Sunday, March 15, 2020

Apostate prophet may want to dig further; Hellfire in Judaism and Christianity?

In answer to the video "The Sick Reason Why Allah Created Humans According to Islam"

The Jewish mainstream belief, only passingly based on scriptures and mainly the results of rabbinical conjectures on oral tradition/Talmud and Zohar is that a dead person's soul rises to heaven immediately for judgement. Those of exceptional righteousness, a very small percentage of the whole, remain in it but others descend to gehonnim (sometimes called sheol) to undergo a "cleansing" treatment that is more or less painful depending on the degree of earthly transgressions, of up to 1 year, in any of its 7 levels that are like prisons where the sinners are "visited" by their sins (see Rashi on Isa24:22). 

Those earthly sins take the form of punishing angels, visiting the guilty with the corresponding chastisement. The nature of that punishment is unknown but the Talmudic rabbis unambiguously speak of torture and pain, regardless of whether chastisement and death have already been inflicted in this world (see Rashi on 1Kings2:6,Mal3:6,Ecc7:13). The notion of 3 categories of souls (righteous, intermediate, sinful), as well as the purification of the intermediate group is hinted at in Zech13:9. Other rabbinical opinions state that the 3 categories are in fact among several other aspects within every soul; the higher "aspect" of the soul, the neshama immediately experiences bliss in Gan Eden where it unites with God, while the lower one undergoes a painful purification process. The "nefesh", the aspect of the soul solely concerned with worldly, physical needs, remains in the grave within the body to experience the necessary suffering. Simultaneous suffering is inflicted upon the "ruach" another of the soul's aspects, in gehonnim.

Returning to the mainstream belief, as each soul's cleansing process completes, it waits in a relatively pleasant place called the realm of souls, until the ushering of the messianic age, in this very world, where they are resurrected. In that utopian world called olam ha-ba, now ruled by the promised prophet-king-messiah, and where Judaism forcefully dominates all nations and beliefs, they start reaping their allotted portion of rewards. The rabbis disagree after that point on whether the messianic world continues eternally or eventually ends after all people have seen, assimilated and accepted the "perfection" of a Jewish world order. At the eventual end of the messianic era, the souls leave the bodies that return to dust, and go to heaven/Gan Eden where they experience their reward completely and eternally. Gan Eden isnt the place where Adam and Eve were, rather a place of spiritual perfection. It could be the place where early Jewish writings hint that certain righteous souls are gathered Gen25:8,17,35:29,49:33,Deut32:50. 

The worst sinners' souls, a small percentage of the whole as in the case of the most righteous, simply vanish following their 1 year at gehonnim, do not resurrect nor experience any share of the perfect messianic world as well as the heavenly abode. Other opinions state that following the initial 1 year stay in gehonnim, those worst sinners are made to emerge for judgement, found guilty and sent back to the lowest level of gehonnim (see Rashi on Ps9:18) for eternal torture. Others yet, opine that they are immediately destroyed following their bodily death. These conjectures are defective from the point of view of divine justice for neither one can argue that a "1 year" sentence is enough in all cases, neither is it fair to simply destroy a soul that has effectively been cleansed from its sins. 

We thus see that in the Quran, every soul is entitled to divine justice and mercy. Once the sinner's soul is purged and cleansed, and the balance of justice equalized in relation to the far reaching consequences of a worldly crime, then it is reunited with the Creator so as to experience divine mercy. Nobody gets an escape card through "annihilation", a proposition that only appeals to the wicked, sinful person who is comforted in his moral depravity and crimes. Further, none is excluded from perfect accountability and ultimate mercy and no victim is left with the thought that its abuser will be "erased" without a just requital. The Quran in fact, complete and thorough as it always is in its argumentation, denies through a vivid scene and with added sarcasm, the desperate plea of the sinners to be annihilated so as to escape their just requital 
25:11-14"But they have denied the Hour, and We have prepared for those who deny the Hour a Blaze. When the Hellfire sees them from a distant place, they will hear its fury and roaring. And when they are thrown into a narrow place therein bound in chains, they will cry out thereupon for destruction. [They will be told], "Do not cry this Day for one destruction but cry for much destruction".
As to the Judeo-Christian tradition, their confusion and resulting philosophies, conjectures on the issue of the afterlife are due to the near complete erasure of this central issue from their scriptures. Their thinkers were then left to come up with all kinds of theories to fill the uncomfortable void. Other cultures like them, including the Greeks, came up with different scenarios more or less resembling the Islamic afterlife, using reasoning and deductions so as to make sense of how to account for the level of morality of a mortal creature. These scenarios however, like those advocated by various thought systems around the world, remain defective, incomplete in one way or another as they are the result of human conjecture upon the unseen.

The Quran makes a powerful observation revealing why the Israelites neglected that aspect of the religion until its near disappearance from their writings. They are, from all people, the most attached to this very life
2:96"And you will most certainly find them the greediest of men for life (greedier) than even those who are polytheists; every one of them loves that he should be granted a life of a thousand years, and his being granted a long life will in no way remove him further off from the chastisement, and Allah sees what they do".
Interestingly the verse uses "hayatin", denoting that no matter in what shape or condition that eternal earthly life is, they will take it in preference to the Hereafter. How scriptures that speaks of God, divine laws, intelligent design, angels, prophets, moral accountability, have no explicit and repeated, stressed and emphasized mention of the afterlife? The only place where individual justice can be fulfilled to perfection? The only explanation is that they have blotted out a concept they deeply loathed due to their attachement to this life and unwillingness to face the consequences of their spiritual condition, their failures as a community bound by a collective covenant 2:93-5. Their history of internal dispute as regards even the concept of resurrection, let alone the mass of speculation on the most convenient or acceptable picture of the hereafter testify to this reality.

Even more corroborative of this Quranic charge against them, is that over and over again, the Hebrew Bible promises as the climax of physical and spiritual bliss, the ushering in this very world of the messianic era, with the dead actually coming back to this world in order to be rewarded. Even prior to the ushering of that era, over and over, divine promises of material gains and rewards of all types are promised in return for spiritual uprightness. The Quran on the other hand absolves the previous prophets from such an important omission, saying they, from Abraham to Moses believed and spoke of the resurrection, judgement and life in the hereafter 2:260,7:155-6,20:48-9,40:38-9. What is also very interesting is that almost all the cataclysmic descriptions preceding the establishment of the blissful "new earth", agree with the Quran's depiction of upheaval and destruction of the universe and the earth, followed by the resurrection of the earth and all humans for judgement. This is rooted in the principle that 28:88"all things are perishing save His Face". Then comes the righteous people's admission into Heaven, a place beyond the limits of the material world 3:133"And hasten to forgiveness from your Lord; and a Garden, the extensiveness of which is (as) the heavens and the earth, it is prepared for those who guard (against evil)". The difference, again, is that the Bible writers place these events as happening in this world, with the Jewish people and the land of Israel being the focal point. The punishment through fire, humiliation and torture will be the lot of Israel's enemies only until the Jewish people are re-established to their station of honor among the nations Zech14:10,etc.

There is a reason why the Quran, in its opening verses of sura baqara states that those who shall gain and find guidance from its contents are those, among other things, who are strongly and firmly convicted of the hereafter, a topic delved into at length. 

As the Quran states when refering to their baseless conjectures relating to the hereafter
3:24"they say: The fire shall not touch us but for a few days; and what they have forged deceives them in the matter of their religion"
and it elsewhere negates the idea that some people will never resurrect as mere wishful thinking 4:42.

There is a clear allusion however in the Tanakh, speaking of the day of resurrection the prophet Daniel says
Dan12:2"And many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awaken-these for eternal life, and those for disgrace, for eternal abhorrence".
Refusing the plain reading of the text, Talmudic scholars opine that "these" stands for "the ones who will wake up for eternal life", and "those" is for "the others who don't wake up". But how does eternal disgrace and abhorrence apply to a non-existant entity? Some other places allude to Hell, like Job18:5-21,33:18-24,36:16-17.

According to Rashi, one of the highest rabbinic authority in scriptural interpretation, the fire by which God will punish certain people, a kind of fire that will not abate nor need to be sustained, is the fire of gehonnim, burning deep in a pit where are already gathered all the wicked nations destroyed through divine chastisement Isa66:16-24,Job20:26,Ezek26:20,31:14-16,32:18-32,Ps30:4etc.

It is also interesting to note the Jewish belief of reincarnation, again not found anywhere in the Tanakh nor even the Talmud/Oral Torah but in the mystical, ambiguous and multifaceted book of the Zohar, in order to explain evil and apparent inequalities in this life. 

Sheol by the way refers to the grave, is used many times in the Tanakh. (Hell in the NT Matt5:29,30:28,Lk16:19-31,Rev20:10)

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