I read “Heaven and Hell”, greatly enjoying it, especially how Bart showed the Greek origins of our heaven and hell concepts. Still through a discussion with a Christian who pointed me to sayings about Gehinnom and Gan Eden in Rabbinic literature and the whole concept of ** you do not have permission to see this link ** in the Talmud and Midrashim, I am not so sure if it is really fair to say that Jesus and his audience who heard him talking about Gehinnom/Gehenna really only thought of that accursed valley in Jerusalem or if the idea of Gan Eden as a kind of heaven and Gehinnom as a kind of hell as described in extrabiblical writings had already become part of popular thinking. So maybe, when Jesus mentioned Gehenna, they did think of some dungeon-like hell where the wicket kept getting it, just as in the Apocalypse of Peter (the descriptions are actually pretty similar).

The evidence from 4 Esra suggests that the belief in Gehenna as a kind of hell was already in place at the end of the first century, so if Jesus talked about it just a few decades earlier, he might as well have struck the same chord. Of course, everything we have from Jesus is filtered through Greek thought and language, so maybe even the Gehenna mentionings are not quite authentic (they don’t appear in Mark if I recall correctly), but otherwise they would match the zeal with which we see Jesus preaching throughout the gospels.

Any opinions on this?