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Author Topic:   Origins of Hell
SuperNintendo Chalmers
Member (Idle past 5834 days)
Posts: 772
From: Bartlett, IL, USA
Joined: 12-27-2005


Message 1 of 2 (321848)
06-15-2006 12:08 PM


I would like this to be a sort of continuation of the thread:
http://EvC Forum: The Fires of Hell Have Gone Out: No Eternal Torment -->EvC Forum: The Fires of Hell Have Gone Out: No Eternal Torment
about hello started by PD.
However, I would like to focuse more on the origins of hell... as opposed to whether the concept of hell is supported by scripture...although this can certainly be discussed as well.
From my admittedly limited research it appears that the concept of hell is a deliberate mis-translation of scripture...
The question is then: where did this idea come from?
I have always assumed it was invented as a scare tactic to control people and drive them towards the church and to obey the commands of the church.
I found some interesting thoughts here:
It is a God dishonoring doctrine, and was handed down to us by the heathen converts to Christianity in the early years of the third century. These converts were anxious to reconcile their new faith with their former pagan systems. Through these so-called early church fathers many other errors entered the church until the whole system of Christianity was corrupted.
At first the hell fire doctrine was held by only a few, but as time went on it became quite popular with those who were only part Christian and part heathen”men who wore the philosopher's garb to their dying day and who are responsible for all the errors that have disgraced the church from that time to the present.
Tertullian, who wrote about 200 to 220 A.D., is said to be the first of the early Christian fathers who openly taught the doctrine of an eternal hell of torture. He wrote thus:
"How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult when I behold so many proud monarchs and fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded scholars, so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians more tuneful in expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers."”Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Vol. I Ch. 15, Page 537.
Gibbon stops abruptly, and adds:
"But the humanity of the reader will permit me to draw the veil over the rest of the infernal description."
The next writer of note to teach this doctrine was Augustine, and little by little it became a part of the religious teaching of the church during the years of moral darkness that followed the third century.
St. Augustine was a great lover of the Platonic system of philosophy and studied the Bible from a Platonic view.
"Of all the fathers of the Latin church," says Villemain, "St. Augustine manifested the most imagination in theology."
He was a poor Greek scholar and understood nothing of Hebrew but was quite a good scholar in Latin, and an eloquent speaker. He taught and wrote during the most corrupt state of the church. The "mystery of iniquity," which Paul said was already working in his day, was now bearing fruit in the development of error and intolerance. All sorts of pagan practices and doctrines were already incorporated into the so-called Christian church. Hell became the "shibboleth" of the priests”the "big stick" of a false religion to drive men to a fallen church.
The whole idea of hell as taught in our day can be traced to the old pagan systems of Greece and Rome. Even to the present day there are some who quote St. Augustine as authority for this doctrine. Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary, says:
"So great a punishment says St. Augustine that no torment known to us can be compared with it." - Article Hell.
St. Gregory Nazianzen believed that the punishment of sinners in the next world would not last forever; and St. Jerome believed and taught that all sinners would suffer eternally, except those who had died in the Catholic faith. That the suffering of these might be mitigated by the prayers and good works of the faithful, was taught by many early Catholic Saints. Even unbaptized infants are consigned to hell by some of these. They had a limbus infantum for the children, probably a little side show in hell itself. The haste with which some send for a minister or priest to sprinkle a dying infant, is evidence of the fact that some churches still believe in the damnation of unbaptized children.
from Bible Study - You Have Questions. The Bible Has Answers!
I also saw some interesting stuff here: http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/tbhell.html
The pre-christian origins of hell are discussed here:
http://www.homestead.com/bibleorigins*net/hellsorigins.html
Mention is made in Revelation of a "lake of fire" set aside for the ungodly and the Devil (Serpent). My studies of Mesopotamian myths have failed to identify the above motifs in their notions of the underworld. It is a different case, however, with the Egyptian and Greek myths.
Mesopotamian myths make no mention of a "lake of fire" or a body of water that is fiery in the underworld. In the below quote Ningishzida is a Sumerian tree/serpent deity who can assume various forms, a serpent-dragon or human.
Ningishzida's journey to the underworld, portrays him with hands and neck bound by a demon, who is about to sail a barge on a river leading to the underworld. Ningishzida's sister, addressing him as "Damu" pleads to board the craft with her brother. He attempts to dissuade her, telling her, he goes against his will bound by a demon. He notes that there is no water in the river of the underworld, which seems strange as the boat he is on is using a river to get to the underworld. There is no mention here of "rivers of fire" like Greek myths, or a "lake of fire" as in Egyptian myths.
Nigishzida speaks to his sister :
"The river of the nether world produces no water, no water is drunk from it. (1 ms. adds: Why should you sail?) The fields of the nether world produce no grain, no flour is eaten from it. (1 ms. adds: Why should you sail?) The sheep of the nether world produce no wool, no cloth is woven from it. " (Ningishzida's Journey to the Underworld. Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr173.htm)
Greek myths also fail to mention a "lake of fire," but they do mention a "fiery" river of the underworld, evidently a branch of the river Styx. This river is called Pyriphlegthon meaning "flaming with fire", sometimes shortened to Phlegethon meaning "the flaming."
Smith :
"Pyriphlegethon, that is, flaming with fire, the name of one of the rivers of the lower world." (p.631. "Pyriphlegethon." William Smith. A Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology, and Geography. London. John Murray. 1875)
"Phlegethon, i.e., the flaming, a river in the lower world, in whose channel flowed flames instead of water." (p.567. "Phlegethon." William Smith. A Classical Dictionary of Biography, Mythology, and Geography. London. John Murray. 1875)
I would like to here the opinions of those who know more about this subject than I do... as I have always wondered where the concept of hell came from and how it became part of (some) church doctrine

AdminPD
Inactive Administrator


Message 2 of 2 (322118)
06-16-2006 4:39 AM


Thread copied to the Origins of Hell thread in the Faith and Belief forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.

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