Thanks to the late John Anderson of Voice of Reason on GCN, when I listened to him from 2011-2012, I learned that an eternal conscious torment known as hell isn't taught in the Bible.
It's commonly admitted that the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament) don't teach it, with the Hebrew word Sheol simply meaning the grave. If it wasn't taught for all that time, then why suddenly come up with such an important teaching later on, unless for political reasons?
But even in the rest of the Old Testament, it's Sheol, and suddenly the concept of an afterlife appears, very clearly in the Book of Daniel, which is used as a later template for the Book of Revelation.
The concept of an afterlife, let alone an eternal conscious torment wasn't very relevant to a tribal society where you would be lucky to live into your 40s, and it's the materialistic nature of the Old Testament that led to such a materialistic mindset that we see of many non-religious Jews today, with Yahweh being the tribal god of this life, compared to the later innovation of the more spiritually-transformed God of Jesus in the New Testament.
As for the New Testament references to the word mistranslated as "hell," there's gehenna, which was simply the flaming dump outside of Jerusalem; there is the lake of fire in Revelation, which it is said death is thrown into, so it can't mean a literal eternal conscious torment, and contextually means annihilation; Hades, which doesn't mean what the pagan Greeks wrote about it, or else it would contradict other teachings of the Bible, and there is no reason to fear it in any case, since Revelation says Hades will also be thrown into that fire; and the word Tartarus, which means a gloomy place, and is only used in 2 Peter, which, even if it is what some point to as being a punishment for the worst of the worst who rebel against God, 2 Peter was the most disputed letter/book in the Bible according to the early Church Fathers, so if it's meaning really is different than the others, it's not to be taken with as much weight.
So you can see how the work gehenna was used to resonate with an Aramaic-speaking Jewish population, while Hades was used to resonate with a Greek-speaking Pagan and Jewish population, and that's really the main reason why two different words were used.
Even the New King James Version translators realized there was a problem with the translation of the various words into "hell," as they removed some of the translations to "hell," but strangely kept others.
I covered this and more in detail on my January 1, 2013 guest hosting of Charlie's show, and the archive can be found here:
2 comments:
Well, Charlie, the jesuit popiola, "Panchito," as I call him, has just announced that there is no hell.
Who knows, what his motive is for coming out with that info, now.
At any rate, I'm glad I got out of that cul de sac, while the going was good.
Thanks to the late John Anderson of Voice of Reason on GCN, when I listened to him from 2011-2012, I learned that an eternal conscious torment known as hell isn't taught in the Bible.
It's commonly admitted that the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament) don't teach it, with the Hebrew word Sheol simply meaning the grave. If it wasn't taught for all that time, then why suddenly come up with such an important teaching later on, unless for political reasons?
But even in the rest of the Old Testament, it's Sheol, and suddenly the concept of an afterlife appears, very clearly in the Book of Daniel, which is used as a later template for the Book of Revelation.
The concept of an afterlife, let alone an eternal conscious torment wasn't very relevant to a tribal society where you would be lucky to live into your 40s, and it's the materialistic nature of the Old Testament that led to such a materialistic mindset that we see of many non-religious Jews today, with Yahweh being the tribal god of this life, compared to the later innovation of the more spiritually-transformed God of Jesus in the New Testament.
As for the New Testament references to the word mistranslated as "hell," there's gehenna, which was simply the flaming dump outside of Jerusalem; there is the lake of fire in Revelation, which it is said death is thrown into, so it can't mean a literal eternal conscious torment, and contextually means annihilation; Hades, which doesn't mean what the pagan Greeks wrote about it, or else it would contradict other teachings of the Bible, and there is no reason to fear it in any case, since Revelation says Hades will also be thrown into that fire; and the word Tartarus, which means a gloomy place, and is only used in 2 Peter, which, even if it is what some point to as being a punishment for the worst of the worst who rebel against God, 2 Peter was the most disputed letter/book in the Bible according to the early Church Fathers, so if it's meaning really is different than the others, it's not to be taken with as much weight.
So you can see how the work gehenna was used to resonate with an Aramaic-speaking Jewish population, while Hades was used to resonate with a Greek-speaking Pagan and Jewish population, and that's really the main reason why two different words were used.
Even the New King James Version translators realized there was a problem with the translation of the various words into "hell," as they removed some of the translations to "hell," but strangely kept others.
I covered this and more in detail on my January 1, 2013 guest hosting of Charlie's show, and the archive can be found here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130309065337/http://mp3.oraclebroadcasting.com/Truth_Hertz/Truth_Hertz.2013-01-01_16k.mp3
http://fauxcapitalist.com/2013/01/02/jason-erb-critically-analyzes-biblical-doctrines-on-truth-hertz-with-charles-giuliani-january-1-2013/
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