it seems like lot of unnecessary effort
oh, maybe they are going to be resurrected in order to be tortured for a few minutes prior to their annihilation . . .
why should I think Jesus or Paul ascribed to this concept
if anyone can provide a better argument than I have seen Dr Ehrman present please enlighten me
what I have read so far is really unconvincing
Bart says this is precisely what Jesus meant? Where?
It is very hard to follow Jesus’ precise meaning, even if we assume (as we shouldn’t) that we have precisely what he said about this matter. My own interpretation is that he thought the Kingdom and Gehenna were for those who were alive at the moment they arrived. The sinful people from before that time have already met with destruction. The question is, what about the good people who died before the Kingdom came? Perhaps his revelations didn’t cover that. He never claimed to know everything.
Jesus was not always that concerned with equitable arrangements–remember the Parable of the Vineyard? You get paid exactly the same if you showed up an hour before quitting time, as if you worked the whole day. Obviously real vineyard workers would be justly angry about such an arrangement. But we almost always make a mistake when we take Jesus literally.
In my opinion (I hate typing that, doesn’t it go without saying?) Jesus meant only the generation that he was speaking to. It’s beside the point what happened to those who came before. The point is not that every soul who ever lived is either eternally rewarded or punished. The point is that the world itself shall be transformed. Before, virtue was punished, and evil rewarded–now it will be made right. The last first, the first last. The Wheat harvested, the Chaff burned.
But even in Matthew and Luke, you see a new idea, of eternal punishment. Does that make sense to you? That for a tiny fragment of time, you fail to live as well as you should have–and for that you’re tormented for all eternity? What is the point of that? I don’t believe Jesus believed that. I agree with Bart that Jesus wasn’t talking about the Afterlife. But if I do think he was talking about that, I have to believe he approved the Doctrine of Eternal Pain.
Stevie Smith would have found Bart’s ideas very interesting, had she lived to read them. Maybe not so vowed to it after all. She was a very devout Anglican. But this doctrine tormented her, in its way. Isn’t it time we had done with it?
Thoughts about the Christian Doctrine of Eternal Hell
Is it not interesting to see
How the Christians continually
Try to separate themselves in vain
From the doctrine of eternal pain?They cannot do it,
They are vowed to it,
The Lord said it,
They must believe it.So the vulnerable body is stretched without pity
On flames forever. Is this not pretty?The religion of Christianity
Is mixed of sweetness and cruelty.
Reject this Sweetness for she wears
A smoky dress out of hell fires.Who makes a god, who pains him thus?
It is the Christian religion does.Oh oh have none of it,
Blow it away, have done with it.Stevie Smith
for reference go to
“Latest Posts” and search for word “annihilation”
there are a bunch of topics
this one is representative ** you do not have permission to see this link **
where he wrote
God will send a mighty angelic power, whom Jesus calls “the Son of Man” (see ** you do not have permission to see this link ** for this figure), to judge the earth; this one will send out his angels to gather up all who sin and do evil and “throw them into the furnace of fire.” There they will weep and gnash their teeth. But presumably not forever – those who are burned to death die.
this is even better representation
** you do not have permission to see this link **
A massive day of judgment is coming, and EVERY human will be caught up in it — not just those living at the time, but ALL PEOPLE WHO HAD EVER LIVED. Those who have died already will be restored to life either to be rewarded or PUNISHED.
and for Jews. Resurrected life meant a bodily existence . . .Those who sided with God in their lives would inherit this kingdom. And those who did not? They would be RAISED in order to be shown the errors of their ways and then SLAUGHTERED as a punishment for their wickedness. . . .Jesus did not teach eternal life of the soul in heaven or hell. The CHOICES WERE A BODILY EXISTENCE or in the kingdom of God or a COMPLETE ANNIHILATION.
As the title and question of the thread
some people appear to be raised bodily merely to be annihilated
He argues against eternal torment of the wicked, but the only other option he appears to consider is annihilation, but there could be many other options besides those two, reincarnation, multiple deaths/resurrections, eventual reconciliation, etc
Nothing in that quote about God resurrecting the dead for judgment.
Now the idea of all the dead being resurrected and judged exists in Christianity, to this day–you can even find it in the prayer read over bodies about to be buried at sea. The idea there is that somebody’s sailor husband lost in a storm would ask how could he be resurrected and judged, and so the idea developed that the sea would give up its dead–that no matter how you died, or where, your body could somehow be recovered and reconstituted, before you were judged. But if we look closely, it’s very hard to see Jesus himself enunciating this idea. It’s something that was inferred, later on. Extrapolation. Because they were trying to make him more specific. They were getting questions from the faithful, and they had to come up with answers. They didn’t all come up with the same ones.
I would read the Apostle’s Creed at mass, along with everyone else, and dutifully recite the words, “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life to come, Amen.”
I never really thought about what that meant–my understanding, by no means unique to me, was the moment you died, you just went up to heaven or down to hell, or sideways to Purgatory. (Maybe some people hung around as ghosts, and you know, they never did talk about Limbo for unbaptized infants or virtuous pagans–that had gone out of vogue).
But really, the idea of infinite punishment for finite sin never made sense to me. It’s disproportionate. Reincarnation makes more sense than that. Or Purgatory–your soul is cleansed, then released. But Purgatory was never meant to be a replacement for Hell. It was a workaround–because Catholicism typically wasn’t a pass/fail system. In Catholicism, God grades on a curve. Luther was more of a pass/fail guy, and Calvin said we’d all been graded before we were born.
I tended to agree with the character of Peggy on Mad Men, a practicing Catholic, who told a priest talking about divine judgment “I can’t believe that’s the way God is.” Me neither. But people believe all kinds of things, and what we believe says more about us than about anything else.
Jesus believed something very specific, and I’d like to believe he only meant that the irredeemably evil and selfish, those who have refused to treat other people decently, would experience a moment of revelation, then be removed from existence. But again–we make a mistake when we try to see his ideas in fully material terms, as if it’s a matter of logistics. It’s a matter of metaphysics. The rules are different.
What Jesus believed says that he was very unhappy to see that the world tended to reward evil, and punish good. He wanted that changed. He imagined a way that could happen, consistent with what his strain of Judaism told him. It’s a very powerful vision. But it did not come to pass. It still has a lot of truth in it. We still live in that world.
Robert said
That specific quotation does not say anything about resurrecting the evil dead in order for them to be tortured and/or annihilated.
Or in some horror movies, for them to attack and devour the living. 🙂
I think tom is doing a bit of extrapolation himself. Bart is quite aware that any view we impute to Jesus is, at best, an educated guess. Any view you put forth based on one quote can be called into question by a different one.
Jesus was a complex person, and his ideas are not so easy to sum up in a few sentences.
I think the question would be not whether he agreed with it but how he understood it, no? And Bart isn’t even sure Jesus could read. What version of Daniel was he familiar with? How was it presented to him by his teachers, such as John the Baptist? How did he modify the ideas in Daniel?
Even if we knew all the gospel quotes are accurate–which is almost certainly not the case–that’s just a few scattered snippets. We will never have an exhaustive overview of Jesus’ thinking about what he thought was coming. So there’s ample room for disagreement.
On the whole, I find Bart’s argument that Jesus wasn’t talking about a heavenly afterlife persuasive. But he clearly did believe some people went up into heaven. I see no convincing evidence he believed in eternal Hell. That came later. And became the dominant idea, for a variety of reasons, most important of which was The Kingdom didn’t come.
It has a pleasing (if grim) simplicity to it. A starkness. It’s the kind of thing that would be easy to get across to ordinary people. Jesus was not a theologian. He was a street preacher. Street preachers don’t tend to get into the weeds of precisely what happens when to whom. They stick to the basics. Do this, you’re good. Do that, you’re toast. I hear street preachers all the time. You wouldn’t walk up to one and start asking for specifics. It would be rude. Also, they have microphones and amps now.
I think he was an exceptionally subtle and perceptive street preacher, mind you. But that’s what he was. (One might argue Socrates was nothing but a street philosopher, and self-evidently that’s what Diogenes was).
tom, let me ask you this–what ideas about the End of the World As We Know It and the Institution of a New World Order would you not describe as nutty? And I’m including the Utopians and Marxist-inspired scenarios in this.
When we start talking about how everything can and must change, and not just a bit at a time, but all at once–we tend to get a bit nutty. It’s not a subject that inspires cool rationality, somehow. It tends to go to extremes. Because we keep saying to ourselves, like Estragon, that we can’t go on like this. To which Vladimir responds “That’s what you think.”
If Jesus did mean a heavenly or hellish afterlife, that lasts literally forever, what would be so non-nutty about that?
will try to respond to more replies later, , ,
to start
Robert said
re
** you do not have permission to see this link **
…Read Bart’s post. He’s basically reproducing the view presented at the beginning of Daniel 12.
Robert, that is a better argument than Bart gives because tho he mentions Daniel in the post he does not specify chapter 12 nor spell it out as you have. Maybe that is a partial basis for Dr Ehrman’s thesis, if so then why did he not quote it so it can be discussed debated.
first question I ask is like Godspell’s
What are arguments for why you think Jesus would xxx have agreed with the book of Daniel, rather than for instance Wisdom of Solomon first few chapters,
particularly see Chapter 2 verse 23
“God created man to be immortal”
which I guess refutes that a human can be annihilated
But be that as it may, I think we need to get indications from the Gospels of Jesus point of view rather than merely quoting this or that prior scripture ( in other words you or I can find probably many quotes here and there in earlier scripture that supports or undermines Dr Ehrman’s thesis, only by looking at things we think Jesus said can we hope to make a reasonable judgement of what he really taught)
anyway to your question
Do you have any arguments for why you think Jesus would not have agreed with the book of Daniel?
3 points
1. I guess, I would say that Daniel’s view of the righteous at the time of “resurrection”
But the wise will shine
like the brightness of the heavenly expanse.
And those bringing many to righteousness
will be like the stars forever and ever.
does not sound like it exactly coheres with what I understand of Jesus’ view of the Kingdom of God, and is far from clear whether these ‘wise’ people will reside on earth (I would say probably implies they won’t be)
2. and regarding the others (non-righteous)
I guess I would ask why would there be
. . . everlasting abhorrence.. . .
of someone who is annihilated ?
3. I would also say that Jesus did not speak much of “resurrection” (I mean general end times “resurrection”), and even when he did (I think probably only once) he does not quote Daniel 12 , nor anything remotely comparable to it like
. . . . many sleep[ing] in the dusty ground will awake. . . .
[I also don’t think he spoke of his own “resurrection” but that is a different topic]
I just searched for “Daniel 12” in his posts here is something interesting
** you do not have permission to see this link **
August 2017
Here is how Bart interpret[s/ed] that last verse
That is, the “wise” and “those who lead to righteousness” are the same group of people; the people in this group will be raised up and made to “shine like the brightness of the sky,” that is, to be “the stars.” The point being made is related to the old view that the stars above are actually brightly shining angels. Righteous humans, at the resurrection, will be exalted to an angelic status, shining in the sky.
my bolding
note at that time he did not imply in the slightest that Daniel was implying the righteous live on earth, it appears to me that he was implying the opposite that these righteous people live in the same place that the angels live.
I pretty much accept this understanding of Daniel’s meaning
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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