Loading...I continue now with my reflections on Jesus’ view of the coming destruction and the very bad fate coming to those who are not rightly aligned from God. In this post I deal specifically with his teaching on Gehenna, and the devastation that will happen there. Spoiler alert: it is not the place you want to go, but Jesus is not talking about “hell.”
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This makes far more sense. Not that it makes the imaginative destroyer of souls (God), any less pathological. At least Jesus’s God is not into eternal torment. I suppose that a mass murderer who kills and then desecrates seems better than one that tortures his creations for eternity. On a “badness” scale of 1-10, it’s a 9.95 perhaps?
Surely, archeology has something to say about this; ain’t not?
Do you mean do we know if there was such a place? Yes indeed, it’s still there.
Unfortunately, it is my experience that since Bibles say hell and not Gehenna, Christians will never accept any other explanation that Jesus is talking about a place called hell where people go for eternal punishment for their sins.
Is Gehenna where the Romans put crucified body remains?
We don’t know. And since Jesus himself had never been to Jerusalem before his last week (probably) he probably didn’t either.
Dear Bart Dear Bart this is a fascinating topic. It seems to me that ‘the valley of the son of Hinnom’ was used by Jesus and antecedant Jewish writers as a metaphor. I understand that the Hebrew or Aramaic ‘Hinnom’ may have had a foreign origin (possibly Canaanite) and that it may mean ‘wailing’. As you say, the metaphor alludes to child sacrifice (2 Chron 28:3), fire, destruction/annihilation, suffering, and being under God’s curse. Also, as you say, the worm not dying and unquenchable fire may be sub-metaphors for continuous irreversible destruction, rather than eternal suffering, as suggested by his Jesus in Mat 10:28. However I am not sure that you have completely ruled out the more grisly interpretation of ongoing torment suggested by the other sub-metaphors of gnashing of teeth and wailing. I suppose the interpretation depends on what Jesus’s view of the metaphysics of the soul was. Do we know this?
I think we do. Like other Jews of his time, he did not believe teh soul would exist outside the body. It was more like the breath: when the body died it (the breath or the soul) did not *go* anywhere. The person simply ceased to exist. At the end God would breath life bcak into bodies: some would enter the kingdom; others would weep, gnash their teeth, recognize the error of theire ways, then be destroyed for all time.
Following your argument here, Dr. Ehrman, upon death when the “soul”(breath) is gone and the body begins to decay, how are we then to understand what was actually present when Samuel said to the witch of Endor who summoned him: “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?”
Dead for some time (so decayed), was Samuel given a “renewed body” and corresponding animating “breath”?
In other words, what was the /nature/ of Samuel’s person/entity?
Thank you.
His breath came back into his body for a brief time. Note: he is definitely being raised bodily (not as a spirit). He’s still wearing his same clothes! I talk about teh passage in my book Heaven and Hell.
> But at the resurrection it will be returned, bringing the body back to life.
Given that dead bodies would be in need of serious refurbishment as they were being brought back to life, did belief in bodily resurrection find any reflection in funerary practices? I.e., was there any effort made to keep the body more resurrectable, or was it assumed that Yahweh in his omnipotence would take care of the details?
There have been debates about this (does a belief in resurrection favor burial rather than cremation), but in this period, I don’t know that it affected practices. I have to admit I haven’t looked into it at any length.
Just a quick question about the courses you teach your undergraduates. Since I’m assuming most of them don’t read manuscripts in the original languages, what version on the Bible do you have then use for your courses, if there is one which you recommend? I was thinking of getting the Oxford Study Bible, but is there a “better” one for the non- Greek-reading plebe like me? Thanks!
Yes, that’s an excellent choice. The other is the HarperCollins Study Bible (which is the one I use with my students)
Dr. Ehrman
Is this a reference to or intended contrast to the valley of the shadow of death?
I’ve never heard that proposed before, but it’s an interesting idea. Usually it is thought to be driven by a historical reality, that this was a real place that was considered desecrated because it was where child sacrifice ahd occasionally been practiced.
I’ve never heard that proposed before, but it’s an interesting idea. Usually it is thought to be driven by a historical reality, that this was a real place that was considered desecrated because it was where child sacrifice ahd occasionally been practiced.
So, what is your response to John 5:28-29 which states, “For an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.” ? And also I would be interested in your response to the previous sentences where Jesus claims to have the authority to judge because God the Father gave it to him and he is the Son of Man? I have read in previous posts that you have formed the view that Jesus believes that the Son of Man is another person, not him. Thanks for your posts, they are helping me to sort through a lot of things that I was taught but now doubt.
It is usually thought to be a “remnant” of an older apocalyptic tradition that came into John’s Gospel — since otherwise this kind of apocalyptic view is notably absent, and even argued against, in John’s Gospels. On your other question, it is clear that all the Gospel writers do consider Jesus to be the Son of Man. When I say that he did not see himself that way, I am talking about the actual historical Jesus, who appears to have anticipated a cosmic judge of the earth to arrive from heaven soon. After his death his followers maintainned that *he* was that one.
Thanks
In Matthew 10: 28, we read” fear him”, or “fear the One”, we know it is of course speaking of God. Just wondering Bart, as I examined the various bibles, most have, *him* in small letters except for the NASB,which has *Him* in capitals. Others use * fear the One* in capitals. Why the differences ? Since referring to God, I thought they would all use capitals.
Since ancient Greek did not use capital letters, modern translators have to decide what to capitalize (and what not). In this case some translators want to make clear that Jesus is referring to God, not someone else, and so they choose to capitalize the referent.
Thank you for the great post.
I have two questions off topic. Is there a New Testament Greek grammar you would recommend for self-study? And could you recommend a few more-advanced grammars and dictionaries that would be the useful after finishing the grammar (from the first question)? Thanks.
I’m afraid I haven’t taught Introductory Greek for 35 years — and so don’t really know the best resource to suggest. Maybe others here do? Someone has mentoined that Mounce’s grammar has a lot of good online help, so maybe that would be a place to turn? You really need to have an expert guide you along for when you have questions. A little bit of Greek can be a dangerous thing! The standard lexicon is teh F. Danker revision of W. Bauer’s lexicon: a sine qua non for anyone in teh field. An advanced grammar would be the one by Daniel Wallace.
If I may suggest, The Great Courses has a course on Ancient Greek and, although I haven’t taken it, they generally have pretty good courses. (Not being paid by The Great Courses nor Bart for saying this.)
If we take the ancient view that the soul is ‘life’ as well as consciousness, then in Greek logic, it is impossible for life to die. Some would see this as consistent with conservation of matter and energy in classical physics or conservation of information in modern physics. However, I would see information as contents of consciousness rather than consciousness itself. Nevertheless, I personally have a sense that consciousness (which is not sufficiently explained by the physical brain and body), may be eternal. Also, if one believes that mystical experiences may convey some truth (which I do), then it’s certainly worrying that In almost every age, there have been reports of mystical visions of a hell involving un-ceasing torment. However, I suspect your very reasonable interpretation of these mystical hellish visions, would be that they unconsciously based on a pre-conception of hell from a reading of the Bible or from previously imbibed Christian teaching. This one is particularly powerful: https://youtu.be/diPhrDPH8U8
You said, “For those destroyed by God there will be no salvation, ever. So too when Jesus teaches about Gehenna, he is thinking of annihilation, not torment.”
It’s hard for me to shake all the talk of hell that was instilled in me as a child and throughout college … and seminary. But these days I find myself chuckling at the whole thing with the random dreadful feeling of “what if I’m wrong?” creeping in.
Anyways, my question is – if Jesus was thinking “annihilation” … who do you think he thought would be annihilated?
Some would say the “non-Christians” are the enemies of God and so they will be annihilated, but if I look at the life of Jesus I would think he would say that the enemies of God are those who mistreat others, don’t love their neighbor, don’t care for the world, the poor, etc, etc, etc.
Would you agree that it’s these people who Jesus would have said are in danger of annihilation?
Yes, it was apparently those who did not follow the teachings of God to help those in need (thus, e.g., the parable of the sheep and the goats)
I’ve always been confused on Molech. Was that actually a god in Canaanite pantheon or just stated as such by ancient Israelites? I’ve seen it omitted and included, as well as different gods “translated” for Molech in the Old Testament (or at least commentaries of it).
We don’t have a full accounting of ancient Canaanite religion, since we do not have massive of surviving texts. As far as I know Molech was a Canaanite deity.
Late as always I am, so no need for a response. How does one desecrate a place that was used to sacrifice children. Is not that the desecration in itself? I would guess at, moving the soil ground, et al, and dumping it into the Dear Sea—highly unlikely.
Yes, that was the desecration.
Thanks Bart for your answer to my question above. OK, if Jesus and other Jews of his time (presumably the Pharisees and Essenes/Scribes) did not believe that the soul (the one and the same ‘I’ of conscious experience and and hell- or heaven-deserving moral choice/decision-maker) could exist outside the body when the body died and did not *go* anywhere, then *in what sense* could Jesus and his pharisaic contemporaries conceive that the resurrected body could be one and the same heaven- or hell-deserving person / soul / I?? Surely Jesus and the Pharisees believed that the soul did go somewhere – to the Hebrew concept of Sheol – prior to the resurrection. Paul, a Pharisee, seemed to believe something similar when he talked about those who had fallen asleep.
The “soul” was the breath of God. God would breath back into the flesh and bring it back to life, so it would be the sae person. And no, they didn’t think the soul went anywhere. Again, think of it as the breath (as in when God “breathed” into Adam to make him come alive). When you die, your “breath” doesn’t go anywhere. It just stops to exist.
But if the body has been bereft of breath and decomposes and the consciousness ceases and both the consciousness and essence of the person do not go anywhere, so there is no physical or psychological continuity between the pre-resurrected person and the post-resurrected person, then can you tell me *in what sense* , a resurrected body with a freshly inspired breath can be in any way the same person as the original person and thus be held deserving of either heaven or hell?
I don’t think we can push the logic of “miracle” too hard. It’s simply what ancient Jews thought. (Just as you can’t push too hard on the idea that “It’s turtles all the way down…”)
OK, Bart, but I’m not convinced that this logical point about personal identity (which you touched on in your post on consciousness) would have been lost on the Pharisees in their debates with the Sadducees about the issue of resurrection. At the risk of sounding identical to the dead parrot sketch, I’m going to spell this ‘ceasing to exist’ issue out clearly. If the soul i.e. the essence and conscious experiencing and willing/deciding and thus morally responsible “I“ that is at the centre of a person doesn’t *go anywhere* at death, then it just cannot be “asleep” or unconscious, but must cease to exist ie be *annihilated*. But you say Jesus (?and the Pharisees) believed annihilation only occurred after the resurrection. But this cannot work. You cannot be annihilated twice! If Your soul soul doesn’t go anywhere, then, by definition, it ceases to exist – it ‘IS no longer’ and therefore, any resurrection body cannot contain the same *you* or be the same *you*. I.e. it cannot be the same soul – the same conscious experiencing/ willing /deciding/morally responsible “I”. Jesus and the Pharisees couldn’t see this logic?
No, they had a different logic. The hardest thing about understanding people in other cultures with different assumptions about reality is figuring out how they don’t seen what is just commonsense to us. Of course, they think the same thing about *us*….
On that interpretation there are still a number of options,. Firstly the soul maybe unconscious “asleep“ in it’s Sheolian intermediate state. Secondly, the soul maybe consciously anticipating its fiery or heavenly fate, either with eyes wide or in some semi-conscious Sheolian stupor. Thirdly, the deserving soul may begin either it’s fiery ordeal (temporary or eternal) or heavenly reward immediately after death as in “today you will be with me in paradise”. So that has still not solved the annihilation versus eternal damnation question. if you are right, then the wailing and gnashing of teeth would only be a temporary piece of suffering followed by eternal unconsciousness, which precludes any suffering. If that is the case, what would be the point of Jesus mentioning (with implied dread) the wailing and gnashing of teeth? Surely a little fire prior to an eternal extinguishing, wouldn’t even be comparable to the average lifetime of suffering now or in those days? Are you sure you’ve correctly interpreted Jesus’s eschatology? Also, https://youtu.be/diPhrDPH8U8 I think this chap really did see what he saw and wasn’t deliberately using an apocalyptic literary style for his audience 😀
But when he says in Matthew 25:41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels”, he is talking about eternal fires.
That is not Gehenna is it?
Well, it’s the fire that sinners will be thrown into to be destroyed once and for all. Whether Jesus meant the place he elsewhere calls Gehenna is an interesting question, but it’s not clear either way I’d say. I’ve always thought not, but I’m not sure what the arguments either way could be, since none of the texts indicate either way.
Dear Bart, surely, the Gehenna where worms don’t die and flames don’t get quenched in the context of punishment after this life, cannot be anything other than the everlasting fire of Mat 25? I don’t understand what would make you think it was a different entity? As for Sheol, a place associated with destruction as well as punishment in most OT references, surely this is also the same place albeit with various levels including a fiery pit at the lowest: Deuteronomy 32:22 (KJV) For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell [sheol], and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
I’d suggest you read mybook, since I talk about all this at some length. The fire doesn’t die but the people do.
Dear Bart, You’re right, I do need to read your book, however I wasn’t disagreeing with you about the fire being unquenchable versus the people being ‘quenchable’. All I was saying is the everlasting fire of Matthew 25, sounds identical to the unquenchable fire and undying worms of Gehenna in
Mark 9: 47-48. It seems to me that being eaten by *undying worms* is a metaphor intended to imply a slightly slower (yet equally sure) annihilation (‘corruption’), whilst being burned by *unquenchable fire* seems a quicker way to be annihilated (‘destruction’), yet, strangely, fire seems to be used to imply a more painful and terrifying end. Neither sound great, especially if you are conscious during the *process*, but both are *infinitely* better than unceasingly experiencing being continuously and everlastingly incinerated by unquenchable fire; or being continuously and everlastingly eaten by undying hungry worms. Of course there is another logical fallacy here. The use of the word apokteino (Strongs G614 – destroy or kill) in Mat 10:28, suggests annihilation, which would logically eliminate any ongoing consciousness thus supporting your view that Jesus did not mean to indicate eternal suffering.
As far as I see, the pre-Christian Book of Enoch does have the typical concept of Hell:
Enoch teaches that the righteous and sinners are divided in death, and the sinners are punished (Enoch 22:1-15).
And Enoch teaches the fire at the Day of Judgement and even says it’s not only for human sinners (Enoch 103:5), but also for the fallen angels (Enoch 10:6-9, 15-16), to be tormented.
Unlike the Old Testament, Enoch teaches eternal torment.
The gospels seem to reference Enoch:
Matthew 25:41 says the eternal fire at Judgment Day was prepared for the devil and his angels.
And Luke’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus uses the concept of Sheol from Enoch, with the separation of the dead.
(The whole idea of casting out demons seems to come from Enoch 15:8. So, even Mark is influenced by Enoch.)
Since the Book of Enoch predates Christianity, and the gospels reference Enoch, how can we be sure that Jesus himself didn’t teach the concept of eternal torment?
If Jesus considered Enoch inspired scripture, he probably also believed in eternal punishment.
For Jesus to teach annihilation and not eternal torment means he either didn’t know or rejected Enoch.
How do we know this is actually the case?
There isn’t any evidence that Jesus considered Enoch inspired Scripture. (AS you probably know, there were many many books available at the time, written expressing authors’ views of God; the fact they existed and were seen as important by some people doesn’t mean they were accepted as Scripture by any one person. I doubt if Jesus had ever heard of teh book, since it was never taken in as a canonical authority, at least by any Jewish source we know of.) But yes, it does have a view very close in some ways to the later doctrines of heaven and hell.
I thought that Jesus‘s views of the “devil and his angels“ and “the son of man coming with his angels” and “with the clouds” we are both concepts that Jesus effectively lifted from the book of Enoch (supplemented by the Daniel seven on “the son of man” (Bar Enash)?
No, I don’t think so. The first idea was widely floating around, and the latter two are expressed more fully in Daniel 7 than in Enoch.
What is confusing is if child sacrifice was so horrible it was the worst fate and ones who did it are depraved, how is it that Yahweh asked for a child sacrifice (Abraham/Isaac), and according to Christian doctrine, Yahweh also demanded the blood sacrifice of his own son. The church defends these stories as beautiful symbols of love…but child sacrifice is child sacrifice. What am I missing here?
You’re right, it’s a huge (conceptual) problem. With Abraham and Isaac, the story is often read as an indication that Yahweh was *against* child sacrifice and substituted an animal on for it. But he certainly does ask for a human one! And with Jesus — I know. It really is a human sacrifice. Theologians (outside of the evangelical world) have real trouble with this and regularly say that it’s the hardest part of the tradition to deal with; which is a bit unfortunate since the entire tradition does stemp from it….
I am new here But I am learning so much. I’m reading heaven and hell currently. In the story of Lazarus and the rich man was this idea of the underworld, Abrahams bosom, The Righteous dead, wicked dead, resurrection, chasm between the two sides prominent in Jesus day? I found something very similar in Josephus.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/hades.html
I wondered your thoughts. Thanks
It was certainly around in Jesus’ day, but was not prominent. And it does not appear to be the view of Jesus himself, but is found only in Luke’s *account* of Jesus, which makes scholars think that the parable does not go back to Jesus himself.
Good read! Thank you for posting this.
The word for Hell in Islam is “Jahannam”, which supports the hypothesis that this concept in Islam was not created in a vacuum but inherited from earlier beliefs in the region.
OK I’ll stop beating a dead parrot and accept your culturally different logic explanation. Suffice it to say, there’s no two ways about it: if Jesus didn’t think the soul went to Sheol or someplace else prior to an end time resurrection, then he was wrong 😂. By the way, I loved the Revelation lecture. Very well presented and fascinating. However, in parts, it was like listening to an old time premillennial evangelist 😂 – if the beast was Rome, then that fitted with Hal Lindsay’s revived Roman Empire story – you know the toes party of iron and partly of clay! I had to go at the end (dinner cooked), so didn’t get to hear whether my 2 questions got answered: 1. As some have suggested, could 666 represent the number of *humanity*~ created on day 6, imperfect (ie short of 777) and incomplete as a final globalised one-world empire of 666 compared to the 777 of the Kingdom of Heaven. 2. If God exists, as a conscious being, would you expect him to possess the emotion of anger and do you think he would be justified in expressing it?
If God exists, I suppose I don’t have any expectations. I do have some opinions of what I’d like him to be though… (e.g., all loving and merciful instead of wrathful and despotic)
Dear Bart: I was raised Episcopalian, but have been an agnostic most of my life. Truly, I envy people who can have a faith, but I simply cannot grasp the concept that one man’s death, conducted in a way that was almost an everyday event in Rome, can somehow erase the sins of all mankind. Now, at age 70, I am suddenly seized by hadephobia. I worry that if I were to die tomorrow I would go to hell because I am not saved in Jesus. Somerset Maugham wrote that a just God would not punish anyone for honest disbelief, but I just don’t know. Also, I can’t understand how Mahatma Gandhi, who led a more saintly life that most Christians, could go to hell. Any ideas on this?
Lots of ideas on it. It’s what my book Heaven and Hell is about. I’d recommend it. It helps to know whwere the teaching of hell actually came from before deciding what to think about it. (It’s never in the OT and is not something Jesus himself taught: I try to show that in my book)
When people try to justify some of the more genocidal passages of the Bible, they often cite child sacrifice among the Canaanites as a core part what God wanted to stamp out. This doesn’t work as an explanation, of course, and one must be careful with biased sources, but what do we actually know about the ubiquity or rarity of human sacrifice in that time and place?
In the days of Jesus it was not common, though surely happened in some times/places. It’s usually thoguht to have been practiced more commonly in the millenia earlier, but I’m not sure what the compelling evidence for that is.