Been to Hell and Back... well to my class on Hell and back home that is...

Well this past Friday & Saturday was our class out at Hastings College (put on by Cotner College) on the 'History of Hell'.  The class was taught by Dan Deffenbaugh a professor of New Testament Theology at Hastings College.  This is the second class I've taken from Dan and he is a genuinely wonderful teacher.  One of the main things that hopefully all the class attendees went away with was the stunning transformation of Judaism during the period of the Babylonian Exile.  Specifically how both the concept of Satan and Hell entered into their religion.

A gross oversimplification would be the observation that prior to the Exile there was no concept of either Heaven or Hell only the idea of 'Sheol' which was a neutral realm of the dead.  In Sheol the good and the bad languished together not in torment nor in any blissful state as we tend to associate with Heaven.  In addition 'Satan' was merely another angel who fulfilled the role of accuser or messenger.  After the Exile we see 'Satan' fashioned more along the lines of the Zoroastrian god 'Angra Mangu' or 'Darkness'.  These changes were both the result of the need to modify their theology to explain how bad things happened to good people (Nations) and also why good things happen to bad people (Nations).  The Zoroastrian concept of resurrection also crept into the Hebrew religion at this time.

At any rate there is no way that I have enough time to blog adequately on these topics.  I would suggest that anyone interested in learning more read the book 'The History of Hell' by Alice Turner, or even in more depth and scholarly the book "The Formation of Hell" by Alan Bernstein.  I would also suggest Elaine Pagels book "The Origin of Satan" and the book "A History of the Devil" by Gerald Messadie.

We're looking at getting some potentially severe weather here tonight so we are watching the news closely.  The sky is looking pretty funky out there tonight with some odd clouds and already some tornadoes sighted further west of us but tracking straight for us.  Hopefully it will move by us without any incident.

Clouds over Omaha 5/11/14 around 5:30 pm  Photo taken by Sue Carson Moore of Omaha

Since I'm now done with classes that have required reading I dug out some books that I wanted to read yesterday evening.  Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate two books that I specifically wanted to read after taking our class on Hell.  The one I may have loaned out. I don't think so but I have loaned it out before but I know it came back after that.  The other I know I have not loaned out and I really want to read it, I suspect I have filed it in an odd location since it isn't a book that fits into any normal theological definition.  One of the problems with having so many books is I can go a bit crazy from time to time trying to find a specific book.  I'll locate them sooner or later, like I said I know the one is here someplace for certain.

The books I pulled out to read right now are one by Elaine Pagels entitled 'The Gnostic Paul' I purchased another one of her books recently and I have read a tiny bit of it already (I have it on my desk at work to read when time allows) that book is titled 'Beyond Belief, the Secret Gospel of Thomas'.  But today I've spent most of my time reading a book I purchased recently for the Kindle 'The Experience of God, Being, Consciousness, Bliss' by David Bentley Hart.  So far I have really enjoyed the book but much of it has been spent pointing out the faulty logic and errors of atheism.  This is a good book to read on the Kindle because the author has a penchant for unusual words.  He obviously has a extremely broad vocabulary and he relishes sharing it with his readers.

As I've been reading I've let a playlist of Melody Gardot's songs play from Youtube on my computer.  I love her voice so much and her song "Baby I'm a Fool" is I think my favorite song of all right now.

On Friday night after class I did some reading before going to bed and was listening to a playlist of 'Dido' on Youtube.  She is also a wonderful artist and I love her voice as well.

Well folks the weather is getting pretty spooky out there so with that I'm going to cut this blog entry off and get ready to take shelter in the cubby hole in the basement.

God's great and abundant Blessing to you all!!

Roy

Update:  The tornado has passed us, pretty strong winds at times but so far I don't know if we had any damage.  Still raining very hard here so unless it suddenly let's up I'll just wait for morning to go out and check things.