Something I can’t quite shake off.
If Christ was a Jew, and I’m 99.99999% positive that the concept of eternal hell is nonexistent in Judaism, why would Jesus preach something that wasn’t part of his religion? Doesn’t anyone in the Christian community stop and think, wait…something isn’t right here? Or am I going nuts?
If you want to find the traditional concept of hell, don’t go looking for it in the Old Testament. It simply isn’t there. But you will find it in the myths of Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome.
In the OT, God warns his beloved people of plague, famine, conquest and exile, but forgets to warn them of everlasting torment? That doesn’t compute. God is not negligent.
By the time of the 1st century, Judaism had quite a wide set of beliefs about post-mortem punishment, some of which involved an eternal hell for at least some sinners.
To be fair, Jesus could preach clarifications and expansions or refinements to Judaism, or corrections to incorrect interpretations of scripture, so even if all of Judaism had been officially and popularly universalistic, Jesus might (in theory) have preached a correction of that. The same would be true (in theory) if the OT had nothing particular to say on the topic (possibly leading to the spread of beliefs) and Jesus came down authoritatively on the side of eternal conscious torment (of some variety).
I say this not to worry you (since I find He came down on the side of Christian universalism of some variety 
), but to be fair to proponents of ECT.
To me, the fact that God did NOT warn Adam in the Garden or Moses on Mt. Sinai or any of the prophets of Israel of the potential of people forever being separated from God is a VERY BIG problem for Infernalism to overcome. “IF” there really was a Hell then it seems only reasonable and just for God to warn Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. But, as you note, He didn’t, not even once! And if Jesus intended to change, correct, or amend the law/teachings of Moses, then it seems to me He would not of repeatedly declared that He did not intend to do so or affirm that not one jot or tittle would pass from the Law until all is fulfilled. And He did intend to ammend the Law, then He’d have specifically and clearly done so. But of course He didn’t.
I was raised on the KJV, so when I realized that biblical Hebrew doesn’t even have a word, not a single word, that can be correctly interpreted as Hell, it was the first explosion of a series of explosions that destroyed my castle of traditional infernalism. For me the tipping point, the final explosion that for me laid waste infernalism was the realization that Jesus did not warn of Hell, but warned of being cast into Hinnom Valley, an obvious metaphor with absolutely no explanation in scripture. If Jesus meant such a radical change to the Law, and “IF” He intended to convey the concep of ECT through the metaphor of Hinnom Valley, then it’s only reasonable that He would have explained such clearly and repeatedly, and surely the apostles would have used such a metaphon in their writings - but of course the didn’t!
I’ve come to believe that Jesus used Hinnom Valley to warn of the destruction of Jerusalem, following the way Jeremiah used it. And being in Jerusalem just a few years prior to the Romans destroying Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Matthew could see the “writing on the wall” and quoted repeatedly Jesus’ warnings of it’s destruction, along with Jesus’ repeated denunciation of the Pharisees.
it is my belief that Judaism had become tainted with Zoroastrianism due to their time in Persia. before that, they had no concept of life after death (except that some believed in resurrection, and the OT demonstrates this). in fact, this was in direct contrast to their neighbours in Canaan, who all had developed afterlives. Egypt, as well, could have shaped this belief, but they were too drastically delivered from them, and given new laws, etc etc. Persia, i think, was a softer influence. Zoroastrians have a Good God and an Evil God, who war eternally. following the Good God gets you into Heaven, following the Bad God gets you into an eternal place of torment. that doesn’t make sense to me, if both Gods were equal, surely they’d both reward their separate followers, and as evil defeats itself, it seems that the Bad God (who is meant to be equal) couldn’t really be all bad, or else he’d lose…anyway, i digress. my belief (unproven) is that they at least started to question Sheol and unconsciousness oblivion in the grave during this time. the fact that they were not told to believe like the Egyptians or their Pagan neighbours in some form of afterlife to me is PROOF POSITIVE that God did not have that sort of thing in mind. Restoration in Heaven was something coming later. i can get conditional immortality from this, but i cannot get ECT/EH.
I believe Jesus does NOT teach eternal hell. i am annoyed that our translations give us that, when He talked instead of Hades (the grave) or Hinnom Valley as Sherman points out above. …although somewhat ironically, the word we now use to mean a place of torment was actually derived from the Saxon word “Hel” which means “to cover” and thus is actually more apt as a word for a grave (just like the Hebrew Sheol) than as any place of consciousness, let alone one of conscious torment.
the one place where it REALLY sounds like Christ is confirming the notion of EH that the church mostly teaches is the parable of Lazarus…however, after re-telling this story, which was commonly told at the time, highlights its flaws, if you examine it.
the wicked man has pity on others that might be joining him (so is far from totally reprobate), and Abraham (sign of an old covenant) is unable/unwilling to help…a far cry from even the OT version of God. These are not even all the flaws (in the story and in the Pharisees) that Jesus highlights. He ends with a very ascerbic and sarcastic statement that if they listened to the law and prophets, they would BLOODY KNOW BETTER THAN TO BELIEVE IN THIS NONSENSE. 
Imagine what he’d tell us now…imagine the tables overturned in His fury at health/wealth “gospel” churches, at those that teach God does not love us all, that keep people in thrall through fear. i know how angry it makes me (on your behalf in this instance, Lady Bug!), so how much more rage will He express? but even when He bruises the wicked, He heals them, as the Law and the Prophets teach us, so even for these blasphemers, He is there with mercy to wash them clean, as He washes me clean when i get it wrong, too.
well said, James, well said 
thanks mate…i can’t remember if the Zoroastrian issue has been debated on here before (i think it has) and if i was right or wrong on it 
so i could be wrong, but i know that by the time most of the OT was written, there was no after-life in their theology…merely Sheol followed by a hinted at hope of resurrection.
More important, why do some people think Jesus preached eternal hell when it is quite clearly absent in the text?
Have a cashew, it’ll stop you going nuts. 