Ep 98: Did Jesus Go to Hell?

00:00Today, you will be with me in Paradise Luke 2343.

00:04He did not say, "I will see you in hell."

00:06I'm going on, you know.

00:08Yeah.

00:09And that would be a weird thing for Jesus to...

00:11God would be so much better, though, if Jesus turns to the guy on the other cross and goes,

00:17"I'll see you in hell."

00:19Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:24And I'm Dan Beecher.

00:25And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access

00:30to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation

00:36about the same.

00:37How are things today, Dan?

00:38Things are great.

00:39It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

00:41That it is.

00:42And we get to learn some interesting stuff, so I'm kind of excited to talk about it.

00:50Oh, well...

00:51I just thought of this.

00:52Sorry to interrupt, but I thought it would be fun to bring up here.

00:56I have received two very cool pieces of news over the last two days.

01:02The first one was, "The other day, the Society of Biblical Literature sent out its annual

01:06Society Report."

01:08And there was an article that was a spotlight on my work, and the article's title was "Stitch

01:15Incoming."

01:16Yes.

01:17I saw that.

01:18And I remember doing this interview a few weeks ago.

01:22It was a fun interview.

01:23I really thought that article was fun.

01:24But then this morning, I got an email from somebody's name I didn't recognize.

01:29But he's like, "Hey, I'm the editor of Biblical Theology Review."

01:34And I was like, "Oh, I recognize that journal."

01:37And he's like, "Just wanted to let you know we're about to release this new issue."

01:40I attached a PDF of it for you, but the essay that I have introducing the issue all about

01:47public scholarship uses you as the model for what public biblical scholarship could look

01:53like.

01:55And I was like, "What?"

01:58So I thought that was really cool.

01:59So I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but--

02:02Oh, no.

02:03Toot away.

02:04Toot away.

02:05But I got some pretty cool pieces of news.

02:07So I was really excited about both those things.

02:09I think that's really cool.

02:11Yeah.

02:12I love it.

02:13I love it.

02:14Yeah.

02:15I've managed to deceive everyone into thinking I'm an actual scholar, but I cannot, apart

02:20from a handful of dudes on social media.

02:23I was going to say, not quite everybody.

02:25Not quite everybody.

02:26Yeah, yeah.

02:27Some of them have me pegged.

02:30I'm a fake scholar from head to toe.

02:34But speaking of dudes--

02:35I mean, we don't even know if those diplomas that you've shown everybody are even real.

02:41I could print up a diploma.

02:44You can evidently just pay somebody to send you a fake one according to some guy on

02:49Instagram who has a pseudonym and has a picture of an eagle in an American flag or something

02:58in their profile photo.

03:00Well, listen.

03:01I can just Photoshop a thing that says that I've got a degree from Oxford.

03:05That's not hard.

03:07But it's embossed.

03:08It's got--

03:09There's gold love.

03:10Well, then there's no way I can do it.

03:12No, I'm out of luck.

03:14Yeah.

03:15Getting myself onto their website would be a harder thing to do.

03:18I will say that.

03:19All right.

03:20Let's dive in here.

03:21We've got two interesting topics that are kind of related to each other that we're going

03:26to go through.

03:27Little and related, yes.

03:29In the first one, we're going to be talking about Jesus and a trip he may or may not have

03:37made right after he died.

03:40Yes.

03:41So we're going to see if Jesus actually descended into hell.

03:46Or in the Pismo Beach.

03:47Or-- Yeah, any place.

03:51We'll see where he went.

03:53Probably in Santorini, I'm going to guess.

03:55It seems like a nice place.

03:58And then in the second half of the show, we are going to talk about hell in a different

04:03way.

04:04We're going to talk about revelation and the hell that it describes.

04:10So we're going to have a lot of fun with this one.

04:14We didn't stop to think about what we would name either of these segments.

04:17So let's just-- Yes.

04:18That's true.

04:19So that's fine.

04:21We're just going to go with-- we're just going to go with here we go.

04:24So here we go.

04:25Here's the first segment.

04:28All right, so this started because I was looking for interesting topics for us to talk about.

04:39And I stumbled on an article on a website called gotquestions.org.

04:46Your questions, biblical answers.

04:48Yes, they do have that tagline.

04:51And I was sort of mystified by the question that is the question from the got questions.

05:01Because it was something I had never heard of before.

05:03Okay.

05:04But I think a lot of people have.

05:06I was just-- I was not raised with this tradition.

05:10And the question is, did Jesus go to hell between his death and resurrection?

05:19So yeah, I was a little baffled.

05:24I was befuddled by this.

05:28Let's talk about-- first of all, so the article itself mentions that this idea sort of cropped

05:35up quick, at least like one of the earliest references we have is from what's called the

05:40Apostles Creed, which I can't hear without thinking of Apollo Creed, but I know that

05:45that's different.

05:46Well, every time I hear it, I think this is some role-playing video game.

05:52Yes, exactly.

05:55It's neither of those things.

05:56It's neither a boxer nor a role-playing video game.

06:00It is a fifth century, is that what we decided?

06:10It's a Latin declaration of a creed, which is just sort of an I believe statement, right?

06:19Yeah.

06:20Yeah.

06:21So this is in order to demonstrate your fidelity to the faith, this particular group you had

06:28to be willing to declare this creed, and then also it was something that would be repeated

06:34quite regularly.

06:35Yeah, I found versions or I found the Apostles Creed listed on websites for both the Church

06:42of England and I think the Catholic Church.

06:45So it's still very much in circulation as a sort of an article of faith.

06:54And one of the lines in it says, it starts with the standard sort of I believe in God,

07:02the father almighty creator of heaven and earth.

07:05Then it goes to I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, dot, dot, dot, blah, blah.

07:11And then it gets to was crucified, died and was buried.

07:17He descended to the dead.

07:19Oh, no.

07:20Oh, I'm on the Church of England one, and it doesn't say he descended to hell.

07:24The other one.

07:25I got a different one.

07:26Oh, come on.

07:27I'm on the wrong one.

07:29Many of them say he descended into hell.

07:31Yes.

07:32And then rose again from the dead on the third day rose again from from the dead on the third

07:36day.

07:37And that Latin is Descendit ad inferno in pharaohs, which I don't know.

07:46I got no Latin.

07:47So I assume the inferno, yeah, so yeah, which is a prototypically associated quite directly

07:56with hell.

07:57Right.

07:58And it looks like this is a variation on something called the old Roman symbol or the old Roman

08:01creed, which was an earlier and shorter version that might go back to the second century.

08:06Okay.

08:07And that that version says who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried on the third

08:11day rose again from the dead ascended to heaven sits at the right hand of the father and thus

08:15and so.

08:16Oh, that the the descended into hell may have been inserted into this creed at some point

08:22between the second and fourth or fifth century.

08:26Okay.

08:27So, okay.

08:28So that's what a fascinating thing to just shove in there in the middle.

08:33Do we have a sense of where that came from?

08:35Why that cropped up like?

08:38Is it biblical?

08:39Does it come from the book itself?

08:41Well, I think the the clearest reference to this and this is something where we see this

08:47interpretation quite early, it comes from first Peter 3 18.

08:51Now first Peter is probably early second century CE, maybe first quarter, maybe second quarter.

08:57So second Peter is probably somewhere between 120 to 150 CE first Peter, it might be a little

09:02earlier than that.

09:04But in first Peter 3 18, we have this statement for Christ also suffered for sins once for

09:09all the righteous for the unrighteous in order to bring you to God.

09:14He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.

09:17And then verse 19 in which also so in the spirit, he went and made a proclamation to the spirits

09:25in prison who in former times did not obey when God waited patiently in the days of Noah

09:31during the building of the ark in which a few that is eight lives were saved through water.

09:37And so we got a pretty peculiar little reference to Jesus in the spirit proclaiming something

09:48yeah to some spirits that are in prison.

09:52And there are a few different interpretations of this, but the the got questions article

09:59that you have goes through and makes a pretty interesting little play at trying to renegotiate

10:09what's going on here and concludes, did Jesus go to hell?

10:13No.

10:14He went to shaol/hades, which which we might we might be like that sounds like a distinction

10:21without a difference got questions.org.

10:24What's going on here?

10:26So we did a whole show about hell and shaol and Hades, but give us a little refresher.

10:36Just a quick refresher on what we're talking about when we say those words.

10:41So in the Hebrew Bible, you have no concept of hell as we understand it.

10:47You have shaol.

10:48And in the King James version, that is translated as hell every single time, but shaol is a reference

10:53to the grave and the abode of all the dead, because in prior to basically Greco-Roman

11:00period Judaism, good bad indifferent somewhere in between everybody went to the same place

11:07after you died.

11:08It was this murky existence in the underworld that was inhabited by questionable creatures

11:15and your relationship with the living was unclear.

11:19But in the way they buried people seemed to suggest they thought their existence continued

11:24on in some sense and that there was even communion and communication that was possible back and

11:31forth across that divide.

11:35But shaol is just the abode of all the dead that was located in the underworld.

11:40And then with the the anochic literature, first Enoch Jubilees, other related traditions

11:46that are part of these texts that were written in Greco-Roman period Judaism, you have this

11:50development of different places where people went after death based on their behavior in

11:56life.

11:57And this primarily arises in the Persian and Greco-Roman periods as Jewish thinkers are

12:04kind of contemplating the problem of evil and going, Hey, a lot of good people are suffering

12:10are people persecution oppression and they are dying and we're not seeing them receive

12:18any kind of justice from God.

12:20Where is God's justice for the righteous?

12:22And then they're also seeing phenomenally wicked people, the people responsible for the

12:27oppression and the persecution and things like that.

12:29And they're saying, Hey, they're not getting their just desserts either.

12:33What's going on here?

12:34And maybe it's in the afterlife that folks are getting their recompense whether for good

12:41or for bad.

12:42And so in the anochic literature, you have ideas, particularly of the disobedient angels.

12:48First Enoch is in some sense kind of fan fiction for Genesis six, and it's extrapolating from

12:54that this idea that these angels who descended and and had offspring with human women and

12:58introduced the evils of warfare and makeup and everything like that, they for for their

13:05goal in evils of warfare and makeup.

13:09The list is to warfare makeup and and you know, they're imprisoned in a part of this

13:16kind of eschatological landscape.

13:18And then you also have these smooth places where you know, the righteous people are waiting

13:24and then you've got the unrighteous people who did not receive any judgment in life.

13:28And then you've got another smooth place where the unrighteous people who did get judged

13:33during life, they go to await their judgment or their allocation of some kind of final

13:40place where they're going to be either destroyed or punished or whatever.

13:45And so you you have ideas about different levels of the afterlife in the anochic literature.

13:49And then we get into the New Testament and we've got three Greek words that are used

13:54to refer to some kind of place of postmortem divine punishment.

14:00You've got oddies or Hades, which is clearly borrowed from Greek, which is kind of is very

14:05similar to all it's the abode of all the dead, but then you have, you know, Hades is subletted.

14:11You've got Tartarus is the place where the bad people go to get punished and you know,

14:17that's where you don't want to end up. And Tartarus occurs once in the New Testament in

14:22the book of one of the two letters of Peter. And then the other word is Ghana or Gehenna,

14:28which is a Greek transliteration of the Valley of Hinnom, which is became symbolically associated

14:35with evil and became this eschatological place where the the bodies of the wicked are going

14:42to be stacked. And and that's where we get this idea that there's this fire that never

14:46dies and the fire is never quenched and the worm never dies. And originally the idea was,

14:53there are always new bodies being heaped into the pile so that the fire never runs out

14:58of fuel and the worms never run out of food. But then later that gets reinterpreted to mean

15:03if you go there, the fire will burn you and will never go away and the worms will eat

15:08a chew and they will never go away. And so right. So these things are all changing the

15:13concept of the afterlife and punishment in the afterlife is constantly changing. And

15:18so what this article is trying to do is trying to weave it all together into this rich tapestry

15:25of something that we can just pretend has a plausible case for being consistent. And

15:33and that's where we're going to get through this. No, no, he didn't go to hell argument

15:38because they want to suggest that Hades and shawl need to be equated. Right. And both

15:43of those are the temporary dwelling place for all of the dead. And then the idea is that

15:51this they talk about in Revelation 20 11 through 15 and we're going to talk about those passages

15:56in the next part makes a clear distinction between Hades and the lake of fire. And so

16:04they're suggesting Hades and the lake of fire are not one and the same. So the lake of fire

16:09is not in Hades, but Hades is going to get chucked into the lake of fire. We'll get to

16:16that later. We'll get to the yeah, we get to the chucking of Hades. So you know, it's

16:21it's like a fire adjacent though. I think we can safely say it might not be there. But

16:26like, you know, it overlooks it. You've got a view. If you get, you know, if you're in

16:30a penthouse in Hades, you're going to be able to see the lake of fire and they say that

16:37shawl slash Hades is a realm with two divisions, a place of blessing and a place of judgment.

16:44And so that's where they're going to tie in Lazarus and the rich man is parable about

16:48how Lazarus dies and he goes off to the bosom of Abraham. And then the rich man is down

16:53and being tormented and just as begging Lazarus to to let some water drip off his fingers into

17:00his mouth so he can be he can be satisfied. And so we're what is fundamentally a a diachronic

17:10difference. Diachronic means through time. And so in other words, the ideas are changing

17:15as time goes on. Right. But because we were preserving the text from earlier, we get all

17:21of the ideas and got questions is trying to collapse that diachronic difference and smoosh

17:27it all together and say, no, it's all perfectly consistent with everything else. And what

17:34they come up with is that shawl slash Hades is this temporary place where you have the

17:40two different divisions. And then hell is not let's see, hell is so they say the hell

17:49is not a correct translation of a bunch of things. Today, you will be with me in paradise

17:55Luke 2343. He did not say I will see you in hell. That would be a weird thing for Jesus

18:02to kind of be so much better though, if Jesus turns to the guy on the other cross goes,

18:09I'll see you in hell. That I would love to have seen William Defoe look over and just

18:15glaringly say, I'll see you in hell. Oh, no, he said today you will be with me in paradise.

18:24So yes, so paradise must be the division that has blessings in shawl slash Hades. So one

18:33problem with that claim is that just because Jesus said, I'll see you today in paradise,

18:40doesn't mean he didn't also then go to hell. He's like, I got a four o'clock in three days.

18:47He can he can boogie around all of the afterlife. He can check everything out. I don't know.

18:52That's not including travel. So what they're basically saying here is there's shawl slash

19:03Hades and there's a good side and a bad side. Yeah. And then there's there's hell and Jesus

19:09did not go to hell, but we got this this thing about Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison.

19:16Yeah. So what's going on there? And so we've got two other articles on got questions.org.

19:21Okay. One is one is who were the spirits in prison? So we're talking about first Peter

19:27three 18 through 20. And and here they give a few different options. Number one, the spirits

19:34in prison are fallen angels or demons. And this is an idea that is based on again, first

19:42Enoch, the Enochic literature, because one of the things it talks about is how the these

19:46angels are going to be punished. In fact, I'll read a tiny bit from first Enoch chapter

19:5310. We've got after the the angels have done all these, these naughty things. God is like,

20:02commission some angels. So in chapter 10, then the most high declared and the great Holy

20:06one spoke and he sent Sariel, who's Canadian, Soriel, to the son of Lomax saying, go to

20:14Noah and say to him in my name, hide yourself and reveal to him that the end is coming that

20:17the whole earth will perish. And then he commissions Raphael says to Raphael, he said, go Raphael

20:26and bind us, I'll hand and foot and cast him into the darkness and make an opening in the

20:31wilderness that is in duodyle, throw him there and lay beneath him sharp and jagged stones

20:37cover him with darkness and let him dwell there for an exceedingly long time. So yeah,

20:45and then use those size that I don't know how to use. And then we've got the later on

20:52in chapter 21 from there. So now we've got Enoch is actually being given a tour of this

20:58eschatological hellscape. From there, I traveled to another place more terrible than this one.

21:03And I saw terrible things, a great fire burning and flaming there. And the place had a narrow

21:08cleft extending to the abyss full of great pillars of fire born downward. Neither the

21:13measure nor the size was I able to see or to estimate. And I said, how terrible is this

21:18place and fearful to look at? And Uriel answered me one of the holy angels who was with me and

21:22said to me, Enoch, why are you so frightened and shaken? And I replied because of this

21:26terrible place because of the fearful sight. And he said, this is a prison for the angels.

21:31Here they will be confined forever. So it certainly seems like first Peter three is riffing on

21:40this anarchic idea of these spirits in prison. And maybe it's it's the angels. And so why

21:47is Jesus preaching to them? Like there are a few different thoughts. One is that he's

21:51basically going, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.

21:56We won more preaching at them than two. Yeah, yeah, more a victory lap. Another idea is

22:03that maybe they thought that the angels could repent and then they would be saved. They

22:08would be let out of this prison. That's a possibility. Another understanding is that

22:14the spirits in prison are the and here I'm reading from the got questions article again,

22:19the spirits in prison are the human spirits of those who perished in the flood of Noah's

22:23day. As for Christ preaching to them, there are three possible interpretations. One, Christ

22:30preached to them figuratively in and through Noah while they were in the flesh. So that's

22:35where Jesus is the puppet master and Noah who is preaching is and and this is kind of

22:41a goofy reading of this Christ in the spirit preach to the spirits in prison really means

22:46that Christ manipulated Noah like a little hand puppet to preach to the people who rejected

22:53him. That doesn't make much sense. B, Christ preached to them literally being present with

22:58Noah through the Holy Spirit who inspired Noah to proclaim the message of coming judgment.

23:02In other words, the pre mortal pre incarnate Jesus was there in spirits directly preaching

23:09to them and C, Christ preached to them literally in between his death and resurrection. And

23:14the article doesn't actually decide which of these is right, but it does, but it does

23:21conclude this way. According to each of these interpretations, the spirits are called such

23:26because they existed in a spiritual condition when Peter wrote, they were no longer in the

23:30flesh, but lived in Hades slash hell. So in the previous article, it was their shawl slash

23:44Hades. And that's different from hell. Here it's they were in Hades slash hell. So depending

23:50on which interpretation you prefer, one of them is that Jesus preached to the spirits

23:55that were in slady, slady's, slady's hash well, Hades slash hell. Yeah. So and then and

24:02then the other are both these are both articles from got questions.org. So both of them from

24:07got questions.org. And I'm just curious. If we got more questions, thanks got questions.

24:15Yeah. So the did Jesus go to hell between his death and resurrection is a part of you

24:20go to the content index, you go to Jesus Christ, you go to the cross in the empty tomb.

24:24Yeah. And then the who were the spirits in prison, you got to go to content index books

24:29of the Bible first Peter. But then you can also through Jesus Christ, the cross in the

24:33empty tomb, get to the question where was Jesus for the three days between his death

24:37and resurrection? Sure. We got a third take on this thing. Yes. And and here we have the

24:45exact same Hades slash hell take. Okay. Yeah. Exactly. Same as which as the the second.

24:54So remember, you got a show equals hell. Right. You got show all slash Hades does not equal

25:01hell. Right. And then you've got Hades slash hell. And now we're going to do another Hades

25:08slash hell. So at the very end, we have, um, but they're kind of a, again, they're playing

25:18with different interpretations. There's another interpretation of the first Peter passage in

25:21this interpretation that people, the spirits are people currently in hell. But Peter is

25:25not saying that Jesus made a special trip to Hades slash hell to preach or proclaim anything.

25:32Rather Peter is giving parenthetical information about something Jesus had done previously in

25:36history, namely that he had in spirit, preached to the people in Noah's day while they were

25:40still living on earth. So it's still toying with these different interpretations, but

25:44ultimately identifies these spirits in prison as being in Hades slash hell and that it concludes

25:50the only thing we know for sure. Because definitely we know something for sure here is that according

25:57to Jesus's own words on the cross, he went to paradise. We can also say with confidence

26:03that his work of redemption finished, Jesus did not have to suffer in hell.

26:09Okay. Little, a little noncommittal. It certainly seems like Jesus would have been able to visit

26:18without suffering. Yeah, particularly if he's there in a preaching capacity, you know, he

26:25can buzz the guards at any moment and he's sort of as a doctors without borders, sort

26:31of visit. Yeah, yeah. So, but I'm going to go back a bit to the first Peter passage because

26:39the, so the got questions people there, they're, you know, Christian apologists, they're trying

26:44to provide a unifying framework for everything. You know, is not all that unifying. You know,

26:49you can't be consistent all the time when you're trying to assert that the Bible is consistent

26:53all the time. So sometimes shole and Hades are not hell. Sometimes Hades is hell. But

27:00the scholarship identifies some, some closely overlapping interpretations. And there's a

27:06wonderful new commentary, multi volume commentary on first Peter from the International Critical

27:15commentary series. And talking about this, they say one theory, which can be traced as

27:19far back as the second century. And we have this view attested in Alexandria maintains

27:26that between his death and resurrection, traditionally known as the Triduum mortis, the immaterial

27:31soul of Christ went to the underworld where he preached to the souls of dead humans. So

27:37according to this critical commentary, about the earliest interpretation we have is the

27:42notion that Jesus went to hell and preached to the souls of dead humans. Within this group,

27:49proponents are divided over what was preached and the group to whom the message was directed,

27:53the vast majority maintain that Christ proclaimed a message of salvation to the generation of

27:58Noah that perished in the flood, although other recipients have also been posited. And

28:04then another interpretation that extends back to the time of Augustine or Augustine, if you're

28:11nasty. This theory arose out of a question posed to Augustine by Uodius, a friend and

28:18fellow Bishop, noting that the passage seemed to refer to Christ proclamation of the gospel

28:23in Hades, which it was assumed would have therefore been empty to all of its inhabitants.

28:27Uodius asked for Augustine's interpretation. And what he said was, if the Lord, when he

28:32died, preached in hell to spirits in prison, why were those who continued on believing while

28:37the arc was a preparing, the only ones counted worthy of this favor, namely the Lord's descending

28:42in hell. From the ages between the time of Noah and the passion of Christ, there died

28:46many thousands or so many nations whom he might have found in hell. Or if he preached

28:51at all, why has Peter mentioned only these and passed over the innumerable multitudes

28:55of others? And so what he decided was that this wasn't a universal thing. This was the

29:05idea was that the pnevmata, the spiritual preaching might refer to human beings who received the

29:11message of the gospel during their lifetimes. More specifically, he suggested that during

29:16the time when the arc was being constructed, the preexisting Christ preached a message of

29:20salvation through Noah. So we got that puppet master theory. Yeah, there we go. Basically.

29:25And then the third theory that's mentioned in the commentary is one that has become quite

29:29popular in more recent scholarships since the rediscovery of first Enoch. The idea is that

29:36maybe these are the angels that were disobedience. And the commentary doesn't really say we like

29:45this option, but does suggest that a lot of critical scholars these days are leaning in

29:50the direction of understanding Peter to be referring to the angels. And I think there's

29:55sense to be made of that. But again, it's certainly not the earliest interpretation.

30:01And I think it kind of complicates whatever got questions.org is trying to do with their

30:08inconsistent little reconstruction of of what these terms all refer to. I mean, I think the

30:14point here, which is the point commonly with these sorts of things with whenever we have,

30:21you know, whenever there's something like this, like this, you know, this thing in Peter

30:26where it's like, what was he doing? We still have the question. Like it's just going to

30:32be a question perpetually. Because there's because there is no obvious answer. And all

30:37of these theories are fine and interesting and valid and also unverifiable and completely

30:46guesswork. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's, you know, educated guesswork. But I think

30:54that the the the real answer is not to have an answer, right? Like the real the correct

31:01answer to this is, huh? Sure. Maybe we do. We don't know. We don't know what what a lot

31:10of it meant. So so have fun with it. I don't know. Yeah. Well, and that that's something

31:17I've said an awful lot on on my own channels that, you know, as long as you're if you're

31:24looking at this critically, and as long as you're making a good faith effort to try to understand

31:29what was going on for these people on their own terms, then as far as I'm concerned,

31:33that's a great foundation for doing whatever else. But you know, just being transparent

31:38about the fact that, you know, at this point, we're just speculating. We don't really know.

31:43We've we're making some educated observations, but that doesn't definitively answer the question.

31:50Because yeah, most of the folks who need a definitive answer need it because, you know,

31:56either there is social or actual capital at stake that they are trying to irrigate. Or

32:06because they're their own identity politics demand that they have some kind of confident

32:11answer. And and they can't shy away from that. And got questions seems to be going from doing

32:19both sides of that, because in one article, it's like, definitely not that. And then another

32:23article, it's like, it could be that. Yeah. All right. Well, I think that's great. We we still

32:29have questions got questions dot org. So we're they've got other questions on this too. I just

32:34looked at a related question and says, what is the harrowing of hell? And the harrowing of hell is

32:38the tradition about Jesus going down, okay, between his death and resurrection and emptying

32:45hell. And there are famous paintings from the Byzantine period of of Jesus coming out of a cave

32:51basically. And there are some door panels that are broken on the ground. And that's and that is

32:56representative of the harrowing of hell. Go you're free everyone out. Let's let's go.

33:01Interesting. All right. Well, speaking of hell, let's let's move on to our next segment segment

33:11number two. And in this segment, we're going to be talking about revelation.

33:21And you book of revelation, the book of John, yes. Yeah, not not the not the concept of

33:27revelation, but but the book that bears its name. Yes. And I am interested in this because because

33:35yeah, we sort of teased a little bit of what's going to happen in terms of things getting thrown

33:41into lakes of fire, but talk about how revelations hell might differ from the concepts of hell that

33:47we've already talked about or or add their unto. Well, we got the main term that is used here in

33:56the book of Revelation is Hades for hell. Okay. And hang on, just a second, I want to see how

34:03many times this word occurs in the book of Revelation. So I'm just going to do a quick search for the

34:11occurrence of this term in the book of Revelation occurs four times. Okay, we see it in Revelation

34:16118, Revelation six, eight, Revelation, 2013 and Revelation 2014. And so I'm the we're looking really

34:24at Revelation 20 versus 11 through 15. And in all of the other occurrences, Hades is associated with

34:33death. It occurs in a pair death and Hades, death and Hades. Okay. And in Revelation 118,

34:42you have Jesus appearing to John where he's, you know, in the spirit quote, unquote, on on the

34:49Lord's day and sees Jesus and Jesus says, I am alive forevermore, amen, and have the keys of death

34:57and of Hades. The idea seems to be that death and Hades are locations, prisons, places where

35:03people are confined, but he's got the keys. He's got the way to unlock this location. But then

35:11when we get to Revelation six, eight, we've got a personification of the two. And I looked,

35:16there was a pale green horse. Its writer's name was death and Hades followed with him.

35:22And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth to kill the sword with sword and famine

35:27and pestilence and by the wild animals of the earth. So it's like a superhero sidekick situation.

35:33Yeah. And so they're personified. In one, they're a place and there's a lock on them.

35:38In another, they're these personified horsemen. And then we get to Revelation 2013 and 14. And then

35:47it's kind of back to being a place because John says, I saw a great white throne and the one who

35:52sat on it, the earth and the heaven fled from his presence. And no place was found for them.

35:57So here we're getting metaphorical again, heaven and earth are like, yeah, and runoff.

36:03And can't find a place to hide evidently. And I saw the dead great and small standing before the

36:09throne and books were opened. Also, another book was opened. The book of life and the dead were judged

36:14according to their works as recorded in the books. And then we have, and the sea gave up the dead

36:21who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. Okay. And all were judged according

36:29to what they had done. So it sounds like all the dead, wherever they're hiding, it's an Ali Ali

36:35oxen free. Everybody come forth from wherever. So you know, we've got our pirates of the Caribbean,

36:42all your shell encrusted people are coming up from the sea and marching out and death and Hades

36:49give up their dead as well. And then so we've had this lake of fire that is associated with

36:58with this place of punishment with Satan and all this and and Satan and the false prophets get

37:02tossed into the lake of fire where where they will be tormented forever. And then after we after

37:08death and Hades give up their debt, it says then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

37:15Oh, wow. Okay. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And anyone whose name was not found

37:22written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. And so there's some inconsistencies

37:29here as well. We've already seen a personified and a non personified representation of this pair

37:35death and Hades. And now we seem to be back to the non personified. They're a place they they have

37:40the dead inhabiting them and they give them up. And then they get yeeted into the lake of fire,

37:48which is the second death, but is also supposed to be like eternally tormenting folks. So I we

37:56seem to be going back and forth between this eternal conscious torment and annihilationism

38:02because death and Hades are not represented as personifications here. And even if they were,

38:08that would just be metaphorical. Like somebody was trying to tell me, no, no, they're personified.

38:13So obviously they're going to be tortured forever. It's like, what sense does it make

38:17to have these places personified and then say, and then we're going to torture the personification

38:25of the place. Just to be mean. Yeah, it's like, what do they do? That looks like a nice place.

38:31I'm going to I'm going to turn it into a person and then torture it forever.

38:35Yeah, like they didn't do anything wrong. So it doesn't make sense that that death and Hades are

38:40going to be eternally tortured. It makes a lot more sense to suggest, hey, remember those places

38:47death and Hades? The places where people go after they die? No more death. No more need for them.

38:53Right. Therefore, they're being destroyed. They're being annihilated. Death and hell poof are going away.

39:06As a metaphor, it makes a lot of sense to say this, you know, what what Jesus has done or what God is

39:14doing is is now sort of getting rid of the concept of death and Hades and whatever. Like you can,

39:25you can let go of those ideas. Let's just throw them into the, the infernator and

39:33yeet them into the sun because, you know, this is not something that's going to happen anymore.

39:39People are not going to die anymore. We don't need a location to store to house the dead because

39:47they've all been given up to be judged and then they're going, they have elsewhere to be.

39:52And so even if you do want to understand them as being personified in some sense, I think the notion

39:58that that, you know, the personified death is going in a lake of fire for eternity. Like who?

40:06I don't know anybody who's going to get their jollies off of that. And if you are, you're messed

40:12up. Yeah. And also just the concept of death as like if the idea here is the concept of death as

40:22we understand it. I mean, I guess, I guess we've already established that in this case, it's not

40:27death as we understand it is death as a place. I'm wrapping my head around it. I'm working on it,

40:33but like, so it's not, so we're not talking about death as in the end of human life or the end of

40:40life. We're talking about death as the place that a person, a spirit would go after their die.

40:48Well, and that's, and that's Hades because when you look at ancient mythology, it's not like,

40:54you know, death is not this abstract thing. Death is actually journeying to the underworld.

41:01So it is a, it is a place. And we tend to think of it in more slightly more scientific kind of

41:09biological terms. But recently, there were a lot more things that were, that were oriented along

41:15like a, a source path goal kind of metaphor, or an inside outside or a directional metaphor,

41:25like the concept of truth, we talk about truth is a thing. You have the truth, you can find the

41:31truth, you hide the truth, you can give it in parts, in halves, in holes. Truth is a thing.

41:37In the Bible, when in particularly in the New Testament, but also to some degree in the Hebrew

41:43Bible, you, truth is a path. You walk in truth, you depart from the truth, you return to the truth.

41:50And so you've got to think about truth more as a path that is representative of behavior.

41:58And so similarly, you've got to think about death, not as a change of condition, but a change of

42:05location. And so that's why death is represented as a, a location here. And I wanted to read from

42:13my favorite commentary on the book of Revelation is from the anchor Yale Bible commentary series.

42:22And Kester is the author K-O-E-S-T-E-R of the, the revelation volume that was published in 2014.

42:30And let me just find where it talks about this. The final judgment ends the work of death and

42:39Hades. They are sometimes pictured as places that can be locked or opened with a key as we saw in

42:45Revelation 118. And they are also depicted as sinister beings that hold people captive as we saw

42:51in Revelation 6, 8. Before the judgment, they quote, unquote, give up their dead,

42:56which means they have no absolute right over people. They do God's bidding by relinquishing those

43:01they hold. Then God deals with them as he dealt with the beast, false prophet, and Satan by throwing

43:06them into the lake of fire. The end of death is the counterpart to resurrection as God brings

43:11the dead to life. He also terminates death's power to hold anyone captive in the new Jerusalem

43:17death has no place. So even here, the focus is not on let's torment this guy forever. The focus is on

43:26the influences over, the presence is over, the role of that thing is over. Judgment ends with

43:34the opponents of God in the lake of fire, which is also called the second death. Revelation refrains

43:39from using terms like physical death and spiritual death and assumes that both death and resurrection

43:44affect the whole person. Ordinary death affects both the righteous and the wicked, whereas the

43:48second death afflicts only those condemned by God. Yeah, there you go. Conversely, those allied

43:59with evil may now elude condemnation, but their future is the second death in the lake of fire,

44:03along with Satan, the beast, the false, false prophet death and Hades, John's visions,

44:08disclose the divergent outcomes of relationships with God and God's adversaries. And then he goes

44:15on to talk about how some people argue that revelation depicts condemnation as annihilation

44:19rather than ongoing suffering. But one can imagine a political system and death coming to an end,

44:27but it is hard to see how they could suffer torment. Yeah. Right. That is it. Yeah, it's a very odd

44:35thing. Yeah. So it's, it's the, I think the problem is we want this to be a rich, unified tapestry

44:46that this all fits together and that it all makes sense as, as if it is some vision of things that

44:52are going to take place in the future when really it's just a jumbled up collection of apocalyptic

44:57imagery. And I don't think the author is like, Oh, wait a minute, I got to change that to make it

45:03consistent because I did the thing over here. Now we, now it all flows together. I think the

45:08author was like, ah, and then this, and then this, because the idea is just

45:12John the revelator has a very, a very sort of beat Nick sensibility. It's, it's, it's, it's

45:20almost a gonzo journalism. What's his name thing? Yeah. You know who I'm talking about. Anyway,

45:27yeah, it's, it's, it, he flows. He doesn't, he doesn't go back and revise. He's, he's, he's not

45:33heavy into editing. He's just, uh, whatever's coming out is coming out. Sort of, sort of dude,

45:39which, which I think, um, makes it a problem when we have people today in, in our modern world who

45:46try to create this, this unifying framework that gives everything a place and everything

45:54fits together as with gut questions.org and everybody else who wants revelation, you know,

46:01who's every, every time there's a car accident, somebody's like, ah, this is the, this is the

46:06beast from, uh, from revelation and somebody was like the, the trains that were derailing

46:12ago. They were like, ah, this is, this is the, uh, the, the serpent with the, with the tail,

46:18like a scorpion from, from this part of, of revelation, because they think this is actually,

46:23some kind of prophecy about things that are going to happen in the future.

46:26It's really just scary story time. Yeah. Like when, when you're taking it literally,

46:31very much to my, to my mind, misses the point. Like you literally, if you try to take it as, uh,

46:40as these are literal things that I'm predicting are literally going to happen

46:45and look the way I'm describing them, you, you miss everything that he's trying to say in it.

46:52Now I, yeah, I think a lot of what he's trying to say is nutballs myself. I think you might,

46:58I think you might have been a little bit goofy, but if you want to understand it, if you want to

47:04understand what he was trying to say, taking it literally is not going to get you anywhere near

47:10it. It's going to, it's just, I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's very clearly metaphor. The guy can't even

47:16decide whether, whether some, whether two things are a place or people. And like, like, yeah, that,

47:23that to me is, is plenty to just say, let's look at this as a metaphor. Let's, let's chill out a

47:29little bit with the, uh, with the literal. And, and I think the reason there are so many people who

47:33are just allergic to recognizing that fact is, is because they want to try to make the text as useful

47:38as, and meaningful as possible to them. And right now there's an awful lot of utility

47:44in you, in, in mapping whatever's in the text onto current events so that we can pretend we have any

47:52as some kind of insight into what's coming next. And, and that is horrifically dangerous when on a

48:00geopolitical level, we have bad actors who are trying to represent genocide as something not only

48:10that is prophesied to happen in the future, but that is something they should be excited about.

48:15Like the, there's the dehumanization that results from gleefully anticipating war and genocide,

48:26because it means you're finally going to feel vindicated about believing in this stuff.

48:31Right. And, and, and it means that if it happens, then Jesus's return must be right around the

48:37corner or whatever. And who knows how lucky we are to live in this generation. And, and who knows

48:43how many people have their fingers on levers of power that are going to use them because they think

48:50they are going to facilitate that, that lucky, lucky event that, that we all get to be a part of.

48:58Just, just seeing the number of people who are like, what Trump said about Gaza. Oh yeah,

49:07it's happening. It's happening. Everybody get ready. Like that's, that is scary, scary delusion.

49:14Well, and not, it's also important to note that like that's something that has been happening

49:21for centuries. Yeah. Like over and over again, people are like, aha, look at this. See, we're in

49:27the last days here in 1666. It's look at this, you know, the, the, the London fire proves that

49:34we are in the final days or, you know, the plague is one of the things like this is, this is not new.

49:40And yeah, they've been wrong every time up till now. I don't know why you think you're the right

49:45one when everybody else has been wrong every time they've made these predictions about we are the

49:50ones who are finally going to see, you know, revolution, revelation come to life. Yeah.

49:58Yeah. And, and something I've mentioned in, in a lot of videos, revelation is late first century

50:04CE Jewish apocalyptic imagery written by followers of Jesus. And it has nothing to do with anything

50:12that happened after the text was written. Right. And, and oh my gosh, the heartache, the suffering,

50:19the literal human lives lost needlessly, because people tried to use this as a map for the future.

50:29Just please give it a rest for the sake. Well, and also not, not for nothing, but like,

50:36there was much there wasn't their hemming and hawing about whether to even include it in the

50:41canon, like revelation only made it barely in under the wire. Right. Yeah. Mainly because of

50:47Athanasius of Alexandria, who thought it was a useful rhetorical bludgeon against his enemies

50:53within the Christian community, because the earliest Christians were like, who's this John

51:00dude? He was up in the night. What was he smoking? Was he in a cave? What was happening here?

51:07But you had, you had folks who were like, I think Justin Martyr around 150 to 160 was the first to

51:14say, Hey, I bet this was the same John that wrote the gospel of John. And, um, and other people were

51:21like, can you read Justin? Like this guy's Greek is awful. This is, this is not the same author.

51:29And, uh, and so you had Christians who were denying that this was John the, or this was John the

51:35beloved, uh, disciple. You had a bunch of them that were pointing out there's no revelation in here.

51:41This is just bizarre grotesque imagery. This is not uplifting. This is not the gospel. And you,

51:48and as we talked with Bart Erman about this as well, you had all this excess. It wasn't about

51:53dismantling these oppressive systems of power. It was about trading places with the people who were

51:59in the driver's seat and so that we could be the ones now to, uh, uh, you know, to laugh maniacally

52:06as other people were, uh, were being mown down. Uh, and so that a lot of people are like,

52:12that's not my Christianity in, in the early centuries. And yeah, it took a while. It took, uh,

52:18Athanasius of Alexandria to write his festival letter and, uh, and tie his little cannon off with a,

52:26the bow that is the book of Revelation and then stealing a page from the book of Revelation.

52:31He closed out his, uh, his cannon list by saying, uh, curses anybody who adds to or takes away from,

52:38from these. Uh, so yeah, it's, it's a mess. But, uh, I think, and, and I think,

52:44let's see, I'm trying to think of which who omitted it from their cannons. There were,

52:50there were a few people, but I think it wasn't even till, uh, like the council of Trent that it was

52:56formally recognized as canonical by, uh, the Catholic church. I may have to revisit that.

53:02I don't know if that's true, but yeah, there's, it was not popular for, um, the earliest

53:09generations of Christians because it conflicted with what they, what they were seeing in the

53:15gospels and, uh, and what they wanted to get out of Christianity. Darn you, Athanasius,

53:20we could have saved us all a big headache if you were just, uh, yeah. All right. Countless,

53:26countless lives. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, uh, thank you for that. I think that is

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