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