Good Faith Media: Global Christian Population to reach 3.3 BN by 2050.

[Bucky Ball]

God is just if He send us to hell even if we commit one single mortal sin...

Hell is interesting, because until the Greek invasions of the Levant in which they brought with them the notion of Hades, there was no "hell", even in the Bible. 

The Egyptians believed in an after life. They had for thousands of years. The concept of a "soul" as distinct from the body, and surviving the body, was called the "ka".  They speculated about what it would be in the Book of the Dead.

The Sumerians talked about it in the Epic of Gilgamesh. While there are obvious things appropriated from Sumerian texts, in the Bible, they did not import content about an after -life.

Almost all the surrounding cultures of ancient Israel DID believe in some sort of afterlife. Israel was an odd exception to this. It has perplexed scholars. Why Not ? There is both a positive, and negative case for this. It is important. Israel was not concerned with a personal afterlife. Genesis 3:19 says, "For dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return". God breathed life into the man, not a soul. While there are examples of exceptions to this, in 1 Samuel 28:15, Saul calls the Witch of Endor, and she conjures up the "shade" of Samuel, who is angry to be disturbed. He was in a "dormant" state". not a "blissful" state. Conjuring shades was forbidden. Apart from the magic, there was just no cultural content of the ideal of an individual ("happy", or "sad") state of immortality. That does not mean immortality was not present. Immortality was considered the continuity of the male line, in children and grandchildren etc. 

Psalm 39 :
"Turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again,
before I depart, and am no more"

Psalm 115 :
The dead do not praise the Lord,
nor do any that go down into silence".

However ALL the dead, both good and bad, were thought to go to an underground region called "Sheol". And Sheol is referenced in mostly the Wisdom texts. It's certainly NOT where God lives.
Psalm 6 : "For in death there is no remembrance of you, in Sheol, who can give you praise ?" Yahweh lives in heaven. 

The Biblical texts were written, (assembled) by the upper-class priests. In Canaan , ancestors remained powerful, after death, and had to be fed, and placated. Because of it's threat to monotheism, shamanism and witchcraft had to be suppressed. The fact it had to be suppressed, means it was widespread, and perceived as a threat. Saul expelled the mediums and the wizards. When the Witch of Endor conjures Samuel's "shade", Saul asks the witch, "What do you see". She answers, "I see a DIVINE being, (the word is "elohim"), coming up out of the ground. (Only the witch could *see* or perceive the shade). Saul asks "What does he look like ?". She describes him. And the text then says, (just as the text in the New Testament does, (ie describes *recognition*) about the "Road to Emmaus" incident), "So Saul knew it was Samuel...etc" because of the description. The DEAD SHADE'S IDENTITY HAD TO BE INFERRED. In Hebrew culture, the dead did not have recognizable human shapes. or appearances. The identity of dead shades was not apparent. The "shade" of Jesus also was not recognized, when they said they saw it.

Historically there is a long, very interesting historical set of occurrences, in which the Greek, and Roman, and Seleucid empire's forces are battling for ascendancy in the Near East) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiochus_IV_Epiphanes. Suffice it to say the Greeks purchased the High Priesthood in Israel, and Jason, (Greek equivalent name of Jesus), imported Hellenistic ideas, even more than they had been already, as recounted in 2 Maccabees, which drove some changes in the Hebrew culture, and it's assumptions. The famous "abomination of desolation" resulted from the interaction of the forces from these days, when the desolate temple, was associated, with not allowing Jews to perform their ritual practices arose.  involved. That's where "hell" came from, from the Greeks, not the Jews, and as a result of persecution in the Maccabean period, there arose the idea of "Martyrdom". Martyrs were important as we shall see. Their status was "raised up" ("exalted") as a result of their heroic actions. That's where Paul got the notion of "raised up", (resurrection) ... which is normally mistranslated.  

There is a transitional period, as always. In Maccabees 2, there is the famous set of speeches of the seven sons of Hannah.
 Each of the sons gives a speech before they are martyred for refusing to eat pork, (an "abomination of desolation"). In the speeches, they refer to SOME people being given eternal life, but not all. Saint Paul STILL had this "some" idea. Only the saved have eternal life, in the Pauline literature. "PUT ON IMMORTALITY". No one goes to hell for Paul. That was added later.