Carl St. James
2 min readMay 5, 2023

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Hell is mostly a popular culture creation grifted from the likes of Milton and Dante.

The original idea of a 'burning pit' was the Valley of Hinnom (translated as Gehenna) which was a landfill site outside of Jerusalem where the Hebrews burned their rubbish and the bodies of criminals. Adults likely frightened children into behaving by telling them that if they were naughty they would 'burn in the fires of Gehenna' which wasn't a lie.

The word Satan is actually a Hebrew word meaning 'adversary' and is used to refer to people on the mostpart. The word Devil, translated from the greek Diabolos, also meaning adversary. This is less about a singular entity but the many enemies of the central characters of the Bible, the various Kings, pagan Gods (Beelzebub is a play on the pagan God Ba'al for example) or the capability for evil in the hearts of mankind.

The 'Seven Deadly Sins' are largely a post-roman religious creation and never mentioned in the Bible.

The fundamentalist Christian argument falls apart as quickly as that of the fundamentalist atheist because both use the exact same line of attack, ie that of literal representation without actually looking at things logically or historically. The Old Testament is an anthology of folklore, poetry, song, eyewitness accounts, campfire stories, legend and prose written over a period of centuries when things were hand-copied; the New Testament a series of letters, advice columns and eyewitness statements. Its less a book and more a dossier.

None of it really matters because if you lose 99% of it what you have left at the very core is a man who said that the most noble thing a person can do with their life is to put others first, forgive instead of hate and was willing to sacrifice himself in the name of love. I have yet to meet one person who can tell me any of those are bad ideas, especially in the world we live in today. This was a message that for the century that followed people were willing to die for it.

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Carl St. James
Carl St. James

Written by Carl St. James

Making sense of modern technology, design and culture.

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