Jagella

We need to understand the culture of the Jews at that time, of course, if that’s what you mean by “broad context of interpretation.�

Jagella

Jagella

I’m very willing to accept new and perhaps radical ideas if the evidence warrants that I accept it.

I’m sorry, but I find this recalcitrance on the part of some of the people on this forum to accept any evidence that conflicts with this odd idea that there’s no depictions of hell in the New Testament to be rather bizarre. There are some notions that I simply cannot respect under these circumstances. That said, in order for me to buy this idea I’ll need to see much better evidence than just one or two guys in an online forum who claim that they’ve read the New Testament Greek and concluded that there is no hell written about therein and who are so quick to dismiss dissenting opinions.

Jagella

Notsri

Diogenes, perhaps you can shed some new light on the following four excerpts, but to me they (among others) clearly speak counter to what you've suggested above. And excepting Josephus & probably 4 Maccabees, the other two quotes come from pre-Christian literature; and more to the point, they're all 1st century CE works or earlier. (I apologize if you've already addressed them elsewhere.)

Judith 16:17: "Woe to the nations that rise up against my people! The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment; fire and worms he will give to their flesh; they shall weep in pain forever."

1 Enoch 27:2-3: "Then Uriel, one of the holy angels, who was with me [Enoch], answered me and said to me: 'This accursed valley [Hinnom] is for those accursed forever; here will gather together all those accursed ones...Here shall they be gathered together, and here shall be their judgment, in the last days'." [Incidentally, 1 Enoch 67:6 describes the smell of sulfur in Gehenna, which bears an interesting resemblance to the satirist Lucian of Samosata's description of Hell - a place plagued by "a horrible smell as of bitumen, brimstone, and pitch all burning together" (The True History 2.29).]

4 Maccabees 12:12: "[J]ustice will hold you [Antiochus] in store for a fiercer and an everlasting fire and for torments which will never let you go for all time"

Josephus, Antiquities 18.1.3: "[The Pharisees] also believe that souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but the former shall have power to revive and live again."


With regard to your comments about the Talmud and (rabbinic?) Judaism: they're not quite accurate (which I think the above quotes insinuate already). According to certain rabbinic sources, sin and death would render three classes:

1. those who would go on immediately to Gan Eden, to paradise;
2. those who would descend to Gehenna for a twelve month period of refinement and then ascend; and
3. those who would be doomed to suffer eternally in Gehenna
(so e.g. Tosefta, Sanhedrin 13:3, 5; & the minor talmudic tractate Avot D'Rabbi Nathan 41:15).

Other sources add a fourth category: those who would descend to Gehenna for twelve months, and then suffer utter destruction (so e.g. Tosefta, Sanhedrin 13:4; & the Talmud Bavli, Rosh Hashanah 17a).

As for those excluded from leaving Gehenna, Bava Metzia 58b lists three groups: the adulterers, those who publicly humiliate a friend, and those who malign their neighbor. Sometimes the reprobates are even specifically identified, like Jeroboam, Balaam, etc. (so e.g. Mishnah, Sanhedrin 10:2; Avot D'Rabbi Nathan 36:5, 41:14).

At any rate, I think you get the point; it's safe to say Judaism (rabbinic/orthodox Judaism, anyway) did/does have some conception of Hell (for select groups, anyway), which fact is confirmed rather than denied by the Talmud and other literature.

I can't help but think you've addressed this somewhere already, but the standard lexicons of Liddell & Scott, Thayer, and Bauer, Arndt & Gingrich all list "eternal" as one possible meaning for aiwn & aiwnios. The LXX, I believe, consistently uses the words to translate the Hebrew )wlm, when the meaning is "everlasting, forever," etc. (e.g. LXX to Hab. 3:6; cf. the Vulgate's aeternitatis). And I think a good example from the NT where aiwn clearly has that meaning is Luke 1:33: "...and he [Jesus] will reign over the house of Jacob forever (aiwnas), and his kingdom will have no end." So, anyway, I guess a good question to ask is, are you suggesting the lexicons are mistaken?

Regards,
Notsri

Diogenes the Cynic

I would highly encourage you not to take our word for it and do some research on your own. Maybe you can find some heretofore unknown meaning of the word "Gehenna" or root out some startling new evidence about 1st century Palestinian afterlife and eschatological beliefs. Until then, you have provided no reason as to why the NY references to Gehenna should not be understood in their ordinary cultural and historical context.

Sensei Meela

Agreed.
Not "no depictions of hell;" depictions of the Dantean hell, a place of eternal torment or torture.
Surely; I certainly make no claims of expertise or authority. It's just that nothing within the Gospels jars with the traditional views of Orthodox Judaism (re: Gehenna and/or 'hell'). Things like the Apocryphal passages cited by Nostri, though, will require greater examination.

Diogenes the Cynic

The fire and worms will eat dead bodies. The Nations will "weep in pain." It's poetic.
Annihilation of bodies. Eternal death, not torment.
4 Maccabees was not written by a Palestinian Jew but an Alexandrian one heavily influenced by Stoicism and Greek culture. The "everlasting fire" is good old Gehenna again. I suspect the "torment" part is just a bit of hyperbole. I would like to see the Greek before I can really make a full analysis. In any case, this is not an expression of Palsetinian Judaism but Greek Stoicism in the guise of Judaism.
This is your best case. Josephus is claiming that some Pharisees thought that the bad people stayed in Sheol forever instead of getting resurrected. He also said that they believed in punishment in Sheol. Other Talmudic references tell us that the punishment was finite, even though Josephus says some thought the "imprisonment" in Sheol (death) was eternal.

Incidentally, this view would conflict with the gospel references to Gehenna which would necessarily presume a resurrection for the dead.
The Tosefta is a third century work so it doesn't help with 1st century beliefs and its ideas about some people staying in Sheol forever (which is arguable just another way to say they would stay dead and not be resurrected) did not exactly catch fire in Judaism as a whole.
Literally, it means something like "of an age" or "age-lasting." It's hard to translate because it's an adjectival form of the word "aion," which means "age" or "eon" in thje sense of an inderminate anount of time. Since "eon" doesn't easily lend itself as an adjective in English we are forced to awkward constructions like the above. The Greek ending is kind of like adding a -y or an -ish to the end of an English noun. A fish can be "fishy" a pig can be "piggish," etc. Aionion is kind of like saying something will be an "agey" (or perhaps "eonish?") length of time.

See what I mean? It doesn't really translate.

So "eternal" is not quite right. It doesn't really, literally mean "eternal"...at least not necessarily. That is not a precise translation. But it's such a historically common (and near accurate) translation that it's what you find in all the Lexicons.

Jagella

When I said, “hell,� that’s what I meant although I would not call my reference to hell “Dantean.� Dante came up with his own ideas of hell as did the New Testament writers.

I don’t make that claim either, although I think it’s safe to say that we know more about the teachings of the New Testament than most “Bible believing� Christians do.

Based on what I’ve read in the New Testament, Christians took the earlier concept of Gehenna and molded it onto a horrific punishment for unbelievers. There were many Jewish sects at that time that believed different things, so “Orthodox Judaism� was losing influence over many of the Jews at that time. As a result, the religious climate of the first century in Judea allowed for new ideas such as the hellish punishment for sinners that we read about in the New Testament.

Jagella

Jagella

Let’s take a look at what the eminent Bible scholar, John Dominic Crossan, has to say about hell:

(Emphasis added.)

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...34#post2134934

I read Crossan’s book, The Birth of Christianity, and I can remember reading nothing about the passages about hell being mistranslated.

Jagella

Chris Weimer

Appeal to Authority Fallacy: you can't just say what other people have to say about it and give no evidence further. At best, that is just plain stupid, at worst, intellectually dishonest.

My post in my forum in case you missed it, or are too lazy to read.
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I'm guessing you are asking this as a theological question determining the afterlife in differences between Orthodoxy and liberalism, eh?

Plato uses it referring to time, as does Aristotle (but maybe in a more metaphysical way).

There are basically two English equivalents of the word in the Septuagint, one meaning "lasting for a long time" and the other meaning "old". We see the first usage in passages such as Genesis 6:4 "oi de gigantev hsan epi thv ghv en taiv hmeraiv ekeinaiv kai met ekeino wv an eiseporeuonto oi uioi tou yeou prov tav yugaterav twn anyrwpwn kai egennwsan eautoiv ekeinoi hsan oi gigantev oi ap aiwnov oi anyrwpoi oi onomastoi" or "And the Lord God said "My Spirit shall certainly not remain among these men forever" and I Chronicles 17:12 "autov oikodomhsei moi oikon kai anorywsw ton yronon autou ewv aiwnov" or "He shall build a house for me and I will set up his throne forever."

Now, this usage certainly portrays two ends of one usage. The first passage could very well be admitted as proving the defintion as eternal, but the second one clearly limits that. You see, the Greeks often had words more exact than we do in English. Their four words for love (philos, eros, storge, agape) should be an example of that. More realistically, aionion means an indefinate, yet certainly long, period of time, often like our phrase in English "for ages."

As for New Testament usage, I hope these passages will suffice.

and

Both of these passages were from here, in my opinion a great and valuable resource for the usages of the word.

This post probably seems like it is aionion, here a more common usage of the word.

Diogenes the Cynic

He isn't talking about the NT, he's talking about the Apostle's Creed. The NT does not contain the words, "descended into Hell."

Crossan is a good scholar to read, though. One of my favorites.
There are no passages about Hell in the NT. You mean you don't remember hims saying anything about the Gehenna passages being mistranslated, but so what? He doesn't say they mean "hell" either. I don't think he addresses the Gehenna passages at all. This is not an argument for your position.