There’s a long tradition in Christian circles of painting vivid images of hell in order to scare people into acting right, believing the right things and buying books. In fact, some people claim that the popularity of early colonial pastors who gave particularly vivid or gruesome hell and brimstone sermons was due to attendees coming seeking a good scare and some entertainment. The colonial version of horror movies, they say. Believe it or not, to this day those people who stand on street corners telling everyone that they are going to hell occasionally get someone to believe them and pledge their lives to Christ. In fact, so great is the human desire to avoid hell, I’m going to use it as my own excuse for procrastinating this blog post all day long. After all, today is the day that we actually talk about hell.

So, what the hell is hell anyhow? Aside from having your mother in law come to visit, that is. Well, there are 4 words that have been translated as “hell” in the bible. The Hebrew sheol and the Greek hades, Gehenna and tartarus. Going back to the Septuagint (the Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures used between 200 BC and 300 AD), we see that sheol is always translated as “hades”, so for our purposes we will consider these two words to be synonyms. Both sheol and hades are simply the place of the dead. In Greek mythology, everyone – good and bad – went to hades when they died. Mostly it was thought that the breath of a person continued to exist in hades but had no consciousness.

Sheol

This idea that in the grave there was no conciousness is also reflected in verses using sheol such as Psalm 6:5 – “For the dead do not remember you. Who can praise you from the grave (sheol)?” and Isaiah 38:18 – “For the grave (sheol) cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness.”

Psalm 89:48 speaks of sheol as the destination of all men rather than the domain of the wicked: “Who can live and not see death, or who can escape the power of the grave (sheol)?” In Genesis 37:35 Jacob refuses to be comforted over the loss of his son Joseph saying, “I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave (sheol). ” Repeatedly in the Psalms, the psalmist credits God with saving him from the depths of Sheol (ex Ps 18:5, 30:3). In fact, in Psalm 139, the psalmist says that God himself is in sheol: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?  If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold,  You are there.”

Modern translations translate sheol either directly – using the word Sheol – or use the word grave. The King James Version translated sheol as hell when it was spoken of in reference to the wicked and as grave in other places. Here’s a list of all the bible verses containing sheol. Since most modern translations do not translate the word sheol as hell, the word and notion of hell have pretty much disappeared from the Old Testament. Continue reading “What the Hell?”

It’s Hell Week! And no, there’s no burpies or hazing involved. Unless you consider discussions of ancient Greek a form of hazing. But don’t worry, I’ll make it easy. The only thing going down here are old ideas about hell that we are well rid of.

Our first Hell Week installment showed that nowhere in the bible does it actually say that hell or punishment or torment is eternal. It’s for an “age” – an undefined, but limited period of time. Today we’re going start by looking at just what the nature of this “punishment” is anyways – including examining more closely the issue of fire and the lake of fire. So, let’s go back to where we left off yesterday: aionian kolasin. This is the phrase Jesus used in Matthew 25:46 when speaking of judgment: “Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment (aionian kolasin), but the righteous into eternal life (aionian zoen).” *

Punishment vs Chastisement

Yesterday, I quoted the 1st century Jewish historian Josephus who said of both the Pharisees and the Essenes that they taught adialeiptos timoria for the wicked in the after life. Adialeiptos indicates everlasting or unceasing – as opposed to aionian which as we discussed yesterday denotes a limited period of time. Should we then understand that Jesus is saying that the wicked will be sent away until they have suffered enough to pay off their debt for their wickedness? A sort of tit-for-tat, sin for suffering exchange between God and sinners? Not at all. It is significant that both the Pharisees and Essenes speak of timoria while Jesus uses the word kolasin. According to Aristotle (Rhetoric 1.10.17): “kolasis is corrective, timoria  alone is the satisfaction of the inflictor.” We see these words used just this way in other Greek texts of the day – timoria indicates vengeful punishment. Kolasis always indicates correction or chastisement. They are similar in that they both deal in some way with a form of punishment, but clearly not interchangeable. Timoria is for the benefit of the one who inflicts it – generally in repayment for some wrong done. Kolasis is ultimately for the benefit of the one being chastised. So, when Jesus says that the wicked with be sent to aionian kolasis, he is saying that they will be sent for correction, not simply for punishment and suffering. God’s purposes are always redemptive.

The Lake of . . . Divine Consecration? Continue reading “Eternal Punishment or An Age of Chastisement?”

Let’s pretend that you are a bible translator and you are working on creating an English translation of the bible from ancient (kione/biblical) Greek texts. And let’s say that there is one word – a noun – with a clear, agreed upon meaning. Every time you come across this word, all you have to do is substitute the English version of the word into the text and it works just fine. There’s just one hitch: if you do this your translation will be accurate and faithful to the ancient manuscripts but it will practically erase a long-held church teaching. Do you go with what the text says and use that one word in your translation? Or do you come up with a dozen or more other ways to translate that word in ways that leave the church teaching undisturbed?

Aion*

This isn’t a hypothetical issue here. There really is a koine Greek noun which has one agreed upon meaning, yet has been translated dozens of different ways – presumably because translating it directly would almost totally remove the teaching of eternal hell from the bible. The word is aoin. It is the root word for the English word eon. The one word that can be used to translate it is “age”. It simply implies an undefined period of time. It has been used variously to describe everything from a few days to the span of a life to time longer than we can imagine. But like eon, it always indicates a period of time with a beginning and end. (Here’s a list of quotes from various biblical scholars saying the same thing. Here’s the wikipedia entry on the word aion. For an examination of how the word was used in ancient times by extra-biblical authors, go here. Or go here and scroll down to the section titled “The Greek Classics” about a quarter of the way down the page.) Continue reading “A Word With One Meaning or 30?”