When did God curse us to hell?

the answer: everywhere. simply put, everyone in the old testament is going to hell.because, you see, "hell" is an english rendering of sheol - the name of the hebrew underworld. or grave, in the most literal sense.however, your observations of the text are pretty good. i've been constantly debating those precise things for months here.

then why have it at all? i do not consider paul's epistles to be inspired, let alone a revelation of anything. as i've pointed out before, he contradicts christ as well as the torah. i don't think he does, personally.

actually, i think it MAY have been the other way around. i think the concept of an afterlife may have actually existed first, and have disappeared by the time of the writing of the bible.but i'm not sure. i'll look into it.however, your's a good model from there. the indication in the bible is only hints of an afterlife. mostly, it seems to use "grave" in a euphemistic sense for death. the concept that followed it, which i think you can find some inter-testimental books, is something similar to hades. not HELL, per se, but people exist as shades of their former selves.later, this concept gets muddle with christianity, and the newer concept of satan, who becomes evil, and then becomes a fallen angel. sometimes condemned to hell, sometimes running it.the idea never fully makes sense to me. if satan's in hell, why is he here too? if he encourages evil, why does he also punish it? the concepts have gotten far too mixed up with stuff that's frankly all later dogma. you're mixing up the two stories. the commandment to "be fruitful and multiply" is not in the tending the garden story. there, adam is just a gardener. the indication is that he is mortal, however. but the two stories are NOT related.and no, there is no indication of an afterlife ANYWHERE in genesis. nroe i believe most of the ot. but i haven't read it carefully or completely. quite. genesis 1 has quite a respect for evolution. for instance, if you pay close attention, it's not god that creates the animals -- it's the earth. god commands the earth, and the earth does it. all god does is talk. god creates man, however. and treats man, two separate entities, as one, made in his image. the tense of the verb in that verse actually indicates a long and possibly unfinished process, too. in other words, we are still evolving towards god.not to pretend there is a huge correlation between science and genesis 1. there just isn't. but whoever wrote it had some idea of what was going on, if not common descent. i think jesus is an example like satan was above. he got thrown into a role he wasn't meant to play. i think jesus was out to reform judaism, not be your ticket to heaven.

more of a suspicion than anything else. but i'll poke around a bit.there is the occasional hint at an earlier religion in the torah, a pre-judaic faith. the etiologies are there to explain practices that already happen (why people get married, why places have certain name, etc). "passover" is an etiology of why people kill a lamb in a certain way, and hold a certain feast every year. in reality, this practice is probably closely related to the "scapegoat." sacrificing one animal in the flock to satisfy an evil outside demon (azazel), animal, etc. better one of your choosing, than an animal tearing through your flock.the predecesors of the jews had probably been doing this for several thousand years before writing the torah, and it suggests a very primitive superstitious spirituality, from around the time of the dawn of civilization. it might be possible that the need for something after death reaches back that far as well, and the judaic tradition is built upon that.but like i said, i don't know. i doubt anyone really does. it's hard to find writing from around then. well, i think it's a little more than mortality. but not neccessarily as individuals. i'm not even totally sure what i believe here, really. i think the bible will support that, when you remove the tradition built on top of it.he did say he did not come to abolish the law. and yet that is what paul has him doing.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 03-24-2005 01:08 AM

study the bible in my class last semester brought me to an interesting "revelation."i'd always perceived a few major changes in the way god is represented in the bible.first: angry and petty.
then: angry and magnificent.
then: absent followed by stern
then: forgiving.now, it's pretty easy to see where the BIG shifts take place. the god of genesis is different than the god of exodus. judges and samuel aren't in line either. isaiah and matthew don't seem to match up.but as we studied the smaller books a little, these abrupt changes smoothed out a lot. seems i just hadn't read these transitional fossils. then it occured to me:it's not god changing. it's the people writing about him.

can't do the ≠ symbol?(also, my map seems to be a little out of date, taped together from a few hundred different maps, and drawns all over in crayon.)

there's no other way to rectify that with the bible actually. it's a fundamentally (pun intended) different way of reading the bible, but it requires or perhaps mandates a sense that the bible is indeed fallible and the work of men.

ah i see.my father is actually a relatively well known mathematician, btw. nothing else really passed on accept the propensity to use funny symbols whenever possible.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 03-24-2005 08:17 AM

probably. yet it's suprisingly unfunny. math homework was a bitch growing up. i was never bad it, but i never could ask him for help. not because he'd be condescending about it or anything, but because he'd tend to explain it with combinatorics. thanks for the help dad.however, it does occasionally cross into one of my areas of interest. for instance, i've personally talked to, and been to a lecture by the major opponent of the bible codes, brendan mckay of the australian national university. and the man has a good point...