http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16312534&postcount=41
See:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hel_bibl.htm
About Hell and the Old Testament:
Proverbs 23:14
NIV - Punish them with the rod and save them from death.
KJV - Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.
It isn’t clear in the KJV whether Hell involves eternal suffering…
BTW what about the following passages:
lol you made a new thread out of my post. I feel honoured lmao.
Hmm, well there’s a lot to explain. I’ll give you a good link that does a great job:
But basically it comes to this:
The original Hebrew and Greek words for spirit and soul didn’t actually mean “spirit” and “soul”
Rather, they meant “Breath” and “Lifeforce”. I don’t know much Hebrew, but I know how to speak Greek though. The Greek word “pneuma” is ancient Greek for “breath”, and this word is translated as “spirit” in modern English. You might notice that a pneumatic tire for example, is a rubber doughnut that you “breathe” into to make it work, hence the name being “pneumatic”
As for the concept of hell itself? Hmm, it seems that in the Old Testament it doesn’t exist at all. The word “Sheol” seems to take different meanings depending on who’s saying it. However, it always symbolizes some type of resting place in the afterlife, and the implication is that it’s unconscious rest. Good people and bad people go there. It is never a place of torment. I believe it’s a euphemist for just your mind disappearing.
The New Testament uses words like “Hades” “Gehenna” and “Tartarus”, which are 3 completely different places, and translates them all as “Hell” particularly in the KJV.
Read the link I posted and you’ll get a pretty good idea of the whole confusion.
Very interesting… and long… though I guess it has a lot to explain.
I guess I should also answer your questions regarding the passages you quoted me.
Matthew 25:46: " And these shall go away into everlasting punishment."
The problem here is the word “punishment”. The original Greek has the word “Kolasin”. There’s some debate as to what this word means. In modern Greek “Kolazo” means to punish. However, the word “Timoria” also means to punish. There’s a difference between the two.
Kolazo means corrective punishment, as in you do something bad, and a reasonable amount of punishment is given to you with the goal of correcting your behaviour.
Timoria tends to have a more negative meaning, as in to punish out of malice or vengeance.
Kolasin in this case, would be like saying “corrective punishment”
This is why some Bibles translate that verse as “everlasting correction”
So the question now would be, if the punishment is meant to be corrective, why is it everlasting? The whole “eternal/everlasting” translations are another can of worms.
In ancient Greek, Kolazo used to mean the pruning of trees. Kolla in modern Greek means glue, and I believe it was the same in ancient Greece as well. So saying Kolazo was saying “ungluing imperfections” by cutting them off, and this evolved to the word meaning correction in Jesus’ time, and further evolved to our modern Greek today (Kolasi means hell in modern Greek, but the implication is that you’re “stuck there” hence the “kola” part of the word)
Mark 9:43-48: “…it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched” The unquenched fire is mentioned three times in this passage for emphasis.
The word translated “hell” in this passage is the word Gehenna, which was a place in the Old Testament. I don’t want to type a book here, so I would wiki the word and you’ll get an idea of what this place is.
Revelation 14:11: " And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night…"
This is a symbolism taken out of Isaiah. See Isaiah 34:10 for an example. Notice how the passage uses the same words. Read the whole chapter from 34 though and you’ll notice the fire is eventually quenched even though it says it doesn’t. It’s just a metaphorical way the writer embellishes the language.
Hopefully this clears things up a bit.
The link is even more convincing than you were about those passages… (I did a word search for the book name/chapter).
Believing in this makes God a lot more worthy to be praised.
BTW the link is better than you when talking about the soul as well… it says that the Greeks actually believed in the immortality of the soul… (not being temporary)
So what do you believe? In Jesus? What about evolution and the creation story where the plants were created before the Sun?
Hmm, good questions there.
The link I gave you happens to be very close to my own beliefs, with some minor exceptions. I was doing a web search a while back and bumped into it, and I thought it was a great piece that is 90% close to what I believe. So I bookmarked it in case anyone ever asked me.
This is a LOT of stuff to explain, particularly since I speak modern Greek (gives me an advantage to make sense of the Biblical Greek, more than other people I would say)
Yes it looks like the Greeks believed in a soul. However the concept goes way back before, as it was kind of an evolutionary thing. You’ve probably heard of a concept called “soul sleep”. This is what that link basically says will happen.
My opinion is different. I believe in the current scientific concept in that we do not have a mystical “soul” inside of us, but rather the collective neurons and synapses in our brain make up our “soul”. I could explain to you why I believe this.
This doesn’t change anything in the Christian belief though, as far as God is concerned. I believe in Jesus, and that he is God in the flesh, same as any other Christian.
The whole thing about evolution and creation is another hot topic. Personally I don’t believe in creation at all. I don’t think the 6 days are literal as much of Genesis is probably symbolic.
There is a whole stack of evidence that evolution works the way scientists theorize.
That doesn’t mean that God couldn’t just magically make everything appear in 6 days, but logically why would he? He has billions+ of years of time at his disposal. Why rush in 6 days when he could enjoy the evolutive process as long as he wanted to? In the end it’s one of those things that makes little difference arguing about, like trying to argue if God has a long bushy beard or not. What difference does it make if he does or doesn’t?
Why does it say there’s an evening and a morning? Also in Exodus it said to work for 6 days and rest for 1 because that’s what God did. Also plants could survive a day with a light source and no Sun (that’s what happened in the creation story). BTW I used to be a young earth creationist. Also God said the creation was “good”… but it wouldn’t be very good if there were billions of years of death and suffering.
Moved MPSIMS --> Great Debates.
It would sure as Hell seem that Hell is forever:
In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction. 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9
If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. Matthew 18:8-9
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. … And these shall go away into everlasting punishment. Matthew 25:41, 46
… into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. Mark 9:43-48
In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction. 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9
The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever. Revelation 14:10-11
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:14-15
The whole point of the creation story for christians is that god created everything except death (which is why evolution and fundamentalist christianity can never be reconciled). It was only when a&e sinned that death came into the world. The punishment for sin is death, not hell. Christ’s sacrifice was to save people from death, not hell. how did hell get into it, anyway? is it because the god christians love is a gory son of a bitch who hated to settle for just killing the enemy when he could add rape, torture, slavery, mutilation, and salting of fields to the fun? god’s still chuckling over that bag of foreskins king david collected…
It looks like you didn’t read any of:
Believe What the Jewish Apostles Taught -- Why Conditional Immortality Is True and Biblical (D)
This talks about the smoke rising forever in Revelation 14:10-11
3) Why would God choose the words like “destroy, destruction, perish, death” to signify something other than their plain meaning?
Also why does it talk about death vs. eternal life in Genesis, and there is the tree of life in Genesis and Revelation, and there is the book of life, and the gospel mentions “eternal life”… i.e. it is talking about conditional immortality.
What about “the wages of sin is death”…
Do you think living forever in Hell is somehow “death” and not “living”? How is conscious eternal torment “death”? Why is the word “death” the best word to use there? I thought “the wages of sin is eternal torment” would be more accurate.
So you obviously haven’t read any of that link. You should if you are serious about this discussions because my responses are just going to be me repeating what is in that link.
According to that link it is because the Greeks believed that souls are eternal which means that they never died when they went to the fires of hell.
cougar58:
Hmmmmmm. Do we have anyone in all the 6 billion plus souls on the planet that actually knows from having been there…?
I thought not.
cougar58:
What about:
Matthew 10:28
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
How is the soul “destroyed” if it is existing for an eternity?
I think your point of view is harder to defend based on those issues. There are also many problems with the morality of eternal torment.
Well there are search results if you search for nde and hell (NDE = near death experience). Though the NDE is probably similar to a dream rather than it involving a supernatural journey.
I know all these places of ‘life after death’ are confusing but when you speak about the Greek belief you shouldn’t then call it ‘fires of hell’.
Call it Hades. Hel is the germanic name for the underworld.
Neither are places of eternal torture, just the place where the dead go.
In Hades people just sit around not remembering anything.
Not so sure what precisely goes on in Germanic Hel. Judging by the fairy tale of Frau Holle (who is, of course Queen Hel), there might be some punishment and reward going on.
Because the Bible is contradictory?
One interpretation of Hell I find interesting is that of the Orthodox churches – the dead are all brought before the presence of God, and when exposed to his glory the righteous/cleansed souls are filled with it and it becomes a heaveny experience, while the wicked souls “reject” it and it becomes a hellish experience - the Gehennna, which meant the place where the garbage was burned.
I don’t really have a dog in this fight, being an atheist, but Jesus also describes a place of torment in his parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus.