[Cronos]

Don't forget that the Jews were exiled in Babylon before the PErsians freed them. Cyrus the great believed in religious tolerance. The Jews must have been influenced by this highly cultured religion with a sharp delineation between goood and evil with man's duty being to fight on the side of Ahura Mazda against evil. Zoroastrianism also has the concept of a Messiah like figure and the concept of hell. Before this, the Jews had little or no concept of the afterlife.

[Yeti]

Before this, the Jews had little or no concept of the afterlife.

And I always thought that the modern Christian notion of hell was derived from Hel, the Viking underworld.

I also like the idea that the Zoroastrian hell is theraputic and redeeming, as opposed to purely punitive and ultimately destructive of the souls cast there.

Also appealing to me is the judgement at the end of life as to whether a person was all-in-all good or bad in life as opposed to the various Christian beliefs, that one need only accept Jesus as ones personal saviour(deathbed epiphanies by men who have led evil lives) or that one is predestined either to go to hell or heaven(no matter what you do on earth).

And I notice among the various hells are punishments for sins that I have kicked around in my own mind as significant and immoral, but have never seen mentioned anywhere. In particular, the witholding of benefits from humanity, which can lead to some difficult moral dilemmas, when considered as a sin.

Are you Zoroastrian, Cronos?