Episode 118: Meghan Henning - Does Hell Exist?
In this episode of The Bible for Normal People Podcast, Pete and Jared talk with professor Meghan Henning about hell and the afterlife as they explore the following questions:
- Does hell exist?
- Did ancient people wonder if hell existed?
- How did popular ancient stories influence the ancient world and the Bible?
- What is Sheol and why didn’t people want to go there?
- What is the tradition of the “two-ways” in the Hebrew Bible?
- What Greco-Roman discussion does the New Testament participate in?
- What is Gehenna?
- What do ancient school books tell us about hell?
- What does it mean that the New Testament uses multiple words for “hell”?
- When did the idea of hell as we think of it come to be?
- Does the idea of an afterlife persuade people in the modern context?
- Was Jesus the first one to talk about hell?
Tweetables
Pithy, shareable, less-than-280-character statements from Meghan Henning you can share.
- “We might need to ask ourselves, ‘Is this a lesson about what the afterlife is actually like or is this lesson about how we could use the visual vocabulary and the rhetorical tools of our contemporary world in order to bring life and healing and education to people as well?’” @HenningMeghan
- “If there is a hell, we’re all going.” @HenningMeghan
- “The question, ‘Does hell exist?’ is really a modern question that we have for ancient texts that aren’t asking that same question.” @HenningMeghan
- “Our scientific curiosity wants us to try to decide whether or not hell is really there or not, but the problem is that the text that we’re asking that question of, namely, the Bible…the earliest readers of those texts would not have had that question.” @HenningMeghan
- “These texts are describing Sheol not as a place that you don’t want to go to because it signifies that you’ve done something wrong but rather to go to Sheol too soon would be to die prematurely.” @HenningMeghan
- “Even the earliest readers of these texts understood on some level that the real point here is about how you treat others.” @HenningMeghan
- “But if we think of this as rhetoric that Jesus is really quite serious about and trying to drive home, what we find is that the emphasis in these texts is really on care for the other and concern for the marginalized.” @HenningMeghan
Mentioned in This Episode
- Class: How to Read the Bible: Like Adults!
- Book: The Aeneid
- Book: The Odyssey
- Book: The Republic
- Book: Dante’s Inferno
- Website: Meghan Henning
- Patreon: The Bible for Normal People
[bg_collapse view="link-inline" expand_text="Read the transcript" collapse_text="Hide the transcript" ]
[Introduction]
0:00
Pete: You’re listening to The Bible for Normal People. The onlyGod-ordained podcast on the internet. Serious talk about the sacred book. I’mPete Enns.
Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.
[Jaunty Intro Music]
Jared: Welcome everyone to this episode of TheBible for Normal People. Oh boy, do we have a treat for you today. We’retalking about does hell exist.
Pete: Mm hmm. Does it?
Jared: You’ll have to listen to find out.
Pete: You’ll find out.
Jared: I mean, you won’t, of course.
Pete: You know, you’re going to get the answeractually within the first, like, two minutes and it will shock you.
Jared: [Laughter]
Pete: As they say on the interwebs.
Jared: Just click here to find out more.
Pete: [Laughter]
That is sort of a hell isn’t it?
Jared: It’s true.
Pete: That’s what I think of all that stuff, soanyway. Yeah, our guest is Meghan Henning and she is a Professor of ChristianOrigins at the University of Dayton, so she deals with stuff like before thetime of Jesus, during, and a little bit after, just the rise of Christianity.And she’s done a lot of thinking about hell.
Jared: And just the best of, I love -
Pete: You’d never guess it talking to her though,right?
Jared: I love having these, like, nerdy scholarson who really just – all they want to do is just dig into texts -
Pete: Yeah! Right.
Jared: And find, I just really appreciate thatlevel of honest scholarship.
Pete: Amen. Bible for Normal People, that’s whatwe do. We talk about this stuff, have nerds on, and we keep going.
Jared: That’s right, excellent. All right, onemore thing. It’s very important so listen up.
Pete: Very important, listen up.
Jared: Every once in a while, we like do to thesecourses online where Pete and I jump on, we tackle a topic and this time we’regoing to be talking about how to read the Bible as adults.
Pete: But Jared! How much does it cost?!
Jared: It costs $5,000.
Pete: If you want to…
Jared: If you want to.
Pete: It’s a pay what you want course, folks.
Jared: So, it could cost you nothing.
Pete: Could cost you nothing.
Jared: You know -
Pete: If you’re not a capitalist, you just showup.
Jared:Normally, we have these courses for, you know, $49, $99, something like that –but no human is going to be turned away. We really want to just continue tohave this dialogue and conversation about what the Bible is, what do we do withit. So, we’re going to be having this course March 26th, so write itdown on your calendar like, right now – unless you’re driving – but otherwisewrite down March 26th, 8:30 Eastern Time. So, from 8:30-9:30 we’regoing to be talking about how to read the Bible as an adult. We’re going to betalking about its ancientness, its diversity, its ambiguousness, how to beflexible with it, diving into wisdom and some other topics, so we hope you canjoin us. If you would be interested in registering for that, just go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-to-read-the-bible-like-adults-with-pete-enns-and-jared-byas-tickets-94096682711. You cansign up there, pay what you want, we’ll see you March 26th at 8:30PMEastern Time.
Pete: Eastern Time, don’t forget, Eastern Time.
Jared: Alright, we’ll lets have this conversationwith Meghan Henning on hell.
[Music begins]
Meghan: If we think about the ethical commandsthat are tied to this, the conclusion that we draw is that if there is a hell,we’re all going. But, if we think about this as rhetoric, that Jesus is reallyquite serious about and trying to drive home, what we find is that the emphasisin these texts is really on care for the other, concern for the marginalized,and that theme is still carried forward. Even the earliest readers of thesetexts understood on some level that the real point here is how you treatothers.
[Music ends]
Pete: Well Meghan, how are you? Thanks for beingon the podcast.
Meghan: Thank you! Thank you so much for havingme.
Pete: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of interestingstuff to talk about today. Before we get to that, let’s just hear a bit aboutyour background. How you got into this, your spiritual background, and maybe whyyou even went and got a Ph.D., which probably sounded like a good idea at thetime.
Meghan: [Laughter]
It’s everyone’s doing it.
Pete: Yes.
Meghan: I grew up in a Lutheran family and in theMidwest and when I was in high school, my family went through a lot of traumaand through that time, I noticed quite quickly that the people around me weredoing their best to try to support my family with the use of Scripture. But, insome cases they were actually really helpful, and in other cases, not sohelpful, and the thing that was really interesting to me at that point was howpeople could be reading the exact same text, but in one case interpret it in away that maybe made my family feel bad about our situation, and in other casesreally come alongside my family and support us. So that really got meinterested from a young age in what it meant to interpret a biblical text, andwhat role the interpreter had and how Scripture could be either a positiveforce in someone’s life or something that was even scary. So, that led me on asomewhat winding path to get a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies in New Testament andthen I developed an interest in the history of early Christianity as well.
Jared: Well, that’s really wonderful and Iappreciate that background, but –
Pete: [Laughter]
Jared: Today, we really want to ask really justone question. Does hell exist?
Meghan: [Laughter]
4:59
Jared: I mean, we really brought you on becausePete and I have been wrestling this for years, we really want to know, so canyou just give us the answer? This may be a really short podcast.
Pete: Yeah, yeah.
Meghan: Right, yeah. The answer is seven.
Pete: [Laughter]
Jared: [Laughter]
Meghan: No, um.
[Laughter]
The question “does hell exist?” is really amodern question that we have for ancient texts that aren’t asking that samequestion, right? Our scientific curiosity wants us to try to decide whether ornot hell is really there or not, but the problem is that the text that we’reasking that question of, namely, the Bible – the readers of those texts wouldnot have had, or the earliest readers of those texts would not have had thatquestion. When they came across the descriptions of the weeping and gnashing ofteeth in the gospel of Matthew, or the story in Luke 16 with the rich man andLazarus, the question for them would not have been – “oh…is that really aplace?” The question for them would have been who’s there and why are theythere, because that’s the way that the culture that they were a part ofunderstood reality.
Jared: So, we’ll get back to this, because what wereally are hoping you can do for us is kind of trace this idea of hell. Butbefore we do that, is what you’re saying then the milieu or the environment ofthe New Testament wouldn’t, would they have already assumed the existence ofsomething like a hell and so the question really isn’t does it exist? The ideaof existence and is it really there, those are really modern questions and in alot of ways there would have been a lot of assumptions in the ancient worldabout some of that, so they would have just asked the other questions likewho’s there, why are they there, not so much does it exist. Are you saying thatin the New Testament there wouldn’t have been an assumption this place calledhell does exist?
Meghan: Whether or not they had an assumptionthat a place called hell existed, they would have already been familiar withideas that sounded like the language that Jesus is using in the Gospels thatwas already used in their broader culture to instruct people. So, the ideareally begins in the cultures that are surrounding the New Testament writers.So, we have in the Greco-Roman world we have the concepts of Hades and tours tothe underworld, and we have in the Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid wehave this idea of a going to Hades and on this journey to Hades, learningsomething that you bring back through this story about your journey to Hades toeducate your audience. And even though the hearers of the New Testament mightnot have been literate or reading those stores, those stories were so widelyshared and told. They were part of the Greek and Roman program of educationcalled paideia that was consistent and used with remarkable consistencyacross the empire. If we look at, for example, some of the school hands, oreducational texts that we have from antiquity, one of the things that’s reallyremarkable that I’ve found through my research is that the chapters of the Odysseyand the Aeneid, so Odyssey eleven and the Aeneid six, thatdescribed these tours to Hades are some of the most frequently used texts inthose school hands. So, what that tells us is that among the population thatwas literate, that was receiving an education, this story would’ve been widelyfamiliar and would have been shared. So, it was a part of the kind ofunderstanding that you would tell these stories in order to educate audiences.And then, of course, Jewish apocalyptic literature, which was very popularduring the lifetime of Jesus, has its own stories and journeys that aresomewhat influenced by these Greco-Roman stories that I’m talking about, butalso takes its own spin on this idea of touring other-worldly spaces and usinggraphic details about those other-worldly spaces to make a point and persuadeaudiences in the present.
Pete: Well let’s get to that, the point, whatthey’re trying to do with all this in a bit. What I hear you saying is thatthis idea of Hades, right, or we might say hell just for arguments sake. A lotof that, it’s, you know, Christianity is sort of dealing and engaging with thecultures around it, which is both Greek and Roman influence and it’s, I mean,it’s maybe an obvious point, but it’s a product of engaging a particularculture and Jews were doing this, but –
Meghan: They were.
9:56
Pete: These concepts were not part of their own Scripture.Am I –
Meghan: Right, that’s accurate.
Pete: I mean, in your opinion?
Meghan: Yeah, I did sort of jump over the HebrewBible, sorry.
Pete: Well that okay, we all do.
Meghan: I jumped straight to Jewish apocalypticism.
Pete: [Laughter]
No, that’s fine.
Jared: I mean, that’s a very common mistake forall of us.
Pete: I know.
Jared: I go from the Old Testament to Jewishapocalypticism every day.
Pete: Whatever, yeah.
Meghan: Exactly.
[Laughter]
Pete: But I guess my question is, I guess mypoint is, just so you can comment on is that, this is a foreign conceptcompletely in the Hebrew Scriptures, right?
Meghan: Yes, so the Hebrew Scriptures have theconcept of Sheol, which is not really what we would call a lively afterlife inthe sense that it’s described as dusty and dark. It’s certainly not pleasant,it’s not a place that you want to go, but everybody goes there when they die,so in the Hebrew Bible there’s this idea that, you know, when you die, you goto Sheol and it is described in ways that it’s sometimes confusing to people,because when they read the Hebrew Bible, it sounds like hell. And when thistranslation of the Hebrew Bible was made into the Septuagint, they actuallyused the word Hades to translate Sheol, and so then that creates confusion fora lot of people because then that starts to overlap those two concepts, butreally in the Hebrew Bible, it’s a kind of a neutral place where everybody goesafter death and the texts that describe it, or talk about it, do refer to it asa place that nobody wants to go, but that’s because in the Hebrew Bible there’sthis tradition of the two ways. And this idea that one way leads to life andabundance, and the other way leads to death. And so, when these texts, Proverbsand Psalms are places where we see a lot of this language, or in Deuteronomy,the Deuteronomist has a lot of language like this, these texts are describingnot Sheol as a place that you don’t want to go to because it signifies thatyou’ve done something wrong, but rather that, to go to Sheol too soon would beto die prematurely. And so, that is negatively valued and seen as a punishmentfrom God, but it’s not the idea of hell that we think of that gets developedcenturies later by early Christians.
Jared: Well, it seems likeit’s more of this, it’s an extension of the idea that you don’t wantto die young -
Meghan: Exactly.
Jared: And Sheol is just,yeah, well that’s what happens when you die and if you die youngthat’s not a good thing and so it’s -
Meghan: And you want tomake what, choices that lead to a fruitful life and a long life,not -
Jared: Right, right.
Meghan: Exactly.
Pete: Yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s areally interesting point and I think an important point to make that this ideathat I think a lot of Christians throughout history and today very much, youknow, at least the people we talk to a lot – they just assume that this isa thoroughly biblical idea, this afterlife abode which is a place of punishment,even torture and for some traditions -
Meghan: And bodily torture. That’swhy I say that Sheol is not really a lively afterlife, because it’s not totallyclear that people have bodies there.
[Laughter]
So...
Pete: Right. I mean, you really can’tdo anything in Sheol.
Meghan: No.
Pete: You can’t even praise God inSheol, so don’t send me there, especially before my time. And wanting toavoid Sheol is not because I don’t want to go to hell, it’s because I have alot more living to do -
Meghan: Exactly.
Pete: And I’d like you to allow me,don’t let me go down into the pit or something.
Meghan: Right, exactly don’t let mego down into Sheol -
Pete: Right, right.
Meghan: Before my hairs are gray. Soyeah, exactly. You want to live on earth as long as possible-
Pete: Right.
Meghan: And that’s a sign of God’sfavor and abundance in your life.
Pete: Right.
Jared: So, when we get to this,let’s maybe move forward a little bit.
Meghan: Mm hmm.
Jared: So, when we get tothe -
Pete: What’s wrong with the HebrewBible Jared? We like talking about that.
Meghan: [Laughter]
Pete: Sheesh, man! I’ll tell ya.Okay, go ahead.
Jared: We get to this time period, sothe Hebrew Bible’s been written. We’re kind of going through history here, Jesusis born around this time, there’s what you call, you know, this Jewishapocalypticism, so there’s these ridings and they’re influenced by,maybe, some Greek culture and the Greek idea of Hades. What, you know, how doesit change? Because we just went through Sheol, which doesn't reallygive us a lot to go on, but by the time we get to Jewish apocalypticliterature, there is, like, what’s the meat to it? What does it start lookinglike, what does the afterlife look like that’s different than Sheol?
14:28
Meghan: Well, in the Jewishapocalyptic literature, you have descriptions of other-worldly spaces, andso, in a text like 1 Enoch for example, you have someone being takenon a tour and you have spaces where there’s a distinction made betweensouls that live different kind of lives and they go to different, they’re kindof like pits or hollows that these different, four different types of soulsdwell in. So, you have in 1 Enoch, and in other apocalyptic texts fromthis time, this idea of what we call the differentiation of fates, which isjust a fancy way of talking about different kinds of souls going differentplaces. And this can beseen as continuous, for the Jewishpeople, this is continuous with this idea of the tradition of the twoways, right? You live one kind of life and you live for a very longtime; you live a different kind of life and you go down to Sheol too soon,right? But now, the difference is in these apocalyptic texts, right,that actually leads to different kinds of after death experienceswhereas the concept of Sheol was everyone goes to -
Pete: Which seems fair, right? Imean, I’m not being facetious, but that seems fair for that to happen becausewhy would someone who leads a long, righteous life wind up in the sameplace?
Meghan: Right. And so, what youhave in the Hellenistic period is under the pressures of the empire,you have the apocalyptic texts developing ideas of the afterlife that are bothinfluenced by Greek and Roman ideas, right? So, this idea of differentiation offates looks different from, but also not totally distinct from what we see inPlato, for example, right? In the Republic, there’s this idea of,you know, the trans-migration of souls, and different souls that live differentkinds of lives going to different spaces after death. And so, you end up inJewish apocalyptic literature starting to see overlap with some of theseGreco-Roman ideas, and you also get this in an apocalyptic textthat may, in some cases, be influenced by the pressure of livingunder Roman rule. So, it’s during this time period that we end upseeing early Christian authors who are deeply influenced by this apocalypticliterature invoking language that shares a heritage with both the Greco-Romanculture that they’re a part of, the Hebrew Bible tradition of the two wayswhere you could, you know, make life choices that lead to different outcomes,and then these Jewish apocalyptic texts. And all of this really funnels intowhat we have represented in some of the New Testament texts that talk aboutthese different other-worldly spaces.
Jared: So, the New Testament youwould say is participating in some way in this differentiation of fates way ofthinking, meaning, you can make choices, and, I mean, you can make choices inthis life that lead to different outcomes in the afterlife.
Meghan: Yes, and I will say, I shouldsay that it is, that is a distinctive Meghan Henning idea.
[Laughter]
Pete: Okay.
[Laughter]
Meghan: That a lot of twentiethcentury Bible scholarship, actually how I got interested in this topic is thatI was reading some New Testament theology book by Rudolph Bultmann and hewas writing it, you know, earlier in the twentieth century and he was reallykeen to try and say, well yeah, there’s these texts in the New Testament thattalk about Hades or Gehenna, but you know, those are really, the Hades textsare all, those are all, it’s Greek and Roman ideas and that’s not really thetrue essential kernel of the New Testament, and I thought, well, wouldn’tit be convenient if that was true.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: Mm hmm.
Meghan: And that started me downthis road of thinking and noticing that most of the scholarship of thetwentieth century was a kind of a scholarly game of hot potato wheretheir different scholars are trying to pin the blame of hell ondifferent people groups basically.
Pete: Yeah.
Meghan: And so I’ve really taken adifferent approach in my own work and said, you know, if Jesus, if we knowJesus is using apocalyptic language in other places, it’s probably not fair toassume that somehow this apocalyptic language wasn’t really, he didn’t reallymean it.
Pete: Yeah, he...right, right,right.
Meghan: And instead, it’s probablymost fruitful to be honest about what’s there and say, yeah, there’s this terminologyabout Gehenna and about Hades, but what’s happening by the end of the firstcentury when the Gospel authors are using this terminology is that they arereally starting to develop an idea of a lively afterlife -
Pete: Mm hmm.
Meghan: In which there’s rewards andthere’s punishments. And so, I do think that first century Christian texts thatwe call the New Testament do have the beginnings of an idea of hell. It’scertainly not the developed idea that we think of though when we think of helltoday. Like people are always like, oh, do you study Satan, and I’m like,well, in the New Testament texts you really don’t get a lot of Satan, right?There’s not -
[Laughter]
Pete: Mmm.
Meghan: We think of hell as this,really, when we think of hell in the contemporary world, it looks a lot morelike what Dante described in his Inferno, and that work is reallyindebted to second through fourth century Christian ideas about hell thatreally take what’s in the New Testament and amp it up -
Pete: Mm hmm, yeah.
Meghan: Times ten.
19:57
Pete: To say the least. Now Meghan, youmentioned Gehenna, so explain what that is and what it meansand that should take you three seconds, right?
Meghan: Yeah, no problem, no problem.
Pete: So, but, ya know, that’s a conceptthat normally, not normally, but often translated as hell by Englishtranslations which is very unfortunate, but just, yeah. So, what isit? What is it and what do we do with it?
Meghan: Yeah, so, Gehenna is itself a reference to,and that term actually also occurs in the Hebrew Bible.It’s in the Hebrew Bible, it mostly likely refers to an actual, itdoes refer to an actual valley, the Valley of Hinnom. It’sa valley that's associated specifically with idolatrous acts ofnon-Israelite peoples that said to include child sacrifice, so it is, and it’salso thought to be a place, so this valley is in Isaiah 66gets specifically associated with that imagery of people who arenot following the God of Israel and who are reapingthe consequences of that, right? And it becomes a kind of,so the Valley of Gehenna or Hinnom become this kind of monument tothe idea of there being consequences for not following God, butthat idea of it being a physical place by the time Christians startreferring to it in the New Testament text, has already startedin apocalyptic literature to refer more generally to the idea ofthere being a kind of fiery place of punishment ora fiery space that would be a place where people were isolated forthe things that they had done in their life.
Pete: Would that be an afterlife thing or not?
Meghan: Yeah, so in the apocalyptic literature, it hasalready started to refer to, so that’s the thing, I have heard many, in mylifetime I have heard many sermons where people will say, “ohyou know, Gehenna was this trash heap and it was this place of fire.” So,all that stuff about the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem,there’s no, there’s been some articles published, there’s noarchaeological evidence for that -
Pete: Right.
Meghan: And it was not, it was really, by thepoint that the New Testament was written, it was already kindof well-known as a monument to infidelity and then anafterlife space.
Jared: So, it had already become known as a way oftalking about the afterlife?
Meghan: Yeah. So that’s the thing that makes it, it’simportant, I do think it’s important to recognize that the New Testamentauthors are not using one word for hell. They are using Gehenna,they’re using Hades, in one case, they’re using Tartarus. In Revelation they’reusing a lake of fire, there’s all these different concepts that arein the New Testament texts because they still don’t have, they’re still workingthis out. We have a bunch of different concepts being used to gesture towardsthe idea of eternal punishment. And that’s part of an early developing notionof eternal punishment.
Pete: So, okay, I like the way you put that. They’re workingit out.
Meghan: [Laughter]
Yeah.
Pete: Which, because it’s a newish idea, and it’sprobably a bit flexible
Meghan: Mm hmm, exactly.
Pete: And it’s used in different ways by different people. So, wehave this New Testament which is supposed to be clear and tell us exactlywhat’s what.
[Music begins]
Pete: But it’s a little more complicated than that it soundslike.
Meghan: Yeah, by just a bit.
Pete: Juuuust a bit.
Meghan: [Laughter]
[Producer group endorsement]
[Music ends]
24:57
Jared: Well I’m trying to, I’m trying to, I’mgoing down a few different parallel tracks. Because on the onehand, we have this influence of Jewish apocalypticism, which by the NewTestament’s definitely taking on this afterlife flavor, even if theconcepts are still being thrown around. We’re not exactly sure what todo with it. But earlier you said something that maybe is worthbringing back up, which was this method, this paideia, andyou’ve mentioned a few times that in a lot of these stories, there’s a journeyto Hades -
Meghan: Mm hmm.
Jared: And there’s lessons learned, and it reminds me kind ofthis dominant kind of meta metaphor of life is ajourney -
Meghan: Mmm.
Jared: And you’re going down that path and you’relearning lessons along the way. So, at first, I was excited about that, becauseI was thinking, oh! Well, I’ve never heard that, maybe that’s kind ofwhat Jesus is doing here in the New Testament to bring these up and talkabout kind of life is a journey, there’s a way of going on thesethings you’re going to learn, these lessons, but then, there’s definitely aninfluence of this apocalyptic afterlife as well. And I’m havinga hard time putting those two thoughts together.
Meghan: Perfect. So, the apocalyptic literature itself drawsupon this idea of a journey or a tour. So, the idea that you are being taken ona tour by a guide is used in, for example, 1 Enoch, as anexample of a Jewish apocalyptic text. So, it’s not just in the Greek andRoman tour literature, but also in the Jewish tours. And so, we get this ideathat, so both the Gospel authors and the audience of the Gospel authorswould have been aware of this idea of going on a tourof other-worldy spaces in order to learn something. Whether they werefamiliar with it through exposure to Jewish apocalyptic ideas or throughthe more, the broader Hellenistic curriculum of learning about the afterlife ontours of Hades. So -
Jared: So maybe there’s not like a clearline that we can draw between this. You go on these tours andyou learn these lessons in these narratives and anactual, historical - historical is not even the rightword - uh, metaphysical -
Meghan: Place.
Jared: Reality of this afterlife, maybe that’s a distinction we’retrying to make that maybe wouldn’t have fit in the New Testament.
Meghan: Exactly. I agree. So, I think that’s a distinctionthat we want the text to answer that question and I think that the textis actually trying to answer a different set of questions.
Pete: Okay.
Meghan: The set of questions that I think Jesus and theGospel authors are trying to answer through these stories is, howshould I live today?
Pete: Okay, so that sort of raises a question that I’ve beenpondering here for the last few seconds as you were talking,but Jesus. Let’s talk about Jesus.
Jared: So, you weren’t listening to her; is that what you’resaying?
Pete: I was listening and pondering.
Jared: You were thinking what you were going to say.
Meghan: Listening, pondering. Exactly.
Pete: Yes, thank you. I multi-task, but. So, did,this is one of these stupid modern questions. I’m trying not to ask the wrongquestion.
Meghan: [Laughter]
Pete: Okay, so let’s talk about Jesus. Was Jesusthinking of, from what we can tell, right, from the world around himand what’s developing at this moment. When Jesus says Gehenna, is hethinking of an afterlife place of punishment or is Jesus usingthe rhetoric of his tradition to motivate change in the peoplethat he’s talking to?
Meghan: The times where he uses the language,whether it’s Gehenna or Hades, are context of ethicalinstruction. So, it’s possible that people hearing this would’ve also thoughtof a metaphysical space.
Pete: Mm hmm.
Meghan: But, what I know for sure, and that islike, since I don’t have a telekinetic connection with the historicalJesus or his audience, I can guess they might have thought that, but I don’tknow.
Pete: Right.
Meghan: But what I can tell from looking at thetexts today, is that they’re using this language to try and persuadeaudiences to behave in particular ways. So, for example, youknow, Matthew 25, right?
Pete: Oh yeah.
29:22
Meghan: Is a place where we see this language, and it’s quiteclear that the whole story about the sheep and the goats hassome pretty specific things, right? And the question that getsasked, well wait, we didn’t know it was you, is followedwith an answer of, like, very specific instructions aboutwell, you should do this for the least of these. You should feed thehungry, and clothe the naked, and tend to the sick,right? That’s all very specific ethical instruction that then is alsoa callback to the Sermon on the Mount, which is another place where we getthis language in Matthew’s gospel as well. And so, there are multipleplaces where it’s quite clear that the language of weeping and gnashing of teethor the language of Hades or Gehenna is tied specifically to anethical lesson. You get the same thing in Luke 16, right?
Pete: Which is where people get the idea from of if you’rebad you go to hell and are tortured forever.
Meghan: Where do they get that idea?
Pete: No, they get it from that.
Meghan: Yes, exactly.
Pete: From a misreading, let’s say, of the intentionalityof Gehenna or Hades.
Meghan: Right.
Pete: And so, again, we’re sort of back to, because I’mtrying to wrap my head around this, because this is sortof important, I think, and I know really important forpeople listening to this too. The rhetoric of Gehenna/Hades, it has a function. Okay,let’s put it this way, I really hope that if you call your brother anempty-headed idiot as in the Sermon on the Mount, or if you’re angrywith your brother, if you hate him in your heart or something, you’regoing to hell forever to burn. I hope that’s not true.
Meghan: Mm hmm, right.
Pete: I really hope Jesus isn’t saying that. He doesn’tseem to be saying that.
Meghan: No.
Jared: Well, I have an interesting thing I want to test withyou, Meghan, and I just came up with it ten seconds ago, so it’s maybe notas brilliant as it seems right now. But the, I just can’t help but thinkback to Deuteronomy.
Meghan: Mm hmm.
Jared: And if we take it to that context and we have these youknow [Deuteronomy] 28-32 or something where we have the blessingsand cursings. When we have these ethical pronouncements of hownow shall you live, there tends to be some level of accountability.Like in the ancient world, I would say even in the modern world, we thinkof consequences and accountability if you don’t behave in theseways.
Meghan: Mm hmm.
Jared: And back then, in the Deuteronomic texts, itwould’ve been, there’s an oppressing army that will come and wipe you out as apeople.
Meghan: Mm hmm.
Jared: And in the same way that we don’t think today, if Idisobey God, that somehow, well there are some traditionsthat would still have this, but that somehow the enemy armiesof an oppressing nation are going to come and wipe us out, like that’s notwhat we think of as the ethical conclusion of my misbehaving. Ithink it’s just as -
Meghan: No, right. We don’t expect for, like, the earthto open up and for us to be smitten.
[Laughter]
Jared: Exactly. And in the same way, maybe, forme, that’s an analogy to repeat what you’re saying, which is, whythen do we think no, no, no. But when Jesus says if you do wrongyou’re going to hell forever, why do we take that then as like the literalthing that will happen when we kind of have this other context in theOld Testament where, no, it’s a cultural way of talkingabout consequences of ethical misbehaving and Jesus is doing the samething in an apocalyptic way and we have our own way of doing that and soit does frame it for me. Is that an appropriate analogy?
Meghan: Oh, absolutely. And one of the things, Imean, what you were saying too about, so, the Deuteronomist is agreat example, right? That we read that, and we have a sense of howancient audiences would read that. And so, to think about what’s going onin the New Testament text is equally appropriate. To understandthat Jesus is using rhetoric of his time in order toreally bring home an ethical message for his audience and to get themto take it seriously. And one of the things I think that peoplemisunderstand sometimes, so you’resaying it’s just rhetoric? And I’m saying,“no!” There’s no such thing asjust rhetoric. Rhetoric is actually really important.Right?
Jared: Mm hmm.
Meghan: You use it when you really want to make a point andyou want to make it clear and well. It also means that, because it’snot rhetoric we use in the same way in the contemporary world, wehave maximal opportunity to misunderstand it. I mean, one of the things, youknow, if we think about, like you said, if we think about the ethicalcommands that are tied to this in the New Testament, thenthe conclusion that we draw is that if there is a hell, we’re all going.Because no one has upheld the entirety of that pronouncement. But if we thinkof this as rhetoric that Jesus is really quite serious about andtrying to drive home, what we find is that the emphasis in thesetexts is really on care for the other and concern for the marginalized and thattheme, even as the intensity of hell gets amped up in the early Christianperiod in the tours of hell that come later, that theme is stillcarried forward. So even the earliest readers of these texts understood on somelevel that the real point here is about how you treat others.
34:39
Pete: Yeah, that’s helpful. I’m stuck on something herethough.
Meghan: Great.
Pete: I’m such a modern person I don’t get it, but I’m tryingto put myself in this space of ancient people and to bepersuaded by rhetoric, there has to be - maybe theredoesn’t, maybe I just don’t get it - but I would think there has tobe some connection between what is said and here is themodern word, reality.
Meghan: Yes.
Pete: Otherwise, it’s just, listen, you’re just using a bunchof hyped-up hyperbolic language here about fire andtorture and whatever, but we all know that’s not, another modern word,true. Right? So, help me through that.
Meghan: Yeah, good. So, one of the things that ancient rhetoricianswould’ve said about this is that rhetoric,visual rhetoric especially, only works if your audience canpicture it in front of their own eyes, so you have to use languagethat’s familiar. You know, if I start talking about something and you’ve neverseen it before, you can’t draw it up in your imagination no matter how hard youtry, right? But it also has to have verisimilitude, or what Itell my students means truthiness, right?
[Laughter]
Pete: Mm hmm. Yes.
Meghan: It has to resonate as true on some level. Andso, even if audiences could call up the image, they also had to understand orbelieve that it was somehow had some truth to it. Now, whether that is ametaphysical truth or whether that is an acknowledgement or an assent that,yes, you know, the wicked have justice meted out to theme in some wayultimately, and yes, the righteous have justice meted out to them in some wayultimately, you know? It’s hard to know what the metaphysical commitment was-
Pete: Right.
Meghan: For the audience, but for sure on some level ifthis rhetoric did work, and it seems to have worked for some time,there had to be some level of truth to it among the people using it. They hadto have some sense that it was, it had what I would call verisimilitude ortruthiness to it. But, you also get someone like the ancient geographerStrabo, who said, well yeah, you know, the myths that we tell, because he wastalking about education, and he said, yeah, the myths that we tell ineducation, it doesn’t really matter if they are true or not. The point is thatthe persuade our students, right? And they can still have value in them, evenif we don’t think that everything that is in the myths, and he was talkingabout specifically about Homer. But even if everything in the myths isn’t true,it still has a pedagogical value. So, I think there were different levels ofcommitment to the rhetoric.
Jared: But there’s a bit of a difference there between like,I resonate with Aesop’s Fables because I resonate with the wisdom of thepoint.
Meghan: Yes.
Jared: And I don’t need it to be historically accurate to getvalue out of it.
Meghan: That’s true. Mm hmm.
Jared: Which feels different than, here are these ethicalframeworks and if you don’t do them, here is something reallybad that will happen to you. Don’t worry, if the really bad thinghappens, that hell will happen to you, will actually happen toyou or not.
Meghan: [Laughter]
Right.
Jared: Like, that feels like a different, feels like we’recomparing apples and oranges. But I also did want to mention that I thinkthere’s something to, I keep coming back to the idea that you saidthat this isn’t really settled, so it’s not a clear concept.
Meghan: It’s not.
Jared: In a lot of ways, that actually helps thepersuasion of it, because I think of a concept like today, in today’s world, Ithink of the concept of karma.
Meghan: Mm hmm.
Jared: Where like, a lot of modern Americans, I just know peoplethat will, like, use it. And if I were to actually drill down andsay, like, what do, like, they really are afraid of karma. That is somethingthat persuades them.
Meghan: Mm hmm.
Jared: That like, if I put good into the world, I’ll get goodback. If I put bad into the world, I get bad back. It’s kind of like,Deuteronomic theology all over again. But, if I ask them to like, drill down,well like, tell me the mechanics of karma. Like, how does it actually,how does it actually happen? Especially if they don’t believe in apersonal God or something who exacts this kind of justice.
Meghan: Right.
Jared: It’s sort of, it’s a fuzzy concept. And actually,the fuzziness is what’s more compelling about it. Because if you ask them,to like, break it down into the mechanics of, well exactly tell me how if I dothis good for someone, a good thing’s gonna happen to me later.
Meghan: Right.
Jared: I don’t understand. And so, there’s some way in which theambiguity, I guess, of the mechanics of hell and dying forever and burning, itplays to the advantage here, I think, of the rhetoric.
Meghan: Yes. There’s no question that in the first century thisconcept is being developed. So, it is definitely at itsbeginnings and the more developed idea that we think of when we thinkof hell in the contemporary world is really an invention of late antiquity andmedieval Christianity.
39:42
Jared: So, in some ways it’s impossible for us to understandhell as they would have, because we already -
Meghan: It’s really hard to unknow it.
[Laughter]
Pete: Mm hmm.
Jared: Right. We already have all this stuff, we poured itinto us.
Meghan: That’s exactly right.
Pete: All those vivid images and things like that,that’s part of our reality.
Meghan: Exactly, that’s what I would call our visual vocabularyand what kind of -
Pete: Oh yeah! That’s a great phrase. I’m stealingthat.
Meghan: Yeah, well, I should tell you I stole it from Quintilian.
Pete: Okay.
Meghan: [Laughter]
Pete: Well nobody knows who that is, so, ya know.
Meghan: Good.
[Laughter]
Pete: So, I guess, here’s, let me. Okay, here’s what I’m hearing.Ancient people probably truly believe thereare consequences for actions, and if they forgot then they needto be reminded of it by people like Jesus or Paul or whoever. Andthe rhetoric of hell and Gehenna and Hades and all that, that’s avery vivid way of expressing that, let’s call it truth, or that reality,that there are consequences. What that’s actually going to looklike, who the heck knows? But it’s a way of communicating to the people inways they understand in these, their visual vocabulary they already have. Andthat, to me, that’s like a really important insight, because it’sjust another example of, well, what Jared was just sort of implying that contextis very important, right? And we can’t get into people’s heads and we readthese texts and we right away bring them into our visual vocabulary whichhas been probably a distorted lens.
Meghan: Yeah.
Pete: Right, for 1500 years or so. And to get back into that investigationis, maybe, very healing for people who are just freaking out about, you know,my relative died and -
Meghan: What is going to happen?
Pete: They’re burning conscious. Well you know, that’s the thingtoo. What struck me early on as you started talking, Meghan, when we’retalking about, like, you know, where this notion of hell developed.Along with that is really, maybe, a different kind of interest inafterlife in general.
Meghan: Mm hmm.
Pete: And I think these things, it’s rather obvious that they gotogether, and, you know, that’s something that preoccupies religious peopletypically, at least Christians it does.
Meghan: Absolutely.
Pete: Jews, not as much. But Christians, I think itreally does. Like, where do ya go?
[Laughter]
Meghan: It’s a big one.
[Laughter]
Pete: What do you do? Let’s see what the Bible says.Okay! Bang, bang. There ya have it, and the two ways, youknow, and there’s just, I just think there’s a lot at stake here for ourown paideia, our own education, our own training to thinkabout this maybe with fresh eyes and to admit that maybe a lot of ourtheologies have been distorted.
Meghan: Yeah. And to reassess if Jesus, if this is rhetoric,if this is Jesus and early Christians using the visual vocabulary of theirown time in order to persuade and educate those around them to behavein particular ways. If we want to think about what we can learn fromthat for the contemporary world, then we might need to ask ourselves is this a lessonabout what the afterlife is actually like, or is this a lesson abouthow we could use the visual vocabulary and the rhetorical tools of ourcontemporary world in order to bring life and healing and education to peopleas well.
Pete: Uh huh. Right. I appreciate the way you put that. Wefollow Jesus best by employing our own visual vocabulary to try to affectsomething that it seems like Jesus was trying to affect. And not copy thevocabulary and then distorting it.
Meghan: Exactly.
Pete: Yeah. But what, okay, so what do we do? How do we tellpeople they’re going to hell?
Meghan: [Laughter]
Pete: [Laughter]
How do we say that? Or have I missed the point entirely?
Jared: [Laughter]
Pete missed the boat. He missed the boat, yeah.
Meghan: I think that’s a great title for my next book!
Pete: You’re going to Disney World! You’re going to DisneyWorld! Okay, that’s it.
Meghan: How to tell people they’re going to hell. Okay.
Pete: You’re going to a mall parking lot! Do you want tospend your eternity in a mall parking lot?
Jared: If you don’t do what Jesus says, yeah, you’re going tothe mall.
[Continued laughter from all]
Meghan: Right, right. I think we do have to be creative. Imean, one of the things that was really troubling for me as I was starting todo this work, and I do work with my students on apocalyptic rhetoric in acontemporary world with film and movies and tv is that given ability todepict kind of like, the most extreme violent situation we can possibly imagineon the screen, I think, actually, that the rhetoric of violence isdone. I don’t think that that is productive in the contemporary world in thesame way that it might have been in antiquity.
Pete: Mm hmm.
Meghan: And I also think that we’ve learned in thousands of yearswhat the, also, what the kind of consequences for using thatkind of rhetoric might be. In a way that, in the early period of theinception of this idea that wasn’t quite as clear.
Pete: Right.
Meghan: So, that’s actually what my next project isabout in some sense, in terms of thinking about, okay, what are the other,what’s kind of the dark side of this rhetoric as it gets developed.
44:50
But, in terms of your original question about, you know, what, howdo we, how do we package this and think about this, I, first of all, I like tothink about, okay, what are the ethical norms that are being communicated, sowhat are the things that are tied to this idea, and then how would Icommunicate those things persuasively in the contemporary world and does thateven get tied to the afterlife, or does that get tied to other things thatmotivate people in the present world? Because certainly, afterlife is abig one, but probably, I think the last Pewsurvey maybe said sixty percent of the population believesin an afterlife? So, maybe there’s something else.
Jared: Well, that’s what I was thinking is, you know, is even justthinking through sermons that I’ve heard over the years, and the dominantmetaphors and ways of talking have shifted. And I think a lot of times now Ihear the language, of say, like, health -
Meghan: Hmm.
Jared: You know, if we don’t do this, like, think of the health ofour community, or the health of our marriage, or the health of our -
Meghan: Mm hmm.
Pete: So, go to health?
Jared: Yeah, right.
Meghan: From hell to health?
[Laughter]
Pete: [Laughter]
Jared: Yeah, you go to health. Yeah. From hell to health,there ya go. There’s your title.
Pete: There it is!
[Continued laughter]
Jared: There’s your title right there.
Pete: You’re welcome.
Jared: You’re welcome.
Pete: You’re welcome Meghan.
Meghan: Thanks guys.
Jared: But I think that is, you know, it is something that Ido think we intuitively, if we pay attention to the language we use, I think ascommunities of faith we intuitively do that. We pick it up and we drop offthings that are no longer useful and we pick up things that resonate more andso, that’s just something I’ve observed is that language of health and naturalconsequences. Like you said, it’s not always the metaphysical, youknow, if you don’t then this will happen to you when you die. It’s more, itfeels to me, maybe it’s just part of faith communities that I’m a part of, butit feels more immediate, it feels more naturalistic, it feels more -
Pete: Intuitive!
Jared: Yeah, intuitive, like -
Pete: Not a conscious deliberation of what to say.
Jared: If we don’t take care of the earth, it’s not, you’re goingto go to hell when you die. It’s if you don’t take care of the earth, we won’t havean earth.
Meghan: Right. Our children will not be able to enjoy the thingsthat we enjoy, yeah, yeah.
Jared: Right.
Meghan: Yeah, I think that’s really interesting.
Jard: Well, unfortunately, we are coming to the end of our time.We’ve been stretching it, because it’s so fascinating.
Meghan: Thanks.
Jard: We’ve been trying to go longer here, but what, youmentioned a project that you’re currently working on. Maybe you can say aminute of that and where people can find you online if they want to continue totalk about hell with you or tell you that you’re wrong.
Meghan: Excellent. Yes, so you can find me online on Twitterand Facebook and Meghan Henning. My next project is, I’m working on gender anddisability and early Christian concepts of hell. The book is called HellHeath No Fury and is about, specifically, how this violentlanguage that gets developed in the later tours of hell in late antiquity andthe early medieval period really runs with this first centuryChristian idea and then becomes what we know today from Dante as this torturousplace, but it really ends up using gendered ideas of the body fromantiquity to depict people as female and disabled and how, and has reallyserious consequences, I argue, for the way that we think about bodies in thecontemporary world.
Jared: That’s fascinating.
Pete: Wow, yeah.
Jared: Well, we may have to have you back on to just keep thisconversation right trucking along into the medieval period at some point.
Meghan: I would love that.
Pete: Mm hmm, yeah.
Jared: Awesome. Well, thanks so much Meghan, for coming on, reallyappreciate it.
Meghan: Thank you!
Pete: Thanks so much, see ya.
Meghan: Great to talk to you, bye.
[Music begins]
Jared: Well thanks everyone for joining in for another excitingepisode -
Pete: Yup.
Jared: Of the Bible for Normal People.
Pete: Yeah, all about hell. Hey folks, don’t forget the pay whatyou want course. Pay what you want course! March 26, 8:30 PM, for onehour, Eastern Time, talking about how to read the Bible as an adult. We hope tosee ya there.
Jared: We’ll see ya next week for another episode ofthe Bible for Normal People, and we’ll see you March 26 at 8:30PM.
Pete: Absolutely, see ya.
[Music ends]
[Outtakes]
[Beep]
Pete: Before we get to that, just introduce yourself to ourreaders. Give us a little bit of your background...
Jared: They’re listeners, not readers.
Pete: Okay, we’re going to start that over again Dave, because Idon’t know what medium we’re dealing with.
Meghan: [Laughter]
Pete: Okay. Can we start all over again?
Jared: Yeah.
Pete: Meghan? Okay, let’s start all over.
Meghan: Yeah, of course.
Pete: I’ve never made a mistake before Jared. How did thishappen?
Jared: I know! Yeah, sorry. He’s short circuiting overthere.
Pete: Okay, I’ll get it right and fix myself there. They’relisteners, you idiot. They’re listeners. Okay, alright. Start again. ReadyDave? Dave, stop. I know you’re laughing Dave. I know you’relaughing. So, okay.
[Beep]
Meghan: Well, you know, it’s Lent, so it’s a good time totalk about hell.
Pete: Good.
Jared: Yeah, perfect! That’s right.
Meghan: Seasonally appropriate.
[Beep]
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