Loading...QUESTION:
You seem reluctant to view any of the early major figures in Christianity (Jesus, Paul, the author of Revelation) as endorsing the idea of eternal torment for the damned. Who do you think is the first figure in Christianity to endorse the idea unambiguously?
RESPONSE:
Yes, I try to show in my book Heaven and Hell that none of these figures subscribed to the idea of eternal torment. They talk about the ultimate punishment as “destruction” and “annihilation” rather than torture. They do call it an “eternal” punishment, but that is because it will never be reversed (not that it will be eternal conscious torment).
We don’t know who first among the Christians came to the view of eternal torment; it starts finding expression at least by the time of the writing of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, which is often said to have been from around 155 CE or so, but may have been written some decades later. By the third century eternal torment was starting to become the standard Christian view. (it is also found in the Apocalypse of Peter from possibly in the 130s, BUT, as I try to show in my book Journeys to Heaven and Hell, the original version of the book indicated that Christ would eventually take all the sinners out of hell and provide them with eternal life in heaven; that “universal” view of salvation, I argue, is why the book was finally not received into the canon and is a passage that was changed by later scribes uncomfortable with the idea that the pain would not last forever).
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Could the Dead Sea Scroll community of the Essences and their Book of The Community Rule have been the origin of all that Satan and eternal hellfire torture stuff which then influenced and infiltrated the early Ebionite sect of non-Trinitarian Christianity and eventually their completed version of the gospel of Matthew which wasn’t originally part of the beginning version of Hebrew Matthew called the Sayings Gospel or Q?
THE COMMUNITY RULE
Translated by G. Vermes
1QS COL II. https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/gopher/other/courses/rels/225/Texts/1QS
4….And the Levites shall curse all the men of the
5. lot of Satan, saying: ÔBe cursed because of all your guilty wickedness!
6. May He deliver you up for torture at the hands of the vengeful Avengers!
May He visit you with destruction by the hand of all the Wreakers
7. of Revenge! Be cursed without mercy because of the darkness of your
deeds! Be damned in the shadowy
8. place of everlasting fire! May God not heed when you call on Him, nor
pardon you by blotting out your sin!
…..Sorry I haven’t read or purchased your book Heaven and Hell yet. I’m still reading
your The Apocryphal Gospels texts and translations.
Satan is already in the Hebrew Bible. Off hand I don’t remember where the first use of the name as a supernatural opponent of God occurs, but it would be quite remarkable if we were to happen to have the smoking gun, especially given the many, many lost pieces of writing there are/were.
Hi Dr. Ehrman, I have a question that isn’t related to any of these, but I wasn’t sure how far back I could comment and still be seen. Brand new member, still getting acclimated.
I’m listening to Did Jesus Exist? while doing some chores (fantastic so far – the book, not the chores), and you talk about something to the effect of how the author of Mark either shares the Aramaic of certain words or phrases, or writes passages that make more sense translated back to Aramaic.
I’m no mythicist, but as a matter of interest I do wonder: could the author of Mark employed the use of Aramaic as a means of lending a sort of verisimilitude to his work? Similar to how the forgers of Paul made anecdotal references to encounters that didn’t happen. Just engaging with the mythicist idea that Mark invented Jesus, would a Greek-speaking author like him have likely known how to use Aramaic in that way?
I suppose the passage about the sabbath stretches the plausibility of that idea, but I wonder if there are other ways to refute it?
Feel free to ask any questoin related to the blog whether it’s relevant to the post or not. Yes, I think probably Mark was using the Aramaic for effect, the few times he does it. But it’s unlikely he knew Aramaic: he had heard these stories that had kept the Aramaic words in them, and they do provide a kind of hisgtorical plausibility (verisimilitude) to the accounts.
I understand that you regard the Gospel of John as the latest and most theologically developed of the four gospels. That said, do you think it nevertheless preserves any material that plausibly goes back to the historical Jesus but is absent from the Synoptics? More specifically, do you consider the basic contours of John 7 to be historically reliable… for example, the portrayal of Jesus as aware that going to Jerusalem would lead to his death, and the role of his brothers in urging him to go?
I think that it’s probably right historically that his brothers did not believe in him or treat him as special during his lifetime. That can be found in Mark as well, though. I’m hard pressed to think of any distinctively Johannine material that is more likely historical than what we find in the Synoptics.