Not Like Silver: Exploring Hell’s Fire
The Book of Watchers within I Enoch strikes the reader as a vengeful departure from its more neutral netherworldly predecessors, its pits of fire casting doubt on the frequently maintained assertion “that there is no belief in life after death in Judaism,” much less a “Hell” as Christianity has come to define it.[1] This perception, as Alan Bernstein rightly intuits, is an inaccurate reflection of Judaic text and oral history, and it would be particularly erroneous for readers to use the descriptions of I Enoch as justification for the later (codified) Christian embellishments and theology: the predominant Judaic cosmology has not shared and does not now share belief in the Christian Hell, which espouses eternal punishment for the incorrigibly wicked.[2] In fact, the sacred and recent history of Judaism has evinced a strong preference for immediate smiting rather than delayed judgment. The connection between these two afterworlds is ostensibly compelling, since both seem to embody concepts of punishment, eternity and fiery tortures: however, when considering Jewish texts on the afterlife, it is the very pervasiveness of fire that underscores the difference. That is, fire in the Jewish tradition is curiously dichotomic: it is the punishing and excessively painful, unrelenting medium that the wicked must endure for all eternity, yet God chooses fire as the literal cornerstone of his dwelling.[3] If not the obvious, then what conclusions should be drawn from the Jewish dialogue about judgment, punishment and fire?
Throughout Jewish sacred texts—and indeed, as a focal point in some of the most revered texts—images of God doused in flame abound. From the burning bush of Moses to God’s fiery vehicle in Ezekiel, the reader understands that for this tribe of man, God and fire have a special correlation. In 1 Enoch, Enoch relates that even the crystalline house of heaven is surrounded by flame, with portals, walls and a ceiling of fire.[4] Yet, unlike the Books of Exodus and Ezekiel, 1 Enoch reveals another context for this awesome element: the ravaging fire of punishment. How are these two disparate uses of fire to be reconciled?
There are several plausible reconciliations. From the viewpoint of historical continuity, Enoch’s descriptions of the “mountain the point of whose summit reached to heaven,” from which rivers of fire flow and “columns of heavenly fire” rise, are suspiciously reminiscent of a volcano.[5] If the tribes who later came together as “Israelites” worshipped, at one point, a volcano god, then the emphasis placed on the relationship between God and fire would be self-evident. From the viewpoint of theological continuity, there are many examples of the belief that divine elements and humanity are not meant to mix. Consider the myth of Prometheus, for example, who was punished for his gift of fire to man. Moving forward in history, demonstrating the emerging belief of divine justice (as opposed to capricious jealousy and cruelty), the Arthurian legend of the Holy Grail teaches that objects imbued with the divine are tabu to the profane, but spiritually glorifying to the righteous. It is Mayan belief in the afterlife, however, that provides the most insight. In this cosmology, all of humanity spends the afterlife in the same place; the experiential difference between the wicked and the righteous comes with each new day. When the sun god’s light falls upon them, the righteous are rewarded with warmth, light and the power that makes their crops grow bountifully. The wicked, however, experience the sun’s rays as a searing heat that seeks them out and burns them throughout the day.[6] 1 Enoch 4:1 provides an interesting parallel to this Mayan understanding, warning: “And as for you [the wicked], you will crave shade and shelter on account of the heat of the sun; and the earth shall burn with scorching heat, and you are not able to walk on the earth or on the rock on account of the heat.” In these two examples, the message seems to be that for the righteous, fire (or its divine correlate, the sun) is awesome, glorious and benign. For the wicked, however, this divine element serves as the instrument of God’s wrath, punishing their souls forever.
But, for the reader who remains convinced that Judaism has not and does not believe in eternal damnation, these explanations do not satisfy, as troubling as the evidence in 1 Enoch may be. For an alternative answer, it is necessary to consider other Jewish texts and oral traditions in order to contextualize the words of Enoch. Bernstein cautions against this approach, reinforcing the fact that the Hebrew Bible, much like the Hebrew culture, is comprised of disparate views which do not evidence a theological evolution so much as a historical compromise.[7] And yet, all codified sacred texts were, at one point, unified as the result of a “central plateau of consensus,” therein creating cohesive patterns and benchmarks of theological continuity through orthodox interpretation.[8] In order to discern this particular pattern of judgment and punishment, attention must again be drawn to the bludgeon of fire imagery: that is, emphasis within this analysis must be placed on the significance of fire, because fire has been emphasized throughout these texts.
What makes fire a special punishment in a history full of vile torments and natural forces of catastrophe? It is not necessarily the most painful punishment, nor is it unique in its ability to completely destroy. In fact, in some esoteric traditions, fire is most meaningful as the elemental catalyst which perfects, rather than destroys, the primordial “goo” that God diversified: fire is the fundamental element of material and spiritual transformation.[9] This transmutation property of fire has often resulted in foundry metaphors, especially in the Hebrew Bible. This metaphor is detailed in the Book of Similitudes, where Enoch’s valley of fire is among mountains full of gold, silver, iron, bronze and tin—the raw stuff of metallurgy. Just like in the forge, the “metal” of the sinners in the “furnace” will be changed and reformed by alternating the heat of fire with the cooling of water.[10] The Book of Isaiah, however, explicitly correlates the smelting analogy with spiritual transmutation when God says, “See, I have refined you, but not like silver; I have refined you in the furnace of affliction.”[11] This text is the key to unlocking the Judaic model of Hell, revealing that unlike the Christian Hell, which seeks to eternally punish sinners for their transgressions, Sheol is a place of moral rehabilitation, figuratively and perhaps literally “burning the badness” away.
Indeed, this is the exact afterlife process presented by Rabbi Thomas Louchheim. In Rabbi Louchheim’s model, compiled from the study of Jewish texts and traditions, death is followed by not so much a judgment as a measuring of “taint” in one’s soul. The soul is then put into a cleansing fire in order to remove the stains of sin. Presumably, there are some souls so tainted that they are consumed entirely by the purifying fire (perhaps those perfect criminals), but, generally, the remaining soul essence joins God in perfection.[12] This core theme is echoed cross-culturally, such as with the images of the Phoenix and Thunderbird—powerful spirits rising out of the ashes.
Textual clues in support of this paradigm abound. In Matthew, for example, the Greek word for punishment used in 25:26 “carries a definite [connotation] of correction and comes a root originally meaning to prune.”[13] Even the word, judgment, supports the alchemical purpose of Hell, coming from the root meaning separation, which evokes a process of identifying the “bad wood” to be pruned. While the New Testament excels in the portrayal of flesh as the tainted matter which must be separated and purged in order to free the spirit for God, 1 Enoch concurs, stating that “no one of the flesh can see him [God].[14] For a reader familiar with Origen, none of these revelations come as a surprise. Further, Origen’s belief in transmigration, or essentially reincarnation, may provide a true mediation between the seemingly disparate Hebraic concepts of an afterlife or destruction, intermediate “ends” or a final “end,” since reincarnation with a final culmination provides for the inclusion of all of these concepts. Here, the phrase “true mediation” refers to the possibility that Origen, given his temporal position, may have had access to oral traditions and an understanding of theological meanings since lost.
A considerable impediment to accepting this correctional view of Hell as consistent with Jewish texts is the pervasive coupling of eternal with judgment, fire, and punishment. It is unreasonable to think of God at the thankless task of eternal pruning. Fortunately, however, this seeming conundrum is easily resolved by correcting a translation error. That is, “the doctrine of eternal punishment rests mainly on the meaning of the Greek word αιωυιος (aionios)…usually translated into English [as] eternal or everlasting.”[15] This translation, however, does not seem to truly capture the denotation or connotation of the original word, which more accurately means age-lasting or for an age.[16] Taking this new understanding in consideration, the Hebrew texts actually depict Sheol as a place where souls are pruned, corrected and perfected for an unspecified period of time (an age). While this is a fairly modest claim in comparison to a fiery pit of eternal torment, it is an image which is wholly consistent with the paternal mien of the Judaic God.
The Book of Watchers initially seems to offer the earliest, complete portrayal of a punitive afterlife in the Jewish tradition, thus tempting the conclusion that it is pivotal in the construction of Christian Hell doctrine. After all, the connection between these two afterworlds is ostensibly compelling, since both seem to embody concepts of punishment, eternity and fiery tortures. However, when considering Jewish texts on the afterlife, it is the very pervasiveness of fire that warrants a less regressive exploration, requiring a temporary rejection of Christianity’s assertion that it is the perfected theology of Judaism, more accurately framing its Jewish inheritance. Through this new exploration, the images and purposes of the afterlife revealed through Enoch shift from a sentence of eternal damnation to a period of finite paternal correction, thus thwarting the cultural historian and Augustine, but reconciling, perhaps, the soul of man with his God.
Notes
[1] Alan E. Bernstein, The Formation of Hell (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 136.
[2] Ibid, 136.
[3] 1 Enoch 14: 17-22.
[4] Ibid, 14: 9-20.
[5] Ibid, 17: 2, 17: 5, 18: 10.
[6] Mary Redick, Professor of Anthropology at City College of San Francisco, class lecture, Spring 1994.
[7] Bernstein, 176.
[8] Ibid, 176.
[9] André Nataf, Dictionary of the Occult, trans. John Davidson (Hertfordshire, England: Wordsworth, 1994), 6-7.
[10] Bernstein, 193.
[11] Ibid, 194.
[12] Rabbi Thomas Louchheim, Congregation Or Chadash, class lecture, 13 Apr 1998.
[13] Robert Beecham, “Eternal Judgement,”
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/robert_beecham/eternal.htm, 1999), 5.
[14] Ibid, 4-5, 1 Enoch 14: 22.
[15] Ibid, 1.
[16] Ibid, 1.