Endless Punishment?

[Green Kepi]

Please help me out...in my studies...the doctrine of endless punishment is nowhere to be found in Jewish Scripture at the close of the Old Testament. At the beginning of the New, they believed in it. They had no prophets - no teachers from Heaven that could have taught them this.

Where did this belief come from? Could they have borrowed it from the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans...could this have been how it all started? All these Nations believed in endless punishment and they were in constant and close contact with all of them....

 

[Zardoz]

Please help me out...in my studies...the doctrine of endless punishment is nowhere to be found in Jewish Scripture at the close of the Old Testament. At the beginning of the New, they believed in it. They had no prophets - no teachers from Heaven that could have taught them this.

Where did this belief come from? Could they have borrowed it from the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans...could this have been how it all started? All these Nations believed in endless punishment and they were in constant and close contact with all of them....

That's pretty much the case. Cultural assimilation, especially among the common people who would have more contact with the dominant civilizations surrounding them and less first-hand scriptural training. This is nothing new of course. The Hellenize Jews of the period just before the NT would have popularized the idea of hell and Hades from Greek culture and adopted whatever Jewish elements that had the closest fit to the Greek mythology, even if it didn't quite mesh. No god of the Underworld in Judaism? OK then take the Jewish HaSatan and invent a mythology of an angelic rebellion to explain his 'fall' and rulership of 'hell'. Nothing of any of this can be found in Jewish scripture of course, but that matters little to popular culture.

 

[Levite]

Please help me out...in my studies...the doctrine of endless punishment is nowhere to be found in Jewish Scripture at the close of the Old Testament. At the beginning of the New, they believed in it. They had no prophets - no teachers from Heaven that could have taught them this.

Where did this belief come from? Could they have borrowed it from the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans...could this have been how it all started? All these Nations believed in endless punishment and they were in constant and close contact with all of them....

I don't understand. By "endless punishment," do you mean the doctrine of damnation to hell?

If so, then it must have come from non-Jewish sources, because Jews have never had a doctrine of damnation to hell.

There was something of a movement during mid- to late Talmudic times, and again later in the Middle Ages, that believed in a place called Gehinnom, which was envisioned sometimes as a place of punishment, although not eternal punishment. But nobody could agree on what exactly Gehinnom was, or what might happen there, let alone on whether we were sure it even existed. It was never formalized as a dogma or doctrine of Judaism.

But the concept of true eternal damnation as it appears in Christianity is simply foreign to Jewish thought.

 

[Green Kepi]

Thanks for your answers! I suppose Jewish thought has become just as 'mixed' up as those professing to be Christian...who knows how many different groups there are...all claiming to get guidance from the same God (?). In Jesus' time on earth, there were the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Herodians, and Essenes. Today (that I know of): Hasidic, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reformed. I couldn't attempt to name those claiming to be Christian. Man! I can see God...just shaking His head at all of us!!!!

 

[Rainbow Mage]

Levite, permit me a question, if you please. Isn't it true that in the past, and even in present day, some Rabbis teach that those who reject their teachings will be boiled eternally in burning hot waste?

 

[Levite]

Levite, permit me a question, if you please. Isn't it true that in the past, and even in present day, some Rabbis teach that those who reject their teachings will be boiled eternally in burning hot waste?

There have been a few rabbis who have taught so, but they are deeply in the minority. Such things were largely said during the intensely polemical period between around 400 to 1000 CE, when Christianity was first beginning to persecute and oppress Judaism.

I would greatly doubt that you would find anyone outside of a few extremely rabid right-wing Haredi communities where anyone would believe such a thing today.

 

[Jacksnyte]

Well, I can say that the Egyptians had no "doctrine of endless punishment". If you are found lacking when your heart is weighed against the feather of Ma'at, then you are devoured, and you simply no longer exist.

Please help me out...in my studies...the doctrine of endless punishment is nowhere to be found in Jewish Scripture at the close of the Old Testament. At the beginning of the New, they believed in it. They had no prophets - no teachers from Heaven that could have taught them this.

Where did this belief come from? Could they have borrowed it from the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans...could this have been how it all started? All these Nations believed in endless punishment and they were in constant and close contact with all of them....

 

[Green Kepi]

Well, I can say that the Egyptians had no "doctrine of endless punishment". If you are found lacking when your heart is weighed against the feather of Ma'at, then you are devoured, and you simply no longer exist.

Okay...I stand corrected. After the Hall of Maat there was either entrance into the Kingdom of Osiris or the soul was destroyed straightway...correct?

 

[Zardoz]

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