New Testament
View of Hell
The primary
purpose of this Is It True What They Say About
Hell? website is to encourage readers to examine
the common assumptions about the topics of Hell and
the Afterlife in modern western culture. The word
Hell in both Protestant and Roman Catholic circles
conjures up a place where the disembodied "souls" of
the dead who had died "unsaved" from their sins are
to be tortured throughout all eternity. These
tortures are inflicted by supernatural beings called
demons, and the Devil himself is there, gleefully
overseeing this whole process. This scenario has
spilled over into secular "popular culture," and is
portrayed in non-religious art, literature, motion
pictures, even comic books. You are invited to
evaluate the information, documentation, and
commentary provided in this collection of articles
and come to your own conclusion:
"Is it true what they say about
Hell?"
Hell in the
New Testament
Both Jewish
and Christian commentators will often admit that the Old
Testament is very vague about ideas regarding the Afterlife,
including concepts of "heaven" and "hell." (See the article
Old Testament View of Hell
for an overview of how these topics are treated in the Old
Testament books.)
Therefore,
if someone wishes to come to a strictly biblical view of any
details about Hell, they will have to turn to the New
Testament. If the Hell of eternal torture is to be
established by scripture, rather than by just human
speculation or fanciful invention, it is in the pages of the
New Testament that it will have to be found.
So what
does the New Testament have to say?
Do not be afraid of those
who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of
the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell
[Greek: Gehenna] (Matthew 10:28 NIV)
This does
not speak of eternal torment, either of bodies or souls. It
speaks of both being destroyed.
Hebrews
10:26-27—“If we
deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the
knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but
only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire
that will consume the enemies of God.
Yes,
there is a judgment of the unsaved ("the enemies of God")
mentioned here. And it even involves a "raging fire." But it
is not said that this fire will "torment forever” these
enemies. It states that they will be "consumed."
Those
who are convinced that there is an ever-burning Hell of
torture, where the souls of billions of humans who have died
throughout history without accepting Jesus as Savior are
suffering unimaginable pain and torment, need to find a way
to explain these two scriptures. For they surely do not line
up with that scenario!
There are
three Greek words which translators of the King James
Version (KJV) of the Bible chose to
translate as "hell" in the New Testament:
Hades
Tartarus
Gehenna
Hades
Hades is
translated in the KJV as hell 10 times. However, at the time
the New Testament was written, the Greek word Hades and the
Hebrew word Sheol referred to exactly the same concept. So
in I Corinthians 15:55, Paul writes:
O death, where is thy sting? O
grave [Hades], where is thy victory?
In this
instance, the translators chose to translate Hades as
"grave" rather than hell. Why? Because Paul was here
referring directly to an Old Testament passage in Hosea 14.
The word Hebrew word sheol is in that passage, and was there translated
as grave. The word grave in Corinthians was Hades, clearly
showing that the words were considered comparable by Paul.
Only in
this passage did the translators use the word "grave" to
translate Hades. In all other passages in the New Testament,
the KJV translators chose to translate
the word as hell.
Tartarus
The second
word translated as hell in the New Testament is Tartarus.
This is used only once. It refers there not to punishment of
humans, but a place of confinement and punishment for fallen
angels:
For if God did not spare angels
when they sinned, but cast them into hell [Tartarus], putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for
judgment... ( II Peter 2:4)
In the
Greek mythology of the writings of Homer, Tartarus was the
place of confinement for the Titans who rebelled against
Zeus. It is described in Greek mythology as being deep within
the earth. It would appear that this "Tartarus" is another
name for "the Abyss" spoken of in other scriptures. In Luke
8, the Legion of demons begs Jesus not to send them to the
"the deep" [NIV: "the Abyss"] The Greek word here
is abussos, which
implies a "bottomless pit." In Revelation 9, John
sees in vision an angel opening
the Abyss with a key, and swarms of locusts coming out, whose
"king" is "the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon [destroyer]."
And in Revelation 20, another angel
casts Satan into the Abyss and shuts him up there for
1,000 years. In none of these passages is there any
implication that either Tartarus or the Abyss is a place
of confinement or punishment for humans.
Gehenna
The third
word translated as hell in the KJV New Testament is Gehenna.
It is used 11 times by Jesus, in the Gospels, and once in
the Epistle of James. This is the word that is accompanied
by the concept of fire:
...Whoever shall say,
thou fool, shall be in danger of hell [Gehenna] fire.
(Matthew 5:22)
If there
is a clear Biblical basis for the doctrine of eternal,
never‑ending torment of humans in the fires of hell, we
might expect to find it in these "Gehenna fire" passages.
Five of
these 11 references occur in a description of one discourse
of Jesus.
And if thy hand offend thee, cut
it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed,
than having two hands to go into hell [Gehenna], into the fire that
never shall be quenched: where their worm dieth not, and the
fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it
off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than
having two feet to be cast into hell [Gehenna], into the fire that
never shall be quenched: where their worm dieth not and the
fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it
out; it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God
with one eye, than having two eyes be cast into hell [Gehenna] fire:
where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9:43‑48)
The word
hell is used here to translate Gehenna three times. In the
parallel passage in Matthew 5, describing the same
discourse, it is used two times.
If
one come
to this discourse with the assumption of eternal torture,
it might be possible to "read into" it that meaning. But look again. It
says nothing about what happens to the person once he is
thrown into that "unquenchable fire." However... there
is a
passage in scripture that does tell us exactly that! In this passage in Mark, Jesus is not expounding new
revelation. He is directly quoting a phrase used by the
prophet Isaiah. At the end of Isaiah's book is a description
of the Millennium, after the Day of the Lord:
"From one New Moon to another,
and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and
bow down before me," says the Lord. "And they will go out
and look upon the dead bodies of those who rebelled against
me; their worm will not die, nor will their fire be
quenched, and they will be loathesome to all mankind."
(Isaiah 66:23‑24)
Note that
what is viewed by passersby is not a spectacle of torture,
but dead bodies of those who came to an ignominious end.
This brings to mind the fate of Mussolini in modern times.
Near the end of World War II, he was executed by his own
people, and his dead body was put on display, hung upside
down in a public street. And this "public display" remains
even to this day through photos taken at the time and
preserved.
What is
described by both Isaiah and Jesus is something that can be
seen
by “all mankind” … so they are not in an unseen “spirit world." They were killed,
and their “remains” were physically left to be seen.
Why did
Jesus use the word Gehenna for this place?
Gehenna is
the Greek equivalent of The "Valley of Ben Hinnom"
("Valley
of the Sons of Hinnom") outside Jerusalem. This was the site
of child sacrifice by the Israelites when they turned from
true worship of Yahweh. Jeremiah prophesied:
The people of Judah have done
evil in my eyes, declares the LORD. They have set up their
detestable idols in the house that bears my Name and have
defiled it. They have built high places of Topheth in the
Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the
fire‑ something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind.
So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when
people will no longer call it Topheth or the Valley of Ben
Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter, for they will bury the
dead in Topheth until there is no more room. Then the carcasses of this people will become food for the birds of
the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no
one to frighten them away. (Jer 7:30‑33)
By the time
of Jesus, history records that this valley had become a "city
dump," where the refuse of the city of Jerusalem was deposited,
along with the bodies of executed criminals. As with most city dumps,
there were fires always burning, and maggots of flies and other
insects feasting on the refuse and bodies. (The Hebrew word translated "worm" in the
Isaiah passage above implies maggots, the
larvae of insects.) Under normal circumstances, if Joseph of Arimathea would not have intervened and begged for the body of
Jesus to put in his own tomb, the body of Jesus, along with the
two thieves crucified with Him, would likely have been tossed
into this place.
It might be
argued that this physical location was just a "symbol," a
fore‑runner of a final "Gehenna fire" where not only
bodies, but souls were cast. Wouldn't that leave room for
eternal torment in this ultimate Gehenna? The statement by Jesus
in Matthew above may imply
that. But it provides no basis at all for eternal torture, since
is clearly states that the souls can be destroyed: "Do not be afraid of those
who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of
the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell."
And there is
another passage in the New Testament that speaks of fiery
judgment which does not use any of the words for Hell, but
obviously is related to the concept:
By the same word the present heavens
and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of
judgment and destruction of ungodly men. (II Peter 3:7 NIV)
As you can see,
this passage also refers to destruction of the ungodly.
Over the
centuries many have tried to "explain away" these and similar passages by
saying that "destroy" doesn't mean "destroy." It means to
"permanently separate from God." In fact, that explanation is
often used to "explain away" every Old and New Testament passage
which seems to clearly say the wicked will be destroyed.
But
there is nothing in the original Greek or Hebrew words for
"destroy," "destruction," "consume utterly," and related words
that would call for that explanation. It seems that those who
propose this interpretation of these words are coming to these passages with a pre‑conceived
notion that the fate of the wicked is eternal torture, so these
passages must mean "separation." But if one can insist on
changing the clear meaning of words just to support a long-held
doctrine, it would be possible to "prove" anything one wants to from the
Scriptures. This is not an intellectually honest, nor sound
method of reasoning.
Thus the
ultimate question posed by the information above is this:
WHERE ARE
THE PASSAGES WHICH CLEARLY ESTABLISH
THE DOCTRINE
OF ETERNAL TORTURE OF HUMANS AFTER DEATH?
There are
basically only two other passages which are offered by
theologians to establish their theory. You can see an overview
of the reasoning that is used regarding these in the articles
Revelation's Hell and
Lazarus and the Rich Man.
This site contains a collection
of articles, on the topic of Hell and the Afterlife, that may
each be used independently for research purposes. But it also is
designed as a systematic, sequential overview of the whole
topic, which can be read like a book.
For those who would like to take
advantage of this perspective of the content, the articles are
arranged in the
Reading Guide as they would appear as chapters in a book, along
with a few reference chapters at the end such as would appear in
a book Appendix.
Use the
links below to go to the next article, previous article, or
first article
in the Reading Guide sequence.
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PLEASE
NOTE:
No single short article can comprehensively cover
any aspect of the topic of Hell. If you have
questions or concerns regarding the material in this
article, be sure to first read through the site
FAQ before writing to the
author. It may already specifically address the very
points you are wondering about.
Unless otherwise
noted, all biblical references in this and other articles on the
Is It True What They Say About Hell? website are from the
New International Version (NIV).
All of the articles on this Is it true what they say about Hell?
website were written by Pam Dewey, with
the support and sponsorship of Common Ground Christian
Ministries. For more of Pam's inspirational and educational
writings, visit her Oasis
website.
All website content
© 2007, Pam
Dewey and Common Ground Christian Ministries
All rights reserved. Material may
be copied for personal use of the site visitor. For permission
to copy for any other purposes, please contact the author at
oasis7@gmail.com
