Hell, part 1

Over the next few weeks, I thought we could take a look at Heaven and Hell. My personal, in depth study of hell some years ago was one of the main factors in my deconversion. I looked through my old posts and could not find a comprehensive examination of those subjects, so that's what I want to do now. We will start with Hell, since that is a fear introduced to believers as the only alternative to Heaven, where everyone woul prefer to end up, of course.

The general, cultural idea of Hell, in Christian North America, is either a place of eternal torment with fire, pain, and anguish, or a dark void of eternal separation from god and all that is good. Does the Bible support either of these ideas? Is there reason to believe either version of Hell exists? Let's find out.

Today, we will start with the old testament. I looked up the word Hell in my Strong's concordance. For the old testament there appeared to be only one Hebrew word translated into the English word Hell: Sheol. Sheol is also translated into the English words "death" and "grave" in multiple scriptures. Read about  Sheol here: (link)

Sheol of the old testament was not the hell of eternal punishment found christianity. It was an underground world where ALL the dead resided. It has its equivalent in the Greek Hades. Obviously, no such world actually exists. It is pure mythology.

However, it is important to recognize that Jews do not follow the doctrine of "sola scriptura" that many protestant christian groups do, including the church of christ, of which I was a member.  Jews also have a long tradition of rabbinical writings which include laws, commentary and additional stories. These are found in the Talmud and other books. They are often given as much weight, or more, as what christians would call the old testament, which Jews call the bible.

We are not going to cover what Jewish extrabiblical writings say about hell, because I'm not all that concerned with them. Jews are not going around trying to convince anyone they will go to hell if they do not believe what is taught by Judaism. Many christians, however, are doing just that.

I will give you a few links with Jewish discussions of what they believe about hell and or an afterlife.

Here
Here
Here
Here
and
Here

As you can see there is great variation in the Jewish faith and tradition. Each of the above links shows a unique perspective, with some pertinent history. However, they all seem similar in that they do not take a stance of condemnation or eternal punishment/torture. They don't see a need to evangelize to save souls. Most do not think what you believe matters as much as what you do. If christianity had not happened, would the world have been a kinder gentler place? Who knows.