|
News for the Pews |
Home
17th March 2026
TuesdayReflection
************************
'Bart D. Ehrman'
is widely recognized as a leading authority on
the New Testament
"What Jesus Really Said About Heaven and Hell"
The fear is as ancient as civilization's oldest surviving records.
There are over two billion Christians in the world, the vast majority of whom believe in heaven and hell.
You die and your soul goes either to everlasting bliss or torment (or purgatory en route).
The vast majority of these people naturally assume this is what Jesus himself taught.
But that is not true.
Neither Jesus, nor the Hebrew Bible he interpreted, endorsed the view that departed souls go to paradise or everlasting pain.
The Hebrew Bible itself assumes that the dead are simply dead - that their body lies in the grave, and there is no consciousness, ever again.
But Jews began to change their view over time, although it too never involved imagining a heaven or hell.
About two hundred years before Jesus, Jewish thinkers began to believe that there had to be something beyond death - a kind of justice to come.
Some thinkers came up with a solution that explained how God would bring about justice.
This new idea maintained that there are evil forces in the world aligned against God and determined to afflict his people.
Even though God is the ultimate ruler over all, he has temporarily relinquished control of this world for some mysterious reason.
But the forces of evil have little time left.
God is soon to intervene in earthly affairs to destroy everything and everyone that opposes him and to bring in a new realm for his true followers, a Kingdom of God.
The end of time is coming soon. The earthly Kingdom of God is "at hand" (Mark 1:15).
But Jesus put his own twist on the idea.
Contrary to what other Jewish leaders taught, Jesus preached that no one will inherit the glorious future kingdom by stringently observing all the Jewish laws.
Instead, for Jesus, the earthly utopia will come to those who are fully dedicated to the most pervasive and dominant teachings of God's law.
Put most simply, that involves loving God above all things despite personal hardship, and working diligently for the welfare of others, even when it is exceedingly difficult.
In traditional English versions, he does occasionally seem to speak of "Hell" - for example, in his warnings in the Sermon on the Mount: anyone who calls another a fool, or who allows their right eye or hand to sin, will be cast into "hell"
(Matthew 5:22, 29-30).
The word Jesus uses is "Gehenna." The term does not refer to a place of eternal torment but to a notorious valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem
It was where, according to the Old Testament, ancient Israelites practiced child sacrifice to foreign gods.
The God of Israel had condemned and forsaken the place.
At one point Jesus says there are two gates that people pass through
(Matthew 7:13-14). One is narrow and requires a difficult path, but leads to "life."
Few go that way.
The other is broad and easy, and therefore commonly taken. But it leads to "destruction."
It is an important word. The wrong path does not lead to torture.
Still other passages may seem to suggest that Jesus believe in hell.
Most notably Jesus speaks of all nations coming for the last judgment (Matthew 25:31-46).
Some are said to be sheep, and the others goats.
The good are welcomed into the "kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."
The (wicked) goats, however, have refused to help those in need, and so are sent to
"eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
At first blush, that certainly sounds like the hell of popular imagination.
The idea of eternal hell was very much a late comer on the Christian scene, developed decades after Jesus' death and honed to a fine pitch in the preaching of fire and brimstone that later followers sometimes attributed to Jesus himself.
From at least the time of Socrates, many Greek thinkers had subscribed to the idea of the immortality of the soul.
Even though the human body dies, the human soul both will not and cannot.
Later Christians who came out of gentile circles adopted this view for themselves, and reasoned that if souls are built to last forever, their ultimate fates will do so as well.
It will be either eternal bliss or eternal torment.
For Socrates, death will be one of two things.
On one hand, it may entail the longest, most untroubled, deep sleep that could be imagined.
On the other hand, it may involve a conscious existence.
That too would be good, even better.
It would mean carrying on with life and all its pleasures but none of its pain.
Twenty-four centuries later, with all our advances in understanding our world and human life within it, we can think that that both Jesus and Socrates had a lot of things right.
Jesus taught that in this short life we have, we should devote ourselves to the welfare of others, the poor, the needy, the sick, the oppressed, the outcast, the alien.
We should listen to him.
None of us, of course, knows what will happen when we pass from this world of transience.
Jesus saw this as permanent annihilation; Socrates as a pleasant deep sleep.
In either scenario, there will be no more pain.
On the other hand, there may be more yet to come, a happier place, a good place.
And so, in this, the greatest teacher of the Greeks and the founder of Christianity agreed to this extent: when, in the end, we pass from this earthly realm, we may indeed have something to hope for, but we have absolutely nothing to fear.
><(((°>
This is an edited version.
The full article is avaiable on request
Bart D. Ehrman
is widely recognized as a leading authority on the New Testament,
the historical Jesus, and the development of early Christianity.
He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1988.
Ehrman's work has had a significant impact on how the textual history of the New Testament and the development of early Christian doctrine are understood by both scholars and the public.
During the Interregnum
March 2025 to ....
Contact the Benefice Office
E-mail:
thebeneficeofbhkandr at gmail dot com
Contact the Benefice Office
Sunday School Rooms, Church Lane,
BUGBROOKE, Northampton, NN7 3PB
Land Line: 01604 830373
E-mail:
thebeneficeofbhkandr at gmail dot com
Mon., Tues., Wed., Thur.
9:00am to 11:30am
For Baptism bookings (Christenings)
to arrange an appointment please contact
the Benefice Office.
For Wedding bookings:
please contact the Benefice Office to arrange
an appointment.
Who Made This?
Seeing as you asked, if you can give helpful
advice or report factual corrections and
'deliberate mistakes',email:-
regparker3 at gmail dot com
Email addresses shown using words in an
attempt to avoid 'spam',
Type the email address replacing 'at' with '@',
and 'dot' with '.'
|