selfAdjoint said:
In other words to hell with the documents, I am going to make up the Jesus that fits my preconceptions and talk a blue streak to try to bully people into not objecting.
Yes, that’s right sA,
you are the one making up Jesus and bullying, not me. I can tell from what you say you don’t know squat about the documents, so why are you acting like you do know. If somebody comes here talking about God being energy, that quantum mechanics proves free will, or some other scientific nonsense, would you sit still for it? So, what am I supposed to do,
pretend I don’t know this subject?
selfAdjoint said:
The gospels, and maybe some of the papyruses that have been found, are the only evidence we have about what Jesus said. To play games with their text in this way is to abandon any legitimate scholarship for sheer fantasy.
In the past I’ve stuck up for you (not that you need it) when you were accused of ignorance. But here sir you are uncharacteristically talking out of your grumpy old backside.
First of all, my undergrad degree in religious studies and the many years of study afterwards qualifies me as more of a scholar on this subject than most. Further, I’ve studied
NOT as a Christian, but as an agnostic hoping to find out what really was known about Jesus (and I am still not religious in any way). In the process I came to understand historical processes (as you know, history is document based). It is impossible to understand anything that was included in the Bible (or why it was included) without also understanding the way language was used, and what the cultural conditions were when things were written. Also necessary to understand are the Bible’s authors, which is why scholarship on the history of the Bible is crucial to study.
I tell you that the overwhelmingly strongest reason why any Christian believes in hell is because their religion insists on it. It is not because the evidence supports the idea even slightly, as a number of my professors made very clear. Also, read modern objective scholarship from religious studies departments at top universities like Harvard or Princeton (Elaine Pagals, for instance, and her book “The Origin of Satan”), and you won’t find any objective thinker who agrees with the modern
religious theory that claims hell is supported by Jesus or anyone, even the nut who wrote Revelations.
Are you really going to make me do your homework for you? You could Google and find all this out for yourself if you were more interested in scholarship than maintaining hell so you can continue to insist Jesus and gang were deluded fear mongers. But okay, I’ll help a little. The following is excerpted from an essay on the history of hell, written by a Christian, but his thinking is close to what is best supported by evidence:
Gehenna, the word hell is given for in the New Testament, is rooted in an Old Testament location. It is generally regarded as derived from a valley nearby Jerusalem that originally belonged to a man named Hinnom. Scholars say the word is a transliteration of the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, a valley that had a long history in the Old Testament, all of it bad. Hence, Gehenna is a proper name like the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and New Mexico. This being true, the word should never have been translated “hell,” for as we'll see, the two words have nothing in common.
We first find Hinnom in Josh. 1.8 and 18.16, where he is mentioned in Joshua's layout of the lands of Judah and Benjamin. In II K. 23.10, we find that righteous King Josiah “defiled Topheth in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.”
Josiah, in his purification of the land of Judah, violated the idolatrous worship to the idol Molech by tearing down the shrines. Topheth (also spelled Tophet) was a word meaning literally, “a place of burning.” In II Chron. 28.3, idolatrous King Ahaz burnt incense and his children in the fire there, as did idolatrous King Manasseh in II Chron. 33.6. In Neh. 11.30, we find some settling in Topheth after the restoration of the Jewish captives from Babylon.
In Jer. 19.2, 6, Jeremiah prophesied calamity coming upon the idolatrous Jews there, calling it the valley of slaughter, because God was going to slaughter the Jews there, using Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. In Jer. 7.32, Jeremiah prophesied destruction coming upon the idolatrous Jews of his day with these words:
“Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter; for they shall burn in Tophet, till there be no peace.”
Notice the mention of Topheth, “the place of burning,” again. Isaiah also spoke of Topheth this way in Isa. 30.33, when he warned the pro-Egypt party among the Jews (i.e., those trusting in Egypt for their salvation from Babylon rather than God) of a fiery judgment coming on them.
In Jer. 19.11-14, Jeremiah gave this pronouncement of judgment by Babylon on Jerusalem at the valley of Hinnom:
And the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, shall be defiled as the place of Tophet, because of all the houses upon whose roofs they have burned incense unto all the host of heaven, and have poured out drink offerings unto other gods.
From these passages we can see that, to the Jews, the valley of Hinnom, or Topheth, from which the New Testament concept of Gehenna arose, came to mean a place of burning, a valley of slaughter, and a place of calamitous fiery judgment.
Thus, Thayer in his Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, said, concerning Gehenna:
"Gehenna, the name of a valley on the S. and E. of Jerusalem...which was so called from the cries of the little children who were thrown into the fiery arms of Moloch, i.e., of an idol having the form of a bull. The Jews so abhorred the place after these horrible sacrifices had been abolished by king Josiah (2 Kings xxiii.10), that they cast into it not only all manner of refuse, but even the dead bodies of animals and of unburied criminals who had been executed. And since fires were always needed to consume the dead bodies, that the air might not become tainted by the putrefaction, it came to pass that the place was called Gehenna."
Actually, since Gehenna was a proper name of a valley, it would have been called Gehenna whether or not any idolatry, burning, or dumping of garbage had ever occurred there, and it did, as we now see. Fudge said concerning the history of the valley of Hinnom:
"The valley bore this name at least as early as the writing of Joshua (Josh. 15:8; 18:16), though nothing is known of its origin. It was the site of child-sacrifices to Moloch in the days of Ahaz and Manasseh (apparently in 2 Kings 16:3; 21:6). This earned it the name “Topheth,” a place to be spit on or abhorred. This “Topheth” may have become a gigantic pyre for burning corpses in the days of Hezekiah after God slew 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in a night and saved Jerusalem (Isa. 30:31-33; 37:26)."
Jeremiah predicted that it would be filled to overflowing with Israelite corpses when God judged them for their sins (Jer. 7:31-33; 19:2-13). Josephus indicates that the same valley was heaped with dead bodies of the Jews following the Roman siege of Jerusalem about A.D. 69-70...Josiah desecrated the repugnant valley as part of his godly reform (2 Kings 23:10). Long before the time of Jesus, the Valley of Hinnom had become crusted over with connotations of whatever is “condemned, useless, corrupt, and forever discarded.” (Edward William Fudge, The Fire That Consumes [Houston: Providential Press, 1982], p. 160.)
We need to keep this place in mind as we read Jesus' teaching using a word referring back to this location in the new Testament. Now here’s only a brief explanation of when Jesus picks up the term (you can read the exegesis of all Jesus’ use of the term here --
http://gospelthemes.com/hell.htm ):
In Mt. 5.21-22, Jesus used Gehenna for the first time in inspired speech:
“Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment, and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire (Gehenna--SGD).”
As we mentioned earlier in this study, Jesus actually used the Greek word Gehenna for the first time in inspired writing. The word had never occurred in the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint. When we read the word hell, all kinds of sermon outlines, illustrations, and ideas come to the fore of our minds. None of these came to the minds of Jesus' listeners, for they had never heard the word before in inspired speech. It is very significant that the word did not occur even once in the Septuagint, quoted by Jesus and his apostles.
I suggest that to the Jews in Jesus' audience, Jesus' words referred merely to the valley southeast of Jerusalem. In their Old Testament background, Gehenna meant a place of burning, a valley where rebellious Jews had been slaughtered before and would be again if they didn't repent, as Malachi, John the Baptist, and Jesus urged them to do. Jesus didn't have to say what Gehenna was, as it was a well-known place to the people of that area, but his teaching was at least consistent with the national judgment announced by Malachi and John the Baptist. The closest fire in the context is Mt. 3.10-12, where John announced imminent fiery judgment on the nation of Israel.
Let's notice the other Gehenna passages to ascertain more about Jesus' use of Gehenna. As we do so, let's analyze each passage thus: Does the passage teach things we don't believe about an unending fiery hell, but which fit national judgment in Gehenna? The author’s interpretation of a “national judgement” is right on target in my opinion. You didn’t have to be seer to recognize what the Jewish state was headed for with Rome. Rome simply did not tolerate rebellion, and Jeruselem was a constant pain in the neck to Rome.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe Jesus had come to show the faithful a way to experience “heaven,” and to show them how to face death without worry they could survive death. What we do know is that within forty years of Jesus’ death Jeruselem was no more. It and the temple were destroyed, 3 million Jews were killed or taken into slavery.
Is that hell (not to mention apocalyptic) enough for you?
