What the Hades?! (Part 2)

What are we to make of the word gehenna, which is the word translated as "hell"?

Yesterday, I started a series on the topic of “hell.” I contend that the modern concept of “hell” for many is a far stretch from what the ancient Jewish text of Scripture teaches. And I believe this is due to a few reasons: 1) not knowing the original terminology used throughout Scripture, 2) the conflation of different biblical terms, and, finally, 3) being driven by a post-biblical medieval ideology inconsistent with the Jewish narrative of Scripture.

In this post here, I want to take a look at the term gehenna (what usually gets translated as “hell”).

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I’ve already laid out that, to translate the Greek word hades as “hell” is a misnomer. Again, hades is the Greek version of the Hebrew sheol, and it is simply a neutral place for the dead. This means it is not a place where the unrighteous are sent for eternal, conscious, post-mortem punishment. That is not the ancient Jewish concept.

But what of the word gehenna?

I noted in my first article that the word gehenna is only used 12 times in the whole of the New Testament — 11 by Jesus in the synoptic Gospels, 1 in the epistle of James.

That’s it.

Of course, noting that a word is not oft-utilized doesn’t mean the concept is completely unimportant. But it is worth mentioning that the actual word for “hell” shows up minimally.

Here is what I believe happens: phrases in the Gospels, such as “eternal punishment” and “everlasting destruction,” get interpreted outside the Jewish context of Scripture, and, then, that inaccurate concept gets applied to the term gehenna.

This leads to forming a view of “hell” like eternal conscious torment.

Confused?

Well, let’s look at the term gehenna in the synoptic Gospels. Jesus himself uses the specific word the most.

For starters, there is an actual background from which the term gehenna is derived. It’s not a word or concept that came into existence in the time of Jesus. The word gehenna is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew phrase “Valley of Ben Hinnom.” This phrase, Valley of Ben Hinnom, is connected to Jeremiah’s words in Jer 7:30-34 and 19:1-9. Read those passages to see the horrible descriptions of what would happen to the Israelites in the midst of the Babylonian invasion. The slain Israelites would be buried in this particular valley outside Jerusalem and their carcasses would become food for the birds and animals. Yikes!

Not only was it a place identified with destruction — dead bodies being buried everywhere — but it was also one associated with the defilement of child sacrifice (see Jer 7:31 and 2 Kings 23:10).

A terrible site, indeed!

But here is the kicker: This Valley of Ben Hinnom (Hebrew), or Valley of Gehenna (Greek), was an actual place that existed just outside the city of Jerusalem. This is key.

Now there is some contention as to whether this Valley of Gehenna was a place where the city’s waste was burned, which would explain the wording “fire of gehenna [hell]” (i.e., Matt 18:9). What we can know for sure is that the imagery of fire is connected with the words of Isa 66:19-24 (see v24 in particular). This Old Testament passage tells us that the people from the nations will be brought to a restored Jerusalem, a whole new setting established after the Babylonian judgment, and this restored Jerusalem is identified by the phrase “new heavens and new earth.” In that day, these people will also be able to “go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind” (Isa 66:24).

It is these words of the prophet Isaiah that are drawn upon as we read Jesus’s statement in Mark 9:42-50: “It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into gehenna, where the fire never goes out” (vs43). Jesus continues, “It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into gehenna, where ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched’” (vs47-48).

What can we conclude from all of this? a) As mentioned above, gehenna was an actual place just outside Jerusalem where bodies would be buried and fed upon by animals and b) Jesus connected this Valley of Gehenna to a place where fire continually burned (“is not quenched”) and worms (literally a kind of maggot) feasted upon the bodies thrown there.

Gehenna, which still existed in Jesus’s own day, was a place of destruction and fire. Plenty of Jews walked it day in and day out, including Jesus. They knew exactly what was being referenced in Jesus’s warning.

And as many will point out — including the likes of scholars Edward Fudge and Andrew Perriman — the first century Jewish historian, Josephus, used such language in describing how this valley of gehenna was filled with the dead bodies of the Jews following the Roman ransack of Jerusalem in the Jewish War of CE 66-73:

Now the seditious at first gave orders that the dead should be buried out of the public treasury, as not enduring the stench of their dead bodies. But afterwards, when they could not do that, they had them cast down from the walls into the valleys beneath. (The Wars of the Jews, 5.12.3)

Josephus is describing a situation that Jesus had pointed to himself. For Josephus, it happened in his lifetime during the Jewish war with Rome. For Jesus himself, it was a future event.

But here is the big question: In Jesus’s use of the word gehenna, was he speaking of his own historical setting and specifically what would happen to the unfaithful, apostate Jews as they faced judgment under the hand of the Romans? Or was he using the imagery of such an infamously despised and forsaken place of destruction to speak of a far-future judgment upon all humanity?

I lean towards the former, primarily because I it is best to situate the Scripture in its own historical context. I do not believe Jesus carried some abstract message to be applied supra-historically. It’s not that Jesus’s teachings are not valid for contexts outside the first-century, Jewish framework. Nor am I saying the Scripture speaks of no future judgment (I'll come on to that in the future, no pun intended, considering the words of Rev 19-21).

However, in my study, I have become convinced that a narrative-historical understanding of Scripture provides a better understanding of embedding Jesus’s words within his own context. Jesus came as a Jew, thought like a Jew, spoke like a Jew, lived like a Jew, ate like a Jew, even held a Jewish worldview and theology, if you will. As missiologist Andrew Walls states, “The Word became flesh and spoke Aramaic; presumably with a Galilean accent” (The Missionary Movement in Christian History, p173).

And as the Jewish Messiah, with his deeply Jewish bones, Jesus spoke directly into that context. He was contextualized within a particular setting. That’s the wonder of the incarnation.

Still, even if one wants to argue Jesus’s words are simply drawing upon imagery in his day to speak of a more abstract, future period of judgment, that’s understandable. But we also need to consider the nature of the gehenna fire.

What is this fire? Does it, at some point, completely burn up that which is being burned or does it continually (“eternally”) torment?

The idea most connected to the fire of gehenna is that of destruction. Not torment, but destruction. If one does a quick search of the term destruction in the New Testament, you will see just how often that word is used to describe the judgment of God. The concept is not one of everlasting conscious torment, but of the finality of the judgment.

Fire burns up, consumes, and destroys. And I believe Jesus’s message — again, one steeped in the Jewish storyline and theology — was that the Valley of Gehenna would be a place where judgment would be applied by the Romans to the unfaithful Jewish people who had forsaken the one true God. Not only that, but it would be one highlighted by the destructive forces of death, fire, and worms feeding upon the dead bodies.

Still, if one projects the gehenna statements into a future judgment, the overwhelming focus of Scripture remains: fire burns up, consumes, and destroys. This fire has an eternal quality to it, in that it is final; but it is not eternal in the sense of continually tormenting the unfaithful.

My hope is that this article gives more understanding into the word “hell,” or gehenna, and the concept of destruction attributed to the language of fire.

If interested in reading beyond my own brief thoughts, check out Edward Fudge's works such as Hell: A Final Word, and Andrew Perriman's, Hell and Heaven in Narrative Perspective. Both have provided helpful reflections.