The History of Heaven and Hell - St Luke's Episcopal Church Interview

okay so i want to welcome those who are here i see some familiar names and some not so familiar names i want to thank you for being muted if you during this uh um lecture talk if you want to ask a question down below is a reactions um tab you press on that and if you give me a thumbs up um icon i will call on you to ask your question then you can unmute yourself and turn on your uh camera uh your video so that bart can see who you are and hear what question you might have uh we welcome dr airman to our st luke's community education event and i love the topic history of heaven and hell that's maybe that's what josh and i should talk about the jewish and the christian context of heaven and hell for our summer series so dr airman welcome and we're glad to have you here uh with us uh for the topic well thank you i'm i'm glad to be here and uh thank you for having me i i want to share a screen i guess we should have talked about this before is it okay with you if i share my screen because i've got a um i've got a uh uh slide uh like a powerpoint that will uh that will help there you go you all see it okay very nice okay so uh right so uh this is uh i'm calling this the history of heaven and hell uh and appropriately that we've got uh dante and uh uh virgil there on the screen for those of you who are uh fans of the uh the divine comedy uh or fans of virgil um and then we see some rather uh grotesque scenes uh as uh as one finds in these things uh this uh this talk is based on the book that i uh recent published um that is called uh this is called heaven and hell a history of the afterlife um i uh published it this uh this past march it's a book written for general audiences uh and so there's nothing uh overly scholarly about it it's meant to to uh to talk to um um to normal folk as opposed to abnormal scholars about uh what uh about what we know about where the ideas of heaven and hell uh came from and so that's that's what the talk uh will be about i'm gonna talk for maybe 40 or 45 minutes and then we'll have about 30 minutes for uh for q a uh so let me see if i can advance my slides yes i'm going to start i'm going to start outside uh outside the bible with the text that i've been very interested in for years that many people do not know but it's a text that almost made it into the new testament in the fourth century there were christian uh church leaders who believed uh this this should be part of the canon uh as opposed to the book of revelation the apocalypse of john there were other people who thought that both books ought to be uh in the in the bible and some people thought neither one ought to be in the bible but the apocalypse of peter didn't make it in and it ended up uh being lost and we didn't have it for very many centuries uh basically we lost track of it for uh well for over a millennium um the book was uh rediscovered in uh 1887. there was a french archaeological team digging uh in a uh cemetery in egypt in a little place called uh akhmeem a couple hundred um kilometers south of cairo they were digging in a cemetery they were digging up um tombs and they dug up a tomb with the remains had a book buried with him it was a 66 page book and it contained it was a small anthology of texts that included a gospel that allegedly was written by peter which is also a very interesting document and uh and a jewish book called first enoch which is a a very important jewish text that is now discovered and um uh and a book this book called the the apocalypse uh of peter uh so this is 1887 when this 66 uh page uh book showed up it's a very interesting uh text this uh apocalypse of peter in this text uh jesus is talking to his disciples uh and about what's going to happen at the end of time and his disciples ask him for some more detail and they especially want to know what happens in the afterlife and jesus opens up his hand and peter looks in his hand and he sees the last judgment and what will uh what will be happening uh it is a very interesting vision because um what uh peter in a sense kind of enters into the vision and is taken on a tour and so christ gives him a tour of heaven and hell this is our earliest known uh forerunner a christian forerunner of dante um we have a number of other instances of this kind of um guided tour of heaven and hell and one of the interesting things about all of these uh these guided tours is that the uh descriptions of heaven tend to be a little banal and uninteresting and um i think the reason is because the saints are in eternal bliss and there's only so many things you can say about it i mean the saints you know it you know it's a gorgeous scenery great weather smells good and they're happy forever but there's not not a lot of detail to give because they're just they're blessed forever whereas when you get to describing the torments of hell if you have any creative imagination at all you can really come up with some interesting things and that's what happens in this apocalypse of peter there are 21 different groups of sinners who are mentioned and each sinner has its own has its own distinctive punishment and so for example um those who have blasphemed against god and so lied with their mouth are hanged by their tongues over eternal flames in hell the uh there there's a group of women who braided their hair to make themselves attractive so they could seduce men they're hanged by their hair over eternal flames the men they seduced are hanged by a different body part over eternal flames [Music] they cry out we didn't know it would come to this so and so it's so good so so all sorts of people are being punished for whatever their characteristic uh sin is and so that that's this vision uh and so a very short little one paragraph description of of heaven and a law of description of the torments in hell and so it's kind of obvious what the point of this uh of this account is um this is what's going to happen to people and so you yourself have a choice what do you want do you want um a glorious afterlife uh up in heaven where it looks great and there's all pleasure and no pain and uh or you want to be uh you want to be roasted in fire forever you know so it's your choice and so that's yeah so that's the point of the apocalypse this is a very interesting um vision and it's a vision that a lot of christians uh very much subscribe to uh today not this particular vision but but the basic idea and so i want to uh i want to talk about uh understandings of the afterlife uh in the present and in the past and i want to start uh with present today uh still in america according to the uh most recent pew research poll um something like oh just barely over seven out of ten americans continue to believe in a literal heaven a place where when you die your your body dies but your soul lives on and uh and can go up to heaven and live eternally being rewarded seven out of ten americans still believe that literally and i'm not talking about just christians or turkey you know americans broadly um six out of ten americans continue to believe in a literal hell a literal hell as a place of punishment you die your soul goes you know if you have if you've been wicked or do you know everybody had different criteria of course you know you have you you haven't accepted christ as your lord and savior you know or you don't believe the bible is the liberal world of truth or you've been you know you you've been a wretched human being you've been wicked what you whatever your criteria are uh six out of 10 people believe that there will be eternal punishment for your soul still um what my book is about and what this talk is about is trying to show that that view is not in the bible the view that you die and your soul goes to heaven or hell is found nowhere in the old testament to begin with i'll talk about the old testament view is in a minute this comes as a surprise to many people then again reading the pipe the bible itself comes as a surprise to many people these days but that view is not in that view is not in the old testament and i'm going to be arguing it's not what jesus taught jesus did not teach that when you die your soul goes to heaven or hell if that is the case where did these ideas come from and why are they the standard christian view and not just among christians now i mean even others kind of have this view and where'd that come from if it's not what the old testament taught and it's not what jesus taught and why does everybody think it's a christian view yeah okay uh it's a good question and so uh yeah so i wrote this book trying to explain it all and i'm gonna i'm gonna try and explain to you in about half an hour and so uh we'll see how this goes so i'm actually gonna start outside the bible um i'm gonna start with um greek thought which is not probably where you would expect me to go but uh that's where i got to go to start i'm going to start with the writings of the philosopher plato uh and his understanding of the immortality of the soul plato lived in let me give you a little bit of background plato lived in the uh he was he's writing at the end of at the beginning of the fourth century bce so uh you know about 400 years before jesus ministry um he is from athens he was he's he's widely considered and in my view rightly considered to be the greatest philosopher ever to have lived um [Music] so uh plato um inherited of course a lot of views from other greeks in the traditional greek understanding of death when a person dies they um they don't really have an afterlife they still kind of exist in some way and so when you read homer for example homer's iliad and the odyssey our earliest greek literature um uh there's a lot of talk about death and afterlife in the iliad and the odyssey and the idea there is that when you die um you've got a kind of a a part of you a soul that goes off to hades and this soul part of you though doesn't have a body and so since it doesn't have a body it doesn't it doesn't feel anything and it's it's immaterial and in fact it it doesn't have any memory and it's just it's like a it's like a shadow in fact they actually call it a shadow and so when you look at the ground the sun's out you look around you see there's your shadow that's that's the substance of what it's like to be dead there's still a substance there but there's like there's no mental capacity you can't talk you can't it's just like it's and you're bored to death for eternity that's that's homer's view that you'll find especially if you want to read about it it's especially in the odyssey book 11 where odysseus the hero takes a journey to the afterlife and he sees what it's like and it ain't good even the greatest greek heroes achilles uh the most powerful man ever to live is just a shadow uh with no strength at all uh so that that's what plato inherited some people in greek circles though came to think you know that's not really [Music] it's not really right that you can be a great person while alive uh and then you die and you're virtually nothing you're a shadow and moreover you mean everybody gets the same fate that can't be right you mean if i'm a mighty uh warrior who is valiant and heroic and strong and courageous and uh and i'm winning wars for the sake of the people and you have some schmuck over here who's like a coward and weak and pathetic and hates everybody and sticks everybody in the back as much as you can so he can get more wealthy is he like they both end up at the same fate what uh you know there are gods in the world aren't the gods taking care of us after death and so greeks developed the idea that you know there's gonna be some justice after death and if you're wicked you're gonna pay a price and if you're righteous you know or strong and powerful you you're going to be rewarded that's the view plato uh inherited that there's justice after death and he developed that by developing further the idea of the immortality of the soul the immortality of the soul is a doctrine that plato developed at great length in a number of his dialogues uh including the uh the phaedo where he tried to show tried to prove that in fact your body does die but your soul lives on there's a part of you that cannot be destroyed the soul is immortal so when you die your soul lives on and plato who believed in justice after death if there is any after death there's justice there thought that your soul then would be rewarded or punished depending on whether it was righteous or wicked if you want to read a really interesting account of that in plato like you you you decide to dig out your college plato you've got the you got the full plato there and you got the book of the republic which is his largest uh dialogue it's ten books long ten you know ten they call it ten books long but it's uh the the end of the republic the republic is is plato's utopian vision of what the perfect society would look like um and uh many of us think it would look kind of like the opposite of our society right now but he has the perfect society and this whole ten thing chap is trying to figure out what it would be like and at the end of it he ends it with a myth that he tells it's a fable uh a myth a story that he tells the word myth just means kind of like a story in greek and it's about a man named er er is a soldier who dies on the battlefield and uh 10 days later is put on his funeral pyre to be burned and he wakes up and he comes back and he tells people what it's like this is a near-death experience this is this is a fourth century bce near-death experience it's terrific and ur describes what it's like people who are wicked go off and get punished people who are righteous get rewarded for a thousand years then they come back and they get another chance at it and it goes on like that forever well it's it's a great story it's a great little story and it's worth reading but my point is this is where you get the idea you that after death your soul gets rewarded or punished but your but your body lives on okay you you find it uh in the western tradition you find it most strongly early on in in plato all right well what's going to do with christianity christianity did not rise out of plato right christianity rose out of judaism uh and so uh i want to talk about the jewish tradition and specifically the hebrew bible hebrew bible christians call it the old testament is of course was the book that christians inherited before they had a new testament they didn't call it the old testament before there was the new testament um the christian christians eventually gathered some of their own writings together uh writings that they believed were written by apostles about jesus or about other things and they put them together the 27 book new testament but of course jesus himself was jewish and his bible was the hebrew bible and his followers used the hebrew bible and this for them was the bible this was the authoritative account and so what does the hebrew bible say about death and afterlife that's that's my issue here most okay so i'm going to say most of the bible says something so let me preface this by saying the hebrew bible the hebrew bible in english the english old testament is 39 books written by lots of different authors there are dozens of authors and writing over a very broad swath of time um there are big debates about when the earliest books of the bible were actually written but they were at least written by the 8th century bce and the and the last book was was written in the second century bc so we're talking about at the conservative investment 600 years of different authors saying things you would not expect these authors all to be saying the same thing they have the same point of view i mean uh suppose you take 600 years of you know the last 600 years in england or in france and you compare what somebody said you know five a christian when a christian said 550 years ago with what the christians said 50 years ago you know are they going to be like completely simpatico probably not well the hebrew bible is like that it's a big book uh with lots of different views but what's striking is that virtually the entire hebrew bible most of the hebrew but versus the entire hebrew bible does not believe that there is a life after death again there is a kind of death after death by which i mean anything we think of as what it means to be alive yeah you don't really find it there uh ancient hebrews did not have the greek view of the soul ancient hebrews ancient israelites did not think that the soul could be separated from the body and live on this is a little bit hard for us to get our minds around because we all grew up thinking that there's a difference between body and soul ancient hebrews thought that there is something called a soul but the soul is the thing that enlivens your body it's not something that exists outside of your body the best way to think about this is that it's like the breath it's like what we think of the breath and sometimes in fact the word for for soul rough is is related to breath in in hebrew we think of our breath as what we have when we're alive when we breathe we're alive when we stop breathing we're dead okay when you stop breathing where does your breath go your breath doesn't go anywhere you stop breathing well that's the soul it stops existing when you die in ancient jewish tradition and so how does the first man get created god takes a lump of clay and he uh it's just a lump of clay but then he breathes into it and that makes adam a living creature when adam dies the breath leaves and he's back to being clay again ashes to ashes dust to dust you're just dust now and so uh you are alive only while you have your breath only while you have your soul your breath doesn't exist afterwards there's no soul afterwards you're dead yeah but what about the idea that there's a sheol and so throughout throughout the psalms especially there's reference to this place called this thing called sheol sheol is not a common word in the old testament as it turns out uh some of you have heard of sheol and people typically i used to think of it typically for years and years i thought of it as like a jewish form of hades it's not actually that it's um sheol is found only in poetic poetic texts like this mainly in the psalms um proverbs and a few other poetic texts when she all gets used in these poetic texts it get it gets used in poetry as a kind of a parallel word for other words it it it's a synonym for other words in the poetry of the hebrew bible and what's striking is that the other words that are the synonyms for sheol whenever she whenever she all gets used the synonyms are always things like grave and pit and death i think sheol is not a place you go to when you die in the hebrew tradition it means you get put in the grave or if you can't afford a grave you're poor you get thrown into a pit and in either case you're dead uh so uh my view is that the hebrew bible does not teach an ongoing existence after death and that's why the psalmist will say things like in sheol he's not able to worship god and in sheol god does not even remember you why because you don't exist the only way you can exist is if you have a body and so the only way to to keep going on is for the body to come back to life by the breath going back into it that does happen on occasion in the hebrew bible the body comes back to life because the breath goes into it again uh okay that's shield again you have the question of justice how's that fair you mean i can be righteous i can follow god i can do what god tells me to do i keep his law i keep the torah i i i'm righteous and this guy next door to me is the most wicked human being on the planet and we both die and that's it isn't there any justice in the world good question it's a question that led to a development at the very end of the hebrew bible period that became important for later judaism it's a point of view that scholars have called apocalypticism uh apocalyptic thought the apocalyptic thought is a view that developed about 200 years before jesus it comes from a greek word apocalypse obviously an apocalypse means a revealing or an unveiling some jewish thinkers began to think that god had revealed the ultimate truths to them and the ultimate truth included the idea that death was not the end of the story for you there is justice after death jewish thinkers became dissatisfied with the idea that you die and there's no nothing then you're often you're in your grave you know and your body disintegrates and your soul's already gone you just don't exist anymore they got dissatisfied that because there's no justice there moreover uh at this period when this view is developing jews were experiencing all sorts of hardships um uh military defeats um foreign oppression um social injustice at an extreme there were clearly there was something wrong with this world because there's so much suffering and this world is a cesspool of suffering where's that coming from well in apocalyptic thinking god's not doing this to you god's not making you suffer well if it's not god then why am i suffering and it you know it wasn't because of free will and it wasn't because you know it is because there are forces of evil in the world that are against us jewish apocalyptis has developed the kind of a dualistic way of looking at the world the world we live in there are there's two powers in the world of course there's god god created this world and he is the ultimate power and sovereign over this world but the suffering i mean you've got to explain that somehow and apocalypses explained it by coming up with the idea that there are powers opposed to god that are creating the suffering for some reason god has relinquished power of this world temporarily to these other powers and they are asserting their force this is when jews started thinking about the devil there's a devil who's god's counterpart god has his angels the devil has his demons and other powers like sin is an actual power that's trying to enslave you you know sometimes you just can't stop yourself what is that it's a power it's trying to get a hold of you death is a power when it gets ahold of you it annihilates you and so there are these forces of evil in the world there's this dualism between good and evil between god and the devil god's ultimate solution to the problem of suffering including death is to intervene god is going to reassert his power over this world and destroy the forces of evil to set up a good kingdom where no one will suffer anymore there'll be no more starvation there'll be no more epidemics there'll be no more poverty uh there'll be no more war there'll be no more uh there'll be no illness there'll be nothing uh there'll be happiness for all that god rewards but how's it going to happen there's gonna be a day of judgment and god is going to enter into judgment with this world and punish the wicked and reward the righteous that will come not only to people who are alive at the time you know if you happen to be alive and you're righteous oh lucky you not just you know it's not like you're righteous that's something you did but lucky you're alive now too bad you know too bad that guy died five years ago he's not going to get the kingdom that god's bringing no that's not right to be fair god has to reward everybody and he's got to punish everybody he's got to reward the righteous punish the wicked but so it's not just going to be people alive but they can't be alive unless they come back into their bodies because only bodies can live in the jewish tradition and so jews started promoting the idea of the resurrection of the body when jews and christians at least the ones who who understand the history of this idea when they talk about the resurrection of the body they mean your body's gonna come back to life you when you die your body will disintegrate you won't exist anymore but god is gonna raise your body from the dead and it will be a glorified body it'll be a body that won't suffer and it won't die uh that's the jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the body okay the other point about this view was that it was imminent jewish apocalypticists were writing in a time of immense suffering for the jewish people and they were writing their accounts about god intervening to reward his righteous and punish the wicked they're writing it to people who were suffering and they were telling them it won't be long it's coming right away it is right around the corner hold on don't cave in don't give up on your righteousness in order to thrive because you've got to be righteous to survive the coming onslaught and so hang on because it's imminent this view became very common in judaism starting about 150 years before jesus was born 200 years 170 180 years before his ministry um it was a view held widely in judaism it was a view the basic view was held by pharisees and is held by the people who made the dead sea scrolls and is held by john the baptist and it was held by jesus and his followers it was it was the majority view uh that we as far as we can tell in israel at the time jesus too thought that the end was coming soon that god was going to intervene destroy the forces of evil get rid of these wicked empires that are making our life wretched and bring in a good kingdom on earth the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked will be punished how's it going to work for jesus it is really hard to know it's hard for scholars to figure out exactly what jesus taught we have four gospels in the new testament these gospels were written between 40 and 65 years after jesus death by people who didn't know him who were living in different parts of the world and didn't even speak his language he spoke aramaic the gospels are written in greek they're not written by eyewitnesses they're written they're recording stories they've heard about jesus teachings and sometimes a lot of times they don't actually agree on what they say about jesus life so these are problematic sources they're for not for believers i mean for believers they're scripture and you know they function as scripture for believers but for historians trying to figure out what really happened they posed their problems well scholars you know devoted their lives to dealing with it with these kinds of problems i'm not going to be able to get into all that here i will say that virtually everybody agrees that one of jesus most clear teachings one that you find everywhere in his teachings is about the coming kingdom of god the first recorded words of jesus are in mark chapter one mark is our first gospel chapter one is the first chapter the first thing jesus says is in verse 15. so the first recorded words of jesus are the time has been fulfilled the kingdom of god is at hand repent and believe the good news the king the time has been fulfilled is an apocalyptic image god has allotted a certain amount of time to the forces of evil and the time is up the time has been fulfilled the kingdom of god is at hand and in other words god now is going to intervene to overthrow the evil force of this world and bring in his kingdom here on earth jesus is not talking about heaven when you die when he talked about the kingdom of god he was a jew he didn't believe that the soul separated from the body when he talks about the kingdom read what he says about people are going to be feasting there they're going to be eating there they're going to be hanging out with the patriarchs there it's this is a kingdom on earth that's coming soon god created paradise on this earth to begin with people messed it up but god's gonna bring it back the kingdom of god is gonna be the paradise on earth that god originally created it's coming soon those who do not enter into the kingdom of god will be cast out and sometimes jesus talks about them being cast into ghana what is ghana english bible translations do not do you a favor when they translate the word gehenna as hell because when we think of hell we think about that fiery place underneath the earth where people are going to be tormented forever that's not what gehenna is in jesus teachings gehenna refers to a place called ghana which first shows up in the old testament gehenna is a valley outside of jerusalem it's on the southeast side of jerusalem it's a valley where corpses were thrown in order to desecrate them jews like everyone else in the ancient world wanted a decent burial if you didn't get a decent burial that was very bad not that your soul is living on it's just like you know i have been dishonored and this is like this is awful people in the ancient world hated that idea gehenna was a particularly bad place for your remains to be disposed because in the old testament it's a place where some israelites practice child sacrifice to a pagan deity malak and so if you get thrown there you are thrown into the most god forsaken place on earth jesus is not talking about going to heaven with your soul or going to hell and again he's talking about your remains being desecrated you don't want that so okay well but if people aren't rewarded the kingdom they might be tossed in gerhana what is what is their destruct what what actually is going to happen to people when when judgment comes well what's going to happen is for jesus people are going to be destroyed those those people who are not living when judgment comes are going to be raised from the dead the righteous will enter into the kingdom along with the righteous living the wicked will be raised from the dead to be shown the error of their ways and then they will be annihilated uh probably painfully in fire they're going to be destroyed and that they won't exist anymore jesus does not talk about punishment after he doesn't talk about torment after death he doesn't know about tort eternal torture he talks about destruction and so i could pick up lots of verses i'm just picking two matthew 7 jesus says enter through the narrow gate uh for the gate is uh is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction and uh the uh sorry i gotta move on and and uh there are many who go through it how narrow is the gate and how hard the way the path that leads to life there are few who find it well what happens to people who don't find life they get destroyed or take his parable of the weeds matthew 13 just as the weeds are gathered and consumed with fire so it will be at the close of the age the son of man will send his angels this is so the intervention of god at the end of time god the son of man will send his angels they will gather out of his kingdom all those who urge people to sin and act lawlessly and they will cast them into the furnace of fire what happens to weeds when they're thrown into the fire if you go back five years later are the weeds still there no they've been burned they're destroyed what happens when people are thrown into fire they too get burned and destroyed and turned into ashes what's going to happen at the end of time when people are thrown into the furnace of fire they're going to be destroyed jesus did not teach that people would be tormented after death everybody would be raised from the dead some would enter into the kingdom to live forever and those who weren't lived forever would be destroyed by fire so it's annihilation it's not uh torment yeah but what about that parable of the sheep and the goats right you get the you get this this parable where uh jesus um here let me go to the previous the sheep in the ghost is this parable of jesus in uh matthew chapter 25 where jesus says at the end of time this judgment day will happen and all the nations of earth will gather in front of the judge and on the right will be the sheep and on the left the goats jesus turns to those on his right and he says enter into my kingdom because you you did what god wanted i was hungry and you fed me i was thirsty and you gave me something to drink i was lonely and you visited me so come enter into the kingdom and the sheep say lord what are you talking about we we've never even seen you how do you do that to you he said if you did it to the least of these my brethren my brothers and sisters you did it to me turns to the ghost you go to your destruction because i was hungry you didn't feed me thirsty you didn't give me to drink lonely you didn't visit me and they said lord we never even saw you before you didn't do the least of my brothers and sisters so off with you so the king will say uh to the ones on his right side the blessed come you are blessed with my father inherit the kingdom that is prepared from you from the beginning of the world he says to the left be off you are cursed go away from me to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and angels these who will go away to eternal punishment but those righteous to eternal life uh well that sounds like eternal torment right so they are being eternally punished no wrong notice that there is again a parallelism between what happens to the goats and what happens to the sheep they have opposite fates their fates are opposite what is the opposite of life the sheep gets lost the sheep get life what's the opposite of life is it uh for example uh being tortured no the opposite of life is not torture the opposite of life is death when he says that this is an eternal punishment he means they're going to be destroyed by fire and it's an eternal punishment because it's never going to be reversed it's eternal punishment because it's eternal death jesus taught that there's a kingdom coming here to earth nobody is going to be raised up to in their soul to go to heaven and nobody's going to be sent to hell to be tormented forever the kingdom will be here on earth where god created paradise to begin with that's why god created the earth and his people are going to live here on earth forever in their bodies without suffering at all the wicked though will be destroyed annihilated painfully after they're raised from the dead so where'd the idea come from that you die and your soul goes to heaven hell which is what most christians still think jesus was an apocalypticist who taught that this coming of the end was coming soon it was imminent just as other apocalyptists said jesus said to his disciples some of you standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of god has come in power in other words that kingdom i've been talking about that paradise on earth is coming and it's going to come within the before some of you die he says to his apostles or he says later in mark that's mark chapter 8 verse 58 mark chapter 13 verse 30 he says this generation will not pass away before all these things take place talking about he's talking about the end of time this year his generation won't pass jesus thought this was going to happen in his lifetime it didn't happen and christians had to modify how they understood what jesus was saying an apocalyptic understanding of things is that you have this dualism that is um good versus evil and it's set up as a kind of a chronological timeline a horizontal timeline evil is in control now there'll be an intervention of god and then good will be in control and so the dualism is not just good and evil it's also a historical dualism this age that's wicked run by the powers of evil and that age that'll be good run by god a horizontal dualism when it doesn't happen when the intervention does not occur when the judgment day does not arrive christians change the way they understand the dualism from being a horizontal dualism of this evil age and the good age to come to a vertical dualism of up and down heaven and hell it's still a dualism and it's still good and evil but good is up above and evil is down below reward is above punishment is below this is flipped to a vertical dualism it is now no longer temporal it is spatial and it gets there by insisting that the salvation that lies ahead is not in the body but in the soul what happens is this christians who start converting to christianity people who start converting christianity early on in the first century the earliest converts were jews they had jewish views of things including body and soul with the bodies body live can live on if it's brought back to life but the soul doesn't exist apart from the body by the end of the first century most people converted into christianity were non-jews gentiles who were raised in greek ways of thinking who believed there was a separation of body and soul because when they were educated or brought up or taught or when they existed they grew up in a world influenced by plato not a world influenced by the hebrew bible they were they were pagans what's their view of the body body and souls to separate well when the end didn't come and more converts are coming out of greek circles what naturally happens is they start understanding it differently like greeks do it's heaven and hell heaven and hell in the christian tradition is a kind of amalgam of the teachings of plato and the teachings of jesus now that is the most simplistic way i can put this because i don't really mean that people are sitting down thinking you know i think i'm going to put plato together with jesus to see what i come up with here it's that the kind of ideas you find in plato became disseminated throughout the entire roman empire because of the conquest of greek culture christians converted out of that culture they uh they they were raised within that culture but then they converted to be followers of jesus but they understand jesus in light of their own world and their own understandings of things just as everybody has done throughout history just as american christians do it leads to this amalgamation where pi where plato and jesus together give us our heaven and hell what is interesting is that later writers who are writing about early christianity who actually writers who write about jesus put their views on jesus lips so that in some of jesus in some of the later gospels we have like luke and john jesus seems to be teaching things that he didn't teach in earlier gospels matthew and mark in matthew mark he's talking about the coming kingdom of god on earth all of a sudden in luke there's a couple of passages where he seems to think that you die and your soul goes someplace where does that come from it didn't come from jesus these are later gospels written by people who didn't know jesus who are who are recording what they've heard jesus said but it doesn't coincide with what jesus said jesus talked about the kingdom of god that's coming and now they're talking about heaven and they don't actually talk about heaven hell very much there's one passage but um basically uh what happens is jesus words get transformed not just in this way in lots and lots of ways as any scholar of the gospels will tell you what eventually this leads to is our graphic descriptions of heaven and hell where the soul is punished forever it's always been a bit of a problem in the christian tradition because christians believe that um christians who believe in the separation of the soul in the body believe that the soul doesn't is in the body well if a soul doesn't have a body how does it feel pain and there are no nerve endings and how does it even think there's no brain and how did i mean you know these are problems that christians have to have to grapple with but nonetheless they start developing ideas that if you go to heaven there will be very s very um sense-oriented pleasures and in hell there will be very real physical torments even though it's your soul so there you have what i'm considering the birth of heaven and hell uh i i think that it's a later development within christianity i do not think it's the teaching of uh of the old testament i do not think it's the teaching of jesus and i think that it's a teaching that emerges later in christianity when the earlier apocalyptic expectations fail uh and it's the view that everybody's inherited down till today all right i'm going to stop there and i will i'm going to do a q a and i think uh i need to oh i need to stop sharing my screen it's what i need to do yep all right there i go okay okay so uh again thank you bart again for you can turn on your um your video uh at this point if you have a question um go down at the bottom you see a reactions tab you press on that and you can put a thumbs up and i will know uh that you have a question and uh then i'll call your name and you can ask bart that question okay let me get rid of that hopefully if it will get rid of i don't know how do you undo it welcome to technology okay sal go ahead uh yes uh dr ehrman before i ask my question do you want to briefly discuss your blog oh thank you i would yes thank you very much uh i plan to do that at the end but let me do it now before people get off um so uh thank you uh ciao i uh i have a blog um that i would like you all to know about and to spread the word about it's called the bart ehrman blog on this blog i uh i post about the new testament and early christianity i make five posts a week usually around 1200 words that deal with everything involving early christianity the historical jesus the how we got the bible how we got the new testament how we got the old testament how uh the books that didn't make it into the bible uh the writings of paul every historical issue from jesus up to constantine i mean constantine's conversion if you're interested in that persecution of early christians the role of women in early church jewish christian relations but also interpretation of passages in the bible it's a whole gamut of things uh so i post five times a week around 1200 words uh a week there's a a charge for uh joining the ball there's a membership fee um there are there are ranks of levels that you can be on the lowest rank is a is uh 29.95 uh a year uh so it's you know 55 cents a month or something i think what it is exactly but it's uh so it's not no it's not i mean 55 cents a week it's so it's not it's not a lot um what i do though i don't i don't get any of the money myself i uh i i get nothing for it uh in fact i pay for it uh the money all goes to charity um the money uh goes to charities dealing with mainly with hunger and homelessness and so i use it as a way to raise money the blog's been going since 2012. we've raised over a million dollars uh in that time we raised uh well over two hundred thousand dollars just this last year and i'm trying to raise more and more money so if you're interested in the new testament early christianity uh think about joining the blog and um as i said there are various tiers if you pay for higher tiers you pay a little bit more and you get you get more perks you get more benefits and so look at it just look up the barterman blog and you'll see thanks al okay now to my question uh you mentioned the uh the parable of the sheep and goats that is found only in matthew yeah uh as because it does not stand the test of independent attestation yes why do you think these are words that jesus actually said yes so uh for those of you don't follow that last point sal is pointing out that one thing that scholars do with the fact that you've got these different gospels with different stories that are odds with each other sometimes is they they look to see do you have the same kind of story in two gospels that aren't copying from each other because if you got it's like if you've got two eyewitnesses to an event it's better than one eyewitness because the one eyewitness might be making it up but if you've got two eyewitnesses to say basically the same thing maybe using different words then it's less likely that you know they're both making it up see what i mean and so you look for independent sources and this parable is found only in matthew and so it's not independently attested nonetheless i am pretty sure jesus said this and the reason sal for me is that the early christians of course were very intent on proclaiming that jesus is the way to salvation this is their view that without christ you cannot have salvation you have to have faith in christ and what happens in this parable is that the people who get salvation do not have faith in christ in fact they've never even heard of christ this is they're they the they're welcomed into the kingdom of god by the judge who's the son of man who apparently in the parable is supposed to be christ the judge because they fed him and and clothed him and visited him and they said we've never even seen you before and didn't matter they did good things for other people so doing good things for other people in the parable is what gets you into heaven you're not into heaven in the kingdom of heaven in the kingdom of god that's not what the early christians thought that means that an early christian probably did not make up this parable this is a view that jesus had jesus thought you have to be righteous if you're going to enter into the kingdom of god you have to keep the torah you need to do what god commands that's jesus teaching but it wasn't the teaching of the early christians and so this looks like it's something that fits into jesus understanding things much better than it does in the early christian view of things so that's why any other questions uh if not i'll follow up on that um now ben has a question okay hi for speaking with us today this is great uh my question uh actually i comes down to uh experience i had recently when i went to the met museum and i saw a lot of medieval art and somewhere around the 1500s i started seeing all of these diagrams of christian cosmology where there's the earth there's a firmament and then there's god literally right above and then down below there's hell and so i guess my question was um how did that evolve that kind of hyper literalism uh was it that way early on or was it more symbolic earlier on what i touched on some of this but i was curious about that yeah no it's a great it's a great question and it's um it's a little bit complicated and the question is because um you know starting back as far as aristotle uh people understood that the world was a globe uh and that um so you know i'm in aristotle tried to calculate the circumference and it says so people always say you know before the before uh you know the enlightenment everybody thought the world was flat it's not true actually that's not true that that myth that was a myth by the way that everybody thought the world was flat that statement was a myth invented in the 19th century by uh by scientists who wanted to show how stupid religion was because they thought the world's flat but now we know so um nonetheless there there were christian cosmologies that uh understood the world in these three dimensions so it's a three-dimensional universe uh where you got you've got up where god is and you got here where we are and you got down below where you know so you got you got so the righteous go up the wicked go down and it's it's this three dimensional thing uh it's rooted in in a literal understanding of the um uh of the bible is starting with with um with chapter one so in genesis chapter one when god creates the heavens and the earth um what he does is um he actually doesn't make um he doesn't make dry land what he does is he he puts water he makes water he makes a firmament between the waters above and the waters below so the water existed and god puts this thing called a firmament which means a firm space between them and the firm space is understood to be the ground that we're on and the heaven above us heaven is a dome that um that is a is a firm thing god is up above the dome and below us is where uh is where is water so there's water above water below that's why when the flood comes in for noah in in the later chapter of genesis 6-9 when the flood comes it's not just that it rains the rain comes down from above because the water from above is coming back in and water comes up from underneath too and what it's saying is the world is returning to its pre-created state because the water is coming back you see and so so the firmament's not holding anymore um and so this this becomes an understanding that becomes uh sort of common in jewish circles and is picked up by the early christians which is why the early christians thought that uh hell was below the the after the hell was below and heaven was above and it's why paul says things about jesus coming down from heaven because jesus is up there with god now and he's going to come down and then in paul in first thessalonians chapter 4 paul says when jesus comes down at the last judgment the dead will rise first then we will meet them up in the air and so so you've got this down and this up and it's all this three-story thing and so these these medieval art these late medieval artists are picking up on that concept the three-storied uh business uh from that and it is it is the even though even though we live in a universe where there's no up and down there is no up and down in our universe depending where you stand people still seem to think about you know christ ascending to heaven like physically you know and that he's coming down and our souls will go up or they'll go down you know which is it doesn't really fit a modern cosmology at all does that answer your question ben yeah yeah it does thank you elaine did you have a question yeah i have a comment if i may i'm jewish and in my long life experience in synagogue attendance there is absolutely no discussion of heaven or hell i am not in the orthodox section of judaism it perhaps may be alluded to there but my father who did uh was more in the orthodox direction never mentioned it so i think that is a very significant difference perhaps because i haven't been to many church services but i do believe it's mentioned more there than in jewish practice yes so perhaps we want you mention um professor erman spoke originally about the percentage of christians who believe in heaven and hell and there was a good percentage if you were to ask in judaism i don't know if he has any comments in that regard well thank you elaine no it's a very very very important point um the statistics i gave were of all americans uh but including jews but you know of course what you you're of course you're right i mean most use this is not an issue um and let me let me explain it historically why it's not an issue in judaism um when i talked about jewish apocalyptic thought about the idea that there was a kingdom of god coming and um and that there would be paradise on earth forever and the righteous will enter it and the wicked be destroyed that what and i said that was a very common view in the days of jesus starting about you know a couple hundred years before christianity started and then it lasted for um they actually date this thing too around starting around the year 200 bce for reasons i don't need to go into and uh this was a widely held view in judaism for about 300 years where jews did think most most use that we know of thought that there would be this future apocalyptic moment where the kingdom of god would arrive after the bar kokovo rebellion in the 130s which was a an uprising against the roman overlords in in israel where they're trying to drive out the romans from the land they got they got wiped out and jewish thinkers at that point gave up on apocalyptic thinking um so that when you get to the rabbinic materials starting with the mishnah and then later with the talmud itself the full talmud the apocalyptic if it's mentioned at all it's condemned anything like an apocalyptic view and basically judaism then developed without the apocalyptic view and certainly without the christian view about going to heaven and hell and so my my christian students can't get their minds around the idea that you could have a religion like judaism that doesn't believe in heaven and hell what's the point from my southern christian students but uh you you are you are absolutely right it's not this simply is not part of the jewish justice by the way it was this is another surprising thing it was not really much of a part for most uh most pagans in the ancient world most um most actual you know not most polytheists we're not religious because of heaven and hell it's kind of an afterthought if there's anything thank you thank you anybody else meryl you have to unmute yes thank you um it's very interesting as you say like let's say 70 of americans believe in heaven and hell and yet i would say the theological view of it uh well especially i would say in the episcopal church um dennis maybe you could clarify that for us is is that it it doesn't exist in the way that people think it does and maybe that's why episcopalianism is not as popular as some other uh evangelical churches where you kind of like it's almost like to exaggerate it a bit if you if you accept jesus as your savior then that gives you a ticket into heaven uh so dennis would you like to talk more about that or yeah i'd love to talk to this companion i'll let him do it okay bart yeah oh yeah so i uh i will i will talk about it i um it's true throughout the uh mainline christian protestant denominations that um uh and elsewhere in christendom that um that belief in heaven hell has been dropping off and continues to drop off um especially belief in hell uh it is a very i if the people this pew poll is some years old now and i'd be interested in seeing them doing a new one because increasingly people are jettisoning any idea of a literal hell as a place of punishment but within the christian movement that started in the more in the more liberal tradition for obvious obvious reasons uh not just in the episcopal church but certainly there but in other more liberal protestant denominations is where first started uh it is now crept into the evangelical community there are a number of evangelical uh theologians and apologists who uh are maintaining uh that there's not a liberal hell who believe uh believe in a kind of an annihilation view such as i i mapped out and they're saying that was actually jesus view i have a surprise i i learned this to my surprise just fairly you know at least five or six years ago um there's a book for example called four views of hell the four people are all very concerned i would call them all four fundamentalist christians but they're theologian they're thinkers they're smart guys they're just you know fundamentalist but they they three of them don't believe in the literal uh they don't believe in eternal conscious torment one of them believes in the kind of purgatory where you punish for a while uh one of them thinks you just die i mean so they got these other one of them did still hold on look it's in the bible that's what's his view um but then i've talked with other christian apologists evangelical christian apologists who uh say no i don't i just can't believe it anymore and you know it just me it's it's a great thing they're starting to you know use their heads about things because you know if you want to talk about why there's hell surely it means because there's justice right that would be god's justice and so all right so i'm a 30 year old and i die in a car accident and you know i've been you know i've kind of been aware of what i'm doing for about you know 15 or 18 years and i've been i haven't been the best of persons but i don't believe in jesus but you know you know and i'm not a real schmuck i'm going to be tortured for eternity for like 15 years of like messing up a bit and like you know in 15 trillion years that's the beginning what and so like even though angelico just say really i i don't know that's that seems a little extreme and fewer people are giving up on the belief in heaven and i think that's understandable because um i think um i think hope um is a very strong uh very strong emotion and the idea that there's got to be something more and there's got to be some resolution and you know surely i'm going to see my family again and you know and so there there are there are emotional reasons for hanging on to heaven so i think the numbers for hell are dropping off more than the numbers for heaven but in many liberal christian churches both of them are read more metaphorically i'd say okay merrell yeah um my question is you said that um the heaven is not too much mentioned in the new testament would you believe would you say that the lord's prayer were actually spoken by jesus himself and where he said thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven so he did speak about heaven so then okay yes yes i'm sorry i think i miscommunicated because what i meant was i don't mean that there is no heaven i mean that people won't go there heaven is where god lives in in the in jesus teaching so that heaven heaven is a place up above that's where god and his angels are um it's the source of all good um but jesus does not think that humans will go there when they die when he says let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven he's saying we bring in your kingdom come bring your kingdom here on earth so that what happens here on earth is according to your will just as everything up in heaven is according to your will and so it's about bringing heaven to earth it's not about people going to heaven it's about god's will being manifest on earth the way it is in heaven is how i it's how i read it okay i'm sorry can i just follow up just just um the story that the problem the bible about um the poor man in the bosom of abraham in hell how then do you explain that one yeah i'm sorry thank you that's just curious bro i've got to tell you i thought that would be your follow-up question [Laughter] all right so meryl's talking about um the parable in luke 16 which is lazarus and the rich man or if you are um if you're familiar with the uh old traditions lazarus and divey's [Laughter] dives of course comes from the latin word waste which means rich it's a rich person and so in the new testament the person's not named um and the story uh is a a very very powerful story in luke 16 where jesus is describing a filthy rich man who has this fantastic mansion and uh glorious clothes and all sorts of slaves and servants and has um and is feasting every day has all these sumptuous meals and there's a guy outside his gate named lazarus who's just desperately looking in who's starving to death and is covered with sores and is dying and he just wants the scraps off of this man's table just to survive okay they both die lazarus is taking up taken up to heaven to feast with abraham and the patriarchs and he's having a feast up in heaven the rich man is sent down to torment in hell uh where he's in the fire the rich man looks up he sees lazarus up there and he says lazarus he and he sees it lazarus and abraham's bosom i mean uh next abraham says abraham send lazarus down here at least he can dip his finger in the water and cool my tongue it's hot down here and abraham says a cat there's a chasm between us and nobody can go between the two and the rich man says he says well look would you at least send them to my brother i've got these brothers on earth send it to my brothers and warn them because this could happen to them and abraham says i can't do that either he says look your brothers have moses and the prophets if they don't believe moses and the prophets they won't believe if a man is raised from the dead okay that's how it ends so what's going on here first it's a parable it is not a literal statement of something that happened it's a parable so this is not describing anything literal second um i don't think it's something jesus said i was saying earlier that the gospels have differences and we jesus says some things in the gospels that he probably didn't really say and scholars have to figure out which is which every time you run across a parable you got to figure out this is something jesus said some of them look like yeah absolutely must have said this and we have so scholars write entire books like on a parable there are on my bookshelf behind me i have two books on that parable so i mean this is like people study this stuff the reason for thinking jesus did not tell this parable which by the way both of these books agree with is that it looks like the parable is presupposing that the readers understand that final line if jews do not believe really believe what moses and the prophets say they will not come to belief even if a man is raised from the dead the parable is presupposing that the readers know that there's been a man who's been raised from the dead and people who have moses and the prophets don't believe in him and so the parable is presupposing a post-easter context it's presupposing that it's being told in the context where people know about jesus being raised from the dead and so that's why scholars tend to think that that's one reason that scholars tend to think that jesus did not actually tell that parable it's found only luke uh going back to south's point about independent attestation it's nowhere else uh in the new testament or anywhere else and it's supporting a view of heaven and hell that jesus doesn't have in his other teachings of the kingdom of god uh and it seems to be presuppose of post-national context so i don't think jesus actually told the parable even though it's a great parable so it's embodying this later view put on jesus lips in my opinion okay and other questions sal you had another question shock horror surprise i'd like to get back to the point about the sheep and the goats and ask um you've written that the earlier uh sources to the time of jesus the more likely it is reliable as something that he actually said and did and with that paul writes in galatians a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in jesus christ and then in mark he writes where a rich man asks jesus what he must do to attain eternal life jesus replies you know the commandments so here we have paul talking about justification by faith apart from the law and jesus and mark saying it's the law should jesus have paid another visit to paul and say hey get the story straight i'll tell you sal you know this is it's a great comparison you just made and i have to tell you that i used to give an assignment to my students uh in my new introduction to the new testament class that was exactly what you've just done what i did is for this and it and it never worked i had to stop doing it because the students just didn't see it but what i did is i say okay this rich man comes up to jesus what must i do for eternal life jesus keep the commandments which ones well don't commit adultery don't do it don't murder don't do you know and uh and the guy says i've done all that he says okay then you got to give everything away and then follow me he said give everything away and then you'll have treasure in heaven and then follow me okay so what i say to them my students the instruction is okay summarize what this person has to do to have eternal life all right now read paul in galatians read that passage sal you just quoted where paul says you're justified only by having faith not by doing the works of the law he said now suppose this man who came up to jesus 20 years later came up to paul and asked him how do i have eternal life does he say the same thing jesus said or does he say something different and of course when paul says you've got to believe in the death and resurrection of jesus and your works will not matter and so then i have the students say well okay is that the same thing or not the reason i had to give this up is because my students would always say yeah it's the same thing it's not the same thing it's the opposite thing and they said no that's the same thing because they'd say because at the end of it jesus says and then come follow me and for that means i've got to believe in jesus i said no no you don't get it you have eternal life you give away your you you follow the commandments if you want treasures in heaven you give away your riches and then only then then after you have that you can you follow me it's not that you follow me and that's what gives you treasures in heaven so anyway so i gave it but yeah i don't think they see eye to eye on this which is why i actually do another debate in my i do a public debate in my class with students one side has to has to argue affirmative the other negative the debate is resolved paul and jesus represented fundamentally different religions some students have to argue yeah their religions are different other that's hard no they're basically the same and they debate it there's not there's not obvious answer to that but that's that's the debate okay another question if i may uh in the triumph of christianity you're right there's a good deal of evidence to suggest that far more than the glories of heaven it was the tortures of hell that convinced potential converts did the vertical dualism of heaven and earth play a major role in the exponential growth of christianity between 40 ce and 400 ce um yeah it's a great question and it's hard to answer um we have um so so for those who don't know my book crime for christianity tries to explain how christianity started out just as a little group of jesus followers after his death so he he dies in jerusalem say it's the year 30. we're not quite sure which year but say it's around the year 30 and in the in the gospels he's he's got 11 he's got 11 disciples left and he's got a handful of women who have followed him to jerusalem for the for the passover feast so there's maybe 20 people there and in the gospels they come to believe so let's say there are 20 of them it's plausible so i mean at the very beginning 20th um by the end of the uh fourth century there are 30 million of them and so my question my book is how do you get from 20 people to 30 million people in you know in this amount of time how's that happen and so the triumph of christian and it becomes the official religion of the roman empire and so i'm interested in knowing how that happened sal's question is is the belief in a literal heaven and hell uh a major factor in converting people um we have stories of people who convert throughout the second third fourth centuries what the stories consistently show is that the reason people converted is because they believed that the christian god was more powerful than their old gods that god was more powerful and the reason you worship god is because you know there are things you need like you need to live and you need to eat and you need to survive war and you need to survive illness and you need there are things you need and you can't provide that you can't you can't provide those things for yourself you can't make sure it rains you can't make sure the crops grow you can't make sure the livestock reproduce you can't make sure your daughter recovers from an illness you can't do those things the gods can do it ancient people worship the gods because they were powerful and they could do things for them christians convinced people that their god was more powerful and when people became convinced that their god christian gods were powerful well they're going to worship back god so that's what happens christians were on the conversionist movement in order to uh convince people this heaven and hell is one way you can convince people that god is more powerful because the idea is that in pagan religions afterlife was not an issue people who were polytheists did not worship gods for an afterlife they had nothing to do with the afterlife had to do with surviving now um but christian said you know the power of god that you've seen here that i you know this person has become healed because of the power of god god's power extends beyond this life and after you die you are going to be rewarded or punished because and god's going to do it you can't stop him and so the question is whether the um afterlife message was a significant impact on early christianity uh on its spread and i don't know there's no way to know how significant it was it is worth noting that we have um narratives uh in which people preach about heaven and hell uh and get a lot of confidence uh and so um sometimes we have one account for example from the second century of a woman who has a near-death experience and she um it's in a book called the acts of thomas she she has a near-death experience she dies and she's given a tour of hell and it scares her to death well she's dead already she's brought back from the dead she tells it she tells everybody and she she tells the apostle thomas who raises it from the dead what she's just seen and it terrifies the crowd and the crowd all converts i don't want that and so uh so it probably was used as a missionary too just as fire and brimstone has continued in fundamental circles to function as a missionary tool elaine you have to unmute yourself i would wonder i would also probably give my own feeling that there are as many saints and sinners in judaism as in christianity both with the motivation or without the motivation of heaven and the fear of hell and um i just wonder if that is valid what i think i am saying because i believe that almost all religions believe in good works objectively here and now without that attachment of the gift yeah uh no you're absolutely right i mean in terms of morality christians christians are not more moral because they believe in heaven and hell look around the world and so uh uh but christianity christianity's early emphasis on heaven and hell was another thing that made it distinctive in the roman world um the jew jews weren't interested in making converts in the ancient world any more than jews are interested making converts now and what you want to okay but you um but pagans also didn't make converts there's no reason for them to make converts either i mean why um christians thought they did need to make converts and they also thought that if you didn't convert you were going to roast in hell and that became a that became a missionary message and it's the kind of situation where it's an interesting situation because they were having to convince people that hell existed before convincing the person was going there but it's like it's like a marketing campaign where uh we're a very good marketer you've got a new product and you have to invent the a person's sense that they need the product along with the advertising of the project product so like if you've uh you know whenever you know you're back in 1920 or something you've never heard of a vacuum cleaner and somebody comes along and introduces a vacuum cleaner you've got to explain to them why this is like an important thing for their life so christians are doing that they're creating a market as their as they're pushing their product and uh so heaven and hell becomes this product and but it ends up becoming so important um that when christianity takes over the western world for most of western history since the fourth century the vast majority of people believed in heaven and hell and simply assume that's what's religion what religion's about with all the implications that they draw them and they say for example they say well that means that you know um without heaven and hell there'd be no morality because you know christians are immoral because of heaven hell and so you wouldn't be more without heaven in hell and so they come up with this stuff but then you say well yeah you know actually there are these there are other people in the world who are not christians who are just as moral as you are you know well so yeah just um uh i was curious there with john the baptist and elijah him being elijah and not being recognized there's almost this weird reincarnation theme today it's kind of as judaism moves into christianity what can you tell us anything more about that yeah so in my book i have a chapter in reincarnation in the christian tradition uh or a section of a book of the chapter on reincarnation because it's kind of an interesting thing there are several passages in the new testament that people have used to argue for a reincarnation and that elijah thing is one of them because elijah people are saying john the baptist is elijah well uh the thing about elijah though is elijah's kind of a special case because elijah never died in the old testament so john wouldn't be reincarnated because john never he's not john come back from the dead because john hasn't died yet i mean elijah hasn't died yet and so it's kind of a special case but there are there are other things in the new testament the most interesting one i think is in john chapter nine in john chapter nine jesus and his disciples are walking around and they're passing this guy who's blind begging for money and and we're told this guy was born blind so he didn't become blind he was born blind and the disciples asked jesus something a lot of readers go pass right over this don't even notice it they asked jesus who sinned this man or his parents that he should be born blind now you think about this for a second if they're imagining that the man sinned so that he would be born blind he would have had to sin before he was born which means this much they must be suggesting reincarnation so that's how some people read it that way it's a it's a complicated passage actually to interpret that way um reincarnation um never picked up much in early christianity i often have people tell me that they've heard the green incarnation was the doctrine that got squelched in early christianity and it's not true hardly anyone believes in reincarnation until there was a there was a third century church father named origen who actually did develop a doctrine of reincarnation his view was that everybody in the end is going to be saved um look god is sovereign over this world god is not going to have his will thwarted and no matter how hard you try you are not going to swerve god you might toward it now and you might be wicked now and you might disobey god god has a way of convincing people and over like a series of almost infinite ages eventually everybody's going to get it and so um but for that to happen you get reincarnated so if you're wic if you're if you're righteous you go to heaven if you're wicked you get reincarnated try it again until you so that's the first time you start getting a doctor of reincarnation and then that ended up being uh taking people he was a very famous theologian very important theologian but he um but this doctrine ended up dying uh dying off and in case he doesn't reincarnate merrill you had one and then that we're going to have to look at that as near the end i'm mute nida and mute yeah um it's just back to john the baptist where john the baptist we just came off advent and there was john the baptist talking to the pharisees or you generation of vipers who want you to flee from the lords to come what was he talking about if it wasn't a case of the hell that was to come what exactly no it's a great question whenever john the baptist or jesus talks about the wrath that is coming they're talking about the judgment that's going to hit the earth soon when god intervenes to destroy the people who are against him and so the idea is they're actually they're partially getting this from daniel chapter 7 uh in the old testament daniel chapter 7 verses 13 and 14 where there's a series of kingdoms that arise out of the sea uh that are wicked that are that are really doing nasty things on earth and then there's a kingdom that comes from heaven represented by one like a son of man who destroys the evil and gives the kingdom forever and ever to the saints they're building on that image john the baptist and jesus by saying that there is a there's a cosmic judge going to come from god above and he's going to destroy everything that's evil and everybody on their side and people need to prepare because it's coming very soon those who uh those who are ready and who are prepared and who are being righteous will survive those who are unrighteous will be destroyed and so that's why john also says that's what he means by the wrath that's coming and that's why john also says in his earlier words when he's talking to them he says he tells them the axe has already been laid at the root of the tree this is john the baptist talking every tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire well so the axe has been laid at the tree means that the chopping is ready to begin this is a judgment image the tree is going to be destroyed um and every tree that doesn't bear fruit is going to be chopped down so he's telling the pharisees you better start bearing good fruit or you're going to be destroyed like this tree you're going to be tossed into the fire now that tree didn't survive for a thousand years in the fire it burned up and so too will the people they'll be destroyed in the fire it'll be a painful death and then it's over with and so they weren't talking about going to hell to be tormented forever they're talking about the judgment day that's going to come on earth before paradise is brought back okay first of all i see david plank there i haven't seen him in a long time hi david good to see you uh just uh in thanking uh bart for sharing today i just want to bring up two few uh it's actually for future events but it's in march each saturday in march from 4 to 5 30. uh the first two saturdays march 6th and march 13th um elizabeth strothers melbourne will be talking to us about mark's gospel good and challenging news for all um so that'll be the 6th and the 13th from 4 to 5 30 in the afternoon you can sign up again on the website i'll we'll be putting that on in the next week or so and then on the 20th and 27th uh john dominic crosston uh will be speaking to us uh march 20th march 27 march 20th the week before holy week he'll be talking to us about the passion the death of jesus and then on march 27th which brings us to just the beginning uh just getting ready for easter actually uh which will be april 4th this year talking about the resurrection of jesus i was talking to bart a little earlier about that and he said generally he follows uh dominant crossing so he doesn't seem so liberal after you're dominic um so we're i want to thank bart for really beginning this biblical uh series for us in 2021 and for sharing his wisdom his knowledge uh and helping us to really explore our own faith no matter where we are on that journey i want to thank elaine uh for being here and representing uh our jewish brothers and sisters um shabbat shalom to you elaine uh and uh to anybody else that that might be appropriate to and thank you all for joining in bart thank you so much uh on behalf of us and for jeffrey for helping get you so i really appreciate that immensely yes thank you all appreciate thank you god bless you all take care thank you good good good bart thank you close off the

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 159,473

Keywords: Denis C. Brunelle, St. Luke's Episcopal Church, The History of Heaven and Hell, Apocalypse of Peter, Plato, Bart Ehrman

Id: lYl24xibc2I

Length: 93min 46sec (5626 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021