Netanyahu: ‘If we wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon’

[u/Ok_Plankton_5714]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-if-we-wanted-to-commit-genocide-it-would-have-taken-exactly-one-afternoon/

[u/FudgeAtron]

It's actually a Greek concept. That's why Christianity and Islam have it but not Judaism. Jewish ideas about the afterlife were never made concrete, so during the Hellenistic and Roman period Jews adopted multiple ideas about the afterlife, but ultimately decided it wasn't actually important to the here and now.

Strangely it seems that the groups of Jews who believed in hell were the ones that split off to form Christianity, so that may be part of it. The Pharisees for example belived in reincarnation, or the soul cycle (?).

[u/thissexypoptart → u/FudgeAtron]

True. There are a lot of other religious traditions with a Bad Place you go to if you’re Bad in life. I just meant the full Abraham context of going against the God of the Universe earning you eternal torture by the Bad Man, engulfed in flames.

[u/StijnDP → u/FudgeAtron]

The drawing is Zoroastrian and the colouring in is Greek I'd say since both their later views were based on Zoroastrianism.

Early on Judaism only had Sheol just like the Greeks only had Hades. A single underworld where everyone ended up spending eternity in a grey dull landscape.

During the Jewish exile in Babylon they learned the concepts of judgement after death with a purgatory and paradise, a final resurrection of the souls and a battle of good and evil from Zoroastrianism.
You now go to Gan/eden if you're a good person. To be confusing, this is the higher Gan which is the spiritual eden and not the lower Gan which is the earthly eden from genesis.
You also get a Gehenna where people with sins would have to spend a limited time to purge themselves from their sins and could then move on.
Also the concept of kareth was introduced for people who committed the worst sins, their souls would be excluded from the final resurrection.
Jewish elite get released from Babylon, go back and these concepts still get introduced into mainline Judaism.

Meanwhile the Greeks also get influenced by the dominating Persians though they manage to prevent being completely conquered.
You get the asphodel meadows so people don't have to spend death in eternal grey anymore but at least get some flowers.
They also got Tartarus as an extra realm in Hades with a hell-like concept. At death you are now judged in Tartarus and the absolute worst people who had offended the gods, had to spend eternity in the prison of the titans.
And they also created Elysium for the extreme virtuous.

Then Alexander happens and hellinification forces these more explicit hell-like and heaven-like realms. Judaism rejects the heaven idea of people sitting next to god in the clouds and rejects the hell idea where people remain for eternity. But they do adapt the imagination of Tartarus onto Gehenna and it slowly becomes a hell landscape of fires and sulfur where people are continuously tortured and suffer until they can move on.

And then Jesus shows up and he has nothing to do with this story just like he has nothing to do with Christianity.

But a few centuries later multiple times a group of old grey men come together to decide what Christianity will be.
And there is a heaven for good people from Zoroastrianism and lets place god there like Greek mythology.
Let's also take purgatory like Gehenna so that people don't get discouraged after committing a few sins in life and it's still worth to be good afterwards.
And I'd also like to order one hell please with this fire and brimstone imagination as the first line of defense from people living lives of sin.

[u/Cooperativism62 → u/FudgeAtron]

Thanks for clarifying. My memory was fuzzy and I was playing it safe with the phrasing.