Hell in the Bible... suffering/duration?

For the moderator, if this comment is out of place and belongs elsewhere, please let me know, and I apologize in advance if that’s the case.

It seems to have been a bad idea to move this from MPSIMS to Great Debates. It’s changed the whole tone of the thread, from a interesting discussion of a topic to a much more confrontational debate. I know that Great Debates is the place for religious debates and witnessing, but while the OP was clearly about a religious topic, it seemed to be more about discussion than debate.

For all responses you should read at least some of:

C) What about the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16?

It basically says that that is happening before judgement day… and after judgement day people will burn up and cease to exist. This punishment has eternal effects.

Actually now I’m trying to defend the following link that Mellontikos mentioned…

See part D:
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)

This is about being brought before the presence of God - maybe there is also another passage about that… bTW the link explains what the “the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever” means since it is used a few other times in the Bible.

**
Originally Posted by JohnClay
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.**

Those contradictions seem to be based on people’s assumptions that the soul is always immortal… this idea came from the Greeks… it doesn’t seem to be Biblical.

That link says that Gehenna and Hades are different… it also says:
Hades will be itself emptied and destroyed one day (Revelation 20:13 – says Hades in Greek).

That’s what I was thinking of. The rich man wasn’t exactly exterminated. And speaking of extermination, whether sooner or later, is not particularly loving. “Worship me or I’ll kill your soul forever” just doesn’t seem very enlightened for a deity.

No I think it’s just do to the contradictory nature of the Bible. It’s not like the book is inerrant and/or divinely inspired.

As mentioned Dives soul survived death to be tormented by flame.

See section C:

The rich man went to Hades…
Hades will be itself emptied and destroyed one day (Revelation 20:13 – says Hades in Greek).

The burning up apparently happens after the final judgment day… it is called the second death, etc.

It is a lot better than eternal torment… eternity is more than a trillion years. It is meant to be a punishment. Anyway I don’t want to live forever if there is a possibility I’d get bored. Do you think it is loving to make people live against their will - even a googolplex years is a fraction of eternity.

The contradictions that people are finding are mostly due to the idea that souls are always eternal… there’s a hermeneutical principle that “scripture interprets scripture” - I’m not aware of verses that say that everyone’s soul is eternal. In fact there is a lot of verses that say the opposite.

Who is “Dive”?

Well for the devil and his angels their souls (or whatever they have) aren’t killed forever - they just spend an eternity suffering… is that more loving?

BTW what if we were talking about a dog that needed to be punished (e.g. it mauled someone)… is it more loving to kill the dog or torture it until it naturally dies?

“What was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?”

Hades and Sheol were the general-use afterlife locations for the Greeks and Jews, respectively. They were extremely similar in description as dark, gloomy, colorless places in which the spirits of the dead sort of moldered on, forever. (Jewish tradition has one theme that indicates that death is, itself, oblivion. Sheol represents a separate tradition, but whether this similarity to Hades was the result of a common belief that permeated many cultures at the east end of the Mediterranean, centuries before the common era, or whether the notion of a Hades-like place was adopted by the Jewish people in the post-Alexandrine expansion of Hellenistic beliefs, I have never seen addressed.)

Gehinnon was a valley to the southeast of Jerusalem where the people of Jerusalem tended to throw their trash. Jeremiah described the bodies of sinners being thrown on to the constant, smoldering fires that burned there, providing a metaphor for the destiny of evil people.

Tartarus was a place in Greek mythology where deposed gods and Titans were imprisoned. Elysium was a corresponding place in which demi-gods, (born to gods and humans), and heroes, (who tended to be demi-gods, anyway), enjoyed happiness after death. Hades remaining the location of the spirits of normal humans.
Eventually, the notions of Tartarus and Elysium were expanded so that good persons would end up in the Elysian Fields while evil doers would be punished in Tartarus.

In the period from around 250 B.C.E. to around 150 C.E., a literary style developed within Judaism and later borrowed by early Christianity that we now call apocalyptic, from the Greek word for revelation. That is the style in which the Revelation of John, (or Apocalypse of John), was written. It is characterized by wildly imaginative depictions of events, typically future events that are being revealed, (hence the name). Few of those works were eventually accepted as Scripture by either the Jews or the Christians. (Revelation and several passages in the Prophet Daniel being the notable exceptions.)
When Christians began identifying the books that would become their canonical scripture, most of the apocalyptic books were set aside and are known as apocryphal, (“set aside” or “hidden”) works. However, while they did not get accepted as scripture, they did influence the beliefs of many people. It was among these writings that the idea developed, (much as the similar idea had developed among the Greeks), that all people would continue in an afterlife and that they would be judged, resulting in their placement in either a place of joy or a place of punishment. In those works, Gehenna and Tartarus figure as places of tormenting punishment, Gehenna, particularly, is described as unending fire.

As Christianity developed, it brought along many of the ideas from both the Greek and Judaic traditions. Since the Apocalyptic literature is not read each Sunday in services, people who examine only scripture are not always aware of the trends that led to the current formations of ideas about heaven and hell in Christian thought.

As the literary language of the first two centuries was Greek, the authors of the New Testament tended to write in Greek. However, several of them had grown up in the Jewish tradition. Hence, they tended to borrow words to describe these places of the afterlife without rigorously setting forth definitions for them. Thus, we get numerous references to Hades, Sheol, and Gehenna in the New Testament, and one reference to Tartarus. The words are not always used in a rigidly defined manner, for example the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, in Luke 16:19 - 31, uses the word Hades, even though the description is one of torment.

It should be noted that while Gehenna is described as a place of torment with unending fire, the torment, itself is not described as unending with the exception of one ambiguous mention in Matthew.
Following on Jewish thought of the first century, punishment in the afterlife is described by some as a period of torment, (one year in various Jewish sources), followed by oblivion. The one ambiguous comment by Matthew, along with similar remarks in the apocryphal First Book of Enoch, Second Book of Esdras, and The Assumption of Moses seem to have captured the imagination of early Christians, leading to the concept of Hell, itself, being a place of eternal suffering.

Attempting to rigidly classify “places” in the New Testament based on their names is pointless. We do not really know which author followed a religious (or secular) tradition that prompted him to use one name or another. And, as we see in Luke 16, they could even use names that were inappropriate to the message they were delivering.

Dives, from a Latin word for rich, is the name given to the rich man when discussing Luke 16.

So the argument is that Jesus isn’t like the Jesus we learned about in Sunday school, but is more a temporary torturer and executioner like Hitler? What a relief.

Because the heretical servants of the false Clean-Shaven God must die. :mad: (And then they can spend Eternity as the Devil’s beard-lice.)

The link mentions Hitler three times:
…The future they face on judgment day is 1) suffering in proportion for their sins – then 2) destruction. Yet all the lost will not receive same amount of suffering for their sins - before they are destroyed. God will see that they receive the exact amount of “stripes” they deserve. Some (like Hitler) will receive very many “stripes”…

I guess it is a bit like Hitler… he killed some people immediately, while he allowed others to suffer for as long as possible…

BTW it is clear in the gospels that Jesus is going to judge people:
e.g.

I think eternal torment is mentioned in some Sunday schools… I mean in order to explain what Jesus’s dying and resurrection achieved involves some mention of hell (which is traditionally seen as eternal in churches)

I agree with JohnClay in that anyone actually interested in getting some of these questions answered should really read that link I provided.

I’ve read the Greek NT several times, and trust me, the KJV is not really a good translation. It chooses when to translate Greek words like “apollumi” (which means to disintegrate something) sometimes into “destruction” sometimes into “perish” sometimes into “perdition” depending on that the translator wanted the verse to imply. It’s dishonest IMO.

The parable of Lazarus and Dives is exactly that, a parable. It’s not means to be taken literally. It was a metaphor for the Phrarisees, since they were the Rich Man, and Lazarus were the poor people who needed their help.

Logically several things don’t make sense in it if it is to be taken literally:

  1. Lazarus ends up in Abraham’s bosom. Does every good person who dies end up in Abraham’s bosom?

  2. Abraham could see the Rich Man and vice versa. Does this mean that the good side of Hades can see the bad side? How could the good souls in Hades be at rest there if they constantly have to watch the damned suffering?

  3. The Rich Man did not seem to be in the excruciating pain someone would be if they fell into a fire. He didn’t ask to be taken out. He had the audacity to ask Lazarus to come and put a drop of water (not a glass of water or bottle, a drop) on his tongue.

If someone fell into a furnace, and there were some people outside that witnessed this, what would the victim most likely do?

A. Writhe in pain and scream his lungs out for someone to get him out of there.
B. Ask for a glass of water, because you know, it’s hot in there! (lol)

There’s more logical fallacies, but I won’t go into them. It’s clear the passage is a parable and not meant to be a literal event.

meh
It makes a few good factual points.
It also includes some errors.
It is clearly driven by a specific theology, coloring even the factual assertions.

It is not horrible, but it is not “the answer” to the OP.

You, however, are missing the point in regards to its expression of the understanding of the people to whom it was given.

Certainly, it was a parable. However, it relied on the the understanding of its audience for it to make any sense to them. It uses the word Hades to identify the place of punishment, (being written in Greek, and not the Aramaic that Jesus would have spoken). Hades has no tradition of being a place of flaming punishment, but the writer was confident that his audience would have understood his meaning. This indicates that the image of flaming Gehenna had already transferred out of the Apocalyptic literature into the general consciousness of the people in the area so that flaming torment was associated by that audience with the abode of the (sinful) dead, regardless which word was used.

That is why claims that Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, or Tartarus have separate specific theological meanings in the New Testament are baseless. At that point, unless one was a Sadducee who believed that death was, itself, oblivion, one might use any of the words for the place of the dead without a guarantee that a specific meaning was conveyed by that word.

Similarly, the question whether the sinful are punished for some period and then destroyed or punished forever may be argued in different ways. However a claim that one side or the other is absolutely true, (or that the other side was “invented” by one group or another), is not clearly supported by the texts available to the people at the time they were written. It is true that the biblical passages that refer to everlasting fire do not explicitly say that the persons there will be tormented forever, leaving open the possibility of destruction after some period. However, Enoch (chapter 10) does refer to being burned forever and we have the statement of Matthew 25:46,

I realize that the jewishnotgreek site plausibly interprets the punishment as death, contrasted to life, but that is still an interpretation.