“According to Arabi, punishment will eventually become sweet for those who suffer it.” “[According to Arabi] Both the angels of torment and the sinners enjoy hell.” | William C. Chittick Ibn Arabi: “Since [God] has this all-embracing attribute of mercy, how can the torment of hell be eternal (for the wretched)? Allah is greater than…

In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, a good death meant burial inside the family tomb, where one would join one’s ancestors in death. This was the afterlife in biblical literature; it was a postmortem ideal that did not involve individual judgment or heaven and hell—instead it was collective. In Hebrew scriptures, a postmortem existence was rooted…

If you wanna know what I’m talking about, the “Harrowing of Hell” is the idea that Jesus descended into Hell, that he triumphed over inferos, releasing Hell’s captives, particularly Adam and Eve, and the righteous men and women of the Old Testament period.J.K. Elliott, editor/updater of M.R. James, “The Aprocryphal New Testament” (1924), for Oxford…

“Gehenna”, is a reference to a valley of trash outside of Jerusalem where the Jews would burn refuse and the bodies of criminals. Its name means “lace of lamentation”, because it used to be where Israelites would sacrifice their children and burn them in reverence to the god Molech.From Bart Ehrman’s blog (https://ehrmanblog.org/jesus-on-gehenna/):Scholars have long…

Some Jews (first century) did believe in eternal conscious torment, according to Josephus. Josephus describes the beliefs of the Essenes as follows:For their doctrine is this. That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue for ever, and that they come…

The author of Matthew was definitely not an annihilationist, i.e. viewing divine judgment in an OT sense consisting of a single moment of destruction. He viewed destruction in Gehenna as a sustained torment over the same duration the righteous receive eternal life. Check out Sim’s book where he lays out all the evidence for the…

Dr. Glenn Peoples has a good video on early church fathers who reflected an annihilationist viewpoint: https://youtu.be/je3AW6QeXzk Same with Heiser: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9uYWtlZGJpYmxlcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9uYWtlZGJpYmxlcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vP3Bvc3RfdHlwZT1wb2RjYXN0JnA9MzM4Mw?ep=14 Part 2: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9uYWtlZGJpYmxlcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9uYWtlZGJpYmxlcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vP3Bvc3RfdHlwZT1wb2RjYXN0JnA9MzM4NA?ep=14

Clines OTL commentary on Job (discussing Job 38). Pope’s Anchor Bible Commentary on Job: commentary on Job 26. Goldingay’s commentary: section on Isaiah 40:22-23. See also: https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/the-first-creation/