Introduction
For people looking to the Bible as an authority for their religious beliefs, contrary voices can be an obstacle. In order to make sense of the conflicting ideas throughout the Bible, readers form ‘systems’ of interpretation, which give them guidelines on how to harmonize apparent contradictions. This is called ‘systematic theology’. The view of biblical criticism is that parts of the Bible must be interpreted by their own contexts, not as part of a system. They are best understood when held in the light of their time, place, language, and social movement.
Below, I will survey Jesus’ eschatology in four layers: Mark, Q (material in both Matthew and Luke, but not Mark), Matthew, and Luke.
Before we begin, we should lay out the setting of the early first century CE. The Torah is Israel’s law code and covenant with God, and it purports to describe God-mandated punishments, including the death penalty. Biblical prophets claimed God directed violence, both non-fatal and fatal, against people and nations. Apocalypticism rose up in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt, and they believed God would violently destroy their enemies, possibly after raising all humanity from the dead first. By the first century apocalyptic expectations are common, thoughts of violent revolution are stirring, and sectarian movements are growing.
Then Jesus kicks off his career.
Divine Violence in Mark
Eschatology of punishment is scant in Mark compared to the other Synoptic Gospels.
‘If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to Gehenna, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into Gehenna, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.’
This passage has a lot to unpack.
‘Unquenchable fire’ is a common idiom in the Hebrew Bible for national disaster orchestrated by God, and Isa 66.24 mentions this fire alongside the ‘worm that never dies’. Gehenna is the Greek transliteration of Hebrew Ge-Hinnom, the Valley of Hinnom, which was located just outside of Jerusalem and is mentioned throughout the Hebrew Bible. Jeremiah dramatized the divinely-mandated destruction of Jerusalem in this valley, calling it ‘the Valley of Slaughter’ (Jer 19). Interpretive Aramaic translations of the Hebrew scriptures — called targums — insert references to the Valley of Hinnom, frequently associating it with death and punishment for violating the Torah. Targum Isa 66.24 identifies Gehenna as the location of the ‘unquenchable fire’ and the ‘worm that never dies’.
The duration of punishment in Gehenna varied widely depending on the source. Targum Isa 65.5–6 says Gehenna will bring a ‘second death’. Targum Deut 33.6 identifies the ‘second death’ as an irreversible punishment following the resurrection, while Targum Jer 51.39,57 identifies it as exclusion from the resurrection entirely. Targum Isa 22.14 and 65.15 follow the first view, and state that God himself will be the one who carries out the execution. Some rabbis believed punishment in Gehenna would range from seven weeks to twelve months before giving way to paradise, while some taught certain people would remain there forever, and yet others believed it was a place of total annihilation. Fourth Ezra 7.36ff teaches that most of humanity will be extinguished by the torments of Gehenna.
Jesus’ threat of Gehenna cannot here be taken in any direction with certainty, but his wording suggests his familiarity with the same tradition behind Targum Isaiah, and hence that his idea of Gehenna is one of endless death.
The prophecy closely adheres to an apocalyptic format seen in the likes of Daniel, 1 Enoch, or 4 Ezra: watch for these signs, they signal this specific crisis, then the end will happen. The premise of such apocalyptic predictions is that these events were determined by God eons ago, which is how the prophet is able to know what to predict with such clarity in the first place. Because God has predetermined the eschaton, and the violence that precedes it, he is ultimately its cause.
Divine Violence in Q
Divine Violence in Matthew
1 Enoch 10.4–5
Matthew 22.13
And he said to Raphael: ‘Bind [
Then the king said to the slaves, ‘Bind [
Azael is bound up, and the other fallen angels are likewise imprisoned within the earth. This punishment lasts indefinitely until they are finally thrown into the fire in the final judgment; this ‘abyss of fire’ is ‘torture’ that will endure ‘forever’ (1 En 10.11–14). The full Book of Enoch is a composite work, written in stages over several centuries, but its ideas of final judgment are that it is either eternal torment or annihilation. Jesus used the same language as 1 En 10.4–5 and doesn’t leave any loose threads.
1 Enoch 69.27–29
And he sat on the throne of his glory, and the whole judgment was given to the son of man, and he will make sinners vanish and perish from the face of the earth. And those who led the world astray will be bound in chains, and in the assembly place of their destruction they will be confined; and all their works will vanish from the face of the earth. And from then on there will be nothing that is corruptible; for that son of man has appeared. And he has sat down on the throne of his glory, and all evil will vanish from his presence.
The ultimate origin of the picture is Dan 7.9–14, but 1 En 37–71 makes several departures; in Dan 7, the son of man is not identified as a messiah, does not sit on God’s throne, and does not cast judgment. It may be that the author of 1 En 37–71 has blended Dan 7 with texts such as Psa 2, where God exalts his messiah and gives him authority to destroy ‘kings’ and ‘rulers of the earth’. However, Matt 25.31–46 departs from Dan 7 in the same way, combining the same messianic elements of 1 En 37–71 with his own teaching that people will be judged based on how they interact with his followers (cf. Matt 10.23,40–42).
After Matt 25.31 sets the scene, Jesus describes the punishment that will come upon condemned sinners:
‘Then he will say to those at his left hand, "You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" […] And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’
Jesus establishes two fates for the people under judgment: it is either life, or it is punishment in fire. Each is directly stated to be ‘eternal’. A growing response in recent years in universalism is to argue over the Greek words used, κολασιν αιωνιον, and how they should be translated. ‘Eternal’ (αιωνιον) should be translated as ‘of the age’, and ‘punishment’ (κολασιν) as ‘chastisement’. Meaning: sinners will be penalized with a corrective sentence that takes place in the age to come.
No ancient text uses αἰώνιον in this way. The adjective always describes the perceived duration: something that is perpetual, something that endures through the ages. In a word: eternal.
The word κολασιν is ambiguous at best; it does refer to ‘punishment’, but it does not alone indicate the nature of that punishment. This noun is used in LXX Jer 18.20 (a trap set for Jeremiah by his enemies), and Ezek 14.3–7 (an obstacle leading to destruction), 18.30 (death for sinners), and 43.11–12 (penalty preceding Israel’s ability to rebuild). The verb form, κολαζω, is used in the Old Greek of Dan 6.12a (death in a lions’ den) and in Acts 4.30 (Jerusalem’s religious elite persecuting Christians). As we can see, κολασιν and κολαζω can refer to both redemptive and retributive punishment, but always ‘punishment’ nonetheless. The verb form is used one more time, in 2 Pet 2.9. This is in context of final punishment, which makes it extremely important for us here.
Judah, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter are a trio of Christian texts that owe much of their eschatology to 1 Enoch. The letter of Judah borrows from 1 Enoch extensively, and even quotes 1 En 1.9 directly. Jud 6 and 2 Pet 2.4 both summarize the punishment of the fallen angels in 1 En 10, which we read before.
Judah 7 states that the punishment of the angels is an ‘example’ of the ‘punishment of eternal fire’ (πυρος αιωνιου).
Meanwhile, 2 Pet 2.9 says the fate of the fallen angels is to be ‘kept under punishment [κολαζομενους] until the day of judgement’.
We already saw that the intermediate fate of the fallen angels in 1 Enoch was perpetual darkness, followed by a final punishment of unending torment in fire. Neither of these are corrective or redemptive, but both come from the command of God. The vocabulary Judah and 2 Peter use to describe 1 Enoch’s vision of ultimate punishment is the same vocabulary Jesus uses to describe his own vision of ultimate punishment.
Matt 25.41 says the ‘eternal punishment’ of sinners is ‘the eternal fire [το πυρ το αιωνιον] prepared for the devil and his angels’. Jesus was operating within the same apocalyptic paradigm as 1 Enoch, if not borrowing from it directly: the son of man will condemn sinners to a punishment of eternal suffering in fire.
Divine Violence in Luke
Compared to the others, Luke is far more concerned with a reversal of fortunes, rebuking the religious elite while proclaiming a message favorable to women, the poor, the sick, and non-Judeans. Punishment is not much on his mind.
Conclusion
The Book of Daniel was written during the Maccabean Revolt. Its author belonged to a community he called ‘the wise’. Throughout the book, Daniel, also called ‘wise’, never responds to threats of persecution with violence. Instead, he remains pacifistic precisely because he trusts that God is in command of all kingdoms of the earth, raising them up and striking them down. For the author’s community, the stories about Daniel were instructive; they were to mirror him by remaining peaceful during the Maccabee’s revolt. The wise among Israel believed that, in the end, God would directly intervene on their behalf and slay their persecutor, Antiochus Epiphanes. They did not need to exact vengeance because God would do it for them. The righteous who had wrongly been slain would be resurrected to ‘eternal life’ and made like stars, while the evildoers who got away with their sins would likewise be raised to life and punished with ‘shame and eternal contempt’ (Dan 12.2–3).
Jesus, also an apocalypticist taught an eschatology that was largely the same. All four layers of Mark, Q, Luke, and Matthew exhibit an apocalyptic Jesus who taught that the wicked would be punished in fire. Though Jesus may have taught his followers to maintain a pacifistic ethic, but this is because he, like the author of Daniel two centuries earlier, believed God would exact a righteous punishment on the wicked and the disobedient. Again and again his eschatological parables conclude with the punishment, destruction, or torment of evildoers. Not once is this violence executed by God shown to be corrective or redemptive. The end of the unrepentant sinner was to be the eternal fire of Gehenna.