I hope that, over my previous articles I’ve at least succeeded in putting some questions in your mind concerning the traditional view of hell as eternal conscious torment. The doctrine seems to be so deeply rooted in Christian ‘orthodoxy’ that we have to ask how it came to be this way.

Influences

On examination, most of the influences are extra-biblical. I’ve already mentioned how the immortality of the soul, a vital plank in the argument for everlasting punishment, is an idea drawn from Greek thought and is at variance with the Hebrew picture of man. The concept of an eternal hell however seems to have its origins in the Zoroastrian religion, and probably started to creep into Jewish thought in the time of the Persian exile. The closest thing to a Biblical text that expresses the doctrine explicitly is the Book of Judith in the Apocrypha.

Judith is thought to be dated around 200 -150BC and tells of a Jewish Maiden who saves Israel from their enemies. In her song of victory she declares:

“The Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment; 
To put fire and worms in their flesh; 
And they shall weep and feel their pain for ever.” (Judith 16:17)

You’ll recognize the fire and worms from Isaiah 66 where they burn and eat up the corpses of God’s enemies. Here, though, the worms dine on the living and the fire tortures them forever in a very familiar picture of the traditional hell.

We should remember that this is an apocryphal book and that this picture does not concord with anything in the cannon of the Old Testament. It does seem, though that this element of everlasting suffering for Israel’s enemies starts to form a thread in Jewish thought during the Intertestamental period and on into Jesus’ era.

I’ve thought a lot about why these foreign ideas might have taken hold and have been considering the circumstances that Israel found herself in at the time.

Persecution

When the Persian Empire was succeeded by the empire of Alexander the Great, Israel found herself under increasing pressure to conform to Greek culture and religious practice. The chief offender was Antiochus Epiphanes who defiled the temple and violated the succession of the priesthood.

The freedom fighters of the time, characters like the Maccabees family, resisted and achieved some victories. However the Greeks had worked out that the Jews would not fight on the Sabbath and many a fine slaughter was performed. It is in this context that Books like Judith were written. We can begin to see how the outrage and pain of their situation could so easily lead the Jews to adopt a ‘death is too good for them’ perspective and herald the hyperbolic language quoted above.

Vengeance

It’s hard for those who live in societies that have not been ripped apart by warfare and oppression to appreciate how deeply those wounds are felt. The death of a child or a partner at the hands of a callous enemy bent on cruelty and destruction calls for justice and vengeance like the blood of Able calling from the ground in Genesis.

It’s only in Christ that these outrages can be neutralized through forgiveness. In the Old and Intertestamental times, vengeance was seen as the antidote and thereby a whole other can of worms meets the tin opener.

A cursory survey of the Psalms will throw up plenty of examples of this kind of vengeance carried out by a wrathful God against the enemies of Israel. Judith and the people of her day seem merely to have felt that He should not be holding back quite so much.

Are there circumstances in your life that make want you cry out for vengeance?

Can you begin to understand how the Jews felt, and where these ideas might have originated?