The existence of HELL

[Jake]

I am not even sure where the current "Christian" concept of hell comes from.

Oh that one is a very long story mixing many scriptures together. It would take a whole thread just to go about it.

[ETOTE]

Is there a test on all this later?

[Jake]

I am not even sure where the current "Christian" concept of hell comes from.

But Ljay, here's something that will help you understand where the concept of Hell & Heaven comes from. Christianity concept hell and heaven were borrowed by previous and ancient religions. Which many people don't know or have forgotten. Because obviously the bible will not provide the sources of its writings because the old testament is in fact composed of 27 books or papyrus rolls and those are the only one that were found. The new testament had kept merely few of those books and major changes have been made from the very first version which we believe was accounted by the writings of Mark, John, Luke and Matthew. In fact, it is very possible that none of the gospel writers ever met with Jesus. The Bible or the precedent of what we call today the bible was written 80 years and so after the death of Yeshua (enough calling him Jesus... He's a Jew, Jesus isn't a Jewish name.) The original twelve apostles were: Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Nathanael or Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the Less, Simon the Zealot, Thaddeus or Jude, Judas Iscariot.

Beside Matthew & John (which is not the same Matthew & John), you do not see Mark, Luke, in the original 12 apostles. However, things may suggest that Matthew, John, Luke and Mark were students of few of the original apostles who would tell the story of Jesus vocally as it was originally done. Therefore, the whole religion of Christianity started with the believe of the second coming of Yeshuah has it was promised from the original apostles and the Gospel writers Mark is truly the one who is at the origin of the Christian religion.

Why I'm I pointing you to the Zoroastonian, because In fact, the concept of both heaven and hell didn’t even exist in the first two thirds of the Bible. Heaven and Hell as we know it today was truly developed in the new testament. The old testament barely makes any reference to the existence of hell and or heaven.

Here is an excerpt of Zoroastronism:

Zoroastrianism, although the smallest of the major religions of the world in the number of its adherents, is historically one of the most important. Its roots are in the proto-Indo-European spirituality that also produced the religions of India. It was the first of the world’s religions to be founded by an inspired prophetic reformer. It was influential on Mahayana Buddhism and especially on the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. To the latter three, Zoroastrianism bequeathed such concepts as a cosmic struggle between right and wrong, the primacy of ethical choice in human life, monotheism, a celestial hierarchy of spiritual beings (angels, archangels) that mediate between God and humanity, a judgment for each individual after death, the coming of a Messiah at the end of this creation, and an apocalypse culminating in the final triumph of Good at the end of the historical cycle.

You can find the whole study here. http://www.theosophical.org/publications/1231

I may be an atheist, but that doesn't mean I don't know (in fact many scholar atheists such as myself know the bible more than those who follow it). I study and I am interested in the history of religions. While I loathe religions in all its forms, I am very curious to know how it got so powerful and how it evolved into societies.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/

So enjoy!

[Jake]

Is there a test on all this later?

Yes and you already failed for asking the question. LOL

[Jake]

Now that I'm on my go I may as well continue ... Remember I mentioned the Odyssey of Omer in one of my previous post I was saying that the story of Jesus was very much borrowed from that novel. Although it's not completely provable, the similitudes are so mind-blowing that the description of Jesus made by the Gospel of Mark is so close to the legendary Jesus Christ that somehow many scholars wonders if Mark just borrowed from the Odyssey of Omer. And when I participate in reading and studies of the bible for science sake. We spent hours comparing some of those. But the most comparable character found was Odysseus which happens to be a carpenter like Jesus. Odysseus is plagued with unfaithful and dim-witted companions who display tragic flaws. They stupidly open a magic bag of wind while Odysseus sleeps and release terrible tempests which prevent their return home. These sailors are comparable to the disciples, who disbelieve Jesus, ask foolish questions, and show general ignorance about everything.

Anyway I am not going to do the whole description here, but one principal Theologian I have been following is Dr. Dennis MacDonald who is arguing that the Gospel of Mark is in direct relation with the story of Jesus. However, where Jesus differs from Odysseus is Jesus, Mark wanted Jesus to be superior to Odysseus in that he was killed by his rivals but rose from the dead, took his place at God's side, and will eventually judge everyone.

Novels such as Homer was very popular with scholars from the previous era. If you have studied philosophy you would notice that the fathers of Philosophy, Aristotle, Plato, would often use quotes coming from Omer. As per Dennys, Mark would have done the very same and even borrowed from Homer. This is one reason why scholars attribute the birth of Christianity to the Gospel of Mark.

Well this is just a forum... but I have nearly 150 hundreds of books on religion, philosophy and psychology. And I use my own deduction as well. But having read Homer, I have no choice to agree with Dr. MacDonald on his take regarding the Gospel of Mark.

If you want to know more about it: just consult this The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark. by Dennis R. MacDonald. I do not suggest you to steal the book, but I'm pretty sure you can get some few excepts from the net . If you like it... Buy it! Hurt Hollywood if you may, but writers are more fragile to piracy. However, the Odyssey of Omer is translated and available here http://sparks.eserver.org/books/odyssey.pdf

[Uneunsae]

These are the exact things I like to discuss with people in RL. I this scholarly discussion.

[Jake]

These are the exact things I like to discuss with people in RL. I this scholarly discussion.

You and I would have very long night without sex LOL

[Uneunsae]

Correction: We would be having mind sex.

[MikeW]

Excellent posts, Jake; although I fear all our furious typing has startled the little birds away!

I'm not an academic although, at times in my life, I've hobnobbed with the Berkeley / Bay Area version of that set and had the good fortune to have met several within the (what to call it?) philosophical-metaphysical sphere. One I wonder if you're familiar with: Peter Kingsley? His book, Reality, is quite interesting and I recommend it to you:

Reality introduces us to the extraordinary mystical tradition that lies right at the roots of western culture.

This is the true story of Parmenides, Empedocles, and those like them: spiritual guides and experts in other states of consciousness, healers and interpreters of dreams, prophets and magicians who laid the foundation for the world we now live in. Reality documents the excruciating process that led to their work and teaching being distorted, covered over, forgotten. And most importantly, it presents these original teachings in all their immediacy and power -- revealing their ability, just as vibrant now as at the dawn of the western world, to awaken us to what reality truly is.

I've emphasized "being distorted" for a reason I may return to momentarily.

In the mean time, I want to add that my relationship to all this is from the POV of a mystic. I was 'born that way' on a small rural farm in the US midwest. In the academic sense of the word, I'm *barely* educated. However, through odd events, I learned as a teenager how to educate myself. So most of what I've read of these interesting matters comes from my own self-inquiry.

From a very early age (7) I *knew* that The Great Knowledge (no, I didn't think of it that way at the time) was *lost* to us (contemporary people, or at least most). This was, for me, a tragic realization. Although I was by this time 'in school' it was clear to me that these were *nothing like* the ancient "Mystery Schools" that (some) of our ancient ancestors had access to.

You are curious about the way Great Teachings become seeds around which cultures, even civilizations form. I want to say that all the great teachers (Yeshua, Buddha and many others--most of them anyway) were the product of these schools. Obviously these 'schools' weren't just for learning how to get on in life, nor were they 'academic' in the sense we have today.

But what I really want to point toward is that 'distortion' aspect: Teachings are invariably distorted. In fact, one can take the entire crucifixion *as* a metaphor for the inevitable distortion of revelation.

Revelation is an interesting concept: It isn't something learned, although much preparatory learning may be necessary in order to 'receive' it. But this is precisely where the 'distortion' aspect comes in. Without that preparatory learning, Revelation can not be understood or, worse, it is invariably understood wrongly. Thus, although cultures and civilizations may arise from some Revealed truth, these same cultures and civilizations become 'mixed bags' that conceal that truth as much as they reveal it. Without the proper 'school' no sacred book that has come down to us from history is going to be much help.

I'm fond of quoting the philosopher Jacob Needleman (someone I've had the pleasure of knowing) speaking about "consciousness":

What Is Consciousness?

I realize that our task would be much easier if from now on we could be working with a precise definition of the word "consciousness." But it is important to stay flexible toward this question of the nature of consciousness. The word is used these days in so many different ways that out of sheer impatience one is tempted to single out one or another aspect of consciousness as its primary characteristic. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that our attitude toward knowledge of ourselves is like our attitude toward new discoveries about the external world. We so easily lose our balance when something extraordinary is discovered in science or when we come upon a new explanatory concept: Immediately the whole machinery of systematizing thought comes into play, Enthusiasm sets in, accompanied by a proliferation of utilitarian explanations, which then stand in the way of direct experiential encounters with surrounding life.

In a like manner, a new experience of one's self tempts us to believe we have discovered the sole direction for the development of consciousness, aliveness or--as it is sometimes called --presence. The same machinery of explanatory thought comes into play accompanied by pragmatic programs for "action." It is not only followers of the new religions who are victims of this tendency, taking fragments of traditional teachings which have led them to a new experience of themselves and building a subjective and missionary religion around them. This tendency in ourselves also accounts, as we shall see later, for much of the fragmentation of Modern psychology, just as it accounts for the fragmentation in the natural sciences.

In order to warn us about this tendency in ourselves, the traditional teachings--as expressed in the Bhagavad-Gita, for example--make a fundamental distinction between consciousness on the one hand and the contents of consciousness such as our perceptions of things, our sense of personal identity, our emotions and our thoughts in all their color and gradations on the other hand.

This ancient distinction has two crucial messages for us. On the one hand, it tell us that what we feel to be the best of ourselves as human beings is only part of a total structure containing layers of mind, feeling and sensation far more active, subtle and encompassing (like the cosmic spheres) than what we have settled for as our best. These lawyers are very numerous and need to be peeled back, as it were, or broken through one by one along the path of inner growth, until an individual touches in himself the fundamental intelligent forces in the cosmos.

At the same time, this distinction also communicates that the search for consciousness is a constant necessity for man. It is telling us that anything in ourselves, no matter how fine, subtle or intelligent, no matter how virtuous or close to reality, no matter how still or violent--any action, any thought, any intuition or experience--immediately absorbs all our attention and automatically becomes transformed into contents around which gather all the opinions, feelings and distorted sensations that are the supports of our secondhand sense of identity. In short, we are told that the evolution of consciousness is always "vertical" to the constant stream of mental, emotional and sensory associations within the human organism, and comprehensive of them (somewhat like a "fourth dimension"). And, seen in this light, it is not really a question of concentric layers of awareness embedded like the skins of an onion within the self, but only one skin, one veil, that constantly forms regardless of the quality or intensity of the psychic field at any given moment.

Thus, in order to understand the nature of consciousness, I must here and now in this present moment be searching for a better state of consciousness. All definitions, no matter how profound, are secondary. Even the formulations of ancient masters on this subject can be a diversion if I take them in a way that does not support the immediate personal effort to be aware of what is taking place in myself in the present moment.

This "immediate personal effort to be aware of what is taking place in myself in the present moment" is the key to understanding what is meant by "preparation" for receiving Revelation. It is the meaning of the Socratic, "Know Thyself." And it is what is missing in everything contemporary people do. We read, we make associations between the various things we read, we think we *know* something because we can then reassemble the words and put them together in sentences which hopefully make some sense, more or less. And this is all well and good for everyday sort of stuff. But when it comes to the transmission and reception of Revelation, it is quite insufficient. As, indeed, the history of all religious traditions shows us.

It is also worth noting that the great epic stories such as the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Upanishads and all the great stories that influenced and informed what we know of as 'The Holly Bible' (what a sad Joke, eh?) were originally Oral Traditions. Oral traditions that in some cases were passed from one initiate to another for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. We have very little understanding of what it would mean to live in a world where such stories were told around a harth-fire beneath the stars, generation after generation. All in a world which, in those days, *was perceived to be* at the center of the universe itself.

Still, the most important thing, as Jacob Needleman put it above and in his definition of genuine skepticism, is, "the search for a quiet centre within the mind that can resist the pull of subjective opinion, mechanical logic, and authoritarian belief. Nearer to that centre of the mind, it seems that a double certainty appears -- the certainty that it is humanly possible to know reality directly and the certainty that there are infinitely higher levels of being to be served beyond and within the human frame. Thus does a form of faith arise alongside the rejection of belief."

[Jake]

These are the exact things I like to discuss with people in RL. I this scholarly discussion.

And well this thread is about the existence of hell, so I might as well talk about it more. Did you guys know there was a Pope who refute the existence of hell? Bishop Jacque Dueze, who became Pope John 22rd in the France Middle Ages era during 1316-1334. There's a very interesting story about this Pope because John 22rd was scared of death and wrote several essays regarding Hell and purgatory.

But the most interesting part of this pope who succeeded to Pope Clement 5th was that he was mentioned in one of my all time favorite series of novel written by the former French Academy Officer, Maurice Druon who wrote the Accursed Kings (Les Rois Maudits), while the story was romanced for the sake of becoming a novel, most of the events mentioned in that novel really did happen and the event are very much accurate. (The novels became a theater piece and later on becoming a TV series with two versions, one of 1972 and the other appeared 33 years later in 2005. You may view both versions with subtitles on YouTube. I do prefer the very first version, however, and I've read all three tomes 5 times.

In those novels which was mentioned Bishop Dueze, which comes into play in the second tome after the death of Philip Lebel from the French Capetian King Dynasty. So now this novel takes place during the fall of the Templars, Philip Lebel was the king who ordered the death sentence of Jacques de Moley, Great Priest of the Templars. When King Philip died, he was replaced by his older son (there were three of them) and that successor was a temper tantrum kind of king and he ordered his previous wife - Margaret Of Navare who was imprisoned by King Philip for having repudiated his son (all three princesses were accused by the way.) Anyway I am not going to give the whole story or I'm not done writing tonight LOL. So let's forward this few months after the death of King Philip when Louis 10th became king and looking to remarry.

In the middle ages era for Royal families only popes could marry kings and only popes could dissolve the marriage between kings and queens. However, there was a crisis for pope after death of Clement V, the popes were seriously divided and while many wanted the Papacy to return to Italy, the French who were the most powerful and influent monarchy of the time, wanted the Pope to remain in Avignon, France. Now you do understand that the nomination of Popes was not just a clergy thing, all powerful nations had their saying for influencing the choice of the next Pope. Which ever countries were able to elect a pope that was favorable to them would benefit of the perks, since all Europeans nations back then swore by god's will. Funny enough one could find the greatest atheists from those eras - Comtess Margot D'Artois, while using god as a mean to control her citizens/slaves, she was not much of a believer, killing without retenue whoever who'd stand in her ways.

So King Philip is dead, his eldest son is now King Louis the 10th (and a very bad one I might add), so under the influence of his uncle, brother of the late king and his cousin Robert D'Artois (all UK people know Robert III D'Artois, he is the firestarter of the 100 years conflict between France and England - his grave is in England by the way ). Both coerced the poor dimwit king Louis to have Queen Marguerite killed and make it pass like it was an accident or natural causes so he could remarry. The problem is to have all this pass... One still needed a pope to cancel the previous wedding. Back in those days, til death tears us apart was not just a cute sentence that we throw at a wedding to make it look officials, it was official and if you couldn't prove that the death of your wife wasn't a murder or premeditated killing, the church would still consider you married even 30 or so years after the death of your wife. Some kings like Philip Capet never remarried.

Now let's take a break... To be continued to follow Mike's example lol.