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Debunking
the Arguments of Christian Fundamentalists and Evangelists
Evolution of heaven and hell in the Bible from
Zoroastrianism – Good news for the fearful
What I am about to show you is very good news for the
following people – ex-Christians who fear punishment from God for deconverting,
current Christians who fear eternal punishment for their unsaved friends and
loved ones, anyone who is fearful of hell in general either for themselves or
others.
As you know, fundamentalist Christians and
Evangelicals believe in the doctrine that the saved go to heaven, while the
unsaved non-believers will go to hell forever after they die. This
eternal damnation is an eternity of torture without end, and is way beyond the
scope of anyone’s imagination. One can imagine though, the fear that this
would cause for those who take it literal, and yet many Christians in fact do
take this concept literally. Just the thought of such a fate or
predicament can stir fear even in unbelievers. However, what I am about
to show you will be a huge relief for the fearful, and good news to them as
well. It will demonstrate that this horrible concept of eternal
punishment is a creation of man rather than a revelation from the God of the
Bible.
You see, fundamentalists believe that the doctrine
that the unsaved go to hell, is God’s law and his revelation to us, and has
been the same from the past, to the present and on to the future. But the
simple historical and Biblical evidence shows that not to be the case.
The idea of Heaven and Hell is borrowed from another
religion and only taught in the last 30% of the Bible!
In fact, the concept of both heaven and hell didn’t even
exist in most of the Bible period. It started becoming part of the Bible
in the last third of it. While it is vague whether the concept of an
afterlife with God was part of the Jewish scriptures, the concept of a hell for
sinners was definitely not part of the Jewish tradition. It evolved into
the Bible, beginning with the time of Daniel. At that time, the Jews were
living in captivity of the Persians, who had a religion called
Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism is known by religious historians as the
first religion to have a concept of heaven and hell. Do you see the
connection now? The Bible originally didn’t have such a concept UNTIL the
Jews met with followers of Zoroastrianism, which did have the concept.
That means the concept was ADOPTED FROM ANOTHER RELIGION!
In addition, Zoroastrianism brought other concepts
into the Bible, such as the concept of Satan, a physical resurrection of the
dead, and a final judgment day of the world. The Grolier Multimedia
Encyclopedia makes this conclusion as well under the entry “Judaism”.
“Some elements of Persian religion were incorporated
into Judaism: a more elaborate doctrine of angels; the figure of Satan; and a
system of beliefs concerning the end of time, including a predetermined
scheme of world history, a final judgment (see Judgment, Last), and the
resurrection of the dead. These ideas were expounded in many visionary
documents called apocalypses; none of them was included in the Hebrew Bible
except the Book of Daniel (see apocalyptic literature; eschatology).”
Likewise, the Encyclopedia Americana states:
"First, the figure of Satan, originally a
servant of God, appointed by Him as His prosecutor, came more and more to resemble
Ahriman, the enemy of God. Secondly, the figure of the Messiah, originally a
future King of Israel who would save his people from oppression, evolved, in
Deutero-Isaiah for instance, into a universal Savior very similar to the
Iranian Saoshyant. Other points of comparison between
In the article The
First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity, Thomas Sheehan
writes on the Zoroastrian influence on the Bible:
“This recasting of Yahweh as apocalyptic destroyer
was strongly influenced by the Zoroastrian religion that the Israelites had
encountered during the Babylonian Exile. Zoroaster (ca. 630-550 B.C.E.) had
taught that the world was the scene of a dramatic cosmic struggle between the
forces of Good and Evil, led by the gods Ormazd and Ahriman. But this conflict
was not to continue forever because, according to Zoroastrianism, history was
not endless but finite and in fact dualistic, divided between the present age
of darkness and the coming age of light. Time was devolving through four (or in
some accounts seven) progressively worsening periods toward an eschatological
cataclysm when Good would finally annihilate Evil and the just would receive
their otherworldly reward in an age of eternal bliss. Zoroastrianism's profound
pessimism about present history was thus answered by its eschatological
optimism about a future eternity.
As
One such apocalyptic work was the Book of Daniel,
composed around 165B.C.E. during the Maccabean revolt against the oppressive
Seleucid dynasty. The tyrannical King Antiochus IV, who ruled
The Book of Daniel was written by an anonymous author
in the second century B.C.E.; but in a way typical of apocalyptic works, the
book purported to have been composed some four centuries earlier by a prophet
named Daniel, and pretended to predict the catastrophic events that in fact
were happening in the author's own lifetime. The work interpreted these events
as "eschatological woes," a time of sufferings and troubles
"such as never has been since there was a nation" (12:1). According
to God's hidden plan, these woes marked the final stage before the destruction
of the old and godless world and the final triumph of divine justice.”
Christian debunker Robert Price writes about this as
well, in a feedback section of the Internet Infidels website (http://www.infidel.org/)
http://www.infidels.org/infidels/feedback/1997/may.html
“Here and there in the NT, Satan seems to be the
enemy of God, but this is a later mixture that may well have come from Persian
Zoroastrianism, to which the exile Temple hierarchy would have been exposed in
the sixth century BC. Zoroastrianism had an evil anti-god called Ahriman or
Angra Mainyu, the co-equalm counterpart to Ahura Mazda. Ahriman had created
snakes, scorpions, etc., while Ahura Mazda created everything else. Judasim
appears to have borrowed this notion, plus the elaborate angelology and
demonology, as well as their notion of a virgin-born Savior who would at the
end time raise the dead for the final judgment from Zoroastrianism. In fact the
Jewish sect closest to Zoroastrian beliefs, the Pharisees, as T.W. Manson
theorized, may originally have received their name as a sarcastic cat-call.
Pharisee may be a variant on "Parsee," synonym for Zoroastrian.”
“Not until the end of the Old Testament period, after
the Jews had been exposed in their exile to the idea of a general resurrection,
was the hope of life after death clearly stated in the Bible. Biblical
inerrantists, of course, object to the mere suggestion that an important
doctrine like this was borrowed from other cultures rather than having been
revealed to the Jews by their god, but even a biblical reference work as
conservative as Eerdmans Bible Dictionary recognizes that the idea of
resurrection to eternal life was a concept that the Jewish captives had brought
back with them when they returned to Judea from their exile. The clearest such
reference to a resurrection would be Daniel 12:1-3.
At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector
of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has
never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your
people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many
of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting
life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall
shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness,
like the stars forever and ever.
Zoroastrianism taught the concept of a general
resurrection, and this religion flourished in Persia at the time of the Jewish
exile. After the Jews had been repatriated, this concept, which had been
unknown prior to the exile, became a widely held belief in postexilic Judaism.
The fact that Daniel is the only book in the Jewish canon to make such a clear
reference to a general resurrection, although not conclusive, is certainly one
more indication that this book was compiled some time after the captivity.”
For more reading on this subject, see the following
articles:
Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Judaism
Zoroastrian
Influences on Judaism and Christianity and Monotheism
Influence of
Zoroastrianism on other religions
In any case, the Old Testament is not obsessed with
the concept of heaven and hell, but rather, the New Testament is.
Although the Old Testament contains verses such as "I go to be with my
Lord forever" it does not make specific references to an afterlife heaven
(just to clarify, we are talking about the afterlife concept of heaven here,
not the use of using "heaven" to describe the firmament in the sky)
and Hell until the Book of Daniel and Isaiah, and even then it only speaks of
it briefly, nowhere near the amount and frequency that it does in the New
Testament.
Based on the evidence of the apparent evolution of
heaven and hell into the Bible, we can surmise the following. During the
New Testament era, the Church found the afterlife concept to be an extremely
powerful way to mind control people into submission. After all, if you
can convince someone that you have the power to send that person to heaven or
hell, then you can pretty much get that person to follow and obey you without
question.
Again, this is all VERY good news for those former
fundamentalists who fear punishment from God for leaving the fold, and for the
Christians who are fearful that their unsaved friends and loved ones are headed
for an eternal damnation, as well as for Christians who are fraught with guilt
at not having converted their unsaved friends or loved ones before they passed
away. It essentially means that the unsaved will not be punished
eternally after all. Instead, this idea was just an old outdated mind control
scare tactic from before the Middle Ages, and belongs nowhere in modern
liberated thought. Now those still instilled with fear can use the
arguments in this section and in the rest of this treatise to feel more
confident and assured that it’s ok. They can now rejoice and sing
“hallelujah!” for a huge burden has been taken off their shoulder. (If
you know someone who could use this knowledge, please forward it to them as
well.)
However, now that the doctrine of the unsaved going to
hell has been dispelled, I should still point out that this doesn’t mean that
you can do whatever you want and get away with it. The universal concept
of karma still applies to our lives, which means “what goes around comes
around” and “we reap what we sow”, so choose your actions and thoughts
wisely.
(And yes I mean “thoughts” too, because contrary to
what most people think, thoughts are not harmless. They do not just pass
through your head and then are gone. Rather, they help slowly program
your subconscious mind and instincts, creating instincts that make you do
things without knowing why, often resulting in control dramas of all kinds
which are like loop programs that repeat itself. A new independent film
out illustrates this well What the
bleep do we know? It is about the latest discoveries in quantum
physics and the power of thoughts. People in several states have been
seeing it multiple times and it has been receiving standing ovations from
audiences. Check its website for info. and to see if it will be playing
at a theater near you. http://www.whatthebleep.com/home/)
Also, this does not mean either that there is no
afterlife in general, for there is strong circumstantial, metaphysical, and
experimental evidence to suggest that there is some sort of afterlife for our
souls. You can read about this evidence at these sites I recommend:
VICTOR
ZAMMIT -- A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife http://www.victorzammit.com/
(Mr. Zammit is an Australian lawyer who has done extensive research on afterlife
evidence, both historical and modern, and compiled a list of them on his
website. My article Debunking
Pseudo-Skeptical Arguments Against Paranormal and Psychic Phenomena is on
his site as well in the skeptics section.)
Mr. Zammit’s book which details the evidence for the afterlife can be read online or downloaded at: http://www.victorzammit.com/book/index.html
The
International Survivalist Society at http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/home.htm.
Contains news, articles, and research on life after death.
Survival
After Death - Campaign for Philosophical Freedom A site
compiled by Michael Roll, who has been a long-time UK campaigner for study of
the Afterlife to be treated as a branch of physics and for unbiased media
reporting of afterlife research. His site contains many useful articles
and links. One of the best articles on there is The
Scientific Proof of Survival After Death.
Also, Dr. Gary Schwartz of
Dr. Schwartz has also written a compelling convincing
book about it called The
Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death
which you can order from Amazon.com.
Also worthy of study relating to the afterlife is the
phenomenon of Near Death Experiences. Here are some compelling links and
books for research.
Kenneth Ring’s book: Lessons from the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience
http://www.melvinmorse.com/light.htm
(The website of Near Death Experience researcher and pediatrician Dr. Melvin
Morse, M.D.)
http://www.near-death.com/
(A site with a comprehensive list of articles on the Near Death experience representing
many viewpoints.)
http://www.nderf.org/
(The Near Death Experience Research Foundation. Contains a comprehensive
site of stories, articles, and research)
Journal
of Near-Death Studies (www.iands.org/journal.html)
International
Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) http://www.iands.org/
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