27 August 2024
The Hebrew people had a symbolic cosmology. They didn't pretend to know any facts about the universe as the fabric of reality, only the symbolism God had revealed to clarify what had been the common assumptions across the Ancient Near East. In particular, Hebrew writing is very thin on the afterlife. It's not that Hebrews didn't have a concept of it, but that they realized that there was no way their human minds could really grasp the nature of such things.
Without any strong details, the Hebrew people knew that there were standards of some sort that differentiated where one went when they died. Thus, the expression "bosom of Abraham" is a bad translation; it should be more like "in Abraham's embrace" to signify one's acceptance into the Hebrew version of Paradise. Yet, the notion that the souls of the dead went down into the earth still stood, regardless of their acceptance in Paradise. It was not a question of where Paradise stood, but that the image of the dying going into the earth was persistent. Only a relative handful of ignorant Hebrews treated it as a literal description.
Thus, you read the Patriarch's complaint that his son's behavior would drag him down into Sheol. Not obvious to us is the implication that this son's behavior would defile his father and make him unfit for Paradise. However, the term Sheol never indicated a literal place, but more of a condition.
Jesus didn't just burst on the scene with new teaching about people going into the trash valley of Gehenna where refuse tossed out of the city was kept burning using sulfur. It stank, but the whole point was to defile what was in ancient times a shrine to Moloch there in that valley. Jesus used it to indicate that "the bad place after life" was not where you wanted to go.
Yet, this is the kind of end that met the rich man in the Parable of Lazarus. He was in torment and begged that Abraham would send Lazarus with some token relief. It was all common figures of speech. In Jewish literature of that time, they had come to the notion that Abraham was the guard at the door to the afterlife and decided who was welcomed into his rest. Still, no one took these images literally. It was just how they symbolized something they knew was beyond their understanding.
The Gadarene Demoniac referred to "the Abyss" as some place of torment for demons. We learn from Second Temple literature that the demons were the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim. These were the "giants" that Israel eventually killed off. In turn, the Nephilim were the product of rebel elohim descending from Heaven to this world. We learn from the literature that neither the rebel elohim nor the disembodied Nephilim were allowed to return to the Spirit Realm. They were confined to the Abyss, but obviously that connects to our world, because they also take a lot of actions here.
Looking back on this symbolism from our perspective today, it is very different from our western church mythology about Heaven, Hell and the afterlife. Well, western church notions are drawn from pagan influences. It uses the words from the Bible, but invests them with a meaning that was never part of Hebrew culture. Rather, our fallen realm of existence is perhaps best understood as an annex, a space conditionally open to those confined in the Abyss. Humans who would have gone down into Sheol were slipping off into the Abyss to be tormented by the various spirit beings God confines there. That's Hell.
If you choose the Devil's path, you will gain his rewards. If you maintain a loyalty to God, you will take a long rest in the embrace of Abraham. But the Abyss is not eternal. At the Final Judgment, the Abyss and mortality itself will be consumed in "the Lake of Fire" -- a symbol of something that consumes. The Lake of Fire is not like Hell; those tossed into that lake cease to exist. Hell and Abraham's Embrace both last only until the Day of Judgment.
Those who have rested in Abraham's home will then be welcomed into Heaven (the Spirit Realm) eternally.
Comments
Jay DiNitto
So you're saying Jesus and the devil aren't arm wrestling as equals to win my soul back? :)
CatRez
Yep, that's what I'm saying.
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