"Instead, we find no references to anything resembling Islamic hell in the Taurah (Torah). As the alleged destination for countless a wayward soul, jahannam is curiously absent from the writings of the earliest Hebrew prophets. Instead, the word that is sometimes translated as ?hell? in Hebrew scripture is the Hebrew word ?sheol,? which actually just means ?grave? or ?pit,? and is also translated as such into English many times.
While these alternate translations seem to lend credence to the idea of the early inception of a jahannam-styled hell, sheol was the destination of all living men, regardless of their righteousness. It is defined by early biblical scholars as simply the place or state of the dead. It is a shadowy, non-physical existence that encompasses the gloom and decay of death, but does not imply torment."
Piggybacking on this, I have a question. I've been riven with doubts that the Quran is actually a "improved edition" of the Bible which in turn is a "improved edition" of the Torah.....which begs the question: Who wrote the Torah? Who is the author? Some ancient wizened Jewish clerics who sat down once upon a time and decided to "create" God and "write" his words in a book called the Torah?
Is it all a grand conspiracy enabled by the suspension of critical thinking?
There is no simple way of explaining this, but the history of the Jewish Bible and the New Testament is extremely interesting. If you are an ex-Muslim viewing the situation from the simple, traditional narrative of Allah “revealing” the Torah to Musa and the Injeel to Isa, boy have you got a shock in store for you.
Far from being the unaltered words of an all knowing god revealed in a single instance to some ancient prophet, the two books are very much a product of many human hands writing for very different audiences within a great variance of circumstances over a span of thousands of years. The Middle East was simply running rife with creative authors with not much better to do besides writing down their own delusions and projecting them onto others.
There has been a lot of work written in the field of biblical criticism. The works of scholar Bart Ehrman are a good introduction to the field, but there are many others. I personally find the subject extremely fascinating, particularly as it exposes just how amateur and hodgepodge a work the Qur’an really is. It’s hard to be overly impressed with the Qur’an when you know what else is out there. It’s also hard to accept that Muhammad was unique when you see what all of the other delusional nutcases were capable of writing.
I’d suggest that all ex-Muslims read the Jewish Bible and the Christian New Testament at least once. If you are familiar with the Qur’an, it’ll help to show that far from simply being “corrupted revelations,” those works are actually of an entirely different nature and often present entirely different world views from those of Muhammad.
What is also interesting is to read about the non canonical scriptures and the heretical gospels and the process by which the books that now make up what we call “The Bible” were collected. As usual, politics and control play a huge part. There is really interesting stuff out there. Often times, the stuff that was not included is the most interesting and the most telling. It also shines some light on the origins of the legends of the Qur’an and its sources.
Topic: Hi ! Im not an atheist ... yet