Adam and Eve impossible

[Justtristo]

A lack of investigation? In the New Testament you have three words that are translated into "hell":

Gehenna, a hellenized version of the Hebrew Hinnom which is actually a name and a place in the Levant (King Ahaz burnt his children in a fire here, and made "profane offerings". The implications of this words use is that a person is being offered up to another god, or in fact to no gods.

Hades, this obviously being the greek god of the underworld (and the name of his domian). As far as the NT goes it is most likely that this word is used simply to mean a grave.

Tartaros, This one means torture. This was a portion of the greek underworld where those who offended the gods would be found. This one absolutely means torture, same as it did for the greeks.

In the Old Testament you only have one, Sheol. Sheol appears to have been the Hebrew's version of the Sumerian and Babylonian Irkalla. A place for the dead, all of them. Good, bad, and indifferent. Think dust and ash everywhere, a generally unpleasant place. This was the prevalent view of the afterlife in the entire Near Eastern world. The number of times that the the word Hades is used for Sheol in the OT indicates to us that at the time of translation, the two words were taken to mean the same thing, or very nearly the same thing. Simply the presumption that life somehow continued after death. Early Christians would have most likely regarded hell along the lines of greco-roman thought; a dreary place, shadowy and generally unpleasant. Stories of torture are found in specific cases, for specific acts (those who did not show compassion and selflessness, and specifically the enemies of the lord). Early christians didn't actually write much about hell and may not have taken what was written as literally as many do today. The concept of the afterlife was simply not very well developed in the Jewish tradition, or the tradition of the Early christians. The only place that we find Hades used in an explicitly "torturous" manner is in Revelations. The problem is that this particular narrative is unlike the other narratives of the NT. We would expect to find a different usage of the word Hades here than we would elsewhere. There are some other interesting concepts of hell, such as the tiered system described in Luke 16:23 ,(which appears to be the first mention of a sort of paradisical afterlife for the virtuous) or the various mentions in the Apocrypha. The concept of hell we currently see so well represented is likely a product of the expansion of the church into Western Europe. Much has been written on the "Gospel of Nicodemus/Acts of Pilate" which are considered apocrypha but nonetheless had a profound effect on what would become the modern concept of hell. The hell which believers imagine today most likely began to be formed no earlier than the 5th century in medieval Europe.

So, the idea of a god sending people to eternal flame and punishment is not strictly speaking biblical (except in very special circumstances). From the standpoint of material reality, it doesn't really matter whether you subscribe to Sheol, or the W European concept of Hell, neither are meaningful, as there is nothing to suggest to us that life continues after death.

Might I add in that in early christian belief the afterlife was not the ultimate destination for at least the righteous dead. Because at the last judgement they would be resurrected somewhat and live forever in the new heavens and earth. For the unrighteous dead if my reading of the last chapters of revelation are right, they are destroyed in the lake of fire. Which the unrighteous dead will probably be annihilated. Anyway trying to construct coherence doctrine from a mass of contradictory texts is like squeezing blood out of a stone.