Paths in Biblical Studies Free Course
A Free Course · Bart D. Ehrman

What the Hell?

Jesus's Teachings on the Afterlife

Two lectures on the question the Bible is far quieter about than you were ever told. Watch the full recording, free, and no signup required.

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The Question

You were taught to
fear it. But did Jesus
teach it?

Six in ten of us say we believe in hell. One in three carry the wounds of religious trauma. Yet open the Bible and the picture is stranger, and quieter, than the sermons suggested. Maybe you are deconstructing a faith you once held, or have left it altogether, and still cannot quite shake the worry that you might be among the damned.

Across two lectures, Bart Ehrman traces where our idea of eternal torment actually came from. His conclusion is bracing: a literal, burning hell was read into scripture, not taught by it. This page is the whole thing, free and open to anyone asking the question.

0%
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Free
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Hans Memling, The Last Judgment, c. 1471
Hans Memling · The Last Judgment · c. 1471
The Two Lectures

Two lectures. One question:
what the hell?

Where the idea of hell came from, and how it conquered the Christian imagination, in two sittings recorded live with Bart.

Lecture 1 preview Lecture 1 50 min
Genesis to Revelation

When Hell Disappeared from the Bible

This lecture considers the views of the afterlife found throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, asking, in particular, if it actually teaches that some deceased souls will enjoy paradise in heaven but most will undergo never-ending torment.

The answer will be a resounding No. Beliefs in a literal hell have been imported into the text, not derived from it, and are based on patently inaccurate translations of the Bible’s original Hebrew and Greek.

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Lecture 2 preview Lecture 2 1h 29m · with Q&A
The 2nd Century & After

Who Invented Hell?

The notion that the soul lives on after the body is such “common sense” today that it is very difficult for most people to imagine it otherwise. If it is not in the Hebrew Bible and is not what Jesus taught, where did it come from?

In this lecture we see how, starting around the second century, Christianity abandoned the afterlife teachings of Jesus about a future resurrection of the dead, and turned instead to views spread throughout the non-Jewish world, that souls would live forever in a state of blessing or despair.

Followed by a live Q&A with Bart.

This kind of study addresses a vital question: Do we need to fear eternal torment after death? And it provides a vital answer: Not if we accept the views of the Bible and Jesus.

Slides & Readings

Every slide from both lectures, plus the primary texts and readings, gathered in one folder. Yours to keep and study at your own pace.

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Dr. Bart D. Ehrman
Dr. Bart D. Ehrman
Your Instructor

Bart D. Ehrman.

Bart Ehrman is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies and one of the most widely read scholars of early Christianity alive. He is the author of thirty-five books, including six New York Times bestsellers. Among his most recent is Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife, the definitive popular account of where our ideas about the world to come actually came from.

Here you get a specialist's command of the evidence, read in its original languages and its original context. Not a sermon. History.

35 Books6 NYT BestsellersHeaven and HellUNC Chapel Hill
Keep Going

If this opened a door, there is a
whole building behind it.

These two lectures are a doorway. Bart's full courses go deeper into the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins of the afterlife, with the same rigor and none of the fear.

Explore the courses Read Heaven and Hell