Hades/hell is a pagan concept inherited from Greek and Persian religions.
There is a she-ol [שאול].
[שאול] is the passive participle/gerund/verbal-noun of sha-al [שאל].
[שאל] sha-al means question, to ask.
Therefore, she-ol, the passive verbal-noun means the "unknown". What Job and King David said was not hell/hades, but
- into the "darkness of the unknown",
- where "no human I've ever met will meet me again."
Even the name of Saul in Hebrew Shaul, is the same spelling as she-ol, but different inflection. Saul's name means "being asked".
There is no gehenna between the books of Genesis to Malakhi, except the gai hinnom [גיע הינום], the valley of Hinnom, the place where people sacrificed their children to their gods, praying to their dead children to intercede on their behalf to mitigate for their transgressions against their gods.
Daniel 12: 2 says
| ורבים מישני אדמת עפר | Then many from sleep of soil of ground |
| יקיצו אלה לחיי עולם | shall arise those to life eternal |
| ואלה לחרפות לדראון עולם | and those to be condemned to eternal contempt-oblivion |
those who are spited to eternal contempted-oblivion will never arise. They will be forgotten in shame. There is no eternal damnation.
Daniel 12:2 is mistranslated by people who try to force the verse to say some will arise to suffer eternal damnation.
Eccl 9: 5 says
| כי החיים יודעים שימתו | as the living know that they will die |
| והמתים אינם יודעים מאומה | and the dead they know not anything |
| ואין עוד להם שכר | and no more to them recompense/wages |
| כי נשכח זכרם | because forgotten is their memory |
Eccl 9:5 says the dead will never be punished or rewarded.
So, there is no such thing as hell. Those who resurrect shall live forever. The rest will not suffer in eternal hell, but forgotten in shame.
Great article and completely accurate. The concept of a fiery torture place was adopted by the church. Early 1st century Christians did not.
ReplyDeleteEcclesiastes accurately states the condition of death as a place where no thoughts exist. Darkness, nothingness. Yet, still a place that can be exited. Jonah was considered to be in Sheol for three days while in the belly of a large fish. The state of the dead is more accurately portrayed as a place of dreamless sleep. Like a candle's fire that is put out. The flame didn't 'GO' anywhere. Perhaps a crude analogy is that of a phone, who's data is on the cloud, but inactive when the computer is turned off. Death is like the phone dying. The data still exists, but it's inactive. The data doesn't go off to live on its own and can only be restored when a new physical phone is connected to that same data store. It's this confidence of a restoration ( or resurrection ) that writers of the Psalms and people like Abraham had confidence in.
Thanks for your thoughts. I included Ecclesiastes and Daniel references.
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