It's a marketing ploy. If you want to sell a product, you have to convince a potential buyer that he has a need, and that your product will fill this need. And if there is no actual need... you create a need.
So it was figured by someone that in order to sell Jesus, he'd have to be worth a potential buyer's while... so they created the idea that the eating the fruit in the garden incident doomed all of mankind to hell... and their only way out was to profess belief in Jesus.
Say what you will about all the death and misery caused by plagues and floods and such in what many refer to as the "old testament".... but it wasn't until Christianity came around that God started condemning people to everlasting torment simply for being human.
Judaism is about how to live life according to God's plan in order to make the world we live in a better place.
It seems to me, more and more as I read Christian texts and talk to Christians in forums like these, that Christianity is about how to avoid being sent to hell when you die.
Life isn't a job application, nor is it a waiting room, nor is it boot camp. Life is the real deal. It's what we're here for.
I must agree that life is the real deal.
Since the idea of literal hell fire did Not originate with the Hebrew Scriptures then mankind needs to trace its religious family tree back to its roots to find the origin of such a belief.
Pagan Babylon was the birthplace of pagan religion by Nimrod.
When the pagan peoples migrated from ancient Babylon they populated throughout the earth. They took with them their old pagan religious ideas and spread them world wide into a greater religious Babylon or Babylon the Great.
Especially after the first century ended there was a fusion, mixing or blending of Biblical teachings with pagan ideas and practices and that is why today we see similar religious concepts such as hellfire overlapping in the world's religions including Christendom or so-called Christianity.
According to Acts [2 vs27,31; Psalm 16v10] Jesus was Not doomed to hell.
God resurrected Jesus from hell [sheol] according to Christian Scripture.
Jesus believed hell was the common grave of mankind. [John 11vs11-14]
The unconscious dead sleep [Ecc. 9v5,10;Psalm 6v5; 13v3; 115v17; 146v4]
Even the word 'cemetery' means sleeping place [RIP].
Jesus taught the dead sleep the deep sleep of death until they are awakened on resurrection morning, so to speak, or Christ's millennial-long day with everlasting life in view as the prophet Daniel looked forward [12 vs2,13]
when death is swallowed up forever.-Isaiah 25v8.
Since man can Not direct his step according to Jeremiah [10v23] then we need God to step in through divine intervention into mankind's affairs and have his Messiah bring the promised Peace on Earth toward men of goodwill in fulfillment to the Promise to Abraham that through his 'seed' [Messiah] all families of the earth will be blessed, and all nations of the earth will be blessed. -Genesis 12v3; 22vs17,18 and according to Revelation 22v2 that will happen, then, the humble, mild, meek people will inherit the earth- forever.
Psalm 37 vs11,29; Proverbs 2 vs21,22.
After all the wicked are destroyed or annihilated [Psalm 92v7; Jeremiah 25vs31-33], then emptied-out hell [Rev 20vs13,14] will be void of people because 'all' in hell [gravedom] are 'delivered up'......then 'vacant hell' dies a symbolic death never to exist again. Finally, (with the only exception of Matthew 12v32; Hebrews 6vs4-6), endless life will be the real deal.