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Hell: actually not that bad?


repsol rave

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so, first of all, i'd like to warn you: wall of text incoming!

second of all, this is in no way at all created to be insulting to someone, or anyone for that matter.

 

now that's out of the way, let's start!

 

i recently stumbled over an article that really interested me. it stated that hell, as we know from the bible, isn't all that bad.

now normally i'm not one to like religious stuff. i'm an atheist myself and i really just couldn't really care less about other people and their religious stuff.

 

tough this article was very interesting, and i felt like sharing it with you guys. sadly, it was entirely written in Dutch sad.png

so i translated it for you guys :3

 

here we go:

HELL: NOT THAT BAD AFTER ALL

Hell, the torture chambers full of smoke and fire deep under the earth, where all ungodly are tortured under seeing eye of CEO satan, for ever and ever for their earthly sins. Evereybody knows this, because that's the way it's in the bible, but is it really?

 

May god help the person that didn't believe in god in the 17th century. When your time at earth had ran out you where in for a one way trip to the fires of hell, where satan's butlers with their everlasting will to work where the guarantee that you where in for an eternity of torture and pain. The statetranslation from 1637 states this directly.

 

"De godtloose sullen te rugge keeren nae de helle toe; alle godt-vergetende heydenen."

"The ungodly will return to hell; all god-forgetting sinners."

 

Just like now, the people back then had a very clear image of how this hell was supposed to look. Over a century before this was written artist Jheronimus Bosch already painted his impressive works about the chambers of hell. And in 1309 the italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote about his imaginary trip through his inferno. We too know how the end in hell must look like: Unending fires with monsters ready to provide everlasting suffering.

 

But is all of this even right?

 

GRAVE, WELL, KINGDOM OF THE DEAD

The old testament (from now on called OT) of the already named states translation threatens with the word 'Hell' for about 25 times. As an example in Samuel 2.6:

 

"De HEERE doodet ende maeckt levendich, Hy doet ter helle nederdaelen, ende hy doet weder opkomen"

"The LORD kills and makes alive, He decends to hell, and he makes arise"

 

But there is something interesting going on in this term. The OT was originally written in the hebrew language. And the word wich is used to threathen with hell with, is actually translated from the hebrew word sheol. This word isn't stated in the original OT for 25 times, but over 60.

The origin of the word sheol is unclear, as stated by theologist Edward William Fudge.

This makes for lot's of disagreements about the actual meaning of the word.

This unclarity made for the word to be translated in a number of ways. Sometimes even in one and the same bible.

in the OT of the King James Bible, Fudge's favorite version, is the word sheol translated as hell 31 times, as grave 31 times and as well another 3 times.

 

This made for Fudge to write a book called the fire that consumes, and in this book he states that sheol is definately NOT translated as hell.

 

OVERCROWDED

One of the reasons for this is that the 'mood' of the word sheol isn't something you would describe hell with.Now, the word would be something you use for like a really shitty restaurant. the food there would be sheol. (if this makes any sense.) It's most definately not good food, but it isn't a burning lake with demons either.

 

Also, in the bible, the people that travel to sheol arn't exatly the worst sinners, or murderers or rapists either. The first mentioning of the word is when in the bible Jakob is being told that his son Jozef has died. In the new bible translation (2007) it says:

 

"Al zijn zonen en dochters deden hin best om hem te troosten, maar hij wilde niet getroost worden en zij; Ik zal rauw dragen tot ik naar mijn zoon in het dodenrijk afdaal."

"All his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, but he didn't want to be comforted and said; I will carry mourn until i decend to my son in the kingdom of the dead."

(Genesis, 37.35)

 

Here sheol is translated as 'kingdom if the dead', just like two other times where Jakob makes these kind of remarks. (Genesis: 42.38 & 44.29)

If even Jakob, The eartfather must decend to hell, it should be damn crowded there.

And Jakob isn't the ony one. Also the rightious Job goes to sheol in vers 14.13. Just like David in Psalmen: 49.16.

 

With so many known bible figures the conclusion is very clear to Fudge."There is simply no reason to make sheol into a place where there is only suffering and pain, and wich is made for the punishment for the evil." He states.

According to Fudge sheol is moe like a shared faith for every mortal, not just the torture chambers for the sinners.

And this statement has found it's way to modern versions of the book itself.

The Psalm the was qouted in the very beginning of this piece, has become (a little) more friendly.

"The ungodly will return to hell; all god-forgetting sinners."

Is now:

"The ungodly will return to The kingdom of the dead, all god forgetting sinners."

 

ANOTHER MATTER OF TRANSLATION

Then there's the New Testament (from now on preffered to as NT) This is where it all happens. Everything from curses, rejection and getting ripped appart to punishment in "the fire oven" or "The firey lake with burning sulphur".

So who's looking for Dante's inferno or the paintings from Jheronimus Bosch should go look in the bibles second half.

"The idea of 'hell' only appears in the NT." Says Tina Wray, Religious Researcher at the university of Salve Regina, in her book what the bible really tells us.

"The specifical word 'Hell' actually never appears at all. It's a germanian word, the name of the godess of the underworld. The NT uses words as 'Gehenna' and 'Hades', and this again suggests a translation problem."

 

Let's start with 'Hades'.

"In the greek mythology Hades was the god of the underworld, and after that it became the name of this underworld itself." Fudge says, agreeing with Wray.

"The word Hades was first seen in bibles from the Septuagint."(The Greek translation of the OT)

"They used this word to translate the word sheol."

And we all know that sheol is miserable and downcasted, but not hell.

And just as the sheol-hell was translated to 'the kingdom of the dead in the NT, so was the hades-hell.

How demonic the descriptions of hades may be, it is not where the devil resides.

 

SINNER'S DUMPING PLACE

So after sheol and hades only the word gehenna is left as a possible description of 'hell'.

The word gehenna originates from the Valley of Hinnom, Ge-Hinnom (in hebrew) was located in the vicinity of Jeruzalem.

With other words, gehenna directs to an earthly location wich actually exsisted.

"It was the place where king Salomon sacrificed to strange gods and where even child sacrifices where made to the idols Moloch and Baal." Writes Salomon Kroonenberg,Professor Geology at the Technical University of Delft(T.U.D)

 

Like how Fudge and Wray are inspecting the bible on a textual level, Kroonenberg does this in a geological way.

How hot is it actually deep within the earth, where runs the Greek death river 'The Styx', And in what mountainside resides the grave of Jesus?

"It's about time somebody with an geological eye takes a look at hell." Kroonenberg notes ironically. "I'm going to do fieldwork to hell, with hammer and compass."

Such a search naturally takes him to the Valley of Hinnom. That place didn't always be a valley of sinners. "Later Ge-Hinnom became a garbage-dump where constant fires burned away the waste, and where the dead bodies of criminals where tossed into," Kroonenberg writes.

 

So with the knowledge that Ge-Hinnom was a dump and cremation center, a lot of bible passages get a whole other meaning.

Take Jesaja 66.24 for an example:

 

"Bij het verlaten van de stad zien ze de lijken van zij die tegen mij in opstand kwamen; De worm die aan hen knaagt zal niet sterven en het vuur waarin zij liggen zal niet doven. Ze worden verafschuwd door alles wat leeft."

"At the point where they leave the cuty, they will see the bodies of them that rose up against me; The worm that eats them won't die and the fire where they lay in shall never die out. They are disgusted by everything that lives."

 

Is this referred to 'hell' or just the Valley of Hinnom?

Wray says it's the latter, but simmilar texts have been interpreted as hell.

"After a while the dump gehenna and the terrifying pit sheol fused together, and they became some sort of early 'hell'." Wray states.

"Gehenna is actually the perfect hellish place, since it is a big firey pit where also childeren where sacrificed and criminals where burned.

 

"This completely real, geographical place is symbolical associated with the destination where the unrighteous in the afterlife are being judged."

So what in the eyes of many is hell, is actually just a sinner's garbage dump.

Kroonenberg agrees with this interpretation. "This must be why the Greek gehenna is translated as 'hell' in the NT." He concludes. "Only then it has lost it's geographical exsistence and it is only used allegorical."

The proof: gehenna doesn't look like hell in any way.

"Hinnom is a dry valley now."Kroonenberg notes after his visit there almost dissapointed. "You can have a pleasant walk there and there is a small asphalt road, but the Valley of Gehenna doesn't look like it has anything to do with the underworld."

 

THE POST-BIBLE HELL

All in all the bible explains next to nothing about 'hell'.

But how do we have such a clear image of how hell must be then?

We probably have figures as Dante and Bosch to thank for that.

"In short; this post-bible hell is a mixture of multiple sources, including early-christen post apocalyptic stories and outside of the bible traditional knowledge, like in John Milton's poem paradise lost and Dante's inferno." Wray explains.

"Sometimes stories, poems and even movies take in a biblical story, wich makes for the disappearance of the line that keeps the bible's stories away from sources wich are very far from biblical."

 

So who wants a scary, weird scenery of hell, should look in un-biblical sources. because it seems completely right that in the new bible translation, The Old testamen aswell as the New testament and even the Deuterocanoniec books, the word 'hell' makes no appearance at all.

 

 

this should completely cover it.

if you have any questions, feel free to ask. and remember, this was translated from ancient Dutch and normal dutch to english by a 17 year old guy, so ofcourse there are going to be some spelling and grammar mistakes.

 

thanks for reading smile.png

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Let's go by the assumption hell does exist in this statement I'm about to write.

 

> Hell isn't bad

Eternity in a lake of fire. That'd really hurt. Just sayin'.

 

> 31 times out of 65 sheol means hell. 31 times it means grave. 3 times it means well.

so the way I see it, 95.38% of the time, sheol means something VERY NEGATIVE. Usually something in or under the ground. Who here would like to die and be burried in a grave? Who here would like to go to hell? 

k

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@

you know, what i wrote here is only the beginning. i still have like 4 pages of translating to do, there will be a lot of explaining there. :3

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Hey man. Hell is supposed to be where all those who do not abide go to live out their eternity in pain. If you run your life in evil and darkness. A place where you are constantly in pain. It is supposed to be the exact OPPOSITE of Heaven. There is a reason why Satan is forced to Hell.

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The whole "Hell and heaven" thing sounds so made up to me. I mean it's obvious. It's a man made story. Just my idea. It was one of the main reasons why I left my religion.

God creates man and then judges them and puts them either to the heaven or hell, seriously? Meh whatever. I still think that the whole "God" thing is a mystery.

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