Maybe this is related to your question - but this is an exerpt from Ray's Paper, "The Christian Hell, is an Christian Hoax". He shows how the teaching got started which is from Egypt, the Mother of superstitions and religious doctrines of the afterlife.
THE COURT OF OSIRIS IN THE EGYPTIAN UNDERWORLD
"Before coming into the courtroom the dead person had to pass a labyrinth of gates and doors and answer questions correctly to pass through. The lion-god Aker let him through the last gate and he was facing the fourteen members of the jury in the Tribunal Hall. There he was allowed to speak about his behavior on Earth. (Shown in the upper left in the picture above). Then god Anubis took him into the courtroom presenting him the scale where his heart would be put in balance with the feather of the goddess M�at, patroness of truth and harmony. The procedure was recorded by Thoth - the god of writing and wisdom. Sometimes Thoth's animal (a baboon) was sitting on top of the scale ready to adjust the result using a sliding weight.
If the heart of the deceased wasn't too heavy with sins from his life on Earth, he went through and could continue his voyage to the afterlife and was granted a plot of land in the "Field of the Reeds". This was the paradise for the ancient Egyptians - to grow crops for eternity in a land that was the very image of the Nile Valley they just had left. If he failed the test on the other hand - his heart was immediately devoured by the beast Ammut sitting under the scale. In that case the dead faced the most horrible future imaginable for the Egyptians - he was denied an eternal life in the land in the West and his soul would be restless forever."
The above is a highly simplified explanation of the Egyptian Underworld. It was considerably more complex and complicated and convoluted and contradictory.
I have read whole books on the amazing complexity of the Egyptian underworld.
Suffice it to say that the Egyptians and the Greeks knew a hundred times more about their hell and judgment procedures than Christians know about theirs. The fundamentals of the Egyptian hereafter are identical to that of Christendom. Only the fanciful gods attending to the judgment of the dead differ from that of Christendom, however, the main concepts of what man is and what happens to him at death are virtually the same.
We see that the DEAD are STILL LIVING (Anything is possible in fables).
The dead Egyptians had IMMORTAL SOULS.
At the time of death, JUDGMENT took place immediately.
Good people were ushered into a place of HAPPINESS at death.
Bad people were: (a) Sentenced to ROAM AIMLESSLY, (b) were completely ANNIHILATED by being eaten by Ammut, or (c) they could be TORTURED as in fire.
Not one of these five aspects of the Egyptian Underworld has Scriptural backing, yet virtually every one of them has a place in Christian doctrine. Some will surely say: "Who would ever believe such absurd pagan nonsense?" Who? Millions and hundreds of millions and billions of Christians, that's who. Here are more proofs from history that the Christian hell was invented by the pagan Egyptians:
Saint Augustine from his writing, City of God:
"This seems to have been done on no other account, but as it was the business of princes, out of their wisdom and civil prudence, to DECEIVE THE PEOPLE in their religion; princes, under the name of religion, persuaded the people to believe those things true, which they themselves KNEW TO BE IDLE FABLES; by this means, for their own ease in government, tying them the more closely to civil society." (All CAPS emphasis is mine).
Do theologians believe that Saint Augustine lied? Or do they think he was miss-informed? Do they think he made this statement with absolutely nothing to back it up? For if Augustine's statement is true, then there is no Christian hell, for it is based on known deception on the part of the "princes" who conned the citizens into believing and fearing this monstrous lie. What do you think the two billion Christians will think and do when they find out that their leaders knew all along that the doctrine of Christian judgment is based on heathen lies straight out of Egypt?
*The Jews borrowed from the Pagans the doctrine of transmigration [reincarnation], with all its accompaniments of future retribution, and ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. And they abundantly justify the statement of Enfield, that 'the purity of the divine doctrine was corrupted among the Jews in Egypt, who, under the disguise of allegory, admitted doctrines NEVER DREAMED OF BY THEIR LAWGIVER [God through Moses] and prophets; and adopted a mystical interpretation of the law, which converted its plain meaning into a thousand IDLE FANCIES" (Doctrine of Eternal Punishment by Dr. Thomas B. Thayer. CAPS are mine).
*"Egypt has been called the 'Mother of Superstitions,' and her whole religious history shows the propriety of the appellation [her doctrines are provable superstitions]. Greeks and Romans, Lawgivers and Philosophers, acknowledge their indebtedness to her in this respect, and freely credit her with THE ORIGINAL INVENTION OF THE FABLES AND TERRORS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD....", (Thayer, Chapt. 3, p. 4).
"It is plain enough, from their united testimony [that of the Greek writers, Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch, and others] , that the whole matter of judgment after death, the rewards of a good life, and the punishments of a bad life, with all the formal solemnities of trial and condemnation, ORIGINATED AND WAS PERFECTED AMONG THE EGYPTIANS, according to the peculiar character of the mythology. From them IT WAS BORROWED BY THE GREEKS, who made such change and additions as fitted the system to the genius and circumstances of that people." (Thayer, Chapt. 3, p. 4).
*"Since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passions and violence, there is no other way to keep them in order but by the fear and terror of the invisible world; on which account out ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously, when they CONTRIVED TO BRING INTO THE POPULAR BELIEF THESE NOTIONS OF THE GODS, AND OF THE INTERNAL REGIONS." (Polybius, B. vi 56).
*"The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, and by those terrors and threatenings which certain dreadful words and monstrous forms imprint upon their minds...For it is impossible to govern the crowd of women, and the common rabble, by philosophical reasoning, and lead them to piety, holiness and virtue � but this must be done by SUPERSTITION, OR THE FEAR of the gods, by means of fables and wonders; for the thunder, the aegis, the trident, the torches (of the Furies), the dragons, etc., are ALL FABLES as is also ALL ANCIENT THEOLOGY. These things the legislators used as scarecrows to terrify the childish multitudes." (Strabo, Geography, B. I).
*"For as we sometimes cure the body with unwholesome remedies, when such as are most wholesome produce no effect, so we restrain those minds with FALSE RELATIONS, which will not be persuaded by the truth. There is necessity, therefore, of instilling the dread of those foreign torments....[the word 'foreign' usually implied Egyptian]" (Timaeus Locrus, the Pythagorean).
Dr. Thayer gives us quotes (Ch. 3, p. 6) from following ancient philosophers:
Seneca--Roman stoic philosopher who lived at time of Christ: "Those things which make the internal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, etc., are ALL A FABLE with which the poets amuse themselves and by them agitate us with vain terrors."
Sextus Empiricus call the teachings, "poetic fables of hell."
Cicero - Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher call them, "silly absurdities and fables."
Truly, combinend with the fact, Scripture and Jesus speaks on Judgment from God - men couldnt help themselves sticking their hands in the cookie jar of translations and tweeking what they could. I praise God for L Ray Smith
Hope that Helped. If anything, read those 3 surrounding papers. Ray nails this idea
Eugene
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Topic: going to heaven/hell when one dies (Read 11514 times)