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Hell: A Jewish Perspective on a Christian Doctrine
Paperback
Series: Recovering the Original Gospel, Book 3
Bible StudiesChristian LivingGeneral Christianity
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Oct 1 2024
Pages: 326
Weight: 0.87
Height: 0.81 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Is the Father who commanded us to forgive and love our enemies truly the kind of God who eternally torments His own image-bearers in fire? Or have we, in the Western Church, inherited a heresy and mistaken it for the gospel?
For centuries, many Christians have been taught a terrifying vision of Hell-a place of Eternal Conscious Torment, where God supposedly burns most of humanity alive forever in the name of justice. But where did this image come from? Is it really what the Bible teaches?
The answer may shock you.
Jesus was a Jewish rabbi, immersed in the metaphors, idioms, parables, and prophetic symbols of Second Temple Judaism. Yet 2,000 years later, many Western Christians read His words through a completely foreign lens-flattening symbolic language into literal horror and mistranslating Jewish metaphors into doctrines of eternal torment.
This book dismantles the popular Augustinian-Calvinistic Hellfire narrative that stems not from Jesus or the Hebrew Bible but from Augustine, Dante, Calvin, Edwards, and centuries of fear-based theology. Words like Gehenna, Sheol, Hades, and Tartarus-each with distinct meanings-were tragically collapsed into a single English word: Hell. But did these words truly convey the same meaning? And did these striking images ever genuinely refer to Hellfire?
If you were raised to believe in the Augustinian view of Hellfire but have quietly wondered, Could there be another way to understand this?, then this book is for you. With courage, clarity, and compassion, we'll explore the Jewish context of both Old and New Testaments, decode the misunderstood language of judgment, and uncover the deeper truth hidden beneath centuries of Western tradition.
You will learn about the first-century viewpoint on Jesus's teachings and Hell and how, much later, the Augustinian tradition, through fear-based doctrines, distorted the gospel into a completely different form, which has played a role in the current mass deconstruction and disillusionment within fundamentalist Christianity. At the heart of the exodus from churches today is not rebellion-but doctrinal trauma. This isn't just bad theology. It's toxic. It's psychologically harmful. And it's time we told the truth.
This book will profoundly challenge fear-based views of God and, I believe, bring deep healing to many who have lived under spiritual anxiety, shame, and terror-driven religion.Written by a Jewish follower of Jesus, this book is an invitation to deconstruct man-made religious fear and reconstruct faith-rooted not in eternal torment but in the radical love, corrective justice, and mercy of God.
- The book is 305 pages long -
- I recommend reading The Gospel Before Christianity: A Jewish Perspective on Jesus' Atonement, Sacrifice, and Redemption, simultaneously or before you begin this one. I also recommend reading my other book, The Gospel of Divine Abuse, once you have finished enjoying these two.
- Dr. Eitan Bar (born 1984, Tel Aviv) is a Bible scholar, author, and Israeli-Jewish follower of Jesus with multiple advanced degrees in Bible and theology. His unique background-living in Israel, being a native Hebrew speaker, and possessing advanced Christian education-provides a fresh and timely perspective on Christian beliefs and doctrines.
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