The Road to Hell is Paved with Some Inventions | Hell – Part 1

 

You can’t really talk about Heaven without talking about Hell. I feel I’ve been able to have a bit of fun talking about Heaven, because as a Christian, I am assured that I will be with God after I die. We might be open to the mystery of what that will look like, or we might have strong opinions and beliefs about it, but it doesn’t really matter, because we believe that it will be a positive existence.

 

This is not the same for Hell. Hell is much more negative, and unless you are one of those sociopathic Christians who relish in the idea of unbelievers being tormented for eternity, Hell is a serious matter and it has implications for people we know and love, who don’t know God. Hell also feels different from Heaven, because while our views of Heaven might be elusive, mysterious and ethereal, the theologies that we have of Hell, feel a lot more certain, and are much heavier, and so I wish to approach it accordingly.

 

Most of us will be familiar with the common view of Hell, that it’s a place of eternal conscious torment for unrepentant sinners who rejected God, who will be justly punished for their unbelief, by being burned in fire for eternity. This view of Hell is clear and simple. Some Christians have even condensed it down to an easy to remember slogan, which they can quickly yell at passing heathens, “Turn or burn!” The simplicity of this theology has meant that the threat of Hell has been the staple of evangelists and church outreach programs for hundreds of years, and is still going strong today.

 

However, the concept of Hell isn’t simple, it’s really complicated.

 

There is a lot that could say about Hell, but it’s probably helpful for the purposes of this book, to look at just a couple of things, and so to launch us into this complex mess, here are three fun facts, and just to be clear, these are facts, these aren’t biblical interpretations or personal musings, they are indisputable facts.

 

1. Jesus never says that Hell is eternal conscious torment for unbelievers

2. The word “Hell” is not mentioned in the Bible

3. There are three conflicting views of post death punishment presented in the Bible

 

Let me unpack these facts a bit.

 

Jesus never says that Hell is eternal conscious torment for unbelievers.

 

There isn’t really much else to say about this, except that as Christians, we are supposed to take Jesus seriously, and if you accept Hell as being eternal conscious torment, then you probably need to go back to the Bible and read what Jesus says in the gospels. Jesus does talk about Hell but not in the way we think of it, and he definitely never says that it is a place of eternal conscious torment for unbelievers. Jesus does warn people about Hell, but his warnings are usually for people who do believe in God, who consider themselves to be good and righteous, just like you and me. He never talks about Hell when interacting with people who would have been considered sinners, undesirables or unbelievers. Jesus is talking about something when he talks about Hell, but it isn’t eternal conscious torment.

 

The word ‘Hell’ is not mentioned in the Bible.

 

Now, this is where things start to get complicated. We all know that the word ‘Hell’ is in the Bible, of course it is, you can probably point to several verses in your Bible where it is printed in black and white. If you own the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, then you’ll be able to find it relatively easily, because this translation of the Bible uses the word ‘Hell’, more than any other translation. If you own a New International Version (NIV) Bible, you will still find Hell, but not as easily as in the KJV, because that word isn’t used as much in this translation. The KJV uses the word ‘Hell’, four times more than the NIV, because of the different translation decisions that were made. If you own a more literal translation of the Bible, such as Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) or the World English Bible (WEB), then you won’t find the word ‘Hell’ anywhere, because these translations have tried to remain true to the original texts that formed the Bible as we know it. If you’re familiar with the original Hebrew and Greek biblical texts, then you will also know that the word ‘Hell’ is not in those texts. This probably isn’t surprising when you think about it. The word ‘Hell’ isn’t in the original Greek and Hebrew texts, because ‘Hell’ is an English word. Presumably, there is another word in the original texts, and whatever that word is, has simply been translated into the word, ‘Hell’. This is what you might logically expect, but it isn’t the case. The word ‘Hell’, isn’t a straight translation of an equal and alternative word from the Hebrew and Greek biblical texts.

 

There’s an interesting history behind the biblical translations and interpretive decisions, which led to the word ‘Hell’ being included in the Bible, but to cut a long story short, the word ‘Hell’ came from Norse mythology and entered into common church use, following the Viking invasions into Europe over a thousand years ago. Before that time, there wasn’t the single and exact concept of post death punishment, that we have come to know as Hell, which brings us to the next point.

 

 

There are three conflicting views of post death punishment presented in the Bible.

 

For early Christians and first century Jews, there were three beliefs of what happened to evil and wicked people, when they died.

 

The first was that they went to Sheol, which was the underworld, realm of the dead. The basic understanding of Sheol was that everyone went there when they died, whether they were good or bad. It was simply a void and empty place. The concept of Sheol did evolve though, and a belief developed that good people who went to Sheol, entered into the Bosom of Abraham, which was a place of peace and comfort, and that evil people would be punished.

 

The second view was that people went to Hades. Hades was similar to Sheol, because everyone went there when they died, but it was different because Hades was the underworld of Greek mythology, and had a greater degree of world building. There were different places for people depending on how good or bad they were when they were alive, but the biggest difference was that Hades was ruled by a mythological god, who was also called Hades, who we obviously don’t believe in.

 

I know what you are thinking, Hades is a different mythology that Christians and Jews obviously wouldn’t believe in. Don’t worry, I will come back to this.

 

The third view was that people went to Gehenna. Gehenna was completely different to Sheol and Hades, and it’s a concept which is pretty much alien to the modern Christian church today. I’ll come back to it shortly because it requires some explanation.

 

If you have a semi decent translation of the Bible, then you will have seen Sheol and Hades printed in its pages. The chances are that you know about Hades from school when you’ve learned about Greek mythology, and maybe you’ve seen Sheol in the Bible and looked up what it meant, and so have some understanding of what it is. These ideas aren’t hidden from us, but it is my belief that when they come up, they are usually explained away as being different names for Hell, which isn’t true. I understand why people say this, if someone is giving a sermon and these words come up in the Bible reading, then they don’t want to spend half their talk explaining the nuances of Greek and Jewish mythology. It’s much easier to say that they both basically mean Hell, and to move on to the point they want to make, but it is a massive over simplification.

 

We have become used to passing off Sheol and Hades as Hell, even though in most modern translations of the Bible, they aren’t referred to as Hell. Even if we do know what Sheol and Hades are, we tend to ignore the fact that they are separate cultural views with different beliefs, and we ignore the fact that they are distinct from the Hell which we see mentioned alongside them. We do this because it’s tradition within the church, going back hundreds of years, and it’s connected to the King James Version of the Bible. The KJV was first published in 1611 and is the oldest surviving English translation of the Bible. It is also the all-time bestselling translation, and accounts for over half of all worldwide Bible sales, and it’s held in extremely high regard. The KJV reflects the language used by the church in the 1600s, and translates Sheol and Hades, both as Hell. Since then, it has helped maintain the tradition that Sheol and Hades are the same as Hell, despite the fact that the modernised and corrected New King James Version (NKJV), correctly translates Sheol and Hades, like for like.

 

It seems that Bible translators eventually realised that translating them as Hell, caused some problems when trying to understand a biblical view of post death punishment. We see this particularly in the Book of Revelation, where its author talks about Hades being thrown into a lake of fire, which most Christians understand to be Hell. If you read Hades as Hell, then this means that Hell is thrown into Hell, which doesn’t make much sense. In order for the common view of Hell to work, we have to understand that Sheol and Hades are not Hell, but if Sheol and Hades aren’t Hell, then what are they?

 

Sheol and Hades are complicated within themselves, but while both are distinct understandings of the afterlife, the Bible isn’t clear in how it talks about them. Sheol is only mentioned in the Old Testament, and Hades is only mentioned in the New Testament, so we might assume that beliefs shifted. Some scholars do believe that the Greek Hades influenced the Jewish Sheol, particularly with the idea that wicked people would be punished once they died, which came from the Greek view of Hades. There may be some truth in this, but it’s a bit of a distraction, and it’s a matter of opinion. Right now, I just want to focus on the facts, and focus on what the Bible says.

 

So, when we see the word Hades in the New Testament, sometimes it doesn’t actually mean Hades. In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Jesus talks about Hades, but he presents something which looks a lot like Sheol, and that’s because he was talking about Sheol. In the parable, Lazarus is in the Bosom of Abraham, and the Rich man is calling to him across a chasm, whilst in torment. This is clearly a depiction of Sheol, and Jesus almost certainly wouldn’t have used the word Hades, because he wouldn’t have been speaking Greek. The people he was teaching spoke Aramaic, which was a language rooted in Hebrew, and so whenever we see Jesus talking about Hades, we can assume that he wasn’t actually talking about Hades. The New Testament was written after Jesus’s resurrection, and it is believed that the original gospel accounts were written in Aramaic. However, the earliest and only surviving transcripts we have of the gospels, are later Greek translations of those hypothetical Aramaic sources, so in these instances, Sheol was translated as Hades, but in the text, it still means Sheol.

 

This is easy enough to grasp, but it does become a bit more complicated when we look at the writings of the apostles, because in these texts we don’t know what the word ‘Hades’ is referring to. When Hades is mentioned in the writings of the apostles, it is in fairly general terms. In some contexts, we can assume it means Sheol, like in Acts 2 when Peter is preaching to Jews in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Peter was presumably speaking to people in their local dialect, in the same way Jesus did when he taught. However, when it’s used in 1 Corinthians 15, it isn’t clear if Paul means Hades or Sheol. We might assume that he means Sheol, and that the early church carried the understanding of post death punishment presented by Jesus in his teachings, and the word ‘Hades’ became a by-word for Sheol, when Greek speaking people started to join the church, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.

 

In 2 Peter 2, we find the word ‘Tartarus’ in the Greek, which in most Bibles is variously translated as ‘Hell’, ‘the pit’, ‘the abyss’ and ‘the underworld’. However, Tartarus is a realm within the Greek mythology of Hades, and so in this instance, Peter is deliberately leaning away from the Jewish belief about Sheol, and reinforcing the Greek mythological understanding of Hades, which as I mentioned earlier, Christians and Jews don’t technically believe in.

 

This shows that there are two different views of post death punishment at play in the New Testament. The use of a specifically Greek Hades in the writings of the apostles may be intentional, after all, the early church was spreading and planting in places where people spoke Greek. Sheol wouldn’t have meant anything to Greek speaking Christians, but by referring to Hades, the apostles were speaking in language and terms that Greek speakers would be able to understand. It makes sense that the apostles would have appropriated Hades as a place holder for Sheol, but they were still separate beliefs and they didn’t attempt to correct the concept of Hades, with that of Sheol, or enforce the understanding that Jesus presented. Peter could have just used the word Hades instead of Tartarus, as a way of speaking about Sheol, but he doesn’t, and by referring to Tartarus specifically, he enforces the Greek mythological view of post death punishment, and deviates from a presumably exact theology. This means that either he believed Hades and Sheol were both true, or that they were just mythological ideas, that were figurative and weren’t theologically precise. I think Christians tend to see Sheol and Hades in this way, treating them as inconsequential mythologies, or lesser versions of Hell, which will ultimately be consolidated into an ultimate Hell, which they are familiar with. Hades and Sheol may be mentioned in some translations of the Bible, but I think we go to where Hell is mentioned and we take our truth from there.

This brings us to Gehenna… which I will follow up on in the next post!

 

Text taken from “Unanswerable: Exploring the Complexities of the Christian Faith and Biblical Truth”, which is available from Amazon, and from all good book shops. An audiobook is also available at https://mindmole.bandcamp.com/music