Do any of you now believe in the hellfire hell of eternal physical torment? (page 3)

The doctrine of hell is both biblical and influenced by pagan thought. For example, the "lake of fire" in Revelation 20:10, 14 directly recalls the "Acherusian lake" in Plato, Phaedo 114a (the same word limnes "lake" occurring in both) and the "Lake of Fire" in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The "second resurrection" after the thousand years in Revelation 20:5, 12-13 is also a motif from Plato, as well as the Aeneid:

"After death, some ingrained evil remains, which must be purged by punishment through wind, water and fire. Each of us must undergo our own treatment as spirits, until at last we are sent to Elysium, where in the fulness of time, when the last stain of sin is gone, a few of us become ethereal fire. All the rest, after a cycle of a thousand years, are called by the god to Lethe to prepare for rebirth." (Virgil, The Aeneid, vi. 734-751)

In fact, the biblical belief in the resurrection is tightly connected with a belief in hell. You might recall that the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. They were influenced by Stoic, Epicurian, and Cynic teaching and their philosophy (preserved in such post-exilic Hellenistic works as Ecclesiastes, Sirach 14:16-19, 27:26-27, 41:4; Wisdom 2:4-6) aspired to material wealth and pleasure. It was this philosophy that the synoptic Jesus was opposed to (compare Luke 12:18-21 with Ecclesiastes 9:9-10 and Sirach 11:19-20) and the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus dramatized the fate of the rich who will reside in "a place of torment" and lack in the hereafter what they had in life (cf. Luke 16:19-31). The Pharisees had a similar view, believing in hell and a future resurrection, and their beliefs are preserved in rabbinical literaure; a good survey of the Jewish rabbinical belief in hell can be found here. The WTS makes much of the fact that the belief in an immortal soul was influenced by pagan philosophy and religion; and this is true. The ancient Israelites did not believe in body/soul dualism but did believe in a liminal afterlife in Sheol as spirits (see the recent book SHADES OF SHEOL: DEATH AND AFTERLIFE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT by Philip S. Johnston [2002] for a complete survey of the evidence). What the WTS does not realize is that the notion of immortality, in a post-exilic Jewish context, is exactly that of the hope of a resurrection (cf. Wisdom 3:4; 2 Maccabees 7:9, 16-17; Daniel 12). Some, such as the writers of 2 Maccabees and the Testament of Job (4:7-11), limited the resurrection as a reward to the righteous. The righteous would be raised, while the wicked would remain dead in Sheol. Others viewed the resurrection as twofold; the eschatological belief was that at the time of the end (e.g. Judgment Day), the resurrection would bring "some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace." (Daniel 12:2). The Testament of Benjamin (second century B.C.) similarly foretold:

"And then you will see Enoch and Seth and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob being raised up at the right hand in great joy. Then shall we be raised, each of us over our tribe, and we shall prostrate ourselves before the heavenly King. Then all shall be changed, some destined for glory, others for dishonor, for the Lord first judges Israel for the wrong she has committed and then he shall do the same for all the nations." (Testament of Benjamin 10:6-11)

This doctrine was elaborated in other pseudepigrapha of the intertestimental period. Righteous and wicked presently resting in Hades will be judged at the end of time and will be given eternal sentences: eternal glory for the righteous and eternal torment to the wicked. 2 Baruch has an extensive discussion on the resurrection and the judgment of the righteous and wicked:

For the earth will surely give back the dead at that time; it receives them now in order to keep them, not changing anything back in their form. But as it has received them so it will give them back. And as I have delivered them to it so it will raise them. For then it will be necessary to show those who live that the dead are living again, and that those who went away have come back. And it will be that when they have recognized each other, those who know each other at this moment, that my judgment will be strong, and those things which have been spoken of before will come. And it will happen after this day which he appointed is over that both the shape of those who are found to be guilty as also the glory of those who have proved righteous will be changed. For the shape of those who now act wickedly will be made more evil than it is now so that they shall suffer torment. As for the glory of those who proved to be righteous on account of my law, those who possessed intelligence in their life, and those who planted the root of wisdom in their heart, their splendor will then be glorified by transformations, and the shape of their face will be changed into the light of their beauty....Both these and those will be changed, these into the splendor of angels and those into startling visions and horrible shapes, and they will waste away even more....Why do we weep for those who go into the realm of death? The lamentations should be kept for the beginning of that coming torment; let the tears be laid down for the coming of that destruction which will then come....The torment of judgment will fall upon those who have not subjected themselves to your power...for at the end of the world, a retribution will be demanded with regard to those who have done wickedly in accordance with their wickedness." (2 Baruch 50:2-52:5, 54:14, 21)

The text goes on to describe the bliss of Paradise for the righteous and the torture of chains and everlasting darkness for the wicked. This is not yet the Christian view of hell but it comes close to the later NT view of the final judgment and resurrection. Matthew 25:46 refers to the wicked going "away to eternal punishment and the virtuous to eternal life," and John 5:27-29 says that "the Son of Man has been appointed supreme judge, for the hour is coming when the dead will leave their graves at the sound of his voice: those who did good will rise again to life and those who did evil to condemnation." Revelation 20:11-15 gives an extended vision of the resurrection of the dead, Hades being emptied of its dead, followed by the judgment of dead, and the punishment of the resurrected wicked in the lake of fire.

As for exactly what the punishment will be, there is great diversity in the Jewish apocalyptic writings. 2 Baruch mentions the punishment as grotesque physical form and chains in everlasting darkness. The darkness is the same experienced by the fallen angels bound by chains in Tartarus (cf. 1 Enoch 10; 2 Peter 2:9; Jude 6). The motif of darkness is also mentioned in Matthew 8:12, 22:13; 25:30. The motif of fire, influenced by Persian and then Greek ideas (but also possibly influenced by the mention of fire in Sheol in Deuteronomy 32:22 ), appears throughout intertestimental literature as well and shows that this was a common idea in Jesus' day as well. It is not a late Christian invention. It first appears in the post-exilic prophecy in Isaiah 66:22-24 referring to God's final judgment on the world and regarding those judged as wicked, "their worm will not die nor their fire put out." This prophecy was very influential in later conceptions of the final judgment; Sirach 7:17 (2nd century B.C.) states that "the punishment for the godless is fire and worms," and Judith 16:17-21 (2nd century B.C.) states: "Woe to the nations who rise against my race! The Lord Almighty will punish them on judgment day. He will send fire and worms on their flesh and they shall weep with pain for evermore." The text in Isaiah is itself quoted in Mark 9:47-50, showing that it directly influenced the conception of Gehenna in the NT.

So as you can see, the belief in hell was closely related to the belief in the resurrection and Judgment Day. The general belief was that the righteous and wicked both reside in Hades until Judgment Day comes, when both would be resurrected, judged, and sent to their respective punishment or glory. Hades was also commonly believed to be subdivided in different regions with the wicked and righteous residing in different places, and some believed that even in advance of Judgment Day the wicked were tortured in Hades. 1 Enoch 22 depicts Hades as containing four subdivisions containing both the righteous and the wicked:

They prepared these places in order to put the souls of the children of the people there until the day of their judgment and the appointed time of the great judgment upon them. I saw the spirits of the people that were dead, and their voices were reaching into heaven until this very moment...At that moment, I raised a question regarding the judgment of all, 'For what reason is one separated from the other?' And he replied and said to me, 'These three have been made in order that the spirits of the dead may be separated. And in the manner in wihch the souls of the righteous are separated by this spring of water with light upon it, in like manner the sinners are set apart when they die and are buried in the earth and judgment has not yet been executed upon them in their lifetime, upon this great pain, until the great day of judgment -- and to those who curse there will be plague and pain forever, and the retribution of their spirits. They will bind them forever -- even if from the beginning of the world. (1 Enoch 22:4-5, 8-12)

1 Enoch 102:1-11 presents the sinners as residing in Sheol in a separate region as the righteous. This attests the view of some Jews (especially the Alexandrian Jews) who believed that the righteous and wicked were separated immediately at death (others believed that the separation did not occur until the day of judgment). Luke 16 similarly presents the wicked in the righteous in the same abode, separated by a "great chasm" with the wicked tormented by flames. Others, identifying Paradise with the Garden of Eden, viewed Paradise as a region at the easternmost edge of the world (cf. the beliefs of the Essences cited in Josephus' BH, 2.8.11). And still others began to view Paradise as "third heaven" (2 Enoch 8:1-3; Apocalypse of Moses 37:5, 40:1; 2 Corinthians 12:14 ). In Christianity, the relocation of Paradise to heaven was itself influenced by the belief of Christ having ascended to heaven and that the later resurrection of the righteous would involve a similar ascension (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). This relocation emptied Hades of an abode of the righteous and thus left the entire underworld as the scene of punishment of the wicked.

Gehenna was the term used by Jewish apocalypsists to refer to the region of Hades or Hades itself where the resurrected wicked would be tormented by fire after Judgment Day. It is used in this sense by Jesus, who specifies that both "soul and body" and the "body" would go to the "judgment" of Gehenna -- that is, after the resurrection (Matthew 5:29, 10:28, 23:33 ). This has nothing to do with punishment of a disembodied immortal soul; it is punishment of a resurrected person, of both body and spirit. Other Jewish apocalypses describe the Gehenna that the resurrected wicked will face:

This accursed valley [e.g. Gehenna] is for those accursed forever; here will gather together all those accursed ones, those who speak with their mouths unbecoming words against the Lord and utter hard words concerning his glory. Here shall they be gathered together, and here shall be their judgment, in the last days. There will be upon them the spectacle of the righteous judgment, in the presence of the righteous forever....There was produced from that bronze and fire a smell of sulfur which blended with those waters. This valley of the perversive angels shall continue to burn punitively underneath that ground....The Most High will arise on that day of judgment in order to execute a great judgment upon all the sinners...Woe unto you sinners, when you oppress the righteous ones, in the day of hard anguish, and burn them with fire! You shall be recompensed according to your deeds. On account of the deeds of your wicked ones, in blazing fires worse than fire it shall burn ....You yourselves know that they will bring your souls down to Sheol and they shall experience evil and great tribulation--in darkness, nets, and burning flame. Your souls shall enter into the great judgment; it shall be a great judgment in all the generations of the world. (1 Enoch 27:2-3, 100:4-9, 103:7-8)

I will burn with fire those who mocked them and ruled over them in this age...I have prepared them to be food for the fire of Hades, and to be ceaseless soaring in the air of the underworld regions of the uttermost depths, to the contents of a wormy belly....For they shall putrefy in the belly of the crafty worm Azazel, and be bburned by the fire of Azazel's tongue....And behold, in this light a fiery Gehenna was enkindled, and a great crowd in the likeness of men. They were all changing in aspect and shape, running and changing form and prostrating themselves and crying aloud words I did not know. (Apocalypse of Abraham 15:6-7, 31:2-6)

The souls of the wicked are brought down to Sheol by two angels of destruction, Za'api'el and Samki'el....Za'api'el is appointed to bring down the souls of the wicked from the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he, from the judgment of the Sekinah, to Sheol, to punish them with the fire in Gehinnom, with rods of burning coal. (3 Enoch 44:2-3)

The Lord will come with his angels and with the armies of the holy ones of the seventh heaven and with the glory of the seventh heaven, and he will drag Beliar into Gehenna and also his armies, ... the Beloved will cause fire to go forth from him, and it will consume all the godless. (Ascension of Isaiah 4:14, 18)

Gehenna is even mentioned frequently in rabinnical literature in the Mishnah: "The best of the physicians is destined for Gehenna, the most seemly among butchers is a partner of Amalek" (Rabbi Judah, Kiddushin 4:14).

The judgment of hellfire taught in 1 Enoch is very important because the Epistle of Jude directly quotes 1 Enoch to discuss precisely the judgment of the wicked:

Jude 14-15: " And about these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, 'Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.' "
1 Enoch 60:8: "...the garden of Eden, wherein the elect and the righteous ones dwell, wherein my grandfather [Enoch] was taken, the seventh from Adam."
1 Enoch 1:9: " Behold, he will arrive with ten million of the holy ones in order to execute judgment upon all. He will destroy the wicked ones and censure all flesh on account of everything that they have done, that which the sinners and the wicked ones committed against him."
1 Enoch 5:4: "You have not been long-suffering and you have not done the commandments of the Lord, but you have transgressed and spoken slanderously grave and harsh words with your impure mouths against his greatness."
1 Enoch 27:2: "This accursed valley is for those accursed forever; here will gather together all the accursed ones, those who speak with their mouth unbecoming words against the Lord and utter harsh words concerning his glory."

Jude also alludes to 1 Enoch in many other places (see my thread on the use of 1 Enoch in the NT). It is thus clear that the kind of judgment that Jude had in mind is that taught in 1 Enoch, and Jude directly confirms this by referring to those who "indulge in gross immorality" as "undergoing punishment in eternal fire" (Jude 7). The doctrine is thus biblical because it appears in the Bible, constituting a key ingedient to the belief in Judgment Day -- and is mentioned in allusions to Judgment Day in Isaiah 66, the gospels, Jude, and Revelation. I agree that the doctrine of hell is distasteful and at odds with other parts of scripture, but one needs to recall how the Bible does not present a single point of view and the diversity of eschatological belief in Judaism is reflected to some extent in the NT. I personally do not accept it as a matter of belief, but I do recognize that it appears in the Bible and I also expressly reject the WTS teaching that the concept of hell is foreign to the Bible.

Do any of you now believe in the hellfire hell of eternal physical torment?

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