Kosh

I can assure you that I was not (nor am I now) intoxicated (not even close to a buzz). In fact, since I'm using the cool "fractured" glasses we got, and I tend to fill them up to the top of the fracturing, which is only like 1/4 of the glass, that means I wasn't even halfway through a normal glass of wine! My, don't we read alot into little jokes! The point being that I'm too busy enjoying my Friday evening to go an internet hunt.

Now, do you have a rebuttal to what a posted, or are you simply using a self righteous facade to cover up that I was right?

inquisitive01

Where would this "worm" (i.e., a maggot) be? Likely continuously feeding on corpses in graves.

"Everlasting punishment" suggests (to me anyway) that this punishment, the Second Death is final and one cannot or will not be brought back from it for eternity, thus it is "everlasting."

Kosh, I am not familiar with the usage of Gehenna you mentioned in your post as it relates to a "burning pile of garbage." Perhaps it does have different meanings (just as other words do), though.

Magdlyn

Off the topic of the nature of hell, but relevant to the OP:


Is god willing to prevent evil but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him god?
- Epicurus (341-270 BCE)

inquisitive01

To answer that, you would have to know exactly what the origination of evil is, or who the "serpent" that tempted "Eve" is... plus what this "serpent" is allowed and not allowed to do. This "serpent" is referred to in the Bible as Satan, the Devil (our "adversary" from 1 Peter 5:8, and the "enemy" from Matthew 13:39), Abaddon, Apollyon, Beelzebub, Belial, the great red dragon, prince of devils (angels which kept not their first estate, or principality, from Jude 6), the god of this world (and prince of this world), the ruler of the darkness of this world, a lying spirit, an evil spirit, the angel of the bottomless pit, the wicked one, etc.

Roland

Where in the Bible does it ever identify the serpent as Satan? Satan is a remarkably absent figure in the OT. I believe more than half the references to him come in the Book of Job alone. Why isn't he the Big Bad Force for Evil in the OT as he is in the NT?

Satan, hell, afterlife - these are all comparatively late arrivals to Judaism, most likely introduced to them by the Persians when the latter conquered the Babylonians, setting the Jews free from their captivity. The influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism and later Christianity is enormous.

Sensei Meela

Heh...I started a thread on a different message board to challenge the claims of omnibenevolence; I'm basically going to copy-paste it, here:


Christians often make the claim that God (aka, 'the God of the Bible,' aka the 'Omni-max Creator God' [OCG]) is 'loving' (or, more specifically, omni-benevolent: lit. "all good," alt. "infinitely good" or "maximally good"); David's Census is here presented as evidence to the contrary.

The important element in the evidence is that the punishment meted out for the 'sin' David committed in the Census is that 70,000 people are killed. Laid bare in premise conclusion form, it looks like this:

P1. Good behavior is characterized as benevolence
P2. Omni- is a qualifier that means 'all' or 'every'
C1. Omnibenvolence is "'all good' behavior"

P3. Justice is fairness in action
P4. The meting out of punishments commensurate with the crime is fair
C2. Justice is meting out a punishment commensurate with the crime

P5. Injustice is unfairness
P6. Punishing person B for the crime person A commits is unfair
C3. Injustice is punishing person B for the crime person A commits

P7. Unjust behavior is not good
P8. (From C1) There are only good behaviors in omnibenevolence
C4. There is no unjustness in omnibenevolence

P9. God punishes 70,000 people for David's crime
P10. (From C2 and C3) The punishment, being neither comensurate with the crime nor directed at the perpetrator, is unjust
C5. (From C1 and C4) God is not omnibenevolent



So far, I've gotten exactly one response: "Straining a gnat and swallowing a camel."

[to be fair, I'd plugged my pitch in another thread, to which one more response was levied: "God brought the 70,000 to heaven." Which somehow makes it all okay...?]

Amaleq13

You can learn more at this website.

The directly relevant portion is under the subtitle: THE RAVINE OF HINNOM

Amaleq13

You certainly won't find it in the story in Genesis. That serpent is explicitly described as nothing more than an animal albeit one that can talk (which, incidently, is why the story can be accurately described as a fable).

You have to fast forward all the way to the very last book of the Christian Bible to find the serpent identified as Satan.

Chili

. . . but is that not the place where faith finds understanding?

The serpent is the void that was created (read 'caused') when woman was "taken from" man without having a created identity. The woman became the gaurdian of the tree of life because that was the full extent of her identity and the created void became the serpent that yearned for understanding (which functions much like hunger to our mind except here it is towards understanding).

lulay

The Serpent in the Tree was also portrayed as Lilith....Adam's partner pre-Eve....she was depicted as part Serpent, with an animal foot

Yje Serpent is very connected with Goddess, and Sepent was the Guardian of the Tree in pre-Genesis mythic symbolism