Religion without hell?

This might be interesting to you guysThe Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless PunishmentDeals with the origins of hell, and its origins in the OT (it wasnt just for sinners...)Seams like Christians really have no originality at all....Red

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chara:
[B][QUOTE]Originally posted by RedVento:Seams like Christians really have no originality at all....Red[/B][/QUOTE]It never ceases to puzzle me that people use the existence of tales in other cultures as evidence against things written in the Bible. Resting on the belief that God is the Creator and all things come from him .... why wouldn't other cultures have those "stories"? Mayhap they didn't just make them up.[/B][/QUOTE]Because "christians" like to say they are the ONLY ones to be saved.. IF they were so willing to adopt other culture's beliefs into Christianity then they should make no pretenses about it and would not be so judgemental about the cultures whose beliefs they just incorporated...Christmas coincides with the winter solstace celebration, what a coincidence.. Christmas trees taken from Germanic tribes. Churches placed at existing places of worship.. Christianity is not so much about saving people as it is getting more converts.

But isn't it worth pondering? Jews originally had no sense of heaven or hell, when you died you died. The Christian notion of Hell never became that popular until "Paradise Lost."Now in all my years of going to temple not once did any Rabbi talk about Hell. At none of the jewish funerals I went to did the Rabbi talk about Hell, or Heaven for that matter. As far as I was taught we are to do good for the here and now, and not for the promise of eternal salvation/damnation.Plus what about religions like Budism? They beleive in incarnation. Those who are evil come back as a lower life, those who are good come back as a higher life until reaching Nirvana. No hell their either, well not in the "eternal suffering" sense.

If I remember my hebrew school properly, schoel was a place where the dead could go, but it wasn't hell in the modern place, more like Purgatory. There was no real notion of Hell and Heaven till later on.