Why ignore our English Bibles that clearly teach eternal punishment?
Because our English Bibles came from Latin translation that came from the Greek. To understand the words you must define them to how they were used when they were written, not how we define words today.
It's been debated a million times, but the word "forever" comes from the Greek word "aion" which comes from the Hebrew word "olam." Olam used in the OT simply meant into the future or over the horizon. Notice how your English word "forever" is used in the OT.
Sodom's fiery judgment is "eternal" (Jude 7), that is--until--God "will restore the fortunes of Sodom" (Ez.16:53‑55);
Ammon is to become a "wasteland forever" and "rise no more" (Zeph. 2:9, Jer. 25:27) that is‑until‑‑the Lord will "restore the fortunes of the Ammonites" (Jer. 49:6);
An Ammonite or Moabite is forbidden to enter the Lord's congregation "forever", that is‑‑until‑‑the tenth generation (Deut. 23:3):
Habakkuk tells us of mountains that were "everlasting", that is‑‑until‑‑they "were shattered" Hab. 3:6);
God's waves of wrath roll over Jonah "forever," that is--until-‑the Lord delivers him from the large fish's belly on the third day (Jonah 2:6,10; 1: 17);
In all the above, forever never meant non ending time.
However, olam was somewhat redefined in the greek, aion could be used to denote an age or endless time. I explained this in the other thread regarding hell.
The greeks had a very common word that denoted severe punishment
"timoria." They also had a common word that denoted endlessness, "aidios"
Before Christ, the Pharisees of the day, already influenced by pagan concepts on hell, already were teaching a place of nonending torture and regarded the penalty of sin as torment without end, and they stated the doctrine in unambiguous terms. They called it "
eirgmos aidios "(eternal imprisonment) and
timorion adialeipton (endless torment), while our Lord called the punishment of sin "
aionion kolasin" (age-long chastisement).
We see the difference between Christ and the self-righteous Pharisees. As I referred in my above post, Christ never used the common language the Pharisees used, but why wouldn't he have used "
timorion" which did mean punishment and "
aidios" non ending time, the people would have no doubt and it would match the non-ending punishment taught by the Pharisees.
The Pharisees were wrong, but they did use proper wording to explain their belief in non ending punishment and it was understood by all the people. Why would Christ use totally different wording, just to confuse everyone?
From the 5th century B.C. to the 5th century A.D. aion simply meant an age, perhaps as short as a lifetine. Aion as meaning eternal didn't even start creeping in to some of the lexicons until the 8th century, and even then it wasn't a dogma but just the evolution of the language since the Church was mostly Latinized by then. It really wasn't until the 15th and 16th centuries that aion dogmatically came into the lexicons to express all durations of time from brief to endless, so again you must refer to how the word was used in the period it was used connecting to the subject matter.