Loading...When I search my mind for times in my (distant) past that I thought about hell, I conjure up two very different moments. Today when I think about them it is with a good sense of humor.
The first is when I must have been maybe eight or nine. I was at some kind of summer camp, and we had a daily camp meeting where we would sing songs and someone would come talk to us. One day there was a local minister who came and told a story about a person who went first to hell and then heaven.
When he went to hell he found that there was an enormous table filled with fantastic food – everything that everyone could imagine wanting. But all the people there had three-foot long forks strapped to their arms, and it was impossible for them to pick up the food and bring it to their mouths. And so they were starving in the midst of plenty.
He then went to heaven and again, there was the enormous table and the fantastic food. At this point of the story I expected him to say that the people in heaven didn’t have those monstrous forks. But no, he continued – everyone in heaven…
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Have you done any research on hell houses in churches https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_house. If I recall right some churches do annual shows dispicting hell.
I got the movie Hell House, but haven’t watched it yet. I’m told it’s … harrowing.
Dr. Ehrman, it looks like you’ve already started writing the introduction to your next book.
I have a friend who’s a Lutheran Pastor. I once asked him how be imagines Hell. He had that new fangled view of hell as oblivion, where you are not directly tortured or tormented, but rather you spend an eternity “separated from God,” and that separation is what causes pain. I’ve noticed that this view of hell crosses denominations, with even some evangelicals holding to the idea. I’m curious, where and when did this view of Hell originate? Did you ever view Hell this way at some point in your life?
Yes, I had that view for a while too.
And here I thought the Lutheran vision of hell had to do with the torment of spending eternity in a room full of lutefisk. But I don’t recall if it was because you couldn’t eat it, or because you had to.
I assume your book will look at pagan views of the afterlife as well?
The Sumerians seem to have basically believed everybody had a horrible afterlife, that you were conscious, but unable to move, just lying there in a dark place for all eternity. Okay, we don’t know they all believed that, but that’s what we have from the writings they left us.
And we’ve all read the stories about Sisyphus, not a Christian last I heard. Very creative punishments in Hades. Good sense of irony.
All of this would exist if Christianity had never come to pass, because there’s something in the human mind that believes we deserve punishment. And particularly the people we don’t like.
And the more civilized we get, the more this tendency takes hold. It’s a way of trying to impose some kind of justice onto a universe that is inherently unjust. And somehow, justice and harsh punishments go together in our minds.
And I’ve found this tendency no less prevalent among atheists.
Is the universe (that which we nominate so) unjust?
Or is it perhaps just ‘a-just’?
It’s only unjust if there is a sense that good deserves to be rewarded and evil to be punished. Without that sense, it is simply a-just.
That distinction I find a-cademic. 😉
The universe is neither inherently just nor unjust. It just is.
I remember while in Divinity school at Yale, there was a group of undergrads down the hill who called themselves “The God Squad.” They would come up to Yale Divinity occasionally to save us from our wicked ways and bring us into the fundamentalist fold. On one occasion a fellow students and I were musing about their message and wondered “what if they are right !? Maybe we need to change our wicked ways and save ourselves from hell” For a moment that shook us up a bit, but we got over it. We realized that we are mere mortals and do not have the capability of knowing absolute truth absolutely. Saving ourselves is also a quite selfish way to express our love for God and humanity.
We resolved that the best we can do is to do our job on this planet, during our short stay here, being as compassionate as we can to our fellow beings and making our earthly home the best as it can be.
Since that time, 1965, I haven’t seen much progress in that regard, and it seems we all are going through a bit of hell right now, but all I can hope is that I have done at least one thing in someone’s life that has made a difference.
I want proof the Bible is wrong, where is it?
Why do you think it is wrong if you haven’t seen any evidence? But I”m not sure I know waht you mean by the word “wrong.” Wrong about what?
I need proof it isn’t the word of God
I’m afraid contradictions and discrepancies in themselves would not prove the Bible cannot be the Word of God. But if you want to see some historical problems with the bible, see my book Jesus INterrupted.
It’s not gonna prove the Bible isn’t the word of God, is it?
The Bible is the word of God only if God is completely ignorant and does not know that the earth is a planet or that the universe exists. The Bible is a library of books (written over a span of 2,000 years, by different authors in different times and places, with different theologies and conceptions of God) that repeat myths, legends, and stories that occur in a world that does not exist. I need proof that it IS the word of God.
Maybe God is like many human authors and puts words into the mouths of characters and hypothetical conceptions of God that do not reflect was she really thinks. Maybe God has a sense of irony. The presence of false or contradictory statements in a book doesn’t prove its author didn’t write it.
Why do you want this proof? I don’t think anyone can prove the Bible is or isn’t the word of God. Likewise, I don’t think anyone can prove or disprove the existence of God. You BELIEVE in God or you don’t. Since no proof is possible, they both are BELIEFS. I’d say the best we can do is decide to accept other people’s opinions as long as they aren’t forced upon others and aren’t used to hurt others. Unfortunately, the religious tend to do the forcing and hurting far too often. It should be “tend to the log in your own eye before worrying about the sliver in your neighbor’s eye,” but that succinct little rule of thumb is commonly forgotten. Can’t it just be “believe what you want, be loving, and don’t force your beliefs on others”?
It’s probably not the word of God if it is historically, scientifically, and consistently wrong.
Exactly! You can’t prove or disprove neither.
If you’re looking for a mathematically rigorous “proof” that the Bible isn’t the Word of God, then you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Instead, simply ask yourself why you don’t think the Qur’an is the Word of God, and apply those reasons to the Bible, and, poof, there’s your “proof”.
Well said.
Wow, you have come a remarkably long way since then. One of the ideal qualities you poses, in my opinion, is your openness, willingness to follow truth, and ultimately change your mind if required. Not to mention that you recommend people of all faiths and none, to do the same.
CS Lewis has a good take on it in The Great Divorce as does Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in Inferno.
Long ago, a relative who was a conservative Christian died. Before her funeral service I was having a nice conversation with her minister. As it was pretty hot out, I kidded him, “If you’ve got a good sermon on hell, this would be a good day for it”. I got a very stern look in return.
Yeah, some people don’t have a good sense of humor….
They desperately need it!
That’s interesting… I still think that very thing every time I go into the sauna at the mega gym here in Newport Beach, CA… which is a few times a week at least… but I too laugh now… but for a different reason… a few years ago, after an injury or two, I got very physically addicted to serious pain pills (about 100 mgs of oxycodone a day) for about one year… so I decided to quit cold turkey just to prove that I could kick it, which I did, years ago now… I wanted to suffer so I’d never get hooked again… I wanted to remember the suffering… which I do! I now laugh at the sauna because if hell is real… I tend to think it’ll be a lot more like the two weeks of withdrawals I went through (the eternal sauna would be terrible too, but the mental anguish of kicking opioids just seems more like how hell would be, if it exists, in my view)… I actually do have a question here, but it’s more personal than normal, although it’s related to the subject I think… obviously if you don’t answer I understand why… but a quick setup… even though I grew up religious too… I rebelled BIG TIME in high school (over 20 years ago now)… and so I did my fair share of drugs… including a heavy duty hallucinogenic drug (psilocybin) ONCE… and it was only once for a reason… after doing it I can tell you I never doubted there’s more to reality than the 4D spacetime we normally experience… I realize I could be wrong (I study biology and understand it reasonably well—but I also study physics—and the leading string theorist, Edward Witten, says consciousness will never be part of physics—it’s far too mysterious he says—and he’s not religious—this ought to give anyone pause in my view)… but my experience was so real that I still believe to this day it was more than a chemical reaction in my brain (it was that too, of course)… I believe it was also a dimensional shift in my mind (allowed, but not caused, by the chemical reaction in my brain)… I’ve found many people who’ve done these kinds of drugs are also convinced such experiences are in fact, in some mysterious sense, real… but it’s one of those things you can’t explain… it’s like seeing in black and white your whole life and then suddenly seeing in color for an hour… and then trying to explain colors to those who’ve only ever seen in black and white… many people (including non-religious people) believe they truly went *somewhere* else (they call them “trips” for a reason!)… I assume you’ve never done drugs… I’m also sure you’ve studied such drug induced hallucinatory experiences people have… my question is do you ever wonder if your views would change if you personally experienced such a thing? I’m not saying anyone *should* do drugs to find out, but the question is still interesting even if theoretically asked… but LSD was developed for medicinal reasons and research is once again being done at places like Johns Hopkins University (the link below is interesting I think). Even marijuana, which is relatively harmless, can cause intense effects that challenge people’s long held perspectives… do you ever wonder what would happen if Mary Jane gave you one of her brownies?! Do you ever wonder if there’s an undiscovered “truth” that could challenge your current worldview if you went down this increasingly common and legal path? I’m not advocating drugs… but after my experience… I always have that window open in my mind… and I wonder if you wonder about that…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/06/lsd-anxiety-study-psychotherapy-_n_4906596.html
I watched a documentary on Netflix recently called “DMT The Spirit Molecule”, which closely relates to what you’ve shared above. I recommend watching it, if you haven’t already.
Yes, I’ve seen it (with Joe Rogan I think). I’m not sure what I asked/said came across properly. But my main question for Bart was whether or not he sees these “consciousness shift” claims as having any relevance to serious studies of the afterlife. There are many people who are convinced they’ve been exposed to extra-dimensional realities… which seems to be in the wheelhouse of the afterlife maybe.
The drug changed ‘you.’ ‘You’ on the drug were not the ‘you’ prior to taking the drug; the drug experience clearly changed ‘you,’ chronically (it altered your brain), just as Paul after hearing/seeing Jesus was not the pre-Jesus Paul, and Jesus’ followers ‘were’ not what they had ‘been’ once they hallucinated the “risen,” Jesus, if in fact that’s what happened.
Among many many pedantic recommendations, read Oliver Sacks’ description of his drug-induced beliefs while on the drugs as later recalled (? accurately? hmm, there’s another problem) in his book….”Hallucinations.”
Or, Hoffman’s account of his experience after he synthesized what we now know as LSD-25.
I wonder why the earliest Christians had such hallucinations independently (e.g. Peter and Paul were separated by a few years and in totally different circumstances). There seems to be no evidence drugs were involved. It’s hard to explain what changed them so drastically and immediately. In my case, I can’t argue that the drug didn’t change “me” as you say (the cause and effect is obvious—but that still doesn’t prove the effect is purely a material one). I’ve never done it again, and it was well over two decades ago that I did it, but it’s true that I remember the experience still which does influence my views to this day. I was with two friends that day (we ditched school). One of them I still talk to, and while he’s an agnostic leaning towards atheism, he also remembers it. He’s convinced it’s something to do with Quantum Mechanics (think the debate between Niels Bohr and Hugh Everett vis a vis superposition and all of that). Many physicists who are at least in some sense “materialists” see evidence for “many worlds” and a multiverse. Considering the Standard Model explains less than five percent of our observable universe (what is Dark Matter and Dark Energy, the remaining 95%?), I’m not willing to close the door to the possibility of an immaterial mind working within the material brain. I don’t know for sure obviously. I’ll check out the sources… thanks.
As a young boy in a catholic school I was taught about the consequences of dying with a mortal sin on your “soul” and informed that eating meat on Friday or missing mass on Sunday were two mortal sins. My school was part of Catholic Univ. and one day in about the 5th grade some volumes of the Nuremberg trials appeared in the library. Such pictures and stories! Imagine that eating meat on Friday would result in the same punishment as what was portrayed in those volumes. It was a serious shock to my 5 th grade mind and the beginnings of doubt in catholic doctrine. Thank goodness my doubt got a early start.
I will be very surprised if your publishers don’t like your book idea. I’ve read quite a few afterlife books and I think the subject sells very well.
Hi Bart, there’s a camp of liberal evangelicals that insist every verse alluding to eternal torment in the NT is a metaphor. I realize the concept of eternal torment is not in the OT (except perhaps one reference in Daniel), but the idea appears rather explicit and literal in the NT, particularly in the gospels and Revelation (although strangely almost entirely absent from Paul’s writings).
What’s your thoughts, and what evidence/examples would you provide to support your perspective?
I’m not sure which perspective of mine you’re referring to. By liberal evangelicals, do you mean people like Rob Bell, or do you have someone else in mind?
I didn’t mean any person in particular, just from observing christian websites, comment threads, YouTube, etc. They will insist that literal eternal torment is not in the NT at all, and that the punishment will instead be a quick annihilation. They are generally of the born again/evangelical persuasion.
I just wanted to hear your thoughts in general about whether the NT concept of hell/eternal torment was meant to be taken as a metaphor or literal.
Matthew 25:31-46 and Rev. 20:10-15 both seem to me to be certainly speaking of eternal torment. If one wants to interpret them non-literally, one should always ask Why?
Good tip, thank you.
The closest reference I could find in the first (and most credible) gospel to what Christians interpolate as “hell,” (i.e., the afterlife destination for the unsaved where they will suffer conscious, inexpressible torment for all eternity) is Mk 9:43-48.
In this passage, however, Jesus actually compares the place of damnation to “Gehenna,” or the Valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem — used for child sacrifice during the First Temple period (😱) and then serving as the city’s garbage dump.
According to Mark, Jesus enhanced this repugnant image by alluding to Isaiah’s prophecy of the fate of those who rebel against Yahweh whose corpses would decay in a place where: “their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched.” (Is 66:24)
Aside from the double jump to get from a garbage dump to an open-air, communal grave to the Christian understanding of “hell,” where is there any hint here of anything (beyond ignominy) for the unrepentant? Where is the “eternal torment”?
Even if this nasty place is home to undying worms and unquenchable fires, how does that extrapolate to the condemned being trapped there — much less in conscious torment! — throughout *all* eternity?
There isn’t eternal torment. There is eternal punishment. Annihilation is an eternal punishment, since it is not reversed. The worm and the fire may never go away, but the human life does.
Matthew incorporated Mark’s pericope (twice! 🙄) but in both places (Mt 5:29-30 and 18:8-9) Jesus omits comparison with the Gehenna garbage dump *and* (uncharacteristically enough) the OT allusion. Further, here, too, he describes only the fire, *not* the stay of the condemned, as being “eternal.”
When Matthew’s Jesus warns about being “liable to the hell of fire” (Mt 5:22) or “thrown into the fire” (Mt 7:19), it’s without any mention of duration.
Elsewhere in Matthew Jesus says the condemned will, instead, “be thrown into the outer darkness” — sans fire — but where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt 8:12 and 25:30), perhaps, after having been bound “hand and foot” (Mt 22:13)
In one instance the place of condemnation is a “fiery furnace” (Mt 13:42 and 50) where there will somehow *also* be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 🤔
Sometimes the unsaved are merely fated to unspecified “destruction.” (Mt 7:13 and 10:28 and 23:33)
That leaves only the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats — the one place I found where the cursed are not only sent into “the eternal fire” but explicitly condemned to remain there for “eternal punishment.” (Mt 25:46)
Did I miss any?
It doesn’t say they stay in the fire for eternity; it says they go into the fire and that their punishment is eternal. They are killed by the eternal fire and their punishment is never reversed.
I find only one discourse in Luke where Jesus warns about being “cast into hell” (Lk 12:5), but without describing either the place *or* the stay as being “eternal” (nor of having the awareness required to ‘abandon all hope.’)
Luke *does* include a parable that implicates “hell.” But not the one he got from Q. His version of that one doesn’t include the denouement about the unprofitable servant being cast into the weeping and teeth-gnashing, outer darkness.
Whether Luke eliminated, or Matthew added, the hellacious postscript to this parable will undoubtedly remain a mystery. But even the failed assassins (another element Luke added or Matthew redacted) are merely executed for their treachery — not condemned to eternal fires or outer darkness.
But this gospel does include the unique and apposite “Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus” (Lk 16:19-31). Though there’s nothing about eternity, it supports both a fiery damnation and conscious awareness of it as the antagonist pleads for “Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.” (Lk 16:23-24)
Also this L parable identifies hell with the Greek “Hades,” rather than the Jewish “Gehenna.” Isn’t that a Q peculiarity?
Not sure if it’s a Q peculiarity. Hades appears five times in the NT, two each in Matthew and Luke, and once in Acts. So if it is a Q peculiarity it stuck wiht the author of Luke / Acts for material outside of Q.
I find only one place in John where Jesus alludes to the fate of “those who have done evil” in this life where he merely warns that it will be: “to the resurrection of condemnation.” (Jn 5:29)
There’s no comparison with either the Jewish garbage dump at Gehenna or the Greek underworld of Hades. No mention of undying, conqueror worms or unquenchable flames. No suggestion of continuing, conscious awareness of torment. Neither is there any indication of whether it is the place, itself, or confinement to it, that is eternal.
The only thing Jesus tells us in this gospel is that the unrepentant will be condemned — presumably to annihilation rather than unending torture.
My own, amateur survey of *all* the teachings of Jesus about the fate of the unreconstructed suggests that the morbid, Christian conception of “Hell” stands entirely on a single parable from a single source. (One that not only wants for independent attestation, but ends with a suspiciously anachronistic admonition.)
Am I missing something? Or does the near-universal, Christian nightmare of an alternative afterlife in a place of eternal, conscious suffering rely *only* on later, apocryphal texts and the lurid imaginations of Dante, Bosch & Friends?
Yes, John has a very different eschatology from the Synoptics. None of the Gospels speak of “hell,” though, as you know.
I take no small solace in learning that your reading of whatever it was that Jesus meant by “Gehenna/Hades/unquenchable fires/outer darkness,” it was *not* eternal, conscious torment.
However, mere annihilation as the alternative clearly stands at odds with the fire-and-brimstone eschatology of (AFAIK) *all* Christian denominations. Supported by scripture or not, it seems that pretty much every Christian sect subscribes to the Dante/Bosch nightmare.
At the end of the day (or, perhaps, of time 😉), neither am I inclined to the idea that annihilation is the eventual fate for the unrepentant. In fact I think I could make a strong case for ultimate, universal salvation being an implication as intrinsic to the teachings of the Anointed One as it was to those of the Awakened One.
Among the (many) apostate dissents that make me grateful to be living well after the papacy of Gregory IX is the Apocatastasis heresy — because the correct answer to the question, “What do we burn apart from witches?” is: “Heretics!” 😳
yes, fire and brimstone crept into the CHristian message early. That’s what my book Heaven adn Hell is all about.
The “You shall be brought down to Hades” cursing of Capernaum in both Matthew (Mt 11:23) and Luke (Lk 10:15) is not in Mark — making it a pericope that presumably came from Q.
The other reference to “Hades” in Luke is, of course, in the apposite, Lazarus parable.
I now realize that I missed the second one (a Holy See favorite) in Matthew because I inadvertently searched in the older RSV translation, not the Updated Edition.
For reasons that, frankly, escape me, the earlier RSV replaces the phrase “gates of Hades/Hell” with “power of death.” 😖 WTF?? How could that *possibly* have been a mere difference of opinion about how to translate the Greek? 😠
Frankly, I never looked at whether, where or how Acts (or for that matter, *any* NT book other than the gospels) might have referenced “Hades” because I knew none could have been quotes from Jesus — which are the only ones I’m interested in.
In fact can you explain, professor, (without having to set off on the fool’s errand of trying to justify) the apologetic logic behind elevating the words of *everyone* else in the canon to *equal* authority with those of the Incarnate Word of God? 🤔
The idea of inspiration is that hte words of Scripture were inspired by the Holy Spirit, who in the doctrine of the Trinity is fully euqal iwth the Incarnate Word of God.
Speaking of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus…
Do you think the telephone game that brought this pericope — notably, the *only* parable with a named protagonist — to Luke might also have inspired the (also unique) anecdote in John about a man (also named Lazarus) whom Jesus raised from the dead?
The last gospel cites this Raising of Lazarus incident as what precipitated Jesus’ arrest — instigated by Pharisees who were jealous of their power and feeling threatened by Jesus’ popularity. All three synoptics, as you know, implicitly blame the Sadducees who were, instead, incensed over the ruckus Jesus caused in the Temple, disrupting operations during the busiest selling season of the year.
It’s seems noteworthy that John *did* preserve the provocative Cleansing of the Temple incident — presumably because it had already become too legendary to ignore — but relocating the kerfuffle to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (and attaching no consequences to it.)
I think the two stories have to be related somehow through the oral tradition. A lot of scholars assume that the parable came first, and as it was told and retold the Lazarus who is asked to come back from the dead in Luke becomes the Lazarus who is brought back from the dead in the later Gospel of John.
I’m gratified to see you share my suspicions that the protagonist in Luke’s parable became a reified doppelgänger in John’s gospel, i.e., a Jesus story that diverged into parable and anecdote (both of them ahistorical in any event) over the decades of retelling.
Should I, therefore, infer that you are not persuaded by au courant speculations among some your colleagues that the author(s) of John had access to the synoptics in composing that unique gospel?
That certainly seems to be so WRT Luke since the similarities of parable and anecdote could hardly be missed. But what about one (or both) of the other synoptics?
Also, if John had no antecedents in any of the other gospels, do you see any likely influence from any of Paul’s letters?
If none of the other works that eventually found their way into the canon were known to the Johannine community before their eponymous account was written, should we deduce that the last gospel was the work of an isolated — and, perhaps, insular — Christian sect?
Might that explain why it is that “One of these things is not like the others; one of these things is not the same”? 😏
Yes, at this point I’m not at all convinced that the author of John knew/used the Sybnoptics.
Prizm, what are your thoughts? Eternal hell never made any sense to me. Bart mentions Rob Bell. Have you read his book “Love Wins.” It deals some with that idea.
An eternal hell is 1) a helluva price to pay for transgressions in one lifetime, which is really an infinitesimally small slice of time compared to eternal punishment and 2) a direct implication that God can only fight Satan to a draw.
Some people don’t believe in Hell at all. That’s easier, of course, if you don’t take the Bible literally, which is really hard, if not impossible, to do. Personally, I’m skeptical that Hell exists at all.
Hi GTGeet88, thanks for your reply. Personally I don’t believe in hell. I grew up fundamentalist and spent many years of my adult life in it, but became a non-believer about 6 years ago. One of the first subjects that actually took me down the doubting path was this issue of hell.
Some of the “no hell” arguments made sense to me, like what kind of loving God creates a place of eternal torment, but never warns his people about it in the OT? That inconsistency sat with me.
But what about the NT passages that Bart mentioned? To this day I haven’t heard a good argument from the “no hell” crowd against the eternal torment passages in the NT. It all seems to springboard from the idea that “God is love and would never create a place of eternal torment”. It’s like apologists must satisfy that particular criteria at all costs, even if it means turning a multitude of verses into metaphor and whatnot. If heaven was a bad place, I’m sure we’d have a truckload of books telling us heaven was a metaphor as well 🙂
I was thinking about the Rich Man and Lazarus story recently: “I am tormented in this flame”, says the rich man. Let’s take the gospels at face value and assume Jesus really is the son of God, etc. It would be hugely irresponsible of Jesus to even *hint* at hell if it didn’t exist. Those listening to this story (and other words of Christ) trust that Jesus knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the afterlife and the ways of God. Countless people down the generations are filled with the fear of hell after reading passages like this. Jesus, being God, would’ve known this would happen. Why on earth would he tell such a story and invoke the fear of hell in millions of people, if he knew hell didn’t exist?
To me, the easiest answer is it’s an inconsistency in the bible (different authors had different views) and an inconsistency in God’s supposed character.
This reminds me of a Simpson’s episode where Bart is in Sunday school and his teacher tells him about hell:
Miss Allbright: “Oh no Hell is a horrible place. Maggots are on your sheet, worms are in your blanket, there’s a lake of fire burning with sulfur. You’ll be tormented day and night for ever and ever. And as a matter of fact, if you actually saw hell, you’d be so frightened, you would die.”
Bart: [raises his hand] “Oh, Miss Allbright.”
Miss Allbright: “Yes, Bart.”
Bart: Wouldn’t you eventually get used to it, like in a hot tub?
🙂
An earlier version of Bart did better–first, when Huck Finn is told of heaven and hell by his aunt, he says hell sounds like a lot more fun. Convinced over time that hell would by unpleasant after all, he determines to betray Jim because conspiring to help a slave escape is theft, and a sin, and he’d go to hell for it. Then he realizes he loves Jim and is willing to go to hell rather than betray him.
And then his aunt frees Jim in her will, obviously because she’s afraid of the very hell she was preaching to Huck about. This happened rather a lot in those days, with smaller slave owners (more rarely with the larger ones whose estates were dependent on slavery). There was an understanding, beneath all the pronouncements of racial supremacy and how they had a moral duty to oversee these supposedly simple people, that enslaving others was a sin, and the fear of hell did in fact lead to many slaves being emancipated before all of them finally were.
People who say “Everyone should do good for its own sake” are, in my opinion, not paying very close attention to the world around them. Yes, we SHOULD. But how many of us actually WILL?
Huck Finns are rare in this world. And precious.
Love those stories.
You said “When I search my mind for times in my (distant) past that I thought about hell, I conjure up two very different moments” I think if North Carolina loses to Duke there may be a third time!
Ha! I was at the game, and it was heaven.
That was a great story Bart. My wife and I are lying in bed on Saturday morning having a good chuckle about it. ?
My wife was reading a book for awhile and I read some of it called Heaven by Randy Alcorn. He believes that there is much more we can know about Heaven, and it’s all there for us in Revelation and the Bible. I like his chutzpah saying in the Intro “I invite you to contact me if you believe you have biblical grounds for disagreeing with anything in this book.” That’s a funny challenge. Is it not enough to have grounds to disagree? Only the biblical grounds are worthy of bringing up I guess.
Even when I sort of believed in the Bible literally which I don’t anymore, I felt Alcorn was taking big leaps of assumption and pretending that they are the truth. But now I’m comfortable knowing that he is starting with what is a tale, and then weaving his own tale on top of that.
Wow! What a terrific post. As always, your more personal posts are your best posts by far.
I still think you should write an autobiography blending together your personal religious journey with your evolving Biblical scholarship. This autobiography would put it all together in one place. There is a remarkable book entitled “The Making of a Psychiatrist.” Your autobiography would be “The Making of a Bible Scholar.”
Great idea!
Apparently there are some textual variants related to “hell” in the NT manuscripts?
“And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than having your two feet, to be cast into hell, [where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED.]
Is it known when the words in the brackets were added into NT?
You’ll need to tell me which verse you’re looking at.
I think Eskil is talking about Mark 9:44.
Ah, right. The brackets are not there in any manuscript, of coruse, since manuscripts do not includ punctuation of that sort. They are ptu there by English translators to make the reader see that the words enclosed are probably not original. In this case the words were inserted by scribes to make a parallel to v. 48. The words first appear in two manuscripts ofthe fifth century. They are not found in the oldest and best witnesses, and are gnerally judged by texxtual scholars (certainly) not to be original.
” I wanted to make sure that if I changed my views about such (for me) crucial theological issues it would be only after very careful consideration and serious self-reflection.”
Thanks for the post. Regarding the quote above I’m still doing that and don’t see any end in sight. Can you describe more specifically how you went about giving these issues “very careful consideration and serious reflection,” e.g., what criteria you used. Or do you know of something autobiographical that might describe a similar process someone else went through?
There’s always another argument for theism and Christianity in general and hell in particular. And it’s easy to forget the counterarguments that previously seemed so convincing. There are smart people on both sides of the issue. Pascal’s Wager seems like the only rational approach, ie, at all costs avoid the worst case scenario. Except that Pascal’s Wager is not rational when there are multiple conflicting religions. But if there’s only one religion that actually seems like a “like a live option” and that one is really worried about…?
The best solution might be a new religion, or something that functions something like a religion, that meets one’s needs much better than the old religion. Simply dropping the old religion-even if for very good reasons-doesn’t seem like it would work for me.
Yes, that’s what I’ll be dealing with in the thread I’m starting.
**The best solution might be a new religion, or something that functions something like a religion, that meets one’s needs much better than the old religion. Simply dropping the old religion-even if for very good reasons-doesn’t seem like it would work for me.**
Clipper, what ‘needs’ are you referring to? I think if you can clearly delineate those, it would go a long way toward answering your questions.
Good post! In some sense I’m still scared of hellfire. What piece of information or analysis made you think it wasn’t real? Gehenna being a garbage heep? The influence of Hell from Zarathustra? The fact that Lucifer changes his role throughout the bible from heavenly faith tester to evil incarnate?
Lots of things! I’ll deal with all that in the thread I’m starting.
Simple Question: God could destroy Lucifer right now, why not end it?
The question of the ages!
**The question of the ages!**
That is not ‘THE’ question of the ages, for there is, at least, one better:
Why (given omnipotence) did He let Satan/evil happen in the first place?
‘Ending it now’ is too late for everyone who have already suffered at the hands of ‘Satan’.
Great stories, Bart!
After I left the Catholic priesthood, I married a girl who had been raised a “Trinity United Evangelical Brethren Methodist.” Her mother ran the church but her father, whom she loved more -stayed home on Sundays, and of course, was doomed to hell fire. When she was 8 years old, she very meticulously built a ledge above the fires where she could sit with her daddy for all eternity!
This was her image until she got to college!
Bill
Wow.
I suppose this is as good a time as any to tell a joke told me by an Englishman.
It is asked, ‘What is the real difference between Heaven and Hell?”
In Heaven-
The English greet you at the door.
The French are in charge of the cuisine.
The Germans are in charge of planning.
The Italians are in charge of the entertainment.
In Hell-
The French greet you at the door.
The English are in charge of the cuisine.
The Italians are in charge of planning.
The Germans are in charge of the entertainment.
(What they think of Americans I’m afraid to ask.)
Ha!!
I’ve heard some liberal Catholics say that the church teaches that the existence of hell is dogma but not-as dogma-that anyone is actually in hell.
Similarly, to deserve hell would require a complete, irrevocable, entirely free and fully-informed rejection of God’s mercy and love-and that it’s unlikely that anyone is mature enough to be able to actually do that.
Finally, the current theory of the inspiration of scripture is that the authors wrote what God wanted them to write as opposed, apparently, to inerrantly.
Broadminded and humane in many ways but it also smacks of having your cake and eating too — though maybe that’s what heaven is like
May I ask a question?
As graduate student of theology you must have been aware of Jesus remarks in Matt 25 saying to those on the left,
“Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.”
So at that time of your move to ‘a different kind of Christianity, one that was more “liberal” and open to a non-literalistic reading of the Bible.’, did you see those words in Matt 25 as
inauthentic, or
authentic but something Jesus was somewhat confused about, or
authentic but not literal, or
. . . ??
Authentic but not literal.
so now you have gone back to your prior/fundamentalist way of thinking ? (i.e. Jesus saying ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire’, was meant by him to be taken literally)?
Yes, I do think that is literal.
Hi Bart
I’m looking forward to your book and your findings. I hope you will cover what the historical Jesus might have thought about Hell (Sheol?). I personally find the thought of eternal life boring, because what’s the point? If there is a Hell, at least in Hell you’d know you’re alive. An eternity of bliss would be a different Hell; life without challenges, obstacles, progress. You only know happiness, if you’ve been sad, success is only rewarding if failure is a possibility etc.
To me the idea of Afterlife is just denial of the obvious – that death is real. Death is death! If our existence on this rock has taught us anything, it’s that there is no life without death. Creatures die so that others can live. Life only makes sense if there is also non-life. It also belittles life to think that it is eternal. It somehow makes it less precious. I think we should cherish every moment of this brief flash of consciousness we are, before we go back to what we were – non-consciousness.
Thank you for sharing your personal experiences. Best of luck with the book!
???
“I personally find the thought of eternal life boring, because what’s the point? … An eternity of bliss would be … life without challenges, obstacles, progress.”
Here, I completely agree with you.
“Life only makes sense if there is also non-life. It also belittles life to think that it is eternal. It somehow makes it less precious.”
But here, I don’t. What if our eternal life really *is* filled with challenges, obstacles, and progress?
I’m not, of course, thinking about “Heaven.” I believe in reincarnation – because there’s strong evidence for it. IMHO, that evidence – for the reality of reincarnation itself, not for any specific theories about how it works – is irrefutable.
In my present life, I developed – in my early teens! – a passion for, of all things, the Wagner operas. In my thirties, I traveled to Germany in three successive years to attend the Bayreuth Festivals devoted to his works. By then, I’d come to believe it was an easily reawakened interest from my previous life, as an English woman who *hadn’t* been able to get to Bayreuth. I was fulfilling her dream.
Knowing as much as I do now, I hope I can prepare myself for my next life. That I’ll have a “head start” – things I’ve learned over decades in this life will come to me more quickly in the next, because they’ll really be coming *back* to me.
The greatest progress I believe I’ve made in this life? My rejection of theistic religion.
I could be wrong but it seems I read or heard that there is no eternal place of torment in the bible. I could have sworn it was you in a debate with a fundamentalist, but again I could be wrong. It seems what I read is that later Christians created the place of torment. Matthew 25:46 seems to indicate that place. Am I reading that wrong? I’m confused. I thought Hell was a pagan concept. Jesus wouldn’t have believed in that would he?
thanks 🙂
Matthew 25:46 does indeed seem to describe eternal torment. As do passages in Revelation.
Evening, Bart. You mentioned leading people to the Christian faith back in your younger days. Do you ever meet some of these people now? For the people that know what you believe ( or don’t) now, what do they say to you?
Just my family. I’ll add the question to the mailbag.
Isn’t hell just the English translation for where people are buried after death? A pit/grave, or Gehenna Hebrew , Valley of Hinnom. Greek
All the same…
The Valley of Hinnom is the modern name for the valley surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City, including Mount Zion, from the west and south. … In the Hebrew Bible, Gehenna was initially where some of the kings of Judah sacrificed their children by fire. Thereafter it was deemed to be cursed (Jer. 7:31, 19:2-6).
Yup.
Getting over my fundamentalist fear of Hell was not easy. That is why I believe that fundamentalist Christianity is a cult. You don’t just walk away from a cult. It’s not like resigning your membership at the Rotary Club. You must be deprogrammed and deprogramming takes time. That is why I blog regarding my former belief system. That is why I study scholarship and apologetics. It is my therapy. It is my deprogramming. It is how I expose my deeply indoctrinated brain to the falsity of fundamentalist/orthodox Christianity. It is my battle against the little voice in my head that tells me I’m going to roast on a spit in Hell for all eternity simply because I refuse to love and obey a man who lived two thousand years ago as my “Lord”.
On another subject: A Christian recently posed this question to me. I am curious how you would respond:
People can be exposed to the same scholarship, (knowledge) and yet come to very different conclusions. For instance, Bart Ehrman’s teacher at Princeton who Ehrman respected greatly was Dr. Bruce Metzger. Dr. Metzger was arguably one of the greatest NT scholars of his time. Dr. Ehrman eventually became an atheist [actually, an agnostic], and yet, Dr. Metzger was a committed orthodox Christian believer until his death. Both were exposed to the same information, the same scholarship. What made the difference in their faith conclusions?
The problem is much more stark than that. None of the professors of Biblical studies at Princeton Seminary agreed with Metzger! So everyone disagrees. The question is: how do *you* weigh the evidence. (Not you personally: you, as in everyone)
That reference to Lucifer in Isaiah says only the morning star, which is Venus. As Venus appears in the morning before the sun and is overpowered by the sun.
Also Jesus is referred to as the morning star twice, 2 Peter 1:19, and Revelation 22:16. There can be doubt that Isaiah is speaking about the Devil?
I don’t at all think he was. But later Christian authors thought he was.
Venus is the Hell of our Solar system. It’s extremely hot and lifeless!
Bart, would you give us some insight into Jewish beliefs about Hell/Hades at the time of Christ. For instance, the parable of Lazarus and the rich man seems to convey the idea of eternal torment , would first century Jews and christians have understood it in that sense?
Yes, I’ll be going into all that!
I am curious about your thoughts on the Religious Historian Ilaria Ramelli research on the patrisic understanding on the bible and the original Greek understanding of the bible by these Greek early fathers. Please correct me if I am wrong but from what I have researched on the bible it was originally in Greek and was then translated into Latin which also caused further mistranslations.
Illara also states that eternal Hell fire was not actually seen as eternal based off the translation of a word that was translated as eternal in Latin but was known as an age of an age with many early church fathers only when this word was attached to God (which I beleived happen once or only a few times in the bible and never in regards to hell ) that it attached it’s meaning as eternal as God is Eternal. They saw “Hell” “fire” “salted with fire” as purification and the words along with many many other words in the bible as metaphorical.
Yes, I discuss her views in my academic book that is coming out in April. She is an incredibly learned and erudite scholar, but I think she completely misreads the church fathers when she argues that virtually all of them were universalists who thought that all would be saved.
How did the pitch go Dr. Ehrman?? This current thread seems to indicate that things went well??
Pretty well, I think. I’ll say more about it anon.
Did it occur to no one who heard the parable of the giant forks to ask if there was something preventing the dead from eating like one does in a pie-eating contest?
That’s the point of the story: those in hell think only of themselves and so can’t think far enough to realize that ifthey thought of others their own needs would be met. It’s a metaphor, of course.
The parable of the long spoons is told in an episode of the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. I’ll never forget Nucky’s bewildered response: “Why don’t they just grab the spoons higher up on the handle?”
I don’t know if the preacher who told the parable of the long forks thought it through this far, but I think it also has the aspect that neither hell nor heaven are eternal, objective states: human choice can make a hell or a heaven out of any situation, depending on our willingness or unwillingness to think beyond the tips of our noses.
Bart, I am getting the impression from my re-reading of Genesis that the final redactors were conflicted about God’s justice. In chs. 2-3 he tries (and fails) to keep humans ignorant of good and evil because he doesn’t want them to become like the gods (who alone know the difference) but then Abraham and one of the Pharaohs have to teach God the ideas of proportionality, letting the punishment fit the crime, and not punishing the innocent. Is that merely my modernist point of view glomming onto the text, or do you think they (the redactors) might have been suggesting that God’s justice evolves with our own evolving understanding of the good?
On a lighter note, here is another amusing treatment of the question of hell: http://www.pinetree.net/humor/thermodynamics.html
My sense is that ancient people did not have the idea that God’s moral sense evolved.
Many years ago, when I was still a committed fundygelical, I heard apologist Norman Geisler tell a joke/story about a little girl who was talking to an old man who lived next door. The little girl had just returned home from Sunday School and was playing with the dog in the backyard. The old neighbor walked up to the fence and said, “hey Veronica, how was Sunday School?” She said, “it was really good.” The old neighbor asked, “what did you learn today?” The little girl replied, “we learned about how Jonah was swallowed by a big fish for disobeying God.” The old neighbor then asked, “well how do you know that story is even true?” The girl said, “well when I get to heaven I’m going to ask him if it’s true.” With a sarcastic tone, the old man retorted, “But what if he’s not in heaven?” The little girl quipped back, “well then you can ask him!”
Lame, but funny!
Yeah, that’s a good one. He would be shocked and dismayed to learn this, but he was instrumental in my decision to pursue graduate work (based on a conversation I had with him when he came to give a talk at Moody when I was a student there)
Wow! Never knew that you encountered him. He dated my mother before she met my late father. Norm and his wife live not far from you and have threatened to come to the book signing event (for my new book) on May 6th at the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, NC He has no clue that I have abandoned the good ship Evangelical.
Professor Ehrman,
I know that the Hebrew Bible is not your speciality, but would you say Isaiah 66:24 is an allusion to eternal punishment?
Isaiah 66:24 (NRSV) – “And they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh”.
Thanks
It came to be used that way, but the text itself does not say that they will be *alive* only that the worms and fires that are consuming their bodies will never die out.
This crossed my mind, but I noticed that “worm” seems to be in the singular. I thought it was strange that they would describe a decomposing body being eaten by a single worm, rather than multiple worms.
I used to think that “worm” may have been used metaphorically somehow, to describe a person’s soul or awareness, but this seems unjustified.
Someone very close to me lived their life in fear and then died believing they were going to a literal hell to burn for eternity because they couldn’t “love god”. That hurt me indescribably to think they were mentally and emotionally tormented by this doctrine. Looking back, that’s probably when my faith began to fall apart.
Very late commenter. I was raised Catholic, and live in Italy. I went to a Catholic school, and they pretty much told us the same story about heaven and hell… only people were eating with chopsticks, not forks! And they didn’t mention the chopsticks being strapped to their hands, so I wondered why they couldn’t just use one end of the tool…
Question: I am a Presbyterian Minister who just yesterday preached against penal substitutionary atonement and against the idea of an eternal flaming torment of hell. But what do I do with Luke 16:19-31? In that parable, there is an eternal flaming torment of Hades, so it’s hard for me to argue Jesus didn’t have that concept when it’s right there. Thanks.
Good on ya!! Actually, the passage doesn’t say anything about *eternal* punishment. But in any event, it’s a “parable” not statement about reality AND it’s almost certainly one Jesus himself did not tell. I try to explain why in my book Heaven and Hell. (Spoiler: the parable presupposes that someone *has* been raised from the dead and Jews still don’t believe him….)
I wonder what the earthly version of Catholic purgatory would be!
Ah, they never conceived of one! By the 13th century the earthly afterlife idea wasn’t part of the equation.disabledupes{ec1a2ea21eb2d624572b5d57bd98ff7a}disabledupes
Dr. Ehrman,
New blog member here! I was raised in fundamentalist Christianity, graduated from a fundamentalist Bible college much like Moody, and spent a few years studying at a Southern Baptist seminary.
I have been in the process of deconstruction for about 2 years now and have just recently come to terms with the fact that I am no longer a Christian. I struggle deeply with the feeling of fear you mentioned you felt in the sauna. I can definitely relate. Do you have any recommendations on how to alleviate the fear? Intellectually and morally I don’t believe it, but my heart can’t seem to let go of the possibility that I’m wrong and might end up there regretting my decision to deconvert for all of eternity.
It seems everyone is different. For me, it took years of thinking hard and reasoning and realizing that it simply made no sense that a loving God who made me would torture me for 100 trillion years (and that just the beginning) for things I had messed up on or gotten wrong about for 50. That’s just a crazy idea that humans came up with. It took me a long time to get over it, but I did and now think of it as a very weird idea we all had. (Have you seen my book Heaven and Hell? Also, I talk about the issue in my book God’s Problem.) One good thing would be to get together with like-minded people and talk it out repeatedly….