It isn't a command, since humans don't have that ability. Hell is described by Jesus in Luke 16. Humans being human, all sorts of temperal tortures have been justified as doing the victim a favor by potentially saving them from eternal torture, but I don't think that is explicit in the text.
As an aside, over half of Christians (Catholics and Eastern Orthodox primarily) consider the teachings of the church to be the primary root of the faith, not "sola scriptura" as came in with protestantism. All sorts of religiously justified torture arose on both sides of that divide though.
over half of Christians (Catholics and Eastern Orthodox primarily) consider the teachings of the church to be the primary root of the faith, not “sola scriptura” as came in with protestantism.
I have never heard that before. Thank you for your reply. The more I learn, the more I understand how much stuff I don't know.
It makes more sense. The Bible has contradictions, sometimes within the same book. Matthew for example can't seem to decide who the dad is. If you go sola scriptura you are basically stuck squaring the circle. If you have a Pope they can issue an official version that overrides everything. That's why you see all those weird Bible literalists groups are prots.
I'm pretty sure that the guy meant that the bible doesn't instruct us to dominate and torture people when he said, "The Bible doesn’t teach dominating and torturing people, for one." and not that hell isn't in the bible.
I really don't know what to say. You can read the gospels and see Jesus threatening people who refuse to kiss the ring with hell. You can see Paul doing the same. Do what I say or die and go to hell. Forsake your own family for me or die and go to hell. Hail me as king or die and go to hell. Bankrupt yourself and depend fully on God (with me as proxy) or go to hell
There are even verses where the man argues that the mystical components of the universe must and do bend to his will. Claiming to rule the Sabbath would be on the level of a modern human claiming to boss gravity around. But not content with that we have stories of him beating the devil and arguing with God
How is this not threatening people? How is this not assuming authority over people? Literally telling people to abandon their children and follow him is not authority seeking?
The guy said, "The Bible doesn’t teach dominating and torturing people, for one." You're talking about Jesus "threatening" people with hell, not instructing them to go dominate and torture their fellow man.
You might look at Matthew 10:34–39 and Luke 12:49–53 to support your argument.
I am alright. I already got Paul condemning a couple to die for not giving him enough money right after he gave a list of people who annoyed him and said that they were going to hell.
No wonder that religion causes so many problems. All the founders are just these petty awful bitter people.
Weird how the author of City of God and one of the most famous Christian thinkers of all time completely disagreed. You got to love a flexible moral system, it allows anyone to claim to be the True Scotsmen authentic deal and condemn as heretics everyone else.
Augustine was wrong about Christianity, St. Paul was wrong abojt Christianity, Jesus was wrong about Christianity, every single Christian thinker was wrong about Christianity except one random on Lemmy.
I can look it up tonight if you really want but basically Augustine argued that you are allowed to go after heretics as long as you do it for love of their souls. If they couldn't be convinced of their "errors" by talking you were allowed to use violence since burning in hell is so much worse.
As I said it is pretty amazing how every single person can just declare themselves the true Christian whenever they want.
Well, the reality is that most people who call themselves Christian are wrong about many things, but not everything.
Augustine subscribed to the Just War theory, which flies in the face of loving your neighbour as well as your enemy, and "Nor will they learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:4)
That being said Augustine wasn't wrong about everything. The Bible is a thick book, and people back then didn't have the resources that exist today. I can look up any word or topic within the Bible directly or from additional resources in mere seconds, whereas anyone from even 50 years ago had to scan through pages manually.
How lucky we are to have the single True Christian in our midst.
Honestly, do you even know the Biblical languages? Could I give you a random sentence in Hebrew or konic Greek and you can translate it? How about Aramaic? Because take a guess which one of us in this conversation can. Before my deconversion I was planning to be a Biblical Scholar. Fortunately I saw the light in time.
Ah, so then you know that the commonly accepted Trinity doctrine isn't supported by the Bible, and John 1:1 isn't the evidence that it's usually presented as. Because the first "God" is the·osʹ which is preceded by ton which is a definite article (ie, the God). And Koine Greek did not have an indefinite article. So if predicate noun isn't preceded by a definite article, then it's an implied indefinite (ie, a god). And in fact many translations render the indefinite the·osʹ as either "divine" or "godlike", because without the definite article, those are equally valid ways of writing that verse.
Sigh. A yes or no would have sufficed. You don't need to know Greek to know the Trinity was made up later. You can just look at the arguments made two centuries later.
While you are at it John 1:1 is just a retrocon. The OT contains the sentence "let us create the world" which comes from the older views of the Hebrews that there were more than one god. It is also there to pick a side in an argument that St. Paul hinted at; when did Jesus become important. He of course viewed it at the Easter miracle, Mark author puts it at baptism, Matthew and Luke authors put it at conception, and the last gospel finishes the trend and makes it prior to conception. A common trend of religion, to one up itself as time goes on. Also a big borrowing from the cultures around them that loved dying and rising God myths.
Now instead of copying and pasting a Wikipedia quote why don't you answer the question? I hand you a randomly selected book from the Bible in its original, can you read it yes or no? If the answer is no you might not want to lecture others on translation issues.
The OT contains the sentence “let us create the world” which comes from the older views of the Hebrews that there were more than one god.
Well yes, technically there were more than one god. The word "god" means "creator". Even Satan is referred to as "the god of this system". This is why there is always a qualifier before "God" such as "the True God", "Almighty God", etc. As "God" itself is just a title and not a name. The Bible gives the name for "Almighty God" as Jehovah. And yes, some people say "Yahweh", but even Jewish scholars have agreed recently that Jehovah is the historically accurate pronunciation.
But back to "let us create the world", Jesus is identified as the Master Worker. The person who physically created everything, aside from himself.
Colossians 1:15-17 - "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and on the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All other things have been created through him and for him. 17 Also, he is before all other things, and by means of him all other things were made to exist"
Now instead of copying and pasting a Wikipedia quote why don’t you answer the question?
Aside from the characters the·osʹ (because I can never write with my own keyboard the same way, and I definitely didn't use Wikipedia), I didn't copy and paste anything.
The words often translated as hell are She'ol and Ge'henna.
She'ol is translated 31 times as hell, 31 times as grave, and 3 times as pit in the King James version.
The word itself is derived from sha'al which means "ask" or "request" because "the grave is always asking for more". Implying that death is always waiting. (Death in this context being the state of death, not "Death" the horseman, which itself is figurative).
She'ol is not a specific grave, but rather the "common grave of mankind". It refers to the state of being dead. As in "everyone goes 6ft under".
It doesn't refer to a "place of hell" and sure as hell (heh) doesn't refer to a place of torture.
Ge'henna is a short form for "Valley of Hinnom". It was a place outside of Jerusalem where Kings Ahaz and Manasseh engaged in idolatrous worship which included child sacrifices. Those Kings and their followers were executed and had their bodies dumped in that valley, left to rot and not buried, so that carrion eaters would desecrate their bodies and deprived from an honourable burial. And then the place was turned into a garbage dump to further dishonour them.
Jeremiah 7:31 - "They have built the high places of Toʹpheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinʹnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, something that I had not commanded and that had never even come into my heart."
So saying someone went to Ge'henna was akin to saying someone displeased God so badly that they will not be honoured by Him and he finds their actions "detestable".
This is all opinion and if you read writers who natively spoke these languages and were much closer to the dates when it was written they disagree with you. There are descriptions of hell in the Talmud, I trust Rabbis to know more about Judaic beliefs of the time they are living in vs someone 20 centuries later who is not even Jewish.
People know what they believe and just because you can take a word and find it's entomology doesn't mean you know how the word was used or the ideas it represented. When I say Dartmouth to you do you think "mouth of the Dart river" or do you think of the famous school there? Does your answer change if someone of a different religion from you 20 centuries later argues that "really what they meant to say is"?
This is all opinion and if you read writers who natively spoke these languages and were much closer to the dates when it was written they disagree with you.
It's not opinion. It's based on historical studies and historical linguistics. This is not something I came up with out of thin air. It's been studied and verified by experts from around the world.
Even the Wikipedia page about She'ol states "Within the Hebrew Bible, there are few – often brief and nondescript – mentions of Sheol, seemingly describing it as a place where both the righteous and the unrighteous dead go, regardless of their moral choices in life."
That's something Jesus said about birth the righteous and unrighteous. It's the figurative "place" where everyone goes when they enter the state of death.
"there is generally no concept of judgment or reward and punishment attached to it. In fact, the more pessimistic books of the Bible, such as Ecclesiastes and Job, insist that all of the dead go down to Sheol, whether good or evil, rich or poor, slave or free man"
People know what they believe and just because you can take a word and find it's entomology doesn't mean you know how the word was used or the ideas it represented.
That's partially true. But there are many many supporting scriptures, old manuscripts like the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as other historical texts that do not support the notion of eternal torture, hell, or an "evil" afterlife.
And now you are goalpost moving. Sheol is not geheniham and never was. There is about 800 years of thought you are condensing into a single time period, a time period that we know there were arguments about this. At the supposed time of Jesus there were at least three versions of the afterlife floating around. What you are doing now is making those three into one and pull stuff from 800 years prior and saying that is part of it as well. Do you agree with every single idea people had in 1223 AD?
Yes you are right about one thing but what you are right about doesn't matter. The 8th century BC Jews didn't really have a concept of judgement in the afterlife. That however tells us nothing about 1st century Jews.
Yes and the original 1st century meaning to those early Christians you are quoting it meant a very bad place you burn forever in. It doesn't matter that 8 centuries prior the word didn't even exist.
I gave you a specific example, Dartmouth, before and you are not acknowledging it. A word means what it means when it is spoken, the entymology is interesting but not the definition the word has forever.
Then how did the 1st century Christians interpret Ecclesiastes 9:5?
"For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all"
And how about all the times that Jesus referred to those who have died as being asleep? The comparison between death and sleep isn't a coincidence. When sleeping we kinda cease to exist temporarily. The part that's "us" goes away. Aside from dreams (which actually accounts for only a small portion of time unconscious, and we only remember a tiny fraction of dreams anyways) we don't think, feel, or even care about anything.
Your example of Dartmouth is irrelevant. The colloquial definition of a word in common language doesn't factor in, because we are looking at the scholastic definitions. And doing so would give us context of the origins of the word Dartmouth, the region it refers to, and how it was used later on. And that way we get a full understanding of what the word used to mean and how it's used today.
Doing the same thing for the word "hell" gives us that important context. So your example is irrelevant.
Where is the command to torture people for eternity in the new testament?
It isn't a command, since humans don't have that ability. Hell is described by Jesus in Luke 16. Humans being human, all sorts of temperal tortures have been justified as doing the victim a favor by potentially saving them from eternal torture, but I don't think that is explicit in the text.
As an aside, over half of Christians (Catholics and Eastern Orthodox primarily) consider the teachings of the church to be the primary root of the faith, not "sola scriptura" as came in with protestantism. All sorts of religiously justified torture arose on both sides of that divide though.
I have never heard that before. Thank you for your reply. The more I learn, the more I understand how much stuff I don't know.
It makes more sense. The Bible has contradictions, sometimes within the same book. Matthew for example can't seem to decide who the dad is. If you go sola scriptura you are basically stuck squaring the circle. If you have a Pope they can issue an official version that overrides everything. That's why you see all those weird Bible literalists groups are prots.
Jesus is pretty clear in Mark that he talks in parables so some people won't understand and go to hell.
Mark 4:11-12
I'm pretty sure that the guy meant that the bible doesn't instruct us to dominate and torture people when he said, "The Bible doesn’t teach dominating and torturing people, for one." and not that hell isn't in the bible.
I really don't know what to say. You can read the gospels and see Jesus threatening people who refuse to kiss the ring with hell. You can see Paul doing the same. Do what I say or die and go to hell. Forsake your own family for me or die and go to hell. Hail me as king or die and go to hell. Bankrupt yourself and depend fully on God (with me as proxy) or go to hell There are even verses where the man argues that the mystical components of the universe must and do bend to his will. Claiming to rule the Sabbath would be on the level of a modern human claiming to boss gravity around. But not content with that we have stories of him beating the devil and arguing with God
How is this not threatening people? How is this not assuming authority over people? Literally telling people to abandon their children and follow him is not authority seeking?
The guy said, "The Bible doesn’t teach dominating and torturing people, for one." You're talking about Jesus "threatening" people with hell, not instructing them to go dominate and torture their fellow man.
You might look at Matthew 10:34–39 and Luke 12:49–53 to support your argument.
I am alright. I already got Paul condemning a couple to die for not giving him enough money right after he gave a list of people who annoyed him and said that they were going to hell.
No wonder that religion causes so many problems. All the founders are just these petty awful bitter people.
🤣 What do you think hell is exactly?
The guy said:
That hell exists is not teaching people to dominate and torture people.
Weird how the author of City of God and one of the most famous Christian thinkers of all time completely disagreed. You got to love a flexible moral system, it allows anyone to claim to be the True Scotsmen authentic deal and condemn as heretics everyone else.
Augustine was wrong about Christianity, St. Paul was wrong abojt Christianity, Jesus was wrong about Christianity, every single Christian thinker was wrong about Christianity except one random on Lemmy.
If you have a compelling argument to cite, please do. I don't pretend to know everything.
I can look it up tonight if you really want but basically Augustine argued that you are allowed to go after heretics as long as you do it for love of their souls. If they couldn't be convinced of their "errors" by talking you were allowed to use violence since burning in hell is so much worse.
As I said it is pretty amazing how every single person can just declare themselves the true Christian whenever they want.
"The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose"
Well, the reality is that most people who call themselves Christian are wrong about many things, but not everything.
Augustine subscribed to the Just War theory, which flies in the face of loving your neighbour as well as your enemy, and "Nor will they learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:4)
That being said Augustine wasn't wrong about everything. The Bible is a thick book, and people back then didn't have the resources that exist today. I can look up any word or topic within the Bible directly or from additional resources in mere seconds, whereas anyone from even 50 years ago had to scan through pages manually.
How lucky we are to have the single True Christian in our midst.
Honestly, do you even know the Biblical languages? Could I give you a random sentence in Hebrew or konic Greek and you can translate it? How about Aramaic? Because take a guess which one of us in this conversation can. Before my deconversion I was planning to be a Biblical Scholar. Fortunately I saw the light in time.
Ah, so then you know that the commonly accepted Trinity doctrine isn't supported by the Bible, and John 1:1 isn't the evidence that it's usually presented as. Because the first "God" is the·osʹ which is preceded by ton which is a definite article (ie, the God). And Koine Greek did not have an indefinite article. So if predicate noun isn't preceded by a definite article, then it's an implied indefinite (ie, a god). And in fact many translations render the indefinite the·osʹ as either "divine" or "godlike", because without the definite article, those are equally valid ways of writing that verse.
Sigh. A yes or no would have sufficed. You don't need to know Greek to know the Trinity was made up later. You can just look at the arguments made two centuries later.
While you are at it John 1:1 is just a retrocon. The OT contains the sentence "let us create the world" which comes from the older views of the Hebrews that there were more than one god. It is also there to pick a side in an argument that St. Paul hinted at; when did Jesus become important. He of course viewed it at the Easter miracle, Mark author puts it at baptism, Matthew and Luke authors put it at conception, and the last gospel finishes the trend and makes it prior to conception. A common trend of religion, to one up itself as time goes on. Also a big borrowing from the cultures around them that loved dying and rising God myths.
Now instead of copying and pasting a Wikipedia quote why don't you answer the question? I hand you a randomly selected book from the Bible in its original, can you read it yes or no? If the answer is no you might not want to lecture others on translation issues.
Well yes, technically there were more than one god. The word "god" means "creator". Even Satan is referred to as "the god of this system". This is why there is always a qualifier before "God" such as "the True God", "Almighty God", etc. As "God" itself is just a title and not a name. The Bible gives the name for "Almighty God" as Jehovah. And yes, some people say "Yahweh", but even Jewish scholars have agreed recently that Jehovah is the historically accurate pronunciation.
But back to "let us create the world", Jesus is identified as the Master Worker. The person who physically created everything, aside from himself.
Colossians 1:15-17 - "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 because by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and on the earth, the things visible and the things invisible, whether they are thrones or lordships or governments or authorities. All other things have been created through him and for him. 17 Also, he is before all other things, and by means of him all other things were made to exist"
Aside from the characters the·osʹ (because I can never write with my own keyboard the same way, and I definitely didn't use Wikipedia), I didn't copy and paste anything.
Hell is not in the Bible.
The words often translated as hell are She'ol and Ge'henna.
She'ol is translated 31 times as hell, 31 times as grave, and 3 times as pit in the King James version.
The word itself is derived from sha'al which means "ask" or "request" because "the grave is always asking for more". Implying that death is always waiting. (Death in this context being the state of death, not "Death" the horseman, which itself is figurative).
She'ol is not a specific grave, but rather the "common grave of mankind". It refers to the state of being dead. As in "everyone goes 6ft under".
It doesn't refer to a "place of hell" and sure as hell (heh) doesn't refer to a place of torture.
Ge'henna is a short form for "Valley of Hinnom". It was a place outside of Jerusalem where Kings Ahaz and Manasseh engaged in idolatrous worship which included child sacrifices. Those Kings and their followers were executed and had their bodies dumped in that valley, left to rot and not buried, so that carrion eaters would desecrate their bodies and deprived from an honourable burial. And then the place was turned into a garbage dump to further dishonour them.
Jeremiah 7:31 - "They have built the high places of Toʹpheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinʹnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, something that I had not commanded and that had never even come into my heart."
So saying someone went to Ge'henna was akin to saying someone displeased God so badly that they will not be honoured by Him and he finds their actions "detestable".
Nothing to do with a place of torture.
This is all opinion and if you read writers who natively spoke these languages and were much closer to the dates when it was written they disagree with you. There are descriptions of hell in the Talmud, I trust Rabbis to know more about Judaic beliefs of the time they are living in vs someone 20 centuries later who is not even Jewish.
People know what they believe and just because you can take a word and find it's entomology doesn't mean you know how the word was used or the ideas it represented. When I say Dartmouth to you do you think "mouth of the Dart river" or do you think of the famous school there? Does your answer change if someone of a different religion from you 20 centuries later argues that "really what they meant to say is"?
It's not opinion. It's based on historical studies and historical linguistics. This is not something I came up with out of thin air. It's been studied and verified by experts from around the world.
Even the Wikipedia page about She'ol states "Within the Hebrew Bible, there are few – often brief and nondescript – mentions of Sheol, seemingly describing it as a place where both the righteous and the unrighteous dead go, regardless of their moral choices in life."
That's something Jesus said about birth the righteous and unrighteous. It's the figurative "place" where everyone goes when they enter the state of death.
The site myjewishlearning.com says of hell in the Talmud:
"there is generally no concept of judgment or reward and punishment attached to it. In fact, the more pessimistic books of the Bible, such as Ecclesiastes and Job, insist that all of the dead go down to Sheol, whether good or evil, rich or poor, slave or free man"
That's partially true. But there are many many supporting scriptures, old manuscripts like the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as other historical texts that do not support the notion of eternal torture, hell, or an "evil" afterlife.
And now you are goalpost moving. Sheol is not geheniham and never was. There is about 800 years of thought you are condensing into a single time period, a time period that we know there were arguments about this. At the supposed time of Jesus there were at least three versions of the afterlife floating around. What you are doing now is making those three into one and pull stuff from 800 years prior and saying that is part of it as well. Do you agree with every single idea people had in 1223 AD?
Yes you are right about one thing but what you are right about doesn't matter. The 8th century BC Jews didn't really have a concept of judgement in the afterlife. That however tells us nothing about 1st century Jews.
I'm not moving the goalpost at all. The discussion is about the definition of the word that in some English translations is rendered "hell".
The discussion about She'ol and Ge'henna is that it's those words translated into "hell".
So to discuss what "hell" is, the original meaning of those words need to be considered.
Yes and the original 1st century meaning to those early Christians you are quoting it meant a very bad place you burn forever in. It doesn't matter that 8 centuries prior the word didn't even exist.
I gave you a specific example, Dartmouth, before and you are not acknowledging it. A word means what it means when it is spoken, the entymology is interesting but not the definition the word has forever.
Then how did the 1st century Christians interpret Ecclesiastes 9:5?
"For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all"
And how about all the times that Jesus referred to those who have died as being asleep? The comparison between death and sleep isn't a coincidence. When sleeping we kinda cease to exist temporarily. The part that's "us" goes away. Aside from dreams (which actually accounts for only a small portion of time unconscious, and we only remember a tiny fraction of dreams anyways) we don't think, feel, or even care about anything.
Your example of Dartmouth is irrelevant. The colloquial definition of a word in common language doesn't factor in, because we are looking at the scholastic definitions. And doing so would give us context of the origins of the word Dartmouth, the region it refers to, and how it was used later on. And that way we get a full understanding of what the word used to mean and how it's used today.
Doing the same thing for the word "hell" gives us that important context. So your example is irrelevant.