Question here for those who "know their Bible" -

[truedelphi]

Is there any passage in the OT or the New Testament that spells out the existence of a heaven or a hell?

[HereSince1628]

1. Like these? Cuz these don't include references to "the pit"

Psalm 9:17 - The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.



Psalm 16:10 - For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.



Psalm 18:5 - The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me.



Psalm 55:15 - Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.



Psalm 86:13 - For great is thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell. (Tartarus, far below Hades)


Psalm 116:3 - The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.



Psalm 139:8 - If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.



Proverbs 5:5 - Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell.



Proverbs 7:27- Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.



Proverbs 9:18 - But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.



Proverbs 15:11 - Hell and destruction are before the Lord: how much more then the hearts of the children of men?



Proverbs 15:24 - The way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from hell beneath.



Proverbs 23:14 - Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.



Proverbs 27:20 - Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.


Isaiah 5:14 - Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.



Isaiah 14:9 - Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.


Isaiah 14:15 - Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.



Isaiah 28:15 - Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:



Isaiah 28:18 - And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it.


Isaiah 57:9 - And thou wentest to the king with ointment, and didst increase thy perfumes, and didst send thy messengers far off, and didst debase thyself even unto hell.



Ezekiel 31:15-17 - Thus saith the Lord God; in the day when he went down to the grave I caused a mourning: I covered the deep for him, and I restrained the floods thereof, and the great waters were stayed: and I caused Lebanon to mourn for him, and all the trees of the field fainted for him. 16I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to hell with them that descend into the pit: and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, shall be comforted in the nether parts of the earth. 17They also went down into hell with him unto them that be slain with the sword; and they that were his arm, that dwelt under his shadow in the midst of the heathen.



Ezekiel 32:21 - The strong among the mighty shall speak to him out of the midst of hell with them that help him: they are gone down, they lie uncircumcised, slain by the sword.


Ezekiel 32:27 - And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war: and they have laid their swords under their heads, but their iniquities shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.



Amos 9:2 - Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down:



Jonah 2:2 - And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.


Habakkuk 2:5 - Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine, he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people:

[WingDinger]

2. Yes, but they are all metaphorical. Heaven as presentedby almost all religions, including Christiani

ity, is the surpassing of existence beyond SELF. SELF, and the concept of ME, MY, MINE, is the root of all human misery. And IS hell. Of course merchants and soothsayers have warped the message into santa claus with his book of naughty. And what borderline sins can we get away with and still go to heaven as ourselves, and meet back up with only our favorite humans, as they were in their prime.

[PADemD]

3. Luke 17:21

"nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."

New International Version (copyright 1984)

http://bible.cc/luke/17-21.htm

[grantcart]

5. This is a perfect example of what I was referring to in my reply below

While there is some disagreement about exactly what was meant by 'kingdom of God' there is consensus that it never meant 'heaven'.

Luke's interest was in writing to government sources to persuade them that the Christians were not existential threats and need not be prosecuted but moral pioneers that were bringing forth a new higher moral order, a 'kingdom of God'.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_God#New_Testament


C. H. Dodd and John Dominic Crossan argued that the “Kingdom” was fully manifest in the present teaching and actions of Jesus. Through his words and deeds the "Kingdom" was brought into the present reality of Palestine. Dodd coined the term "realized eschatology"<16> and largely based his argument on Luke 11:20, and Luke 17:21, claiming that "the kingdom of God has come to you" and “the kingdom of God is within you”. Crossan imagined Jesus as a cynic-like peasant who focused on the sapiential aspects of the "Kingdom" and not on any apocalyptic conceptions.<17>

Albert Schweitzer, Rudolf Bultmann, Norman Perrin and Johannes Weiss argued that Jesus’ "Kingdom" was intended to be a wholly futuristic kingdom. These scholars looked to the apocalyptic traditions of various Jewish groups existing at the time of Jesus as the basis of their study.<18><19><20><21> In this view, Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who would bring about the end times and when he did not see the end of the cosmic order coming Jesus embraced death as a tool in which to provoke God into action.

The most common view of the "Kingdom" in recent scholarship is to embrace the truths of both these parties─present reality and future manifestation, known as Inaugurated eschatology. Some scholars who take this view are N.T. Wright and G.R. Beasley-Murray. In their views, the “Kingdom” that Jesus spoke of will be fully realized in the future but it is also in a process of “in-breaking” into the present. This means that Jesus’ deeds and words have an immediate effect on the “Kingdom” even though it was not fully manifested during his life. Even greater attention has been paid to the concept of the “Kingdom of God” by scholars during the current third quest for the historical Jesus (with which N.T. Wright is associated).

[Thats my opinion]

12. thanks for some scholarly input nt

[grantcart]

4. The methodology of your question presents the essential problem of talking about the bible

It is an example of 'eisogesis' rather than 'exogesis'. In the former you have a particular point of view that you are taking from your context and looking in the Old or New Testament for what appears to be a relevent reference.

Exogesis is where you study the book, its context, likely audience, literary construct, redaction context, changes in early forms of the text by scribes and so on. For example something might appear in a gospel and seem important by looking at a single passage but when seen in the context of where it was put its importance is less than originally apparent.

Your question of the existence of 'hell' for example is a perfect example of this.

You can find the word 'hell' or 'hades' in the Old Testament and New Testament.

So people from the 21st century have a preconceived idea what that meant and when they see it in the Bible assume that it confirms the impression that they already had (hence 'eisogesis' meaning 'reading into').

The further you go back in Scripture the less it is a place for the soul and the more it is simply the word for 'grave' or 'graveyard'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hades_in_Christianity

Hades in the Old Testament

In the Septuagint (the ancient translation of the Old Testament into Greek), the Greek term "ᾅδης" (Hades) is used to translate the Hebrew term "שׁאול" (Sheol) in, for example, Isaiah 38:18.<1> This use refers the term hades to the abode of the dead in general, rather than the abode of the wicked.

Hades in the Intertestamental Period
See entry for Sheol concerning use of Hades in Second Temple Judaism, and in the Christian Intertestamental period, such as Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, and also Hellenistic Jewish authors such as Josephus and Philo.
Hades in the New Testament

Thus too, in New Testament Greek, the Hebrew phrase "לא־תעזב נפשׁי לשׁאול" (you will not abandon my soul to Sheol) in Psalm 16:10 is quoted in Acts 2:27 as "οὐκ ἐγκαταλείψεις τὴν ψυχήν μου εἰς ᾅδου" (you will not abandon my soul to Hades).

In the textus receptus version of the New Testament, on which the English King James Version is based, the word "ᾅδης" (Hades), appears 11 times;<2> but critical editions of the text of 1 Corinthians 15:55 have "θάνατος" (death) in place of "ᾅδης".<3> While the King James Version translated "ᾅδης" as "hell", except in this very verse of 1 Corinthians, where it uses "grave", modern translations, for which, of course, there are only 10 instances of the word "ᾅδης" in the New Testament, generally simply transliterate the word, as "Hades".




The real answer to your question is "No" because your asking if writings 2 mellenia ago contained nouns that reflect 21st century understandings of what was written then.

The words used then reflected understandings of that age and unless you go back and unravel what has been added since then one is simply playing a word game trying to get an ancient document to confirm or repudiate a modern concept.

This is why fundamentalists don't just sound crazy but actually practice terrible biblical scholarship.

[truedelphi]

9. Although I am appreciating everyone's replies,

Your response offrs me thse juicy "technical" terms that make so much sense in terms of my original reason for asking this question.

I am pestered (to put it mildly) by both a collegue and a relative about their concerns for the final destination of my soul.

I am quite confident that if there is a God, it is not some elderly version of Santa Claus, with a list of all the times I have been naughty or nice.

Your explantion offers me a way to convey what I have been trying to formulate in terms of an answer. It does seem to me that the modern day "born again Jesus" movement simply overlays their beliefs onto a previous structure, but their beliefs are so different from what Jesus of Nazareth was speaking of or thinking of tht it is a shame they even reference Jesus.

[grantcart]

10. The strange thing about all of this is that at the Biblical scholarship level

there is little controversy about this and the broad outlines have been settled for years and none of the issues (virgin birth, resurrection) fall the way of the fundamentalists.

Ground zero for this is Princeton Theological Seminary (where I attended for 2 years) that established that the Bible was the 'inerrant' word of God about a hundred years ago and then quickly took that apart and has been on the path of more critical biblical scholarship ever since.

Disappointment at leaving the principle of 'inerrancy' caused fundamentalists to establish Fuller Seminary.

Guess what, the principle of 'inerrance' which was the founding principle of Fuller, has been abandoned there as well.

If you remember the movie 'Paper Chase' that is what it is like at PTS with these yahoos who come up and are determined to prove the scholars wrong. The distinguished professors teach one of the large intro classes with 300 students and they will quickly identify a couple of these 'true believers' and then mercelessly grind them into nothing.

I saw one guy who stood up to assert that he still believed that Noah was a real person literally get laughed out the door as the professor asked if his mommy drove him to school today or packed his lunch for him.

In any case scholarship at the peer review level has established a broad consensus none of which your colleague or friend would be in agreement with. Wikipedia is quite good on most of these basic points. Here for example is a discussion on the authorship of Genesis;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis

You might be interested in reading Bart Ehrman who arrived at PTS after I went but had a similar experience. Brought up in conservative community was convinced that his faith would equip him to outsmart the scholars.

Bart is now an agnostic Biblical scholar - I believe that most Biblical scholars are in fact agnostics. He then went on to have a nice career writing books for the layman that explains the methodology discussed above and give examples. Pretty typical journey evolving from the Moody Bible Institute to writing a book called "Misquoting Jesus".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Ehrman

[Thats my opinion]

13. Good

If many posters and responders on r/t would realize that religious scholarship has moved a thousand miles since the fundamentalist days--while fundamentalism outside the academy and the mainline churches still carries on, we might solve many of the arguments here. I don't want to focus on the scientists who still don't believe in global warming, because science has moved far beyond that. So has theology. So thanks for the solid information.

[darkstar3]

17. Theology may have, religion most certainly has not.

[truedelphi]

15. One of the reasons that I cannot be a Christian is Genesis -

Any book that starts out by telling me that woman came from man's body is so
fatally flawed that within my matriarchal soul - all of it comes crashing down.
(if you ever meet a human who has come out of a man's body at birth, let me know.)

I am glad for your recounting of this, and your links. Much of what you say mirrors the truths taught me by a friend who was a monk for the first ten years of his adult life.

Now while growing up and attending a rather prestigious Catholic girl's HS, I experienced the nuns who made it clear by Junior year that Genesis was basically a fairy tale. According to what these nuns taught, the depiction of events in Genesis allowed humankind to remember events through the telling of a mythical account that kept the event personal and dramatic. The best example off the top of my head would be the Big Flood, which virtually all primitive civilizations recount in some mythos of their own.

I suppose if I choose to I could still be part of the mythos of Christianity. However I would rather go my own way than using it as a blueprint of beliefs. I owe some of this to my Dad, who when marrying my mom in the forties, agreed to attend Church on Sundays, and also to raise us kids as Catholics. But he was an agnostic, one who did not pray even when experiencing the hell and damnation of the Battle of the Bulge.

He was also one of the most honest, worthy and enjoyable humans I have ever met. I have his skepticism towards the world of organized Christianity. One of his favorite sayings was this one: "If you ever need some help, you'd probably be better off seeking it at the local bar than at the local church."

Didn't use that one in front of my mother. :-)

[ChadwickHenryWard]

22. That's fucking harsh.

I saw one guy who stood up to assert that he still believed that Noah was a real person literally get laughed out the door as the professor asked if his mommy drove him to school today or packed his lunch for him.

That's totally improper. Just because the student doesn't know enough about the professor's subject to form a coherent opinion does not mean that he should be publicly abused in that way. The expression of an outdated or uninformed idea does not warrant that kind of nastiness.

[On the Road]

6. Probably the Clearest Example of Both

is in Daniel, which is probably one of the latest books of the OT. Although it's traditionally dated to the 6th century BC because it concerns the Babylonian captivity, it is more likely to have been written around the Greek occupation in the 2nd century BC.

Many of those who sleep in the dusty ground will awake – some to everlasting life, and others to shame and everlasting abhorrence. But the wise will shine like the brightness of the heavenly expanse. And those bringing many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever. (Daniel 12:2-3, NET)

Although the reference in Daniel doesn't explicitly say this, the concept of heaven and hell was probably based on Bablyonian cosmology:

The Babylonians conceived of the universe has having seven heavens and seven hells. Above the seventh heaven was the "highest heaven", divided into upper and a lower portions.¹

For the rest of the OT, it all depends on how you define heaven and hell and how you translate words like "Sheol." Sheol is certainly a type of afterlife, but does not really conform to the modern evangelical or Catholic depictions of heaven or hell. It was probably a shadowy realm were both good and bad people's souls went when they died.

In earlier parts of the OT, there are indications of a heavenly realm where God and the angels resided, but it is not identified as a place for human souls. In fact, the description of the patriachs' deaths in Genesis does not really seem to contemplate a conscious afterlife:

Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people. (Genesis 25:8 )

[dmallind]

7. Dunno why people miss the obvious

The concept of the afterlife was only introduced into Hebrew culture after the exile in Babylon in the 6th Century BCE. It, like much that evolved into Christianity (the Messiah, angels, salvation) was lifted straight from Zoroastrianism, so obviously didn't exist in earlier writings.

Rev 21:10-21 is a physical description of heaven

Rev 20:12-15 is a physical description of hell

References to both are frequent in the NT (and don't tell me that Gehenna was a dump - I know that, but I also know it was a metaphor that certainly did not contain or have the properties Jesus says it has. Nor do I suspect it is Joseph's house that had many mansions).

Yes I know full well the kinder gentler liberal progressive nicey-nicey DU believers will say Revelation is simply an allegorical mystic's tale. It was however voted into equal canonical status with any other part of the NT by the church, so blame Nicaea not me.

[Thats my opinion]

14. In fact there was serious early disagreement

about whether Revelations was canonical. It slipped in. Many early lists don't include it. It is well known now that the book was a statement to early churches under persecution warning them of Rome's terror and telling them to have courage. Why would anyone in exile write to besieged churches about something that was not going to happen for thousands of years? Slight comfort to the persecuted. The book makes senses when we realize what it is really about.

[truedelphi]

16. I had never heard that explanation for Revelations.

It makes total sense to me.

What I was taught according to Catholic catechism lessons in fifth grade or so was the Revelations told of the return of the Messiah, which early Christians expected to happen within their lifetimes.

And now it is used by various politicians to strengthen their hand when they do such nasty things as promote famine foods brought to us courtesy of Monsanto.
Some of Bush the Elder's advisers didn't care about scientists who tried to speak out against the policy of approving Gm. The advisers would just be sitting there thinking "Well, so what? Famine was predicted by God in the Bible - so our approving this seed is simply bringing about God's will."

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. As I recall, Luther wanted to leave it out of his German translation of the Bible

I don't know the full story of why he finally decided to leave it in.

[Thats my opinion]

19. I think it was just the book of James Luther really left out

calling it a an epistle of straw and putting in a blank page at the end of the Bible before he included it. I don't remember what he did to Revelation.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. Oh right, he didn't like the emphasis on good works in James

He was a "faith alone" type of guy.

[Leontius]

23. That's not quite fair to Luther.

His objection was to the teaching of "salvation by works."

[dmallind]

21. Ity did not "slip in" at all. Irenaeus and Origen included it. Eusebius on TWO lists

It was voted on and accepted in exactly the same manner as any gospel. There was no subterfuge or concealment or any other manner of "slipping in".

Also it's worth noting that Revelation does not stand alone, and that such physical descriptions would have stood absolutely no chance of being accepted even for one moment by the originators and early leaders of Christianity had it not been accepted beyond question that heaven and hell were real, describable locations. Sue modern theology has moved away from this, like the other laughably primitive claims in scripture. But that does not mean that these laughably primitive parts were not, and indeed for less well-informed believers (the vast majority) are not, parts of the faith.

I remind everyone that more than two thirds of all Americans believe in a real hell and three quarters in a real heaven. ALL Americans not just Christians. This is as mainstream a belief as any that can be found about such matters.

[Deep13]

8. Yes, they are both in the gospels.

The OT suggests it, read Psalm 28 for example, but it is really the NT, the words of JC, that assume the existence of eternal reward or torture. I don't have citations handy, but they are pretty easy to find.

[Thats my opinion]

11. only by analogy and through metaphoric language nt

[Xolodno]

24. When you say "spell out the existence"...

...you have to keep in mind that those concepts have changed over the long length of time. What Hell or Heaven is today did not mean what they did in 3000 BC. Others have already pointed out Biblical verses and the controversy of Revelation in this thread...so let me add another. Much of what is conceptualized as "Hell" comes from a widely accepted, but never cannonized book called the Apocalypse of Peter. So in one hand you had the church indirectly using it to frame "Hell" while at the same time discounting it as cannon. So why wasn't it included in the Bible? The final message didn't fit with what the Church wanted. That being, eventually those in Heaven will petition God to release those in Hell, thereby redeeming them. Can't have eternal damnation when you have stuff written to the contrary.