The Non-Existence of Hell (Religion)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, September 30, 2010, 11:45 (4957 days ago) @ David Turell


> > I... hate to be a bother, but when the Christian Bible mentions Sheol explicitly (and Sheol again, is an aspect of the "punishing" afterlife) I find it quite hard to deny that Judaism as a whole when taken with Rabbinic literature abandons the concept of "hell." Filtering to Balance_Maintained's insistence that there is no hell in Christianity, I'm forced to be skeptical. If the phrase (which in the OT is translated merely as "Grave" became something more powerful to the 2nd temple Jews (a very pessimistic and apocalyptic (in the modern sense) lot--it is quite difficult to deny hell. But when we consider that Kabbalism can easily be extended to exist back in Solomon's time--"Solomon's Seal" has had mystical importance to more than just Jewis mystics. I would posit (from the Spanish Shepardic Jews that wrote the Zohar) that Kabbalic mysticism was more prevalent than one would think...
> 
> I have no idea about Judaism as a whole. I know what I was taught. You are delving back into Jewish mysticism. From what I have experienced most Jews will not know what you are discussing.-I know you keep labeling it as "mystic," but I Enoch is actually a well known book--to scholars I'll admit--but Rabbi's and priests both are aware of it. When I was looking for deuterocanonical works Enoch was the first book recommended to me by local Priests and Rabbis. Enoch is supposed to be a great-grandfather to Noah, and his book tells the tale of what exactly happened in "The Fall." According to Enoch, Sheol and its precincts were used to punish the Watchers who sinned by mating with humans. It also goes at length to describe the kingdom of God. My point is, even if the general public isn't aware of it, there are "revealed" texts outside of canon that deal with Sheol/Hell. But it's not just apocryphal books; The Talmud can hardly be considered a non-mainstream text, and many of the references I provided here reference books within that great work. -This is a side note, but I have to say that without these books, a full understanding of the OT/NT is difficult, if not impossible. These books all contain the background mythology that put the more mundane works in a better light.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"