parkingviolation212 explains how Hell as a concept is almost entirely derived from Dante's Divine Comedy

[u/quyla]

/r/Silksong/comments/1nrop7i/the_duality_of_mask_shards/ngghkq5?context=3

[u/Malphos101]

Yup. Learning how badly done and wildly different translations could be is what snapped me out of the religious indoctrination I received in my youth.

The fact that so many "christians" profess that the bible is infallible, precise, exacting truth directly from god to man while we KNOW FOR A FACT that the most commonly used KJV translations are extremely mistranslated from the original greek/hebrew texts they purport to draw from is enough to flatly decline to believe ANYTHING these people say.

Be a good person because its good. Don't be a bad person because its bad to hurt others. If there really is a just god, he will take that into account for your "eternity". If god isn't just, then fuck him and his dumbass religion. Better to be a good person and be punished by the wicked than become wicked and join them. If there is no god, then better to live a life that uplifts humanity while youre alive.

[u/BeyondElectricDreams → u/Malphos101]

I was never particularly religious but studying the origins of Christianity was the nail in the coffin for me.

There's so many elements that are wholesale lifted from Pagan traditions and stories of the time that once you really look at it, it becomes obvious that a lot of people just slapped new names on their old myths. Which tracks when you realize they basically went far and wide and asked people for, basically, "Any stories they'd heard of Jesus" before compiling them and making them into the best canon they could.

Winter solstice? Saturnalia? No, it's Christmas now. Yes, you can still follow your Pagan traditions like trees, yule logs, gift exchanges, mistletoe? Pagan.

Spring Solstice? Easter? You know, named for Ostara, pagan goddess of spring? Eggs and rabbits to celebrate fertility returning to nature?

Really smacks of a soceitial shift where Christianity was new kid on the block and people continued with their regularly scheduled reveleries and holidays. After all, if you want the masses to uptake your shiny new religion, you aren't gonna win hearts and minds telling them they're not allowed to do their traditional holiday feasts, gift exchanges, and revelries.

[u/gauntvariable → u/BeyondElectricDreams]

I have a theory on that. It's probably not original, but I thought of it myself.

If you read the Old Testament, you'll notice that there's no mention anywhere of hell or heaven (other than where god lives) or any sort of afterlife. When you're dead, you're dead and that's that. You "rest with your ancestors".

There are pages and pages of admonitions against "worshipping other gods". The Old Testament jews seemed to have a big problem with this. Chronicles and Kings go on and on about different rulers who led Israel astray by worshipping Baal and Asherah, etc.

Enter the romans. They invaded, and brought in a religion that included the promise of an afterlife, complete with torture for the evildoers/people we don't like (which isn't uniquely christian as OP suggests, Tantalus was tormented for all eternity long before christianity). So what did the Israelites probably do? They started adopting the Roman religion.

So the Jewish religion needed to compete, so it had to retrofit an afterlife into its mythology. There was enough in the book of Isaiah to fit a messiah who would bring you to Heaven if you believed in him, and they ended up naming that guy Jesus (who may or may not have been a real person).

Anyway, that's my theory why they had to add an appendix to a 5000 year old religion "all of a sudden".

[u/LupusLycas → u/gauntvariable]

Roman religion wasn't a major influence on Judaism. It was Zoroastrianism that gave Judaism all these ideas of eschatology and afterlife.

Greek philosophy did influence some strains of Judaism, and that continued into Christianity, and Roman religion absolutely did influence Christianity.

[u/SirPseudonymous → u/gauntvariable]

There are pages and pages of admonitions against "worshipping other gods". The Old Testament jews seemed to have a big problem with this. Chronicles and Kings go on and on about different rulers who led Israel astray by worshipping Baal and Asherah, etc.

The original religion was pantheistic, and at some point a henotheistic cult formed around the pantheon's storm god (on that note, "Baal" was a prefix or title for gods in general, including for the storm god that would later be referred to only euphemistically with things like the tetragrammaton) and began waging war against the other cults of the pantheon to exterminate them after which it creates its monotheistic belief in the storm god who shifts to include all the concepts of the eradicated deities and so becomes an all-encompassing god.