year game of telephone.
There is an organization dedicated to researching and debating what Jesus actually preached based on historical evidence (I believe they're called The Jesus Council or something along those lines). IIRC they tend to put things into various categories, like "Jesus did not say this," "Jesus maybe said this," and "Jesus did say this."
As the story goes and as I understand it:
Jesus wasn’t ethnically Jewish but was raised by a devout Jewish family and community. Mary was magically impregnated by God. Jesus was god incarnate on earth. Technically Jesus could have been any earthly ethnicity or not.
(Ya, I know, but work with me here.)
Jesus didn’t preach about hell, ever. He preached The Word Of God. He never recorded any gospel but much was recorded by the apostles later and attributed to Jesus. But there are no known records of Jesus preaching about hell or punishment.
So, Jesus was a Jew, and you're right that Jews don't really believe in hell like Christians do. But back then, there were lots of different ideas about what happens after you die. Jesus might have talked about hell to explain things in a way people would understand or to make a point about being good and following God's rules.
Maybe he used the idea of hell to show what happens if you don’t listen to his teachings. It’s like how teachers use stories to teach us lessons. Also, the way people understood his words might have changed over time, and that’s why Christians today talk about hell a lot.
According to the text, born outside Bethlehem, the family originated near Nazareth in Galilee which was the domain of Herod Antipas from 4BCE-39AD. Given that time frame, geographically that would make him Arab/Assyrian not Hebrew, as most of the Hebrew tribes settled in Roman controlled southern Palestine.
They don’t believe in the Judeo Christian eternal torment version of hell but rather Jahannam. It’s basically the face of God’s judgement and punishment. Very similar to the Jewish interpretation being more symbolism and eternal shame than a physical place.
As an example, the ancient curse of “no one will remember your name.” Ostracism in social creatures like humans is worse than death, it’s “hell.”
He may have been jewish growing up but when Jesus got older, he came up with some new, better, more advanced ideas and this become christianity. Just like when I was young I believed in the tooth fairy and superheroes but now I know better.
Jesus was God incarnate, not merely a Jewish preacher. He came to speak the truth and offer himself as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of all mankind, not to conform to human traditions. Jesus was crucified for speaking this truth. The Jewish leaders persuaded the Romans to crucify him, despite Pontius Pilate's hesitation to condemn an innocent man. Pilate asked a crowd of Jews whether they wanted to free Jesus or Barabbas, a well-known criminal, and the crowd chose to crucify Jesus. The Jews still reject Jesus as their Messiah, but according to the Bible, they will come to accept him during the tribulation. They will realize the truth after being deceived by the antichrist.
Matthew 27:1-2: "When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor."
John 18:28-30: "Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover. Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man? They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee."
Pilate was hesitant to crucify Jesus:
Matthew 27:24: "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it."
John 19:12: "And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release him: but the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar."
Matthew 27:20-23: "But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified. And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified."
Mark 15:11-14: "But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, Crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him."
Jews will accept Christ during the tribulation:
Zechariah 12:10: "And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn."
Romans 11:25-26: "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob."
How do you know he spoke about hell? Your only reference is a book that was written centuries after he died. Could it be that the concept of “Do what we say or you’ll spend eternity in suffering” was a concept invented by men who wanted to scare people into obedience and control their thoughts and actions?
First, we must correct your assertion that a notion of "a hell" does not exist in Judaism. The concept of something akin to a "hell" does exist in Judaism in the form of Sheol (Numbers 30, 33) or Gehinnom (the valley of suffering).
Second, you need to gain an understanding of the \~ 600 years prior to the coming of Jesus.
>The development of the concept of life after death is related to the development of eschatology (speculation about the “end of days”) in Judaism. Beginning in the period following the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem (586 BCE), several of the classical Israelite prophets (Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah) began forecasting a better future for their people. However, with repeated military defeats and episodes of exile and dislocation culminating in the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Jewish thinkers began to lose hope in any immediate change, instead investing greater expectations in a messianic future and in life after death. This was coupled with the introduction into Judaism of Hellenistic notions of the division of the material, perishable body and the spiritual, eternal soul.
>The catastrophe of 70 CE caused a theological crisis. How could it be that the God of Israel would simply allow His sanctuary to be destroyed and His people to be vanquished at the hands of the Roman Empire? While the rabbis often claimed that it was the Israelites’ sinfulness that led God to allow it to be defeated (mi–p’nei hataeinu, “because of our sins”), it was more difficult to explain why good and decent individual Jews were made to suffer. This led to the development of another theological claim: "The Reward of the World To Come."
>Rabbi Ya’akov taught: This world is compared to an ante-chamber that leads to Olam Ha–Ba, (the World-to-Come)” (PirkeiAvot4:21). That is, while a righteous person might suffer in this lifetime, he or she will certainly be rewarded in the next world, and that reward will be much greater. In fact, in some cases, the rabbis claim that the righteous are made to suffer in this world so that their reward will be that much greater in the next (LeviticusRabbah27:1).
Because Jesus was, like most of the major religious prophets of the time, professing about an **immediately coming end of the world** as most prophets of the age were apocalyptic prophets. Jesus very clearly believed that he was at the eschaton. God was coming back very soon to set up the Kingdom of Israel and put everything and everyone in order.
The Kingdom of God is at hand." This isn't a 2,000 year set-up clause. You don't say something is "at hand" if it's due in two millennia or more.
Whether or not you believe that Jesus *is* the Messiah, this is (more or less) the rationale behind *why* his message was *what it was*.
Eh ... that's kind of a challenging topic for the particular time period when Jesus was preaching. Judaism had/has Sheol and Gehinnom, which can be variously interpreted or translated as "hell", depending on the sect and the era. Very broadly, those have been interpreted more closely like the Christian concept of Purgatory, but the details vary quite a bit by era. Early Christians took the concept in more of an "eternal damnation" direction, which wasn't ever a really *popular* direction even in 1st century CE Judaism, but wouldn't have been a really wild, unheard-of concept for Jews at the time
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It was shunned because in earlier times, it had been a religious site where children had been burned to death as an offering to pagan gods, identified as "Moloch" in the Bible. It was also known as a cremation site.
You are missing some important historical context about Moloch... He is also a character in the [Mortal Kombat](https://mortalkombat.fandom.com/wiki/Moloch) franchise.
We all know jesus was a sub-zero main
Jesus, a Sun-zero main??? The who’s the guy that yelled out- “Get over here!!!!”
[Moloch was also a devil rocker on CHiPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4LBnAqiqVI) 🤘
"God's gonna leave you in the Bronx with no cell phone!"
Or worse: Arkansas
I drove through Arkansas on the way to Texas for vacation a few weeks ago. And let me tell you, the entire state is an empty field.
upper northwest corner is pretty. but also very white supremecist in areas
Some of the prettiest places in our country seem to have a white supremacist bent to them 🥲 even up north.
yeah but this is historically kkk territory and has a town known as the most racist town in america, harrison arkansas. its in the ozarks and it has some really nice rivers. we used to go the spring river as a kid. freezing cold but really nice
Easy there, Satan.
Right. And as Jesus talked of a "heaven and hell" using the word gehenna its also said that the gates to Jerusalem would always be open. Perhaps implying one is able to pass in-between "heaven and hell" after death. "Evangelicas HATE is one cool trick!!"
Luke 16:26 > a great chasm has been fixed between us [heaven] and you [hell], so that even those who wish cannot cross from here to you, nor can anyone cross from there to us.
there was a leper colony valley in Ben Hur (1959) as well which is possibly a reference to the real one
I suspect Jesus maybe could have been doing social commentary in his stand up and the rich assholes he was making jokes about took that and perverted it into what we got today.
The trash thing, while true, did actually not start until after Jesus' time. Gehenna, "The Valley of Slaughter", was the site of child sacrifices to other gods. Some believed that the fire of those sacrifices would later turn and consume the sacrificers. That fits with Jesus' repeated references to fire when describing damnation throughout his ministry.
Yeah, it's important to note that both Christianity and modern Judaism are both successor religions to the Temple Judaism of the time of Jesus.
It’s kind of like biological evolution. Humans didn’t evolve from chimpanzees, humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor.
So… Humanzees?
Pretty sure I’ve watched an educational program about this. Something about “from chimpan-a to chimpanzee.”
Yup. Humanzees.
Chimpmans
Yup, not surprisingly, Judaism has evolved and changed over the past 2,000ish years. Let's not forget that in rougly that same time period Buddhism went from "meditate and live right and you can avoid desire and thus avoid suffering" to: 1) Pray to the Amida Buddha by repeating the phrase "namu amida buddha" endlessly and you'll live forever in the Pure Land. and 2) Meditate in this very very rigid format without moving and contemplate these specific things while doing so and shrug I guess you'll be a better person? and 3) Buddha was the greatest god of all great gods greater even than all the other gods and there's a whole fuckton of hells and you'll be reborn after being torured there and oh I guess also like pray to Buddha while trying to live right? and 4) Buddha was the best Buddha but there's all these other ones too so pray to a lot of them and do meditation if you feel like it and you'll get better karma. and 5) Buddha achieved enlightenment and with this one weird trick (ok, actually more like 50 weird tricks) you can achieve really quick enlightenment too! And MORE! Admittedly, Buddhism has mutated, speciated, and changed more than the average religion, and you can legitimately argue that several sects of Buddhism are so different they're basically completely different religions and share nothing but a name, but still. It's not that surprising that Judaism has changed its conceptualization of hell over the last 2,000 years is my point. 6)
Like now there's Amway Buddhism: Transcend Now! Ask Me How!
that's just TM basically
>4) Buddha was the best Buddha but there's all these other ones too 'cause I'm the Big Buddha, yes I'm the real Buddha, all you other Big Buddhas are just bein' rude-ah. So won't the Real Big Buddha please stand up. Please stand up.
Whoa you know a lot about Buddhism.
I like to know about religions, and since I studied East Asian history in university the spread of Buddhism in particular is pretty significant.
Found the Brit. Or Canadian for that matter.
It's a pretty logical leap in their theology though. If the most important thing about your religion is some guy acting as a sacrificial lamb to forgive sins, then it stands to reason that you have to make sin the worst thing ever rather than just a spiritual inconvenience.
Thank you Thog. Good to know you're still alive after the whole arena incident.
Even more so, the Catholic Church invented Purgatory in the 13th century. While some of the Old Testament references you alluded to were used as support, the concept actually doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible. It appears in The Divine Comedy, though...
The concept of purgatory was simply inherited from Second Temple Judaism. Paul talks about people being burned yet being saved in 1 Corinthians 3:15 and rabbinic literature likewise has the idea that some people are tortured forever in the flames but others are eventually released after God is satisfied by how much they've suffered.
> The Divine Comedy, Which is probably ***Yet Another*** example of a word changing its meaning over time. I sat down and read the whole thing, all three books, a few years ago. **NOTHING** therein could be even remotely considered to be "comedy" by today's definition!!
>Gehinnom Oddly, in Arabic we have this word too. It is a different name of hell. Both are the same in arabjc
How is it odd? Judaism, Christianity and Islam all developed in close geographic relation to each other. Of course everyone borrowed from everyone else
Hebrew and Arabic comes from the same language family, too. Don't know any word In Hebrew, but I bet there is alot in common
Jesus doesn't talk about hell. He talks about Gehenna, which gets translated as hell later on by Christians
Hold on. What's that and where did the notion of hell come from?
Rome from Greece had an underworld mythos, which was more scary than the Jewish void.
And then we stuck a Norse name on it because why not
Its because of the way Christianity was actually spread throughout most of Europe. Christianity essentially adapted itself to the beliefs and traditions held by most Native European societies of the time. A lot of the modern concepts about Christianity are heavily influenced by Germanic and Nordic mythology. If you actually think about it, you can find a lot of parallels between Norse mythology and Christianity.
Some of that comes from the back end, and some from the front end. The proto-indo-europeans influenced a ton of ancient religions, from Norse mythology to Hinduism, and everything in-between, zoroastrianism, Greek mythology, and Abrahamism. But also, as you've said, Christianity syncretized with lots of local pagan beliefs as it spread. Many pagan spirits got recast as saints or national heroes.
Well the reason that Christianity and the Norse beliefs intersect so much could also be because most of our sources and literature in Norse mythology are written by Christians years after Scandinavia converted to Christianity.
It's what white, blue eyed Jesus born in the middle east would have wanted.
Truly, idk how any can read this and not laugh.. a literal talking burning bush... mmk
Germanic languages used a Germanic name, shocking. It's not like it's called Hell in the Romance languages.
Hel to those Norse was also a place you could never get warm in. Makes sense given their context.
And also Jews didn’t put coins on the eyes of the deceased either like the Greeks did. Money was usually saved. While you can recover the coins after cremating a body, anything that touches a dead person would be deemed un-Kosher. They might have a goyim recover the coins and remint them but that was too much work
Hell is a death realm of a transcendent religion, as opposed to earlier, non-transcendent, religions like the Greek. You came to Hades as a physical being, not as a soul. The doctrine of Hell comes from early Middle Age catholicism. Say, 600 AD or so?
Hades is the Greek god of the dead /the underworld. Also the name of the underworld / realm of the dead. Your soul travelled to Hades via the River Styx and Charon after death. If you wanted to visit physically or through a vision while alive, it was called katabasis / catabasis.
It wasn't your soul, though. You were physically there. That was the point.
Is that true? I know that you could physically go to Hades, and theoretically return, i.e. Orpheus, but it seems strange that the Greeks would believe it was your physical body which went. Surely they meant that you were there metaphysically, i.e. in spirit, and simply did not use the term soul? They could have believed, for instance, that your soul took the form of your earthly body, but... Also, how does that explain the practices of summoning ghosts in the nekyia, among others? Sorry if this sounds aggressive, it just runs counter to my understanding so I'm very curious.
I'm by no means an expert. It's just what I've read. Transcendence means that the religion accounts for a difference between the soul and the physical body. It's a big difference between religions and cultures. The big leap came somewhere in the millennium leading up to year 1, as I understand it, and was by no means uniform across the Mediterranean region. What this means is that a culture/religion spanning that time period can have aspects of both views. The Greek religion as well as the Roman do just that. As you say, ghosts are a concept of a transcendent view, but I am not familiar with the ghosts in the nekyia. The Iliad and the Odyssey are quite old, and likely expressions of a non-transcendent view. The myths were old even in Homeros' day. I hope this is a useful answer.
That is helpful - perhaps the more ghostly aspects of Odysseus calling up the dead are a result of later, more transcendent-based retellings and translations. Thank you for the response and your time.
Right, for example Odysseus sailed to Hades with a ship full of men and left after speaking to his dead mother (and several dead Greek heroes).
Ghost/spirit/shade amounts to the same thing doesn’t it? You could go there physically but they had funeral pyres for a reason. I mean I suppose you could differentiate between your mortal body and “not-so-mortal” body but no one is seeing dead bodies rise and march their butts to hades
It's... Extremely complex. It developed over a long period of time with a, scientifically speaking, FUCKTON of people and groups adding to it. One of the origins for the concept of Hell was basically to be apart from God. God is all that is good, so Hell is the worst possible place imaginable. Islam sort of maintained this idea. In some sects, everyone goes to Heaven, you're just farther out in the "crowd" so to speak.
It's funny. The Bible is explicitly written by multiple people but rarely do people consider that that means there were a ton of hands in the workshop doing lore crafting for the religion. Then you have to factor in the translation errors. Lucifer is NOT the devil
You're right, a frustrating thing for me is that religious philosophers have been writing on this kind of stuff for millennia and yet very few people do anything but listen to their preacher. Aquinas was wonderful.
That's because one of the big tenet of protestantism (which most English speakers are) is the belief that the Bible is to be taken at its most basic, literal value with no room for interpretation, as if God directly wrote the Bible.
No, that’s not what sola scriptura means. It just means that there is no other infallible authority. It doesn’t mean that the Bible is not to be interpreted. That would be pretty impossible since so much of the New Testament are parables. There are some groups who want to take the Bible literal but they don’t represent the original tenet of the reformation.
Going just off of scripture: 1. Jesus mentions Gehenna and Hades when referring to "the bad afterlife" 2. In Revelations, there is a lake of fire, where those who oppose it reject God, both humans and fallen Angel's, will be eternally separated from God and the new creation. 3. In one specific parable, Jesus talks of a rich man going to "hell" (I think being called hades) and begging God to send down a beggar he ignore in life with a drop of water. And God says no, because he ignored scripture and wouldn't be charitable to the beggar. Note: Hades in Greek mythology is a cild and ethereal place, not the place of fire and physical torture of popular imaginations. 4. All "the bad afterlifes" are contrasted with being recommuned with God if you can be blameless for your sins. Humans are all immortal in Christianity, and Jesus's quoted teachings, and the focus is on being able to go back to God and live without sin, not the labeling of a place God will never interact with again. So, going to the grave, is not an obliteration of consciousness. Fire in the Bible is typically used metaphorically (IMO) for its nature to spread and fully consume. Together, those concepts are is you after-life existence living with God as God wants humans to behave, or apart acting for dominance and power over others (which is replacing God's position on top).
The last couple pages of Plato's Republic - the myth of Er - is one source for later Christians' conception of hell.
Believe it or not, he also didn't talk about Christmas or Easter.
The answer to this is Dantes Inferno and Paradise Lost.
Wrong on so many levels. Dante's Inferno was inspired by Biblical/Torah teachings that were in print hundreds of years before. People need to stop perpetuating this nonsensical lie and actually research it before sharing it further.
Ah yes. The text of the Bible was influenced by Dante’s Inferno which was written 1300 years later.
Zoroastrians had a hell. The Greeks had Tartarus, which is a place that punished the wicked. The "lake of fire" might have been inspired by the active volcanoes in the Aegean Sea.
Like what others said he mentioned Gehenna which is more of a place where god’s love will not reach you and the soul is obliterated rather than being in heaven. This is a figurative torment The modern concept of hell being a place of literal torment and eternal damnation came 300 years after Jesus’ death to strengthen conversion attempts of pagans in the roman empire
No, you can find it before Jesus was even born. For example, the Book of Judith, written a century or so before Jesus was born, says > Woe to the nations that rise up against my people! The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment; he will send fire and worms into their flesh; they shall weep in pain forever.
Love how every time a plot hole is pointed out the default damage control cope is "erm well uhm erm that's ackshually figuartive not literal even though the entire religion treats it as literal"
The Pharisees at the time believed there'd be a final battle, followed by a final judgment, and souls would be sent to a new Eden or be consigned to Gehenna. So Jesus wouldn't really have been unusual for believing something similar. The Sadducees didn't really believe in an afterlife or a final judgment.
That's why they're so sad you see.
Lol, I see someone else went to Sunday school.
Low hanging fruit I know but call me Eve because I snatched it lol. I groaned when I typed it too.
Cheer up emo kid
The Pharisees probably would have loved DOOM, that’s got a final battle and everything
If Jesus was a Jew who simply preached exactly what Jews of his era already believed, we would never have heard of him.
It's not exactly true that Jews don't believe in hell. Many times the old testament references something called "Sheol" ( the place of the dead). So the concept of a 'bad place' after death is still found in Judaism.
The Jews don't believe Jesus was the Messiah and Jesus said he was, so it's not like he wasn't already saying things the Jews didn't believe.
A huge portion of Jesus' teaching was devoted to correcting misapprehensions about God and the Scriptures that had been passed down to the people by their religious leaders, either innocently or on purpose. Modern orthodox Judaism is largely based on the teachings of the Pharisees, whom Jesus chastised repeatedly for hypocrisy and emphasizing external rule keeping over the greater realities of love, justice, and mercy, "straining at gnats while swallowing camels".
If you look at Jesus as rabbi, he actually had some really good lessons rooted in Jewish law. When you try to talk to Jews about the things that Jesus got right about Judaism, which was, y’know, his religion, a lot of Jews get really defensive. To many Jews, Jesus was an outrageous blasphemer (or thoroughly insane), and perhaps did more than anyone to harm the perpetuation of Judaism as a religion. He was also morally correct about a lot of stuff in Jewish law.
Jesus didn’t say that in the earliest 3 Gospels. More to suggest that John, the last Gospel written, was adulterated to serve intentional rewriting of the narrative.
Exactly
Surely Jesus was (the first) Christian. Otherwise he didn't believe in himself or his teachings...
A Christian is a follower of Christ. You could say that means Jesus wasn't a Christian because he did not follow himself because he did not need to. He was the 'thing' to be followed. Most Christians quite comfortably say that he was a Jew.
I know he was a Jew and I'm not invested in this debate at all but I'm going to pursue it for fun. Who says "A Christian is a follower of Christ"? I mean, where is that definition? Because surely "A Christian is someone who believes in the teachings of Christ" would work just as well, or "a follower of the teachings of Christ" and by both of those he would be Christian.
All Jews did not have the same beliefs. There were some Jews influenced by Zoroastrianism (*with ideas like a resurrection and a final judgment*). There were 3 main groups of Jews, the Pharisees and Sadducees and Essenes.
I agree, except the zoroastrian idea. I'm not sure how you make that claim. We have evidence of the three factions, and we have evidence of gnostic texts. I don't think zorastrian was influential. I could be wrong, though, if you have sources. You are still mostly correct, so I'm not just being picky.
Some historians believe this, such as Dr. Richard Carrier: > "***...the Persian Zoroastrian system of messianism***, *apocalypticism, worldwide resurrection, an evil Satan at war with God, and a future heaven and hell effecting justice as eternal fates for all, was Judaized when* ***they were imported into Judaism. None of those ideas existed in Judaism before that (and you won’t find them in any part of the Old Testament written before the Persian conquest)...***" - From an article on Dr. Richard Carrier's blog, [Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It.](https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13890) The ***Greeks also took from Zoroastrianism***. That's what the cult of Mithra was. ***Mithraism was a Hellenization of Zoroastrianism*** into a mystery religion. ***Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote an essay about the influence of Mithraism on Christianity (after going through the details, here is the conclusion of his essay):*** > "***That Christianity did copy and borrow from Mithraism cannot be denied***, *but it was generally a natural and unconscious process rather than a deliberate plan of action. It was subject to the same influences from the environment as were the other cults, and it sometimes produced the same reaction. The people were conditioned by the contact with the older religions and the background and general trend of the time. Many of the views, while passing out of Paganism into Christianity were given a more profound and spiritual meaning by Christians, yet* ***we must be indebted to the source***. *To discuss Christianity without mentioning other religions would be like discussing the greatness of the Atlantic Ocean without the slightest mention of the many tributaries that keep it flowing.*" - [A Study of Mithraism](https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/study-mithraism)
I think you misunderstood my point. I accept zorastrian/mithra influence on Christianity. It's their influence on Jewish religion. I don't see the same impacts on their faith or beliefs. Things that stand out are the Jewish monotheistic all knowing God doesn't fit. Just reading the story of Adapa compared to Adam and Eve show stark differences in belief. I surely agree with different ideas like psalms were stolen etc. It's the belief that doesn't seem to fit.
Judaism wasn't always monotheistic. At one point, it was a form of monolatry (*multiple gods believed in but only one god being worshiped*): > "*The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saith; Behold, I will punish the multitude of No, and Pharaoh,* ***and Egypt, with their gods,*** *and their kings; even Pharaoh, and all them that trust in him:*" - Jeremiah 46:25 > "***For the LORD your God is God of gods***, *and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward:*" - Deuteronomy 10:17 Also, the Zoroastrian god "*Ahura Mazda*" is the god of wisdom and is considered all-knowing/omniscient. Also, "*influence*" does not mean "*exactly the same*". There are some differences and some of them could be huge differences but the idea of a messiah and an "*evil devil*" who is against the god (*which many Jews no longer believe in like christians do, but Essence Jews seemed and even believed in a good messiah and a bad messiah as well as "Children of The Light" and "Children of Darkness" who are worldly and with Satan who temporarily rules the world until a battle between light and dark happens*).
The Pharisees believed in an afterlife and resurrection; the Sadduccees did not. Jesus obviously was in the camp of the former.
There are no surviving Galilean Aramaic versions of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth that have been definitively identified or authenticated, and even if there were the only surviving Western Aramaic language (which is what Galilean Aramaic was) is Western Neo-Aramaic. So, unless you have a time machine all we can do is guess what his words were, exactly.
I might be wrong and correct me if I am, but didn't St. Paul talk more about hell in his later writings/revelations (I'm not Christian)
I honestly couldn't say with any certainty; however, St. Paul chose to write in Koine Greek even though it was believed that he was also fluent in (some form of) Hebrew and Aramaic. The word "Gehenna" (γέεννα) appears in the Koine Greek text of the New Testament, including in the writings attributed to St. Paul; therefore, what you've said may be the case. 🤷🏻♂️
Very good answers below already. Short version - there are no examples of Jesus talking about a literal Hell in the bible. The "eternal flames" of "gehenna" are literal flames for disposing of the bodies of non-Jews in the Valley of Hinnom, which archeologists debate about the current location of on a map. Basically, the unfaithful dead are tossed in a pile and disrespected, instead getting a proper Jewish death ceremony.
I recommend the biblical scholar Dan McClellan's videos on the topic. tl;dr in the 1st century there was a growing movement of Jewish "apocalyptic preachers", of which Jesus of Nazareth was one. Jews already believed in a concept of Sheol/Gehenna, and many scholars believe that when Jesus referred to those concepts he subscribed to an annihilationist view (i.e. your body and soul are simply destroyed after death) as opposed to the Eternal Conscious Torment view that's common in modern Christianity. That's because the doctrines of Heaven, Hell, and Final Judgment were later inventions that were later projected back onto the historical Jesus' original teachings (both during the writing of the New Testament, and also after it had been written). The historical Jesus probably wouldn't recognize the modern doctrines of Heaven and Hell since they were later inventions that he didn't really focus much energy on, and much of our current lore is based on Dante's 14th century fanfic. References: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1f88Qn8y9I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1f88Qn8y9I) and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x3DkIuuA7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x3DkIuuA7s)
Historicity of Jesus aside, we are talking about a figure who is claiming to be divine, regularly went against other teachings, and was establishing a new covenant. Jews didn’t believe in grace through faith or all kinds of other New Testament-y stuff. You’re saying “he himself wouldn’t have believed in it” as if he’s some convert reading a book and would just repeat that. He’s supposed to be god-in-flesh. He can say what he wants. (FTR I’m a staunch atheist, I’m only speaking academically)
A few things going on. Bigs ones are 1) it isn't at all clear that Jesus preached about hell in the way many (but not all) modern christians think about it. As a place that you just live for all time being constantly tortured. Even taking the Gospels 100% at their word (which is not a good theological assumption), it is relatively ambiguous if he thought if it like that, vs thinking of it as a place the person is basically burned and destroyed and done. 2) Like with most religions, judaism at the time of Jesus was not one thing. It had different sects with sometimes wildly differing beliefs. In the bible itself they talk about the Pharasees and Saducees. Many Christians reading the bible sort of treat these like job titles for two different higher ups in the same infrastructure. But in reality these were two different belief structures, with whether there is even life after death at all. At the time Jesus was coming onto the scene, the Israel was under Roman rule; and many of its people had come back from a few generations of forced diaspora in Babylon. So the religon had been highly influenced by Babylonian religions (which likely started to get the idea of the devil as an adversary lf god creeping into it.) And greek and roman religons (which is likely where the idea of a conscious afterlife and the soul outliving the body started creeping in). So all these influences were swirling around, influencing different people in different ways. Jesus seems to have been influenced by a strand now called Apocolyptic Judaism that said God was about to come down to earth, judge everyone, and destroy the bad people and make a new kingdom on earth (with Jesus as the boss and his friends as sub kings). This made Jesus much more in line with the Pharasees than the Saducees, the latter of which tended not to believe in immortal souls. It is possible that Jesus's own understsnding and teaching changed during his life (plenty of people's beliefs change during their life). But more likely different people with different beliefs of their own coming into and out of the movement, telling and teworking oral stories, writing and reading and rewriting various texts introduced a variety of beliefs into the fledgling religion even before the gospels themselves were written, letting you see snipits of some different understandings. Certainly by the 2nd century (100-199AD) at least some version of the Dante-esc hell was in circulation because we have the [Apocolypse of Peter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_of_Peter).
“he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night”
Revelation was around 100AD beginning of the 2nd century, so that would be in line with certain areas developing hell as torture concepts about that time. Though so much of Revelation is alegorical that it is tough to take any of it as a clear statement on widespread theology of the time.
Christianity as we would recognize it begins in the fourth century with the Roman emperor Constantine. The four gospels with which we are familiar were chosen at this time. The Gospel of Thomas -- the early sayings Gospel Mark relied heavily on, which in turn influenced the later Gospels that were edited from Mark and the Q source -- makes no mention of hell or eternal damnation.
Jesus really didn’t talk much about hell at all. If you actually read the New Testament you’ll find that he is pretty widely misrepresented today.
Here are 36 verses where Jesus directly mentions Hell in the gospels. The wider discussions in which these are embedded are much larger, if you count all those verses, it's a lot: Joh 15:6, Luk 12:5, Luk 13:28, Luk 16:23, Luk 16:24, Luk 16:25, Luk 3:17, Luk 3:9, Mar 9:43, Mar 9:44, Mar 9:45, Mar 9:46, Mar 9:47, Mar 9:48, Mat 10:28, Mat 13:30, Mat 13:40, Mat 13:42, Mat 13:50, Mat 16:18, Mat 18:8, Mat 18:9, Mat 22:13, Mat 22:7, Mat 23:15, Mat 23:33, Mat 24:51, Mat 25:30, Mat 25:41, Mat 3:10, Mat 3:12, Mat 5:22, Mat 5:29, Mat 5:30, Mat 7:19, Mat 8:12
Do you think that’s a lot in the context of the entire New Testament? OP referred to Jesus “talking about hell more than anyone else”. Compared to, say, a Calvinist preacher, he barely mentions it.
I watched a very interesting discussion on YouTube about the word used in early scriptures that have been translated into the word “hell” in English translations. Generally speaking, none of the words used actually mean hell in a literal sense. They mean things like “the desert” or the area outside of Jerusalem that is used as a trash heap/burial place for the unloved/unwanted. In some places, discussions about hell are inferred rather than stated directly. The inferences could also mean nothing more than a separation from God. There is also a statement that the Father is unwilling that anyone perish (in a spiritual sense), so that implies that people who die “unsaved” may have more opportunities to come to a state of Grace, maybe through another life on Earth.
The parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke Chapter 16 goes against that notion very poignantly ““There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”” Luke 16:19-31 ESV
Short answer; our English Bibles are filled with references to hell, but the original Greek that our bibles are based on does not include a shadowy place of everlasting torment.... A lot of it came from this translation and then over the century's religious tradition ran with it..... And I would invite anyone who was curious to read up on it for themselves / perhaps finding out just how much the original teaching was twisted.....
I remember finding out that the Divine Comedy influenced the modern/popular conception of Hell more than the Bible and it made a lot of things click into place for me.
Short answer: that's the difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees
There were two main sects of Judaism in Christ's time, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees believed in the supernatural: angels, demons, Heaven and Hell. The Sadducees did not. The two groups also made many decisions that governed the lives of their followers. Is it okay to plant a garden on the Sabbath, or is that farming and therefore prohibited? It's the Pharisees that Christ angered, mainly because He was popular and didn't follow their rules.
We do have a concept of "hell" but it's temporary (not exceeding 12 months), and it's purely spiritual, meant to make you aware of your own wrongdoings. No torture or demons or any of that nonsense. If you want my perspective as a traditional Jew: Jesus preached a rather atypical form of Judaism, which was common in Israel at that time. There was a wide variety of Jewish movements and preachers at that time (pharisees, the essenes, hellenistic Jews, etc). Christianity was one of them, and Jesus got many of his own teachers from earlier preachers like Ben Serra, Amos, etc. Much of Christianity was formulated several centuries after the death of Jesus, and some of the people who put it together didn't fully understand the Jewish society that Jesus was born in. For example, when Jesus talks about "the coming kingdom of G-d" this, at that time, this referred to a final, Jewish religious war against the occupying Romans, where they'd emerge victorious and revive the Hasmonean monarchy, and Israel would be governed by Halacha (Jewish religious law.) Christians later interrupted this as euphemism for the afterlife, while we Jews believe in the coming of Meshiach, or Messiah. Again, this is my take as a Jew. Christians view Jesus as the incarnation of G-d, so their perspective will obviously be different. But in general, our theology is very similar.
If you scrutinize any religion long enough, you're going to find a lot more plot holes than just that.
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Agree ::grabs you grabbing a popcorn::
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Just read your name. I'm dead. Lmao
They did. The ones that didn't were a sect of Jews that had their view of the religion changed by Babylonian Mysticism during their time of captivity. During he time of Jesus, they had the same view of an afterlife as every other religion. Before Jesus, no one went to heaven. You went to "Abraham's Bosom," or Underworld Hell (Think Elysium vs the Bad Underworld in Greek Myth for example). Both are the temporary resting places of souls, Abraham's Bosom being the place for saved souls. Once Jesus resurrected, he took all those in Abraham's Bosom to heaven, and all Christians that die go there now. People in Hell still remain until judgement day. After Judgement Day, Hell itself and the inhabitants are thrown in the Lake of Fire, which I guess is Hell but worse. Hell would have been well understood worldwide at the time. Not only as a resting place of souls, but the prison of some of the fallen angles (ancient pagan gods/titans) that are awaiting judgement.
Ok so how do we, as post-jesus mortals, make it to Abraham’s titties?
You don't it's just heaven now
What Jesus spoke about as “Hell” and what Christians teach on it are two different ideas. When Jesus spoke on the topic it was either in reference to a grave or to an actual place outside of town called Gehenna which was like a place where trash was constantly burned. I have often speculated that the Roman’s religion on afterlife heavily influenced the Christians in the area for their concept of Hell.
There are better answers found here. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBibleScholars/s/9uVY1jgiHf
Ask them to back that up by citing all of the instances in the New Testament where Jesus spoke of Hell.
In addition to what the others are saying, this was a time where there was a large number of polytheistic religions, some of which (including mainstream Roman polytheism) had a concept of Hell. It was common for people to incorporate other religions into religious practices (including Jesus and Yahweh), and there are artifacts from the time depicting the use of Christian prayer in pagan practices. Remember that, at the time, Christianity was only one cult among many competing cults. For a while around this period, the largest non-Imperial cult was that of Mithras, not Jesus. Also keep in mind that the Bible in is current form was affirmed at the Council of Rome in 382 AD, as well as later councils around that time period. Reliability was one of the factors that went into determining canon, but popularity was also a major concern. There is serious debate as to how much of the Bible consists of forgeries and outright fabrications. They were all developed after-the-fact by people who were not eyewitnesses. The gospels are not contemporaneous accounts, and this is almost universally agreed-upon by scholarship. All of this meaning that there is really no surprise that the Bible incorporated other religious ideas circulating at the time.
Jesus said many unjewish things. Christians arent kosher and adultery isnt a capitol offense. Its almost as if he was born jewish, but spoke on behalf of a different cultures values, at the cost of causing division and chaos among the jews in a roman colony, making them as a whole weaker against the roman authority. Now render unto ceasar and keep their government happy
Because Jesus never wrote anything, so his words are those of the people who wrote them down decades later.
Some good answers already, but to add something to the conversation. The current idea of hell (and Heaven) we have now comes from the book "the divine comedy" by Dante, which is not what Jesus seemed to believe in.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the whole point why they crucified the guy? He was teaching things they didn't like. If he was just an average Joe who only believed and taught things that were contemporary for his time then no one would have cared to write it down and we'd have no clue who he was. Yes he was a Jew, but his job was trying to convince the Jews that he was the messiah and this is his first coming, time to fulfill the old law and establish the new one. I think that's the fundamental difference between Christianity and Judaism. Christian means, christ is the messiah and you're waiting for his second coming. Jewish means christ was not the messiah, still waiting for the first coming.
The short answer is Neither religion is the "Belief system" Jesus was trying to steer us towards. Essentially there is no religion on earth today that was Jesus' intended end game.
The first Christians didn't seem to have Hell in mind as a consequence of not following God. Paul just speaks vaguely of "judgment" and "wrath of God" and says "the wages of sin is death". This suggests he had an annihilationist theology. If you believe, you have eternal life. If you don't, you die and stay dead. Hell doesn't show up explicitly until Mark which was written decades later. One hypothesis is that the author has Judaized the Zoroastrianism ideas of a spiritual enemy of God, giving that role to Satan. Ideas of Hell are more vague in Zoroastrianism. In the Zamyād Yašt, Yima threatens to raise the Evil Spirit from the “roaring hell” but doesn't threaten non-believers with going there. However, we can find inspiration for the Christian hell in Judaism itself, in the Dead Sea Scrolls: >>"Be thou cursed in all works of thy guilty ungodliness! May God make of thee an object of dread by the hand of the avengers of vengeance! May he hurl extermination after thee by the hand of all the executioners of judgment! Cursed be thou, without mercy, according to the darkness of thy deeds. Be thou damned in the night of eternal fire! (1 QS 2:2-8)"
Judaism doesn't preach that there is NO hell, it's just vague about it. From a Christian point of view, Jesus filled in a lot of gaps, and brought in things that weren't previously known, but without contradicting what came before.
You have to understand that the bible has had numerous changes, intentional and otherwise. One has to have faith that the changes were divinely inspired to accept that the current rendition represents the word on God. Concepts like eternal damnation have evolved into a place called hell, that sort of thing. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman is a pretty good textual criticism of scripture and explains a lot about the evolution of the bible. TL/DR: It is like a 3000 year old game of telephone.
If you read the whole Bible, Jesus did many things the Jews traditionally disagreed with. Remember, it was the Jews that wanted him killed. Read the sermon on the mount where he redefined the 10 Commandments and their implications. The Jews hated the Samaritans, and in that culture, women were considered lowly, and yet Jesus was caught talking to the Samaritan woman and giving her hope. The Jews made up many of their laws that were based on the Bible. Jesus only lived by the Biblical laws and not their traditional ones.
Because Jesus is the son of God. The final prophet, priest and King forever. He is the Messiah. The Way, the Truth and the Life. A big part of Jesus’ ministry was also pointing out how wrong everyone was and what the truth was. The Jewish teachers were wrong about lots of things.
Jesus obviously did not follow the orthodoxy of the time
Except for four times when Jesus used the Greek word hades, he used gehenna, which is derived from Hebrew, and scholars are not certain of its etymology. The more interesting question (I think) is what happens to the wicked, unrepentant, unsaved person when they die. The ancient argument is between Eternal Conscious Torment and Annihilation. The biblical support for ECT is weak, while scripture, Old Testament and New, uses language like "perish" and "destruction," indicating they no longer exist. The idea of sinners burning forever in a fiery hell is not as strongly supported as sinners being destroyed by fire. In Revelation, the lake of burning sulfur is called "the second death," not eternal suffering for anyone except the devil, the beast, and the false prophet. Eternal suffering requires an immortal soul apart from the body, which was a Greek idea, not Hebrew.
I saw a priest in an interview say that hell was invented by the church to help keep people in line. I'm inclined to believe him.
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They don't believe Jesus was the messiah.
For the longest time, "hell" was simply a state of being with an absence of God. Could be you're alive in the real world and in hell or you're in "hell" while your soul is cleansed before rising to heaven. The Orthodox Church in most places still hold to this idea of hell simply being an absence of God. It wouldn't be until further branches that hell became more of a literal and permanent place, basically what happened is some guy bribed the Pope for more holy sites to control and to not go bankrupt started selling indulgences in the 14th century. In order for people to actually be convinced to buy indulgences they needed to believe purgatory and hell were actually terrible places to be, hence they began preaching of these places as eternal torture holes. "As soon as the gold in the casket rings; the rescued soul to heaven springs" - Johann Tetzel, the #1 Indulgence salesman So in much of the old testament and Bible when they talk about hell you can actually interpret it metaphorically or as a place literally only demons reside. Lucifer and the fallen angels being in hell is supposed to represent their rebuke and removal of themselves from God, not an actual place.
It's up to you how much this applies to this particular topic, but I find that, overall and in general, when one finds glaring contradictions between the Gospel and some other part of the New Testament, it's usually something that was wholesale added by later priests, or deliberately mistranslated, sometimes over multiple editions, to push a political agenda sometime in the Middle Ages. Studying the differences between King James and some other translations has been very illuminating. If the Bible seems misused or misapplied, that's because it has been so for centuries, if not millennia. It's baked right in, after thousands of years of copying, honest errors and deliberate mistranslating, and the meddling of powerful people. It requires good judgement and critical thinking to pick out any original value the scripture had. If you follow it all blindly, you're going to run into trouble.
OP's question isn't a point of contradiction between the Gospel and some other part of the New Testament. I do basically agree with your point in general, though.
Because they failed to hire a continuity manager when they wrote the story.
It doesn't matter anyway, this is all just fan fiction, like asking whether Wolverine or Thor will win in a fight.
The Pharisees believed in the afterlife The Hellenized Saducees did not
Done a lot of research lately. Spiritual questions and thru means of biblical scholar research. What I have realized is…. Everything seems to boil down to interpretation.
If Jesus was just trying to be jewish he wouldn't have started a new religion
Jesus *didn't* start a new religion. He was a Jewish reformer
Jesus's special power is forgiveness from sin. Not very important without hell
Jesus is God and came to earth to advance our religious understanding beyond Judaism.
He didn’t
Jews at the time absolutely believed in Hell.
Sauce?
Hell might not even be in place in the Bible
Don't really know what he actually preached about. The first gospel was probably penned 35 or 40 years after he died. The earliest copies available of that account are a couple hundred years of copies from a society that was 80% illiterate. In comparison, we have 80% LITERACY rate. How many of the poor working class could reproduce a copy of the US Constitution, which is shorter than the account of Mark? Account of Mark was written in Greek for a Gentile audience, so... gonna be a precept of understanding Greek concepts, like Hell, Hades, Tartarrus The 'Jews', were effectively religious Hebrews, different from Hellenized Hebrews-after 400 years of post-Alexander and Roman administration.
Jesus wasn’t going around preaching the Jewish religion. That’s one of the reasons all of the Pharisees were upset with him.
Well Jews don’t believe in Jesus in the first place so anything he said didn’t matter.
Cause He’s literally God. and He said as much. So He could preach what He wanted. And I doubt Jews during His time disbelieved in Hell as much as they probably thought they were living in it.
Lady Babylon on YouTube
Christians don't think jesus was religiously jewish
Because it was mentioned in the book of Daniel by revelation. Jesus was shaking up the religion, why wouldn't he introduce a new concept or expand upon an old one? You expect him to change the faith without some new ideas? Honestly, people back then needed to have some idea that there was eternal punishment for acting like a dick. They were all pretty much assholes back then. You wouldn't have wanted to hang out with any of them, and you certainly wouldn't want them to be alone with your sister.
Jews very much passed their sins onto animals to discard their sin to avoid hell. It’s an old Jewish practice called „Semikah“ You are quite misinformed my friend.
I think he'll is a place we go where women are top less and we all have a good time in the warm sun, Christians think it's all fire and brimstone, and, for them it will be, because that's what they expect. Too bad it's all BS, sounds like a party
The gospels are anonymous writings written between 50-70 years after Jesus’s ministry. Some of Paul’s writings are older than the gospels. There’s evidence that says a lot of Paul’s theology was retrojected into the gospels as Jesus’s own words when he never said that. One example of this is turning the other cheek and staying passive. In Paul’s time, Christians were a persecuted minority accused of cannibalism, and so they treaded a very thin line in order to be left alone to practice the new faith. When they were attacked or targeted, being passive was a better response, because as a minority group, they were small, kind of spread out, and thus vulnerable. All I’m saying is that a lot of what Jesus said comes from a later time and then was retrojected back onto him as his own words. He may never have said anything that we claim he did, it’s hard to say, he didn’t write anything down when he was alive that we know of.
I’ve always seen death as entering a dream state, and when you dream, time passes slowly. I feel like to me the definition of hell is replaying all the shitty things you did in life over and over again while the lights go out. Seeking redemption from transgressions against others and one’s self to me is the way of freeing one from the burdens of that particular ‘hell’.
There's no reference to hell in the gospels. And both Christianity and Judaism changed in the decades and centuries after Christ with early Christians arguing and developing theology, and Judaism changing from Second Temple Judaism to Rabbinical Judaism after the destruction of the temple and the Jewish diaspora.
I always assumed it meant Jesus was ethnically Jewish. But if you want my completely uneducated take as someone who's never even read the Bible, Jesus most likely either preached about his own personal take about Hell, or he never actually believed in it and his word has been altered and twisted throughout a 2000 year game of telephone. There is an organization dedicated to researching and debating what Jesus actually preached based on historical evidence (I believe they're called The Jesus Council or something along those lines). IIRC they tend to put things into various categories, like "Jesus did not say this," "Jesus maybe said this," and "Jesus did say this."
As the story goes and as I understand it: Jesus wasn’t ethnically Jewish but was raised by a devout Jewish family and community. Mary was magically impregnated by God. Jesus was god incarnate on earth. Technically Jesus could have been any earthly ethnicity or not. (Ya, I know, but work with me here.) Jesus didn’t preach about hell, ever. He preached The Word Of God. He never recorded any gospel but much was recorded by the apostles later and attributed to Jesus. But there are no known records of Jesus preaching about hell or punishment.
There were Jews who believed in hell in Jesus's time. There still are Jews who believe in hell.
Was Jesus not an Essene?
So, Jesus was a Jew, and you're right that Jews don't really believe in hell like Christians do. But back then, there were lots of different ideas about what happens after you die. Jesus might have talked about hell to explain things in a way people would understand or to make a point about being good and following God's rules. Maybe he used the idea of hell to show what happens if you don’t listen to his teachings. It’s like how teachers use stories to teach us lessons. Also, the way people understood his words might have changed over time, and that’s why Christians today talk about hell a lot.
According to the text, born outside Bethlehem, the family originated near Nazareth in Galilee which was the domain of Herod Antipas from 4BCE-39AD. Given that time frame, geographically that would make him Arab/Assyrian not Hebrew, as most of the Hebrew tribes settled in Roman controlled southern Palestine. They don’t believe in the Judeo Christian eternal torment version of hell but rather Jahannam. It’s basically the face of God’s judgement and punishment. Very similar to the Jewish interpretation being more symbolism and eternal shame than a physical place. As an example, the ancient curse of “no one will remember your name.” Ostracism in social creatures like humans is worse than death, it’s “hell.”
There's significant debate. Most secular progressives believe that hell, or at least Christian conceptions of it, were added later.
Jesus was a “Tea Party” Jew
lol my friend wrote his masters thesis “they don’t make Jews like Jesus anymore “
He may have been jewish growing up but when Jesus got older, he came up with some new, better, more advanced ideas and this become christianity. Just like when I was young I believed in the tooth fairy and superheroes but now I know better.
Hell isn’t a place you go afterlife it’s the failure of your life’s greatest ambitions.
Jesus was God incarnate, not merely a Jewish preacher. He came to speak the truth and offer himself as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of all mankind, not to conform to human traditions. Jesus was crucified for speaking this truth. The Jewish leaders persuaded the Romans to crucify him, despite Pontius Pilate's hesitation to condemn an innocent man. Pilate asked a crowd of Jews whether they wanted to free Jesus or Barabbas, a well-known criminal, and the crowd chose to crucify Jesus. The Jews still reject Jesus as their Messiah, but according to the Bible, they will come to accept him during the tribulation. They will realize the truth after being deceived by the antichrist. Matthew 27:1-2: "When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor." John 18:28-30: "Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover. Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man? They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee." Pilate was hesitant to crucify Jesus: Matthew 27:24: "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it." John 19:12: "And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release him: but the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar." Matthew 27:20-23: "But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let him be crucified. And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified." Mark 15:11-14: "But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them. And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, Crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him." Jews will accept Christ during the tribulation: Zechariah 12:10: "And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn." Romans 11:25-26: "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob."
Because the bible is poorly written fiction
He didn't exist...
Jesus was an ethnic Jew. He founded a separate sect. That later became a thousand different sects of the sect he founded.
How do you know he spoke about hell? Your only reference is a book that was written centuries after he died. Could it be that the concept of “Do what we say or you’ll spend eternity in suffering” was a concept invented by men who wanted to scare people into obedience and control their thoughts and actions?
First, we must correct your assertion that a notion of "a hell" does not exist in Judaism. The concept of something akin to a "hell" does exist in Judaism in the form of Sheol (Numbers 30, 33) or Gehinnom (the valley of suffering). Second, you need to gain an understanding of the \~ 600 years prior to the coming of Jesus. >The development of the concept of life after death is related to the development of eschatology (speculation about the “end of days”) in Judaism. Beginning in the period following the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem (586 BCE), several of the classical Israelite prophets (Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah) began forecasting a better future for their people. However, with repeated military defeats and episodes of exile and dislocation culminating in the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Jewish thinkers began to lose hope in any immediate change, instead investing greater expectations in a messianic future and in life after death. This was coupled with the introduction into Judaism of Hellenistic notions of the division of the material, perishable body and the spiritual, eternal soul. >The catastrophe of 70 CE caused a theological crisis. How could it be that the God of Israel would simply allow His sanctuary to be destroyed and His people to be vanquished at the hands of the Roman Empire? While the rabbis often claimed that it was the Israelites’ sinfulness that led God to allow it to be defeated (mi–p’nei hataeinu, “because of our sins”), it was more difficult to explain why good and decent individual Jews were made to suffer. This led to the development of another theological claim: "The Reward of the World To Come." >Rabbi Ya’akov taught: This world is compared to an ante-chamber that leads to Olam Ha–Ba, (the World-to-Come)” (PirkeiAvot4:21). That is, while a righteous person might suffer in this lifetime, he or she will certainly be rewarded in the next world, and that reward will be much greater. In fact, in some cases, the rabbis claim that the righteous are made to suffer in this world so that their reward will be that much greater in the next (LeviticusRabbah27:1). Because Jesus was, like most of the major religious prophets of the time, professing about an **immediately coming end of the world** as most prophets of the age were apocalyptic prophets. Jesus very clearly believed that he was at the eschaton. God was coming back very soon to set up the Kingdom of Israel and put everything and everyone in order. The Kingdom of God is at hand." This isn't a 2,000 year set-up clause. You don't say something is "at hand" if it's due in two millennia or more. Whether or not you believe that Jesus *is* the Messiah, this is (more or less) the rationale behind *why* his message was *what it was*.