Hell and Its Rivals , livre ebook
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408
pages
English
Ebook
2017
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
06 juin 2017
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781501712494
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
The idea of punishment after death-whereby the souls of the wicked are consigned to Hell (Gehenna, Gehinnom, or Jahannam)-emerged out of beliefs found across the Mediterranean, from ancient Egypt to Zoroastrian Persia, and became fundamental to the Abrahamic religions. Once Hell achieved doctrinal expression in the New Testament, the Talmud, and the Qur'an, thinkers began to question Hell's eternity, and to consider possible alternatives-hell's rivals. Some imagined outright escape, others periodic but temporary relief within the torments. One option, including Purgatory and, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Middle State, was to consider the punishments to be temporary and purifying. Despite these moral and theological hesitations, the idea of Hell has remained a historical and theological force until the present.In Hell and Its Rivals, Alan E. Bernstein examines an array of sources from within and beyond the three Abrahamic faiths-including theology, chronicles, legal charters, edifying tales, and narratives of near-death experiences-to analyze the origins and evolution of belief in Hell. Key social institutions, including slavery, capital punishment, and monarchy, also affected the afterlife beliefs of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Reflection on hell encouraged a stigmatization of "the other" that in turn emphasized the differences between these religions. Yet, despite these rivalries, each community proclaimed eternal punishment and answered related challenges to it in similar terms. For all that divided them, they agreed on the need for-and fact of-Hell.
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Publié par
Date de parution
06 juin 2017
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781501712494
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
HELL AND ITS RIVALS
HELL AND ITS RIVALS
DE AT H AND RE T RI BUT I ON AMONGCHRI ST I ANS, J E WS, AND MUSL I MSI N T HE E ARLY MI DDL E AGES
A l a n E . B e r n s te i n
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London
Copyright © 2017 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2017 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Names: Bernstein, Alan E., author. Title: Hell and its rivals : death and retribution among Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the early Middle Ages / Alan E. Bernstein. Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016051661 (print) | LCCN 2016052966 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501707803 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501712487 (epub/mobi) | ISBN 9781501712494 (pdf ) Subjects: LCSH: Hell—Comparative studies. | Hell— Christianity—History of doctrines—Middle Ages, 600–1500. | Hell—Islam—History of doctrines— Middle Ages, 600–1500. | Hell—Judaism—History of doctrines—Middle Ages, 600–1500. Classification: LCC BL545 .B47 2017 (print) | LCC BL545 (ebook) | DDC 202/.3—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016051661
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Cover illustration:The Last Judgement. Germany or Italy, ninth century, © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Co nte nts
Preface vii Acknowledgments xi List of Abbreviations xiii
Introduction Pa r t I . F o u n d at i o n s 1. Gregory the Great: Order in Chaos 2. Inner Death: Hell in the Conscience 3. The Punishments: Slavery, Torture, and Hell Pa r t I I . A lt e r n at i ve s to H e l l 4. Exceptions to Hell: Relief and Escape 5. Calibrated Justice and Purgatorial Fire 6. Visions: Rights to Souls Pa r t I I I . H e l l i n A b r a h a m i c R e l i g i o n s 7. Rabbinic Judaism: One Fire, Two Fates 8. Byzantine Universalism: The Path Not Taken 9. Islam: The Mockers Mocked Conclusion
Bibliography 359 Index 381
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137 168 199
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282 319 355
P r e f a c e
Hell is one of the most influential and vexing of religious ideas. For some it is a basic element of faith; for others it is a reason to reject religion altogether. In between, many wonder how divine justice and mercy can be reconciled. Whatever one’s position, even hell’s deniers know what it is. Hell became a fixture in European religion, social life, and political thought in the first centuries of the Common Era, yet the story of how it came to have this strategic position is not at all simple. GrecoRoman ideas and biblical Judaism together shaped the presentation of hell in the Christian Scriptures and the patristic period, a thesis I argued in an earlier work,The Formation of Hell. Here, I examine the next phase, from ca. 400 to ca. 800, when Jews, Christians, and Muslims explored various ideas of life, death, justice, and mercy to shape what became a common perception of the punitive afterlife. Because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (the “Abrahamic” religions) all adopted an eternal hell, their hells have more in common than the distinc tive elements of their respective creeds. Further, each tradition had to meet similar challenges: the rivals to hell. Briefly put, hell’s rivals are these: escape, periodic relief, and purification. All may be saved; hell exists but can be modi fied; hell exists, but individuals may be rescued from it or may be released through purification. Debates over these positions have lasted for centuries and, in some ways, still endure. As long as I could, I resisted the conclusion that these religions shared sim ilar eschatological ideas because they are monotheistic, yet that conclusion appears inescapable. Indeed, the teachings about postmortem punishment in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam derive from their monotheism. Without monotheism no one would ask whether God’s justice is consistent with his mercy. Another indication of this homologous relationship is that each reli gion faced challenges to its views on hell from roughly the same directions. Supporting this statement requires close reading of many different texts, a task for the following chapters.
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viiiPREFACE
The authors we are about to examine communicate their ideas in vari ous ways, as if on different levels. They teach the “highest,” most abstract theology. They preach the gritty imagery of exemplary tales that draw the audience in and reinforce doctrinal conclusions. They report the visions of those “returned” from the land of the dead. They record the intentions of their charitable gifts. Because each source, and sometimes each sentence in a source, occupies its own position in this range of expression, it is necessary to consider each one as having its own point of view. Given this range of levels, it follows that doctrinal declarations form only part of the story. Attending to theological conclusions alone would ignore the concern the authors invested in balancing fear of hell against love of God. This emotional side of the subject includes many associated issues that pure theology does not address. The thought of others involves not only their conclusions, but also their rationale. It is therefore vital to include data reported as directly seen (visionary literature) and oral traditions. One author to be examined below compares this range of levels to the different depths of flowing eloquence. This stream accommodates every hearer from the practiced expert who can dive below the surface to the beginner who only wades along the beach. For this reason, I investigate hell from the many different rhetorical levels we find in our sources: dogmatic, theological, phil osophical, homiletic, visionary, and anecdotal. These levels of discourse and the different perspectives each one yields exist in Judaism and Islam as well as Christianity. Therefore I shall apply this method to hell belief in all three faiths and at all these levels. InFormationhell fit within an overarching, I emphasized how the idea of judicial system. Here, I examine the infernal pains in detail and explore their links to social institutions. It is not my wish to reduce the idea of hell to a social function, but that is not to deny that it has one (or several). There is an understandable correspondence between the severest penalties in human criminal justice and in the universe ruled by a King of kings, a divine Lord. As opposed to the theology of hell, the history of hell cannot be understood without appreciating the interaction of religious and political patterns of thought. Although the following chapters are not arranged chronologically, I have tried to maintain a rigorous respect for the meanings of words as they existed at the time the sources used them. Failure to respect the evolution of ideas over time can lead to fundamental misunderstandings. For instance, I have discovered a distinction between Hades and hell, two terms frequently treated as synonymous today. But the difference between Hades and hell is crucial, and coming to terms with it opens many doors. The same is true for
PREFACE ix
the concepts to which words point. For instance, the fit between a crime and its punishment, the proportionality of penalty to offense, the understanding of severity as time served versus pain applied: these notions interacted in fas cinating ways to produce what was much later called Purgatory. But if that term is carelessly applied to any antecedent notion that seems to anticipate it, the agony of debate about God and divine justice risks being lost. Writing this book has also taught me that the study of a concept can benefit from the simultaneous examination of what it is not. Applying this method rejects any binary distinction between the concept and its opposite, between hell and “nothell” or hell and heaven. Instead, important nuances appeared when I studied hell and its fringes, the darkness and its penumbra. Since hell is sometimes imagined as an abyss, one might say the trick is to study not just the chasm, but the geographical (and moral) inclinations that end there. The same principle applies to the paths not taken. If the establishment of hell as a fixed concept in Western religious thought required a gradual evolution, then the threats to its survival must be identified and examined. The benefits of taking this more inclusive approach repay the effort because, as history tells us, hell is simply too important an idea to accept it unques tionably as a fixed essence. Not even its presence in Scripture gave it this status, because opponents could cite contrary proof texts in the Bible and raise other obstacles that had to be dealt with before hell could be clearly separated from the alternatives objectors presented. For that reason this book examines how the three religions treat three key subjects: hell, its denial, and its mitigation. It proceeds in three stages. Part I, “Foundations,” outlines the structural and conceptual background. Part II, “Alternatives to Hell,” expounds the principal arguments against the abso lute restriction of postmortem punishment to hell proper. Part III, “Hell in Abrahamic Religions,” shows how hell’s three rivals (no hell, mitigated hell, and an end to hell) are examined in Judaism, Eastern Christianity, and Islam.
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