Is Hell actually in the Bible?

Dan McClellan Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we bring you greater access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. And before we get into any- anything, Dan, I wanted to, um, share a, a brief note about an episode from a couple weeks ago where we talked about God regretting/repenting. Mm. Uh, because a, a helpful listener pointed out that, uh, I had two different words confused. When I was talking about the root nacham, I mentioned that it was related to the word for the womb, and that is actually a different noun, rechem, and I had those two confused in my head. Little slip of the brain there. It doesn't affect my commentary. It doesn't affect the argument against the claim that God, God does not regret or repent. But I do wanna keep it 100 and, uh, make sure I'm acknowledging when, uh, when I made mistakes, and, uh, and a helpful listener pointed that out, so.

Dan Beecher I like that. I think, you know, it is the official, uh, po- position of this podcast that, uh, admitting when you make a mistake makes you more credible, not less- ... uh, everybody. So, uh, if that's not your position, then Dan, you've just lost all credibility. But-

Dan McClellan Well, you know, there are a lot of people for whom I never had any credibility to begin with, so. Yes.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan Absolutely. I think the, the balances are, are not thrown too far off.

Dan Beecher I'm lucky. I'm in the position where I don't have to be credible.

Dan McClellan I, uh, I'm... You're, you're the only one that... I,

Dan Beecher I'm incredible, and you're credible.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, uh, there's there's that great line from, uh, I think it was the first Mission Impossible movie with Tom Cruise, "I'm gonna miss being disreputable." I, uh, wish I could be disreputable sometimes, but I- Yeah.

Dan Beecher No, you're not allowed to. You, you have to be the reputable one.

Dan McClellan Ah, dang it.

Dan Beecher I, I get to be as dis- disreputable as I wanna be. Well, enjoy it. So, uh, this, this week on the show, we got a fun show coming up. Uh-

Dan McClellan We're gonna try something different.

Dan Beecher You're,

Dan McClellan you're gonna, you're gonna

Dan Beecher take us straight to hell-

Dan McClellan Yep ... uh,

Dan Beecher to start us out with, uh, for,

Dan McClellan for a, uh, a,

Dan Beecher a

Dan McClellan all right, let's see it.

Dan Beecher And then we're gonna go chapter and verse, and I... We're gonna... You're gonna explain to me why something in the Bible feels like it contradicts itself.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And

Dan Beecher I'm sure that what you're going to do is just completely harmonize everything- ... and it'll all work out great, and everyone'll feel at peace.

Dan McClellan We're gonna make these texts get together, sing Kumbaya, and, uh, it, it's gonna be a great time. All right.

Dan Beecher But first...

Dan McClellan All right, let's see it. You mentioned, uh, a, a pastor or author from, uh, a handful of years ago, I think. Uh, we're at an age now where a few years ago means 15 years ago.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Um, so- It, it felt like only a few years ago. But yeah, there was a guy named Carlton Pearson who, uh, who made waves. He was,

Dan McClellan he was the, uh,

Dan Beecher the pastor of one of the largest, uh, Pentecostal congregations in the country.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And he, uh, he was out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. And he came out, uh, as being no longer believing in hell. He said, uh, it just, it just didn't line up with either his theology or his reading of the Bible. Mm-hmm. And, uh, and that just blew minds across the country. And since then, I have seen plenty of debate about what is hell? Does the Bible talk about hell?

Dan McClellan W- is... I mean, w-

Dan Beecher was it just made up? What, w- what's going on? So Dan, help us.

Dan McClellan Uh, was... I mean,

Dan Beecher there was a movie with, with Chiwetel Ejiofor. I have no idea if that's how to pronounce it. Chiwetel, I know you're a listener.

Dan McClellan Write in.

Dan Beecher Help me understand how to, how to say your name. But, um- Send

Dan McClellan a recording preferably rather than just write in. Yeah,

Dan Beecher yeah. Or just call me. We- I'll give you my number. Uh, you can call me. Anyway, uh, help us out here.

Dan McClellan What... Y- you know,

Dan Beecher if this was as, as big a bombshell as, as it was, we should know what we're talking about here. What... It, it seems like it would be obvious, but it doesn't feel that way.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it, it... There are a lot of arguments on social media. I see it a lot on Instagram, on TikTok, on other places where people insist that the concept of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment is something that's not anywhere in the Bible, but was developed post-biblically. Uh, perhaps even as late as some of, uh, the early English literature or even pre-English literature, Italian literature, um, Dante, uh, and others. Maybe that's where the concept of hell as burning forever in a lake of fire comes from. Uh, but there's actually a lot to say about concepts of the afterlife in ancient Israel and early Judaism and in early Christianity, and it's a little more complex than this black and white, "Oh, it wasn't in the Bible, and then after the Bible, it just popped up." Uh, there's actually a long history of innovation on concepts of the afterlife that go from nothing remotely approximating our concept of hell to how we understand the concept of hell today generally. Okay. So I wanna start all the way in ancient Israel, however. There is a, a popular idea that there was no concept of the afterlife in ancient Israel, that you died, that was annihilation. That was everything. You just ceased to exist consciously, physically, uh, metaphorically, grammatically, ecumenically- ... just in every possible sense.

Dan Beecher Oh man, your grammar dies with you?

Dan McClellan That's, that is rough

Dan Beecher That is rough.

Dan McClellan But that doesn't really fit with the archeological data. One of the interesting things about, uh, ancient Israel and the, the material remains is we have a lot of material remains that come from tombs and from graves, and partly because everybody just shoved a bunch of stuff underground, sealed it up, and that happens to preserve things quite nicely in the drier climates, like in Egypt, like in parts of Israel. And so we've got a lot of, uh, grave goods, and this is actually responsible for, uh, a bias towards grave goods. Like, when we reconstruct what we have about the ancient world, it seems they were really focused on the grave and the tomb. And really, it's because that's where we find most of the stuff that we happen to find. So there's a little-

Dan Beecher In fairness to the people who have, who take that approach, uh, pretty much everybody from the ancient times did die.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, so they, so it makes sense to be, to, to recognize that, you know, they, there were a lot of graves.

Dan McClellan Yeah, there w- there were a lot of graves. We, we don't find nearly all of them, but the majority... Uh, I don't know, I don't know exactly what percentage, but there is definitely a disproportionate amount of our material remains from the ancient world that are grave goods. Um, and, and two books I just wanna highlight if you wanna go learn more about, uh, the grave and the afterlife in ancient Israel. One was one that recently came out, uh, by a scholar named Kerry Sonnia, and it's called Caring for the Dead in Ancient Israel. That's a wonderful book, and then another one by a friend of mine, Chris Hayes, called A Covenant with Death. Uh, and this is, the subtitle is Death in the Iron Age II and Its Rhetorical Uses in Proto-Isaiah. Um, but there's wonderful information in there about the fact that the things that were provided to the dead seem to indicate that ancient Israelites believed the dead consi- kept on living in one sense or another, and that whatever this, uh, this agency that kept on existing, whether you wanna call it a spirit or a soul or a ghost or, or whatever, whatever this, uh, agency that kept on existing was, it in some sense was kind of tethered to their corporeal body, to the remains, uh, of the dead and to the location of them. And so we would see people providing food, providing light, providing protection, uh, for the deceased in the afterlife. Hmm. Uh, and we also see them communing with the deceased in different ways, visiting them at, uh, prescribed intervals to have feasts or t- to petition them for aid, or to seek information from them. So necromancy was phenomenally common in ancient Israel. Um.

Dan Beecher Necromancy, g- help me out with, with that word because, uh- Yeah ... it, it sounds magical or whatever, but- ... in this case, we're just- It's

Dan McClellan basically seeking information from the dead, communing with them, um, to engage in some kind of exchange, uh, of information.

Dan Beecher Yeah, and you know, it's interesting to say that, I mean, you, you started this part of, uh, of your segment by saying that, that people are saying that, uh, ancient, the ancient Hebrews had no, no concept of an afterlife. But now I'm realizing that I remember there being stories, uh, you know, the, the, the Witch of Endor jumps to mind, where someone is called back from the dead or someone- Yeah ... is communicated with after they've died.

Dan McClellan So that's the, the necromancer of Endor. She, um- Yeah ... her profession has been outlawed by Saul, but then Saul is in a bind, and he needs to get information from Adonai, and the prophets aren't doing it for him. So in disguise, he visits the necromancer of Endor and, uh, wants to call up Samuel, and it works. And, uh, the necromancer says, "I see Elohim. I see, uh, deity rising up from the underworld." The, um, and, uh, Saul asks, you know, "What is its form?" And, and basically, Samuel's coming there to say, uh, "You should have let me sleep." And, um, and then says Saul is going to die in, uh, in battle, and that's what ends up happening. But yeah, we see some interesting things there. One, S- uh, Samuel is still extant, still exists in the sense that they are some kind of, uh, I, I don't wanna say incorporeal or immaterial, but, uh, some kind of noncor- uh, fleshly, uh, sense, and they're referred to as an Elohim, as a deity, uh, which kind of attests to the overlap in the concept of ancestors and deities. Um-

Dan Beecher Interesting ...

Dan McClellan but you have care and feeding for the dead because they kept on existing in some sense. And there's a way, this is kind of like the movie Coco, where they were thought to exist as long as they were remembered. Right. And so some of the ways that people would, uh, try to ensure that they were remembered for longer periods is they would pay to have their name pronounced over their mortuary chapel or something like that, or they would, the families were expected to go make offerings to commune with them to pronounce their name 'cause the pronunciation of their name, in a sense, was a materialization of their name, in a sense, uh, extended their postmortem existence. And the nature of this postmortem existence is not incredibly clear. Uh, from what we can tell from the biblical text, it was just kind of a dreary, murky, uh, ambiguous just existence of some kind. ... that was, uh, we get the sense that it was fraught with all kinds of dangers associated with malevolent, uh, or benevolent forces that might exist in this, in this world of the deceased. Uh, but also somehow the deceased also had access to strategic information, and so could be petitioned for aid. You, people would go, and in this, um, type of worship we refer to as ancestor worship, they could go petition their ancestors for aid. Or say, "Hey, can you get so and so to stop stealing my stuff?" Or, "To give back my stuff." Uh, or, um, you know, you had imprecatory petitions and things like that too. So they were- Uh, the,

Dan Beecher you just used a word I do not know. Uh-

Dan McClellan Imprecatory, uh, which, uh, has to do with cursing. Okay. So im- imprecatory is, means I'm, I'm putting some kind of curse on you.

Dan Beecher I'm saying something that- Go, go spook my neighbor. He's a, he's a jerk ...

Dan McClellan Yeah. Or make somebody fall in love with me. Okay. Or make somebody not be in love with me. Like, there were all kinds of different ways that the deceased could, could help out. But this, this realm of the dead was the same for everybody. There was no distinction between, uh, the good and the evil. Uh, it was the same place for everyone, and in the Hebrew, the, the word most commonly associated with this realm was Sheol. Oh. Which just, it could mean the grave literally or it could mean the grave figuratively, the realm of the dead. And so everybody was destined for Sheol in one sense or another. And in many English translations of the Bible, Sheol is translated hell or grave or pit or something like that. Um, so this is- But,

Dan Beecher but in and of itself, that word doesn't have a negative or a positive connotation. It just- It,

Dan McClellan it's negative in the sense that it's mysterious, it's murky. Uh, we're pre- And it sucks to be dead. Yeah, it's going to suck to be there, but there's not a distinction of do good and you'll get on, you know, you'll be in the, uh, the better part of Sheol. Right. It was just everybody's going to Sheol. Um, and so you did good or bad, or how you acted in life really only affected your lot in life. 'Cause once you were dead, everybody's lot was the same.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan So when we get into the Hellenistic period, when we have a lot more interactions with, first, um, the, uh, Zoroastrian societies and then the Greco-Roman societies, we start to see some, uh, bleeding into Judaism these concepts of, uh, Hades on the, the Greco-Roman side of things, uh, and a kind of dualism on the Zoroastrian side of things. And you start to see people distinguishing, uh, a, a different kind of abode in the afterlife for those who, who do bad and for those who do good. And, and I get the sense there's, uh, there's still an argument to make, it's still debated, but I would argue that the concept of punishment in the afterlife probably derived from early Jewish experiences with larger empires that were oppressing them, and the observation that there did not seem to be punishment for the wicked in this life. Because the people who seemed to be the most successful and the most powerful and the most wealthy frequently were also the most wicked and the most evil, and they didn't ever really seem to get their comeuppance. Right. And so I think there's an argument to make that the concept of divine punishment in the afterlife is rooted in some sense in fantasizing about the incredibly wicked and evil and powerful people of the world getting their just desserts, if not in this life, then in the life to come.

Dan Beecher Well, it makes sense. How, how can one believe in a just deity, in a just God, and yet justice doesn't come to the worst people that they can think of? Yeah. The people who have most hurt their people. There's go- You know, it, it, all, it just makes a lot of sense to imagine a justice that comes after this life.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and, and we see these debates about, uh, in wisdom literature, in Job and Ecclesiastes, and elsewhere, this idea of why do bad things happen to good d- people and good things happen to bad people? There doesn't seem to be any justice. Well, once you can tack on what Latter-day Saints are used to calling the eternal perspective, or the fact that there is an afterlife and so everything can be resolved in the afterlife, that is a convenience, uh, that's a convenient way to outsource that problem- Yes ... and say, "Oh, that, we'll take care of that in, in the afterlife." So I'm gonna posit, and I am working on research on this and, and will publish something hopefully at some point in the future, and I know some other people are working on similar projects as well, that that is one of the main foundations of the concept of divine punishment. But we begin to see, uh, the concept of divine punishment popping up in the Hebrew Bible, in some of the most recent layers of the Hebrew Bible- Oh ... in some of the most recent passages. So one is, uh, in Daniel 12, which was written in the middle of the second century BCE. Again, this is under heavy persecution from the Seleucid Empire, these Greco-Roman, uh, folks that are, uh, oppressing them. And the other is the very last verse of the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah 66:24, where we have this statement. I'm reading from the NRSV here. "And they shall go out and look at the dead bodies of the people who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh." So this idea is that, uh, these people are going to see the place where these bodies are, are amassed, and the worm shall not die, the fire shall not be quenched. Now, this doesn't Have to be interpreted to mean they will experience this pain and this torment for eternity. This can just mean the worms and the fire that the people are seeing doesn't go away. It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be feeling that. But here we see this concept of divine punishment that gets picked up in later authors, and particularly this idea of the worm that does not die and the fire shall not be quenched is gonna pop up in the New Testament. But there- And,

Dan Beecher and the idea is that... Sorry, I'm, the-

Dan McClellan No, go ahead ...

Dan Beecher this concept of a, of an undying worm is baffling me a little bit. Yeah. It, the idea is not, uh, anything to do with the worm other than you, these bodies do not stop being eaten. Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Is that somehow, somehow they, uh... I, I mean, one would think that after a while- ... of being worm digested, you are, uh, you're just goo. But apparently worms like goo.

Dan McClellan Well, it's-

Dan Beecher And burnt goo at that because the fires are still going.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and so this is, this is pretty horrific imagery. It's hyperbolic imagery, where you're just imagining these, uh, these bodies just rotting and being consumed for eternity by worms and being burned for eternity, without necessarily saying they're gonna feel all that for eternity. Right. Uh, but we have some other literature that is not part of what we understand as the canonical Bible that is reflecting on this as well. Uh, the, uh, Book of 1 Enoch, for instance, seems to be one of the innovators of the concepts that are gonna be picked up later on, and particularly as it relates to, uh, the word Gehenna, which is in the New Testament, in the Greek transliteration, frequently translated hell in English translations. Now, Gehenna is, um, in the Hebrew Bible, if you go look it up in your Bible, it's referred to as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom. So, um, Ge Ben Hinnom is, is the word in Hebrew. But it becomes Gehenna, uh, in the, uh... or Ge Hinnom, uh, in the Greco-Roman period. And this is an actual valley that run, kinda swoops down and runs, uh, to the south and then to the southeast around Mount Zion. It meets up with the Central Valley, uh, and the Kidron Valley coming down around both sides of the City of David. And this valley, uh, is where, uh, Tophet was located. And Tophet is a name that's used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to the place where the pre-exilic kings of Israel made their children to pass through the fire. In other words, engaged in child sacrifice. Mm. So this place is associated with unspeakable evil in the eyes of the folks who are, um, curating these traditions in the exilic and in the post-exilic period. Now, I'm gonna stop and make a quick qualification here. There is a, an idea that this place around the time of Jesus was a landfill where there were perpetually burning fires or where the bodies of criminals, uh, were tossed. Uh, and so there's this idea that this is just this perpetually burning place of filth and dead bodies and stench and all this. And there are no archeological or textual data that actually support that. Um-

Dan Beecher Interesting. I have heard those theories. Yeah. That, that's something that has popped up in my just looking around.

Dan McClellan So yeah, that's- And that, and that's something that we don't see anybody making those claims until many centuries after the time of Jesus. Hmm. Uh, and I was just in that valley a couple weeks ago. It's a lovely park down there,

Dan Beecher so, uh- No, no garbage

Dan McClellan that you could see? No, no garbage at all. Grass, green grass. Uh, there's, there's a little, um, like, a, a rope bridge that goes across part of the valley- Oh, cool ... that you can go, um, run across if, uh, if you're brave enough. Uh, and they have a little concert venue on one end of it. It's a lovely area. So I tell people, uh, or, you know, I, I told the, the, uh, tour group I was with, "You can tell people now you've been to hell, and there's a lovely park

Dan Beecher there." There you go. And, yeah. Absolutely. So- And very few child sacrifices.

Dan McClellan Yeah, that's, uh, that's all in the past.

Dan Beecher That's gone way down-

Dan McClellan Yeah ...

Dan Beecher since, since the, uh, the exilic period.

Dan McClellan But when we get into the Hellenistic period, because this valley is associated with unspeakable evil and with child sacrifice and with burning, it becomes kind of a symbolic location for wickedness and punishment. So we have in the Book of Enoch a reference to this valley right by Jerusalem where certain entities, uh, we've got some angels who are being buried under mountains, and we've got some other who, who are being reserved in this deep, dark valley, where they're going to be punished. And we first have a reference to or a suggestion that this is a place for eternal postmortem punishment. So, First Enoch is, is kind of the, the seedbed for this idea, and this is-

Dan Beecher And talk to me about Enoch. I don't know

Dan McClellan s- So First Enoch- ... the book well. Yeah. It's, uh, a lot of people don't, and, and even the people who spend all of their time on, on TikTok making videos about First Enoch frequently don't understand what it is. Okay. But it's, it's, uh, in a sense it's a retelling of some of the main stories from Genesis that's, and particularly focused on Genesis 6. The, uh, kind of setting the stage for the flood where it talks about the bene elohim, the children of God, uh, seeing the, uh, the daughters of humanity, seeing that they are beautiful, going down, marrying them, having children with them. Uh, and then it says in the text of Genesis, "The Nephilim were on, in the land in those days and after as well." And then it goes straight into, "And so the Lord saw that everything was corrupt and wanted to destroy the earth." And so it's, it's probably an older disconnected tradition that was inserted in this spot to kind of buttress the idea that God was, was perfectly validated in wanting to destroy everything that breathed on the earth. Um, but what 1 Enoch does is pick up that story and kind of expand on it, fill in a lot of the, the gaps, and use that as kind of a conceptual template for this story about angels, uh, rebelling against God, coming down, um, and inappropriately engaging in sexual intercourse with human women, and siring these giants, and then the giants have children who are the Nephilim, and they die, and then the ghosts or the spirits that, that rise up from their deceased bodies become demons and, um, the angels teach humanity, uh, everything, all the wickedness from warfare to makeup. Um-

Dan Beecher Interesting ...

Dan McClellan and so it's, it's really one of-

Dan Beecher We're gonna have to do a whole, a whole episode

Dan McClellan on that. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. 1 Enoch need, needs to have a whole discussion. But, and this is one of the most influential non-biblical texts in this period. This sets the stage for so much that goes on regarding angels, regarding the source of evil, uh, and, and in part this was a way to account for where evil came from. Right. We have the problem of evil, of theodicy. How does we get evil from ev- creation that was all good? And it's, well, these angels rebelled, and they came down, and they basically, uh, physically reproduced evil and then spread knowledge of evil.

Dan Beecher And when was this book written? Um,

Dan McClellan so this is, uh, Greco-Roman period, Hellenistic period. Okay. It's probably, the earliest phases of it are probably somewhere, um, around 300 BCE or after, and it kind of cumulatively picks up a bunch of stories. So there are several, I think there are five distinct books within the Book of Enoch, and they are generally dated to different periods by scholars starting around 300 BCE down to probably close to the turn of the era. Well, actually, some of the later layers of some of these books probably comes, uh, in the Common Era rather than before the Common Era. Okay. Okay. But there's an issue with identifying this as the origins of hell, is that, um, eternal conscious torment is not the only concept that is reflected in there. We also have two other concepts of divine punishment in the afterlife. One of them is annihilationism, the idea that the wicked, when they die, they just stop existing. Right. Um, and the other is, uh, temporary torment followed by annihilationism, the idea that the wicked are punished for a time, and then there comes a point when they stop existing entirely. So I, I think the best scholarship on the development of th- these concepts would identify three different general categories of postmortem divine punishment: annihilationism, temporary torment followed by annihilationism, and then eternal conscious torment. And we have this reflected in 1 Enoch. We have this reflected in places like the Book of Judith from, uh, the Apocrypha, which is, um, quoting or at least alluding to Isaiah 66 and the fire and the worms. And we have it, uh, in a handful of other texts. Uh, we have even Josephus discussing things like this. We have some rabbinic literature that's discussing things like this, the Apocalypse of Abraham, uh, 2 Baruch. A number of texts that are considered apocrypha or pseudepigrapha or other early Jewish writings are kind of, um, we see one or more of these three different categories bubbling to the surface. And so what we can say is that the concept of hell or divine punishment in the afterlife is not yet systematized. It's kind of ambiguous. It's inconsistent. People are making use of different ways of thinking about it to the degree it serves their rhetorical goals. But it has not, um, sifted out into one kind of universal idea. That's something that would not come until after the Bible. So in the New Testament, we see all three of these categories as well. Um, we have this- Oh, really? Yeah, we have this idea of the, the worm and the fire reflected in places like Mark, um, and Matthew, and we have Jesus talking about divine punishment as eternal conscious torment, but we also have Jesus talking about it as if it's just annihilationism or as if it's temporary torment followed by annihilationism. We have all of that in the Gospels. So it is not a systematized concept yet in the Gospels. Some of the, uh, other literature in the He- or in the New Testament similarly reflects one or more of these concepts. Paul doesn't talk about it at all. We don't have any of them in Paul. And probably the place where we get the most imagery that is going to be picked up later in the systematization of hell, in the programmatization, prog- program- I don't even know what that word should be. But in the-

Dan Beecher I think you nailed it.

Dan McClellan When they finally decide hell is gonna be this, uh, they pull a lot of the imagery from the Book of Revelation, where we have this idea of a lake of fire, and we have this dragon, and we have Satan, and there's throwing down of stuff. Uh, but even death and hell in the Book of Revelation come to an end. And so, um, we're fan or, uh, we're fans on this channel of rejecting univocality. So even the concept of hell is not presented univocally in any single gospel, much less in all the gospels, much less across the entire New Testament. It is entirely inconsistent, and it is not until early Christianity becomes institutionalized and gains political support and resources once, uh, it takes over the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries CE, that we get the means of systematizing everything and then enforcing a single concept of hell, which does reduce down to this concept of eternal conscious torment. But for the authors of the New Testament, there's no one concept of hell. Some of them don't refer to any of these concepts of hell. Some of them refer to multiple different ones, and these are influenced, uh, by Greco-Roman ideas of Hades. They're influenced by what's going on in the Book of Enoch. Uh, they're influenced perhaps by Zoroastrianism, although we don't have a lot of great data to show us exactly how it was influenced. And so hell comes together from a number of different streams of traditions, uh, that begin inconsistently, uh, and don't really arrive at what we understand today about hell until well after the Bible has been completed. And then we also have, obviously, that other literature, uh, Dante and, and others, uh, that are giving us additional imagery that contribute to the, the accumulated kind of conceptual package that we generally evoke today when we talk about hell.

Dan Beecher Right. So s- sort of circling back to Pastor Pearson that I, that I mentioned at the beginning of this, uh, uh, uh, of this segment.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Would you say that there is a, uh, a valid argument to be made that, that there is no hell? Could, could you... Do you think that that is, uh, because there are so many different concepts presented biblically, is that, is, is, is, is that a, uh, a tenable position, or do you think that, uh, that, that somehow we have to, if, if we're following the Bible, there is some hell-like concept that, that is likely to be, uh, to b- to be more likely than not?

Dan McClellan I think if you're talking about the Bible as a single text, and if you are going to impose a univocal lens upon it and say, "We have to reduce it down to one concept," then that concept is gonna be negotiated, and I think all of those possibilities are there. You have everything from absolutely no reference whatsoever to postmortem divine punishment, all the way to ec- eternal conscious torment across the different authors of the Bible. So I would suggest that any one of those positions is arguable if you're trying to, uh, accommodate a univocal take. If you g- trying to say, "We have the text. We must arrive at a single conclusion with the text," then that is a negotiated conclusion, and any one of those is, is tenable. If we're saying, "What did the authors of these texts believe about divine punishment?" you have to say there are authors that say absolutely nothing about it, that it's not relevant, certainly not salient. Uh, they may have not believed in it at all. Then there are other authors who treat it, um, one way, other authors who treat it another, and we have authors that treat it a variety of different ways. So I, I think it's, it's murky, and it's a little more complex than just saying, "Yes, it's there," or, "No, it's not there." It depends on what you're doing with the text. It depends on how you understand the text and its function, uh, and it depends on, um, yeah, I suppose it depends upon the group that you're doing it for. What are your goals- Yeah ... uh, for this? All right.

Dan Beecher Well, thankfully- ... our next segment isn't gonna be anywhere near as confusing. It's, uh, it's, it's, uh, uh... We'll... Don't worry. We'll find a way to make the Bible- ... all say one thing. Just stick with us.

Dan McClellan Yeah. This is, this is the problem of putting data over dogma, is it, it frequently does not kind of sift out into one easy answer. It, it, the answer is- Yep ... usually, ah, yes with a but or no- No ... with an and or something that, um, just entirely confusing, so.

Dan Beecher Or just pick one.

Dan McClellan Yeah, it's up to you. If I, if I can show up and muddy up the waters and then scamper away, I've done my job.

Dan Beecher Good.

Dan McClellan Good.

Dan Beecher Thanks to all of you for tuning in. We sure do appreciate that. If you would like to become a part of, uh, helping to make this show go, you can go to our Patreon page, which is patreon.com/dataoverdogma. Uh, you can write in to us. Uh, contact@dataoverdogmapod.com is the way to do that. And, uh, until next week, have a good one.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.