Yeah, it bugged me as well. Unsong’s as Christian as it is Jewish.

I got into some… arguments… about that… in the comments section. Scott yelled at me a bit after I got a little really angry/accusatory.

He later makes it explicit that it’s a monotheistic, but very different from either Jewish or Christian, theology.

It’s more complicated than this.

The very early Biblical Jews seemed to have a really vague concept of maybe there being a placed called Sheol under the earth where the souls of the dead hung out. It seems a lot like Greek Hades (and in fact is translated as Hades in some sources) in that it’s not particularly bad, just dead and lifeless and hopeless. The Bible is very quiet about this and it’s unclear to what degree some other Biblical concept called “Sheol” was influenced by Greek conceptions of Hades during the Hellenistic Age.

At some point, probably under the influence of Greek and Christian stuff, this transformed into the belief in the Olam Ha-Ba (“the world to come”, a good afterlife) and Gehenna (a bad afterlife of punishment). The Talmud says punishment in Gehenna is usually twelve months at most, after which the soul goes to Olam Ha-Ba. But this isn’t absolute and there are a couple of sources that suggest otherwise.

First of all, the Talmud itself clarifies that there are some punishments that involve having “no share in the world to come”, including “heresy, publicly shaming someone, committing adultery with a married woman and rejecting the words of the Torah”. It’s unclear how strictly this is defined, but, like, “publicly shaming someone” alone catches nine-tenths of Tumblr. I think there’s controversy as to whether these people stay in Gehenna forever or disappear into oblivion at the end of their twelve months.

Second, there are some Biblical and apocryphal sources suggesting eternal punishment. The Book of Daniel says that “multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt”, but the Book of Daniel says lots of things and is pretty weird and metaphorical. The Book of Judith (apocryphal, but apocryphal Jewish rather than apocryphal Christian) says that “The Lord, the Almighty, will punish them on the Day of Judgment by putting fire and worms into their flesh, so that they cry out with pain unto all eternity”.

And third, the New Testament itself provides some evidence that Hell was considered eternal during its time. This is what Jesus keeps telling people, and remember that Jesus was working within the Judaism of the time. Jesus’ sermons are framed as reminders (“You already know that Hell is eternal, so don’t go there”) not as didactics (“You might think sinners only go to hell for twelve months, but I’m telling you it’s eternal”).

So there was a common strain of Jewish thought during the Second Temple period (ie the time of Jesus) saying that punishment in Hell might be eternal. That strain ended up in Christianity, and a different strain ended up in modern Judaism (mostly). On the other hand, since Jews lived among Christians for a long time, a lot of Christian beliefs ended up reinfecting Judaism in the same way some modern American Jews end up with Hanukkah bushes. I’ve mentioned before this Hasidic story, where a kabbalist almost sells his soul to a very Christian Devil who wants him in Hell for all eternity. And Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews has a part which is basically Dante’s Inferno with Moses in place of Dante (CTRL+F “Moses visits Paradise and Hell at this link)

So yes, Unsong is a mishmash of Jewish and Christian beliefs, but no more than Judaism and Christianity themselves are both mishmashes of Jewish and Christian beliefs.

Yeah, it bugged me as well. Unsong’s as Christian as it is Jewish.

I got into some… arguments… about that… in the comments section. Scott yelled at me a bit after I got a little really angry/accusatory.

He later makes it explicit that it’s a monotheistic, but very different from either Jewish or Christian, theology.

It’s more complicated than this.

The very early Biblical Jews seemed to have a really vague concept of maybe there being a placed called Sheol under the earth where the souls of the dead hung out. It seems a lot like Greek Hades (and in fact is translated as Hades in some sources) in that it’s not particularly bad, just dead and lifeless and hopeless. The Bible is very quiet about this and it’s unclear to what degree some other Biblical concept called “Sheol” was influenced by Greek conceptions of Hades during the Hellenistic Age.

At some point, probably under the influence of Greek and Christian stuff, this transformed into the belief in the Olam Ha-Ba (“the world to come”, a good afterlife) and Gehenna (a bad afterlife of punishment). The Talmud says punishment in Gehenna is usually twelve months at most, after which the soul goes to Olam Ha-Ba. But this isn’t absolute and there are a couple of sources that suggest otherwise.

First of all, the Talmud itself clarifies that there are some punishments that involve having “no share in the world to come”, including “heresy, publicly shaming someone, committing adultery with a married woman and rejecting the words of the Torah”. It’s unclear how strictly this is defined, but, like, “publicly shaming someone” alone catches nine-tenths of Tumblr. I think there’s controversy as to whether these people stay in Gehenna forever or disappear into oblivion at the end of their twelve months.

Second, there are some Biblical and apocryphal sources suggesting eternal punishment. The Book of Daniel says that “multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt”, but the Book of Daniel says lots of things and is pretty weird and metaphorical. The Book of Judith (apocryphal, but apocryphal Jewish rather than apocryphal Christian) says that “The Lord, the Almighty, will punish them on the Day of Judgment by putting fire and worms into their flesh, so that they cry out with pain unto all eternity”.

And third, the New Testament itself provides some evidence that Hell was considered eternal during its time. This is what Jesus keeps telling people, and remember that Jesus was working within the Judaism of the time. Jesus’ sermons are framed as reminders (“You already know that Hell is eternal, so don’t go there”) not as didactics (“You might think sinners only go to hell for twelve months, but I’m telling you it’s eternal”).

So there was a common strain of Jewish thought during the Second Temple period (ie the time of Jesus) saying that punishment in Hell might be eternal. That strain ended up in Christianity, and a different strain ended up in modern Judaism (mostly). On the other hand, since Jews lived among Christians for a long time, a lot of Christian beliefs ended up reinfecting Judaism in the same way some modern American Jews end up with Hanukkah bushes. I’ve mentioned before this Hasidic story, where a kabbalist almost sells his soul to a very Christian Devil who wants him in Hell for all eternity. And Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews has a part which is basically Dante’s Inferno with Moses in place of Dante (CTRL+F “Moses visits Paradise and Hell at this link)

So yes, Unsong is a mishmash of Jewish and Christian beliefs, but no more than Judaism and Christianity themselves are both mishmashes of Jewish and Christian beliefs.

Yeah, it’s worth keeping in mind that Judaism is a very wide-ranging and diverse religious tradition. Modern rabbinic Judaism doesn’t think much of the idea of hell, but there are exceptions even there (@femmeprince can tell you a lot more about that than I can). One can argue that this is not authentic or legitimate Judaism, and certainly many adherents of mainstream Judaism would say so; I don’t really see it as my place to say one way or the other.

There were definitely historical Jewish sects that believed in eternal punishment; as Scott says, that’s most of where the early Christians got the idea. The Book of Watchers (the oldest part of the pseudepigraphic Book of Enoch), dated to around 300 BC (older than some portions of the canonical Tanakh) focused a great deal on a version of Sheol that looked a lot like the Greek Tartarus or the later Christian Hell, as well as being the main source of the idea of demons as fallen angels in Christianity. (It’s also the earliest known use of “Son of Man” as the name for a divine/eschatological figure, and probably the origin of the figure of the Metatron in Judaism.) There’s also some treatment of damnation in the more apocalyptic texts from the Qumran community, like the War Scroll. And once you get to the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, contemporaneous with the rise of Christianity, you start seeing a lot of texts, like The Assumption of Moses and 3 Baruch, that deal with various flavors of eternal punishment.

Basically, this is a friendly reminder from your local religion degree holder to avoid treating the dominant strain of a religion as the only strain.

Also, I should point out that this misses the most important correspondence. Ezekiel 17:3 says:

Thus saith the Lord GOD; A great eagle with great wings, longwinged, full of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto Lebanon.

Video guy has already pointed out that the eagle represents Armstrong because of the name of his lunar lander. But did you know that after the moon landing, Armstrong retired to a farm in the town of Lebanon, Ohio?

Also, I forgot to mention the best part, which is that this guy was actually an engineer in the Apollo Program

I seriously thought about trying to make the wrap-up party in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. I decided I was willing to sacrifice kabbalistic significance for convenience and people actually attending, which unfortunately is still true.

I think there’s a plan to hold it in the Finnish Hall in Berkeley, which would be a kabbalistically appropriate place to finish the book.

Also, I should point out that this misses the most important correspondence. Ezekiel 17:3 says:

Thus saith the Lord GOD; A great eagle with great wings, longwinged, full of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto Lebanon.

Video guy has already pointed out that the eagle represents Armstrong because of the name of his lunar lander. But did you know that after the moon landing, Armstrong retired to a farm in the town of Lebanon, Ohio?