The scriptures are mythological tales all rewriting Mark using Persian, Greek and some Roman myth in a Jewish context.
We can get into the scholarship of this, it's consensus.
But a simple overview by a Pastor /historian covers the basics:
The Invention of Hell
7:30
Aristotle was recovered and his ideas taken and put into Christian philosophy/theology. Ultimately Aquinas philosophy/theology are a synthesis of Plato, Aristotle and Christianity.
11:15
Ptolemaic Cosmology
Cosmology of Dante, Aquinas. 7 heavens, earth in center, Hell in center of earth.
Paradise LOST BY JOHN MILTON, HEAVEN EXPELS LUFIFER PRIOR TO GENESIS STORY.
Misreading of Rev 12:7-13 not happens in preexistence but is a future event.
Devil in Gospels
Tempted Jesus
Jesus casts out devils
Jesus talks about Satans kingdom
Jesus visits hell after crucifixion and before resurrection for salvation
In OT the devil and hell are absent.
Genesis, - not Milton’s pre-existent Lucifer
- serpent in story is much later interpreted to be Satan, here it’s a snake
- character does not recur to temp Cain and Able or any other temptation
In Job Satan is one of the sons of God.
Satan wagers with God that Job is righteous because he’s blessed, God allows Satan to torture Job
Isaiah 14 is taunting the King of Babylon who has compared himself to one of the Gods.
Morning Star son of the dawn is talking about a man, a king of Babylon who compared himself to Venus.
Isaiah is the source of much imagery, cast down from heaven to hell, attempted to rival God in heaven.
37:04 Serpent, The Satan, Lucifer (king of Babylon), not the devil
39:50 No heaven or developed concept of afterlife. Abraham is promised to be the father of many nations not eternal life. Then sleeps with ancestors in Sheol.
41:35
4th century - Jesus, Israelites went to a developed theory of afterlife.
2nd Temple Judaism had an established idea of hell/devil but dropped it, Christianity kept it.
44:20
Greek Hellenism/2nd Temple Judaism/Persian ideas
48:12
Dualism is from Persian religion - heaven/hell, God/devil and from Greek religion
Abraham was happy with prosperity, not an afterlife
1:00:30
Christian hell is a hybrid of Greek and Persian influence.
From Mary Boyce the expert on the ancient Iranian religion:
Hell
The concept of hell, a place of torment presided over by Angra Mainyu, seems to be Zoroaster's own, shaped by his deep sense of the need for justice. • Those few souls 'whose false (things) and what are just balance' (Y 33. I) go to the 'Place of the Mixed Ones', Misvan Gatu, where, as in . the old underworld kingdom of the dead, they lead a grey existence, lacking both joy and sorrow.
Zoroaster was thus the first to teach the doctrines of an individual judgment, Heaven and Hell, the future resurrection of the body, the general Last Judgment, and life everlasting for the reunited soul and body. These doctrines were to become familiar articles of faith to much of mankind, through borrowings by Judaism, Christianity and Islam; yet it is in Zoroastrianism itself that they have their fullest logical coherence, since Zoroaster insisted both on the goodness of the material creation, and hence of the physical body, and on the unwavering impartiality of divine justice. According to him, - salvation for the individual depended on the sum of his thoughts, words and deeds, and there could be no intervention, whether compassionate or capricious, by any divine Being to alter this. With such a doctrine, belief in the Day of Judgment had its full awful significance, with each man having to bear the responsibility for the fate of his own soul, as well as sharing in responsibility for the fate of the world. Zoroaster's gospel was thus a noble and strenuous one, which called for both courage and resolution on the part of those willing to receive .
Zoroastrians occupied Israel from 600 BC to around 200 BC.
The end times myth also comes from Persian mythology:
Revelation
but Zoroaster taught that the blessed must wait for this culmination till Frashegird and the 'future body' (Pahlavi 'tan i pasen'), when the earth will give up the bones of the dead (Y 30.7).
This general resurrection will be followed by the Last Judgment, which will divide all the righteous from the wicked, both those who have lived until that time and those who have been judged already. Then Airyaman, Yazata of friendship and healing, together with Atar, Fire, will melt all the metal in the mountains, and this will flow in a glowing river over the earth. All mankind must pass through this river, and, as it is said in a Pahlavi text, 'for him who is righteous it will seem like warm milk, and for him who is wicked, it will seem as if he is walking in the • flesh through molten metal' (GBd XXXIV. r 8-r 9). In this great apocalyptic vision Zoroaster perhaps fused, unconsciously, tales of volcanic eruptions and streams of burning lava with his own experience of Iranian ordeals by molten metal; and according to his stern original teaching, strict justice will prevail then, as at each individual j udgment on earth by a fiery ordeal. So at this last ordeal of all the wicked will suffer a second death, and will perish off the face of the earth. The Daevas and legions of darkness will already have been annihilated in a last great battle with the Yazatas; and the river of metal will flow down into hell, slaying Angra Mainyu and burning up the last vestige of wickedness in the universe.
Ahura Mazda and the six Amesha Spentas will then solemnize a lt,
spiritual yasna, offering up the last sacrifice (after which death wW be no more), and making a preparation of the mystical 'white haoma',
which will confer immortality on the resurrected bodies of all the blessed, who will partake of it. Thereafter men will beome like the Immortals themselves, of one thought, word and deed, unaging, free from sickness, without corruption, forever joyful in the kingdom of God upon earth. For it is in this familiar and beloved world, restored to its original perfection, that, according to Zoroaster, eternity will be passed in bliss, and not in a remote insubstantial Paradise. So the time of Separation is a renewal of the time of Creation, except that no return is prophesied to the original uniqueness of living things. Mountain and valley will give place once more to level plain; but whereas in the beginning there was one plant, one animal, one man, the rich variety and number that have since issued from these will remain forever. Similarly the many divinities who were brought into being by Ahura Mazda will continue to have their separate existences. There is no prophecy of their re-absorption into the Godhead. As a Pahlavi text puts it, after Frashegird 'Ohrmaid and the Amahraspands and all Yazads and men will be together. .. ; every place will resemble a garden in spring, in which
there are all kinds of trees and flowers ... and it will be entirely the creation of Ohrrnazd' (Pahl.Riv.Dd. XLVIII, 99, lOO, l07).
Apocalypticism is the
religious belief that the
end of the world is imminent, even within one's own lifetime.
[1] This belief is usually accompanied by the idea that civilization will soon come to a tumultuous end due to some sort of catastrophic global event.
[1] Apocalypticism is one aspect of
eschatology in certain religions—the part of
theology concerned with the final events of
world history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity (
societal collapse,
human extinction, etc.).
[2]
The religious versions of these views and movements often focus on cryptic revelations about a sudden, dramatic, and cataclysmic intervention of God in history; the judgment of humanity; the salvation of the faithful elect; and the eventual rule of the elect with God in a renewed heaven and earth.
[3] Arising initially in
Zoroastrianism, apocalypticism was developed more fully in
Judaic,
Christian, and
Islamic eschatological speculation
According to legend, the final savior of the world, known as the Saoshyant, will be born to a virgin impregnated by the seed of Zoroaster while bathing in a lake. The Saoshyant will raise the dead—including those in all afterworlds—for final judgment, returning the wicked to hell to be purged of bodily sin.