This book is an academic and exegetical critique that the ancient myths of Satan and Hell are no longer valid from a biblical review or from current science. The manuscript begins by looking at the nature of myths and concepts of evil gods and punishment in ancient Mesopotamian. It works systematically through early Hebrew myths of evil, life, death, and through Hebrew canon texts of hassatan (Satan) as one of God’s council and concept of death in Sheol. In the Hebrew canon these terms are clearly non-punitive. Sheol get mistranslated as Hades in the Septuagint, the c.250 BCE Greek version of the Old Testament used primarily by Hellenistic Jews.

It looks at Zoroastrian and Greek myths wherein began concepts of punishing gods and Plato’s hell for sinners. It then examines the impact of the Persian and Greek occupations and the development an evil Satan where it first appears in Jewish apocalyptic mythic literature. This apocalyptic literature was never accepted by the Jews as authoritative.

It then moves into Paul and the Gospels and how they use terms of Satan and gehenna (a valley outside Jerusalem where dead enemy soldiers were buried which gets mistranslated as Hell). It finds their N.T. usage is basically the same as the non-punitive usage in the traditional Hebrew concepts. Finally it looks at concepts that enter in during the first couple of Christian centuries, especially in Augustine, wherein punitive language reappears.

The work reaffirms the Biblical view of a compassionate God, and concludes that contemporary concepts of Satan and Hell are ancient myths that are no longer valid and should be eliminated from our theologies.

Since this is a major challenge to popular understandings about Satan and Hell, it will advance thinking both in the meaning of biblical texts and the confrontation of systemic evil in today’s world. At the same time it affirms the historical compassion of God. As such it has relevance for scholars, pastors and laity. The text has tried to use the best scholarship available and yet be written in a way that the common reader can follow and understand.

The work is more academic and exegetical than the sermonic approach of Rob Bell’s, Love Wins or the conversational approach of Sharon Baker’s Razing Hell, and is the opposite theology of Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle’s Erasinghell, all three of which treat only Hell, not Satan and Hell.
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Dr. V. Donald Emmel, has been a 12 year university pastor at San Jose State University, and 25 years as a Presbyterian parish pastor in Oregon, Connecticut, and California. He is a graduate of The College of Idaho, has advanced degrees from San Francisco Theological Seminary, American University in Washington D.C., and the Hartford Seminary. For several years he was the guest lecturer for Presbyterian students at Yale Divinity School.