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Loading...I am pleased to let all you blog members to know that on Saturday July 18, 2:00 – 5:00 pm ET, I will be doing a FREE two-lecture course on where the Christian idea of hell (as a place of eternal conscious torment) came from. This course is NOT connected with blog per se, except insofar as I am connected with both. It is rather a production of my on-line course company, Paths in Biblical Studies. But since this is a complete Freebie, I thought I would be remiss not to let all of you know about it who haven’t learned about it from another channel.
The course is called: What theHell? The Real Teaching of Jesus on the Afterlife. It will will consist of two lectures of 50 minutes each, followed by a live Q&A. Anyone can come. There’s zero cost.
If you’re interested, you can find out more about it here: https://learn.bartehrman.com/what-the-hell?widget=courses
Here’s a brief overview:
What The Hell?
The Real Teachings of Jesus on the Afterlife
Many people have trouble understanding how a good God could send billions of people to eternal torment because they have not believed the right things or behaved the rights ways. In particular, many fear they might be among the damned and do everything they can to escape the never-ending torment. But is this what the Bible actually teaches? Is it what Jesus himself thought? In this free course, we find out.
Lecture One: When Hell Disappeared from the Bible
This lecture considers the views of the afterlife found throughout the the Bible – from Genesis to Revelation, asking, in particular, if it actually teaches that some deceased souls will enjoy paradise in heaven but most will undergo never-ending torment.
The answer will be a resounding No. Beliefs in a literal hell have been imported into the text, not derived from it, and are based on patently inaccurate translations of the Bible’s original Hebrew and Greek.
Lecture Two: Who Invented Hell?
The notion that the soul lives on after the body is such “common sense” today that it is very difficult for most people to imagine it otherwise. If it is not in the Hebrew Bible and is not what Jesus taught, where did it come from?
In this lecture we see how, starting around the second century, Christianity abandoned the afterlife teachings of Jesus about a future resurrection of the dead, and turned instead to views spread throughout the non-Jewish world, that souls would live forever in a state of blessing or despair.
This kind of study addresses a vital question: Do we need to fear eternal torment after death? And it provides a vital answer: Not if we accept the views of the Bible and Jesus.
Again, this is the link: https://learn.bartehrman.com/what-the-hell?widget=courses
If you sign up, be sure to tell your friends “I’m going to Hell with Bart Ehrman!”
Ha! Should have thought of that as a title!
Um I like free and I like your voice!
Dr. Ehrman I figured out Son of Man/Son of God!!! 💃
Son of Man = Simon of Cyrene
Son of God = Jesus upon ascension
It’s the Substitute King Ritual called Sar Puhi. Jesus seems to be unifying all the iterations of the world’s first religion, which is Sumerian, as the Lord of Life/Benevolence in Anuship in order to be able to be relevant to a wide region: Enki, Ea, Hayya, Yah, Asar-Asalluhi, Asar-Osiris, Sarapis (Osiris-Apis-Ptah-Dionysus and more Creator Gods) aaaand Marduk-Asalluhi.
Marduk-Asalluhi has the sacrifice ritual, Asalluhi has the crown of thorns, perfume rituals, revivification, Dionysus does water into wine, Ea appears as a human and conducts feasts, etc.
My own view is that, when I think about Jesus, and also about the attributes of God as described outside the book of Revelation, I find it impossible to believe that God would condone the idea of people being tortured forever in the fires of hell simply because they did evil things in this life. As I mentioned before, where exactly would one draw the line between heaven and hell?
Some of your arguments are at times difficult to reconcile with my own faith. But to be honest, your comments on this occasion have actually strengthened my faith in the Bible. In the end, I feel that we should read honestly what is actually written there.
Do the earliest known Greek texts of Matthew 11:23, Matthew 16:18, Luke 10:15, Luke 16:23 offer clues as to whether Jesus was quoted using the name of the Greek god, Hades (brother of Zeus and Poseidon) or the more generic term “hell”? The KJV uses “hell”, while the NRSV uses “Hades”. The use of a Greek god name in the early Jesus movement would suggest a Hellenistic tinge.
It is curious that Christian books included in the Christian Old Testament (Tobit, Sirach, Baruch, 2 Maccabees, and chapters 11 through 16 of Esther) include references to Hades, while the Hebrew Tanakh and Masoretic Text do not include these books.
Yes, the Gospels use the word Hades. You won’t find that in the Hebrew Bible beause there is no word for Hades in Hebrew. It is in the apocryphal books because they appear in the Septuagint.
Question for Dr. Bart Ehrman …
At the very, very beginning of Christianity, as a sect of Judaism, in the days of the home churches, before there were priests, bishops, or popes …. Who “designed” the Christian Liturgy and the “order of the Mass”? Also, who designed the hierarchy of Christian authority (priests, bishops, deacons, etc). Was it freeform until some later date? Was it patterned after another religion’s style of worship? Since the original Christians were a sect of Judaism, was the Christian Liturgy patterned after Jewish Synagogue or Temple worship services? If not, how did the Christian Liturgy develop and evolve? Thank you.
These appear not to have been “designed” by one person or group, but to have emerged organically within Christian commuunities, much as other institutions, traditions, practices, and rites are.
The algorithm must be rithiming because I saw this blog post then went to YouTube and a random video popped up with Kirk Cameron saying he believed in annihilation instead of an eternal fire hell. Then an interview popped up where you’re an animated cartoon! I don’t know what’s going on with that, BUT I did hear you say you didn’t know who Kirk Cameron is.
Maybe you’ve recalled since then, but he was a famous actor in the 80s and early 90s on a show called Growing Pains with Alan Thicke. He was a teenage heartthrob, then kind of disappeared for a while and had a resurgence of fame again coming out as a big conservative Christian and starring in the Left Behind series. His sister is currently pretty famous too. Candace Cameron Bure…starred in Full House in the early 90s and now in those Christmas Hallmark type movies along with Fuller House. She’s also a conservative Christian.
I wonder if you have influenced Kirk Cameron with your book or one of your talks on hell because he ended up in a firestorm when he said he believes in Annihilationism now. He said people were calling him a heretic.
I’m assuming you know what the Left Behind books are about—The Rapture. So much buzz was going around Kirk Cameron playing one of the main characters in the Left Behind movies. I remember several years ago he believed the earth was 6,000 years old. Not sure if he still believes that or not.
Really looking forward to this. Its very generous of you to make it free!
I’m just six chapters into Edward Fudge’s “The Fire That Consumes” and I can already see that the proofs against hell in the Tanakh must also apply to heaven. Many times the effort to prove something from the Bible ends up proving too much!
what a treat! Thx for the experience
Thanks for the free course—as always, stimulating and enlightening. I am bugged by one thing: if the Hebrews had no real idea of existence beyond the grave, what’s going on with Saul visiting a medium at Endor to summon Samuel?
I answered that in the Q&A. Saul doesn’t see Samuel’s “soul” but his body. Notice: he’s actually wearing the same clothes! He’s not a disembodied spirit.