Sending "Hell" (New Testament) to Hell in a Hand Basket

After some of the comments I got on my last post concerning whether Xns should be telling others their love ones have gone to hell. I decided it was time to finish of my sending "hell" to hell in a Hand Basket series by looking at "hell" in the New Testament having looked at the Old Testament some months ago.

The CRI/Voice Institute website has a good article about the expression "he descended into hell" from the apostles creed, which covers much of what I think about hell in the New Testament. Here is part of that article...

There are two perspectives necessary to understand this issue, one cultural and historical and the other exegetical. In the old King James Version, the English word “hell” actually was used to translate two different words and two very different concepts. One term was the word gehenna, (e.g., Matt 5:22). This was adapted from the name of a valley to the south of the Temple in Jerusalem where the city garbage was burned, the “Valley of Hinnom.” Because of the perpetual fires, and also because there had been idols to the Canaanite god Molech erected there to which were offered human sacrifices (2 Kings 23:10), ge hinnom (“valley of Hinnom” in Hebrew) became a symbol for the judgment of God. The fires also came to symbolize that punishment and destruction, and became the more common way to conceptualize “hell” in later Christian tradition.

Another term, and one more relevant to our topic, is the Greek term Hades (e.g., Matt 11:23). This term comes from Greek mythology in which it was the abode of the dead. It was used to translate into Greek the Hebrew concept of Sheol. While in the Old Testament this term was not mythological, it was a metaphorical way to talk about what happened to people when they died. Sheol was simply the place where dead people go. It was almost synonymous with death and especially “grave,” and indeed is used that way in several Old Testament passages, e.g., Psa 49:14: Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; Death shall be their shepherd; straight to the grave they descend, and their form shall waste away; Sheol shall be their home.

In other words, Sheol or Hades was a poetic way to say, “they died and were buried.” It is in this sense that the phrase in the Apostles’ Creed is used, using the ambiguous word “hell” in English, when the more precise idea of Hades actually lies behind the statement. “He descended into hell” then becomes nothing more than a statement that Jesus died and was placed in the tomb, the grave. In Hebrew concepts, they would say he descended into Sheol, that is, was lowered into the grave, or that he slept with the fathers, that is, was placed in a family tomb. It is in that context that the affirmation of the resurrection is so powerful.

Part of the reason for the confusion in the first place is that the Septuagint (the old testament translation used around Jesus time) translated the Hebrew word Sheol as 'Hades', the name for the underworld in Greek mythology which derived from the Egyptian Lake of Fire (see picture below). Since word gehenna reffered to an eternally buring rubbish tip it's easy to see how imagery of these two different ideas could be eventually melded into the modern day understanding of hell.


So what do we do about the images of "hellish" fire in the New Testament? Well, given what we know about our eternally burning rubbish tip this fire does not have to equate to eternal suffering in a lake of fire, it more likely means that what ever goes in there (at whatever time) dies instantly, like the rubbish tip.

Sometimes I think Xns have forgotten how horrible death is. Adding the eternal punishment understanding of hell into the mix just makes you look insensitive at best and stupid at worst.