I’m under the (possibly false) impression that either Judaism has no concept of Hell, or else it’s just not nearly as emphasized as it is in Christianity. It seems like in Judaism one is supposed to follow God’s Law because it’s part fo the Jewish people’s covenant with God, not because it’s a means to avoid damnation. Am I wrong? Because it seems like in Christianity (at least many branches of Christianity), the concept of Hell is heavily emphasized. The reason to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior (the primary requirement of Christianity) is in order to be “saved” from damnation. So where did Christians get the idea that we’re all in danger of going to Hell? Was this some new theology created by Jesus or his followers? Or did it come from the Old Testament? (In which case, why does it seem the idea of Hell is emphasized so much less in Judaism?) Or something they adapted from another religion?
You got it in one. Now, I personally would go with Zoroaster, bet there are even older examples. Also, folk-judaism does have Gehenna, but it is not necesarily a part of judaism. As I have said before on this topic, it is an Also-ran idea. Come to think of it, you are member, so you can search the topic. Here is a starting point: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?searchid=871255 in fact, see Cecil’s column, Who invented paradise?
Thanks. I should have guessed this had been discussed before.
Not to mention the Greek ideas about the afterlife, with the clever eternal punishments of Tantalus and Sisyphus and others.
A lot of our ideas of the geography of Hell come from medieval visions that were widely distributed. Alice Turner’s The History of Hell is an excellent reference:
I don’t know what these guys are talking about, but Christians get the idea of Hell from the Bible. There are numerous mentions of it throughout the Old Testament and New Tesament.
These are just a few:
Old Testament:
Prov 9:18 But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.
Psa 139:8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
Psa 16:10 For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
Ezek 31:16 I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to hell with them that descend into the pit: and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, shall be comforted in the nether parts of the earth.
New Testament
Mat 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Mark 9:45 And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
Acts 2:27 Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
My understanding is that the Torah doesn;t mention it (or life after death) at all - ie ‘the law’ the most sacred bits of the OT for Jews. Hence the 1st C Jewish historian Josephus says that strict Jews in the Sadducees sect - which included the top priests - did not beleive in an afterlife at all. The emphasis in the OT seems to be on doing what God wants here and now, often coupled with an idea of material rewards for piety and misfortunes for disobedience.
In later books there are references to a belief in somewhere called Sheol, which may be the original term used in some of the passages quoted above. This was a kind of shadowy underworld where spirits of the dead lived on, similar to the Greek Hades (which is sometimes used in the New Testament, although some versions probably translate it as Hell instead).
By Jesus’ time some Jews, including the Pharisees (who Jesus criticised for being too legalistic, but who shared many beliefs with early Christianity) believed in eternal life for the just - who it appears would come back out of Sheol (also called ‘the Bosom of Abraham’) and get new immortal bodies in the Kingdom of God (like a Heaven-on-Earth) when the Messiah came - and punishmnet in Hell for the wicked. The term Gehenna is the name of a large rubbish tip/bonfire outside the city walls of Jerusalem, which was compared to the eternal flames of Hell.
Oliver
The CONCEPT of an afterlife place for the unworthy[?] is somewhere in every religion.
The IMAGERY of Hell, in modern times, is the continuatiion of the works of Dante and his Comedie.
He illustrated Hell and all of it’s punishment variations.
The punishment fitting the crime was his contribution.
If one was not too impressed with Hell before him-they sure as Hell were after!
EZ
Well, I wouldn’t say that Dante is completely responsible for the imagery of Hell. If you’ve read any of the holy books of Zoroastrianism, you would find one, The Book of Arda Viraf, in which a prophet travels to heaven, and then to hell, and describes his experiences in each. Naturally, the imaginative description of hell and its punishments take up the bulk of this book, and definitely has the fire-and-brimstone type imagery you know today.
I’m not so sure about that. Our impression of hell (Fire, brimstone, sulphur, large guy with a pirchfork and hoofs), doesn’t get a lot of support in the Bible. Quite possibly, hell is just a landfill outside Jerusalem, which was often torched, on purpose, and could burn for weeks or months. An unworthy would be thrown on the city dump, basically. A good read is the Wikipedia entry on hell which has, among other interesting things this:
The number of people who have read zoroastrianism are as numerous as strands of frog hair.
Ditto for readers of Dante.
“Howsomever”,as the feller says, ‘Arda Viraf’ duly noted.
TNX
EZ
My reason for mentioning Zoroastrianism is that many of the concepts of heaven-hell/good-evil, etc in Christianity appear to find root in this religion. There are those who say (and I tend to agree, from my limited knowledge on the matter) that the idea of Satan as an evil incarnate-type character stems from Zoroastrianism and, in fact, if you read the Bible, you will note that the function and character of Satan changes the further you get into the Old Testament. By the time the New Testament starts, Satan is a full-fledged No. 1 Bad Guy. In the few places he is actually mentioned in the Old Testament, it’s pretty clear that he’s actually a servant of God, whose role is more of a tester of human will or a “devil’s advocate,” rather than the antithesis of God.
Pulykamell, you have to make Satan less powerful than God otherwise you fall into manicheaistic (sp?) ideas of equally powerful good and evil in opposition. The Catholic church burned a lot of people over this proclaiming it heretical. That’s why you often see angels and saints depicted fighting satan for peoples’ souls (the classic angel on one shoulder, and devil on the other) instead of God being directly involved. According to the RC church, there would be no contest if Satan tried to take on God. So although Satan becomes the “No. 1 badass” he is still officially subservient to the Big G.
From Phaedo, written by Plato in 360 BC.
Such is the name of the other world; and when the dead arrive at the place to which the genius of each severally conveys them, first of all they have sentence passed upon them, as they have lived well and piously or not.
Revelations 20:12
And those who appear to have lived neither well nor ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts.
(idea of purgatory)
But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes-who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like-such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. :eek:
Mathew 25:41
Those also who are remarkable for having led holy lives are released from this earthly prison, and go to their pure home which is above, and dwell in the purer earth; and those who have duly purified themselves with philosophy live henceforth altogether without the body, in mansions fairer far than these, which may not be described, and of which the time would fail me to tell.
John 14:2
I’m not really disputing this. Either way, Satan, as he is seen in the New Testament, is the embodiment of evil. Whether he is subservient to God or not is another question. Satan was not the embodiment of evil in the Old Testament. He had a different role altogether, that of an adversary, of testing God’s subjects, but he was not inherently evil. In fact, Satan is more correctly a job description, as he is correctly referred to as “the satan” in the OT, not as the proper name.
It wasn’t until the influence of Zoroastrianism and its Dueling God of Good and Evil dichotomy that Christianity began to adopting the devil as a direct, albeit ultimately less powerful, adversary to God.
I should also clarify that in Zoroastrianism, that the Evil Spirit was heirarchically much the same as Satan is in Christianity. Good eventually triumphs over evil, and there is but one God, and all things come from it in Zoroastrianism.
Searching the Archives would get you:
Straight Dope Staff Report: Who invented Hell?
and What’s up with “fire and brimstone”? What’s brimstone?
… as well as the aforementioned Who invented paradise?
:eek: Have I died? Is this the afterlife:eek: Never before have I seen a thread containg both me and C K Dexter Haven, which did not contain his having misunderstood my point. Also, on a diffrent point, while there are still Zoroastrians today, (As I have said many a-time, Freddy Mercury, of the band Queen, for example.) I believe it can still be argued that either the form of it back then had two gods, a good one and a bad one, or that one was subserviant to the other, and personally, the one I read in a history book growing up claimed the “two gods” theory.
When did the Catholic church burn anyone for Manicheaism? Augustine was one for a while.
The Roman and Byzantime emperors, not the popes, issued several imperial edicts against Manichæism, from Diocletian (296) onward, that included death to its followers.
Diocletian was no Catholic. He tried to revive the cult of Jupiter.
I did find some Byzantine emperors at your cite site, who of course, were not Catholic, who declared the death penalty. "Anastasius condemned all Manichæans to death; Justin and Justinian decreed the death penalty, not only against Manichæans who remained obstinate in their heresy, but even against converts from Manichæism who remained in touch with their former co-religionists, or who did not at once denounce them to the magistrates. "
In the Western Empire, we have " He arrived at Carthage in 383, and was arrested, but the Christians obtained the commutation of his sentence to banishment and even that was not carried out. ", which doesn’t sound like Catholic persecution. It does say a Vandal king burnt some, though.