So now let's tackle the word that I think causes the MOST confusion when it comes to this hot topic: the Greek word "Gehenna."
In the King James Version of the Bible, the ancient Greek words "Hades" and "Gehenna" are both translated as 'Hell' about 10 times each. I already mentioned that translating 'Hades' into 'Hell' is a little weird because Hades was not thought of as a place of "eternal punishment" and supposedly all humans -- bad and good -- went there when they died. I think that 'Gehenna' is actually weirder though. Why? Because it was an actual place (see picture above). It is an actual place. By ''actual place," I mean a place that you can physically go to now, in this life. You can go right now if you want, the place is still there -- south of ancient Jerusalem.
The Greek word 'Gehenna' is really just a borrowed word from Hebrew. It comes from the words "gay'," meaning "valley", and "Hinnom," meaning "lamentation." This "Valley of Lamentation" was a literally a garbage dump south of the city that the Jews threw all variety of unwanted things into. It was THE garbage dump, and not just a dump, but an incinerator as well. The fires in the Valley of Hinnom were constantly kept burning; sulfur was added to them to achieve this.
About the burning of the Hebrews' "garbage": Ancient Jews took their laws very seriously (they were given to them by God after all), and the worst criminals were stripped of all of their rights -- even the right to an honorable death and burial. These "sinners" were instead treated just like the rest of the city's garbage; they were cast into the Valley of Hinnom to burn.
Any of this sounding familiar? Fires that never go out? Fires kept burning with brimstone (sulfur)? A fiery place where sinners are "cast" when they die?
Yeah, that was Gehenna, and every Jew living at the time of Jesus knew what it meant when Jesus spoke about it: utter disgrace. To be cast into Gehenna was probably the greatest fear of most Jews. It meant that all your honor was gone, your family's honor was gone, and all memory of you was marked with shame. It was a punishment that would linger even after you died.
But Gehenna was not a place of eternal, conscious torment. Yes, the fires were "eternal." Yes, the damned, the condemned, those who were judged as sinners, were thrown there. But from the texts that we have, both in the Bible and from other documents of the same time period, there is nothing that even remotely points to a belief of ancient Jews and Greeks that they would be in physical pain forever.
So the next question is, if the Bible doesn't speak of a place like the "Hell" that we are so familiar with today, where did that concept come from?
Tune in next time...
[to be continued]






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