I guess religion has always above all filled these basic needs:

1) A device to make you feel superior to the disbelievers, sometimes as a pretext to take their stuff or worse.

2) A concept of a Valhalla, to give life a greater purpose and meaning (if not to explain the unexplained).

You bring up one of the two critical historic Biblical phenomenon that no one ever talks about:

1) That Heaven and Hell didn't exist before Jesus (that's why the Catholics invented "Limbo")

2) That the three major religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) all believe in the Old Testament, having diverged primarily at the point of the New Testament and disagreements over Valhalla.

So Jesus invented H & H, endorsed the Ten Commandments, fair enough. What no one ever explained was "if Jesus was sent to free us from some of the pointless rigidities of the Pharisees and Sadducees of the O.T. in favor of "love thy neighbor", "blessed are the meek", "Let ye without sin...etc", why are we still carrying around ridiculous O.T. books like Leviticus? I suppose also that if one simply "does what Jesus would do" everything else would take care of itself, eliminating the need for the self-righteous Christian butt-sucking and hell-condemning?