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Jesus ascended into heaven in a glorified body. When he rose from the grave, he looked different. Some suspected he was a ghost (i.e. purely spiritual), but he made clear that he was not a spirit. He was phyiscal, and yet he did not have an earthly body but a heavenly resurrected body.

The bible clearly tells us that we will one day join him and be given similar bodies:

"The Lord Jesus Christ... will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." (Philippians 3:20-21)

"As just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bare the likeness of the man from heaven". (1 Cor 15:49)

Therefore the type of things Jesus was able to do after his resurrection are things we can expect to do in heaven (e.g. eat, talk, walk). When he ascended, he did not materialize into some ghost like spirit, but kept his physical resurrected body. Just as Jesus ate on earth, we are promised to eat and drink in heaven. Do not be tempted to think of Heaven as completely spiritual and void of all matter. It is in many ways a physical place with physical bodies, physical food and physical houses.

If you are interested in further study, I highly recommend:
Heaven - Randy Alcorn
It smashes many of the myths that Christians (and thus popular culture) have developed over the centuries regarding heaven by examining the bible over traditional stories.

I recommend the narrated version of Krishna Dharma which is excellently written. It's a real page turner and you have everything essential in one juicy volume.

If you want an audio version adapted to modern audiences (and hilarious side comments, e.g. comparing the gods who incarnated on Earth with a SWAT team) you can listen to a highly detailed and entertaining narration of the story from the Mahabharata by Harvard graduated Sanskrit scholar Howard Resnick, a.k.a. Hridayananda Swami. It's good because it also has a brief introductory part about the text itself.

They were the most fun lectures I listened to about anything :-)...also good if you want to understand the etymology of popular Sanskrit words such as maha, bharata, yoga, karma, avatara and tens of others etc

>Where can I read more about this?

Little bit here.

Classic on the subject from Angus


Interestingly, Martin Luther King once wrote a paper on the subject

Richard Carrier has written a lot about them too.

>Are the Gospels representing a Jewish Messiah, or are they Pauline?

Well, mostly Pauline, but Paul probably wasn't the first one to think Jesus was the Messiah. The original followers most likely thought he was the regular Jewish Messiah, exalted after the crucifixion and that he would return to liberate Israel and fulfill the other requirements (see Ehrman's How Jesus became God for example). Even Paul's own letters say that the Jerusalem movement was still very Jewish. Paul universalized it with outreach to Gentiles (and by waiving circumcision and dietary requirements).

I am not Christian, I follow the Old Testament. Besides learning Hebrew, the best thing that you can do to understand the Old Testament is to read this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Hebrew-Scripture-Yoram-Hazony-ebook/dp/B0096BCVPG/

The author is Orthodox Jewish and I generally hate Judaism, but he did a great job of not coloring his interpretation with Talmudic nonsense. Rashi, on the other hand, forget about.

I'll try to give an unbiased view:

1. Yes, before and after, as you can see here. The most famous of which is Simon bar Kochba, though he was slightly after Jesus. It is also the mainstream historical view that Jesus did not claim to be Messiah (though there are some that disagree).
   The main thing about Jesus is that, even though he was executed, his followers (mostly Peter and Mary, and Paul later) had visions of him. This allowed it to be continued after his death.
   Another major thing is that Christians (especially through Paul) reached out to Gentiles. Paul said that Gentiles did not need to conform to any Jewish law to be Christian. This made it much easier for others to convert, and in just a few hundred years, we see tons and tons of Gentile Christian writers.
   
   
2. Christianity was known in the time, though it was a type different that what was in the west (though both types are equally old). The makeup of Arabia varied. There were Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Arabs. Arabs worshiped lesser divinities (that is, not the supreme God), or they were monotheistic hanifs. There were also non-Arab polytheists.
   As far as I know, Muhammad's early community was made up of mostly Arabs, and no Jews. Though he did view Jews as People of the Book (Jews were given 3 of the 4 major books in Islam: Moses, David, and Jesus). It's hard to explain why an individual Jew would convert to Islam, as religion is tied up with politics and culture. But Muhammad's early community didn't have any Jews in it (I think).
   
   
3. As far as I know, Muhammad didn't claim to be the Messiah. In Islam, Jesus is still the Messiah. The difference is that he is not God. As for Jews and Jesus, you can read some reasons here. The Gospel writers had their own view of the prophecies. They seemed to make the story of Jesus fit into the prophecies, even if those prophecies are based on a bad translation, or even if those prophecies aren't even talking about the Messiah. There are unfulfilled prophecies. Modern Christians say they will be fulfilled when Jesus returns. This is not in the Tanakh, and Jews don't seem to believe in the Second Coming.
   The reason Jews generally don't think the Messiah went unknown is because the prophecies have some extravagant claims (as you can see in the link). The whole world will have knowledge of Yahweh and worship him.
   
   For question 1, you can read more in the book How Jesus Became God. For question 2, you can read more in the book No god but God.

The Way to Nicaea and The Nicene Faith by John Behr. They pretty much examine exactly this issue, through the lens of the writings of the Church Fathers.

>i know jews don't believe in hell; is it only mentioned in the nt?

Hell is in both testaments. Hell in the Old Testament is mostly known as the abode of the dead that was called Sheol or sometimes the pit. It could either represent the grave, or the afterlife. It was apparently divided into two places, a place for the righteous dead, and a place for the wicked dead. For an example of the wicked side of Sheol see passages like Ezekiel 32:17-32.

Jews, and then later, Christians, believed in a general resurrection of the dead, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting death.

>i've heard the rare argument from a christian that hell is metaphorical; what is the point of disagreement?

I wouldn't call it a rare argument, as its rather well accepted. The idea that the imagery used is metaphorical comes from a number of clues within the imagery itself. First of all, when Jesus refers to "hell" in passages like Matthew 5 or Mark 9, the Greek is the word Gehenna. The Valley of the Son of Hinnom, from which the word comes, was a place mentioned in the Old Testament where followers of Baal sacrificed children by passing them through fire. The place was considered cursed by the Jews, and was later turned into a rubbish dump that continually burned day and night. The metaphor is invoking the imagery of this place. Other places in scripture hell is described as a bottomless pit or abyss, a lake, darkness, death, destruction, everlasting torment, etc. I mean, these all can't be literal descriptors of the place... you can't have a place that's both an abyss, or a bottomless pit, and a lake of fire, you can't have fire, and also a place of utter darkness. And other clear figures of speech are used throughout the Bible, so it isn't only hell that is exempt from a literal interpretation. Hell then seems to be eternal separation from the creator, and this separation appears to cause anxiety and torment.

I suppose the point of disagreement then is that some read the Bible in a more literal sense than others even where the Bible does not exactly grant an overly literal reading. I've seen both Christians and atheists read the Bible from an overly literal perspective. Most of the time, this is because they're reading the book as if it were written yesterday. When reading the Bible, or any ancient work, its needful to understand the historical context, the genre, and the original audience. Same is true of works written in the 1800s. You can't read Romance literature of the 1800s without some background on the context and the intentional use of metaphor and symbolism, so why expect you can with a book thousands of years older.

>is that similar to the jewish position at all?

The NT view would be a Jewish view (specifically, Jews of the Hellenistic period) since the NT was largely authored by Jews.

>how much does scripture play a role in these conceptions as opposed to tradition?

I'd say that scripture plays the larger of the roles. Tradition has added some concepts like Purgatory, and then later in Dante's Inferno we have all sorts of new imagery added that people use in popular media, but all of that can be stripped away by looking at what the Bible actually has to say.

If you're seriously interested in this subject, I think theologian, NT Wright's book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church is a terrific, and easy to read introduction into the actual beliefs by both ancient Jew and Christians on the nature of the afterlife. Its only $17 something on Amazon right now.

Hi, I teach a class on angels and demons in Western Monotheisms. We do a unit on the character of Satan as it developed from the Babylonian captivity to modern pop culture. I'll restrict my answers to what is in the Biblical text.

1. Not really. There is an allusion to Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12, but scholarly consensus is that this refers to a worldly tyrant, not Satan.
   
   
2. Possibly. In Job, Satan has his first real debut. He bargains with God. It makes sense that this characterization would put him on God's team, i.e. part of the heavenly court, and not an arch-enemy. Job's Satan is like a righteousness auditor or prosecutor: not necessarily pleasant, but necessary.
   
   
3. The rebellion / fallen angel story comes from an extra-biblical source, The Life of Adam and Eve that was composed around the 1st century. It's also in the Qur'an. Now there are stories of other fallen angels that disobey God. Genesis 6:4 is an enigmatic verse:
   >The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
   There is lots of Jewish mythology imagining the backstory to this verse, imagining fallen "sons of God."
   
   
4. There is no mention of hell as we know it (fiery, bad) in the Hebrew Bible. By the time you get to the NT, you have Gehenna, a Hellenized Jewish conception of Hell. The valley of Hinnom was Jerusalem's literal dumpster fire - and it was the inspiration for Gehenna / Hell. By the 1st century, Satan is thought of as God's arch-enemy instead of God's prosecutor (as he was in Job). Revelation says that Satan is having / will have a bad time in Hell. All of the Gospel writers, as far as I can remember, mention Hell and Satan. Matthew in particular loves to end chapters with
   >and they will be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth
   
   
5. No. This is a popular myth with no scriptural basis.
   
   The book Birth of Satan by Wray and Mobley is a great introduction to the topic. It's accessible and emant for popular audiences.
   
   Edit: It is worth pointing out that the Hebrew hassatan means accuser, or obstacle.
   
   Edit Edit: Overall, it's probably important to note that Satan is characterized in several different ways throughout the Bible. There isn't a single coherent consensus on who Satan is, or what Satan's relationship with God is like.