{"id":279,"date":"2011-03-14T13:19:19","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T17:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/?p=279"},"modified":"2011-03-14T13:19:19","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T17:19:19","slug":"banned-question-should-a-biblical-hell-be-taken-literally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/?p=279","title":{"rendered":"BANNED QUESTION: Should a Biblical Hell be Taken Literally?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is a passage from the book, <\/em>BANNED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BIBLE<\/a>. Visit Chalice Press<\/a>, order the<\/em> BANNED QUESTIONS books online or by phone and use the promotional code “BANNEDMAR” for a 40% discount.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hell, Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus are all labeled as \u0093Hell.\u0094 By most Christians. Are they really the same? Are they all places of fiery torment? Are such things to be taken literally, metaphorically, or as myth?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

David Lose<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

These places aren\u0092t all the same, but they\u0092re similar enough that you can understand why people lump them together. In brief, Sheol and Hades represent the realm of the dead, the place where both good people and bad go after death. Gehenna and Tartarus, on the other hand, are reserved for wicked people and are places of punishment. Hell, a word that comes from Old English, has become a catch-all phrase for the others, but for the last two, especially.<\/p>\n

On the whole, the Bible doesn\u0092t talk a whole lot about any of these places, and so I\u0092m a little leery of giving them much significance in our own theology. In fact, I get downright suspicious of folks that seem to like<\/em> talking about eternal punishment, as that seems out of sync with Jesus\u0092 emphasis on God\u0092s love.<\/p>\n

Too often in the Church\u0092s history, hell has been used to scare people into doing what the church wants them to. For this reason, some people think we\u0092ve outgrown the usefulness of concepts like hell and damnation. Others, however, would argue that we wouldn\u0092t appreciate heaven without the threat of hell.<\/p>\n

In so far as hell depicts ultimate separation from God, I tend to think that whether it\u0092s an actual physical place or a metaphor, it\u0092s a good place to avoid. On that score, I take hope from the Apostle Paul\u0092s declaration that \u0093neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord\u0094 (Romans 8:38-39). Sounds good to me.
\nGary Peluso-Verdend<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, the meaning of these words is not the same. Rather, we have different symbols from different symbol systems.
\nSheol is a Hebrew word, found in the pre-6th<\/sup> century BCE portions of the Old Testament. Ancient Judaism did not conceive of human beings as part body and part soul. Rather, human beings were understood as flesh animated by the breath of God. Whatever existence a person has after death was thought to be in a place called Sheol, a place of shades, where there is no consciousness. Sheol contains neither pleasures nor torments.<\/p>\n

During Israel\u0092s captivity in Babylon, Jews were exposed to Zoroastrianism, a religion that includes a belief in resurrection and a two-place afterlife\u0097the equivalent of heaven and hell. By New Testament times, belief in resurrection, heaven, and hell were widespread\u0097albeit not universal\u0097in Judaism.<\/p>\n

Hell as a place of torment and stink became well developed many centuries after the Bible by the Christian writer Dante Alighieri, but sometimes the roots of a mythical or non-physical place are found in real places. Gehenna, as a place of torment for evil people, was associated with the Valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where the city dumped its garbage.<\/p>\n

Very important beliefs are associated with hell, such as sin, judgment, consequence, resurrection. Christianity\u0097or any other religion\u0097is like a language; one must understand each symbol within a greater grammar.<\/p>\n

Jason Boyett<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, they are not the same. Four words\u0097the Hebrew word sheol<\/em> and the Greek words hades, gehenna,<\/em> and tartaroo<\/em>\u0097have been translated as the English word hell<\/em>. We think of hell as a fiery place of torment for sinners, but only gehenna<\/em> fits that description.<\/p>\n

Sheol<\/em> was an all-purpose term referring to the shadowy realm of the dead (\u0093the grave\u0094), and earlier Old Testament books seem to indicate that everyone goes there\u0097not just the wicked. In the New Testament, the Greek word hades<\/em> is used interchangeably with sheol<\/em>\u0097it\u0092s the place of the dead. Tartaroo<\/em> appears only once in the Bible, in 2 Peter 2:4. It refers to Tartarus, the dungeon-like netherworld in Greek mythology filled with suffering and torment. The context indicates it is where demons reside.<\/p>\n

The hell-as-torture-chamber idea comes from gehenna<\/em>, which Jesus described as a destination for sinners. This word originates with a Hebrew name, Ge-Hinnom<\/em>, which refers to the Hinnom Valley, a garbage dump outside Jerusalem. Trash, animal carcasses, and the bodies of criminals were dumped there, and the valley burned continuously\u0097an evocative image of hell.
\nDo we take the idea of a burning hell literally? Jesus certainly spoke as if it were a real place. But keep in mind that the idea of a dualistic afterlife\u0097a hell for sinners and heaven for the righteous\u0097was a relatively new idea to Judaism, possibly due to the influence of Zoroastrianism during the Babylonian Exile. It was a theological departure from the ancient faith of the Jewish patriarchs.<\/p>\n

Craig Detweiler<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

While death is a certain fact, it is also prompts an air of mystery. What happens when our hearts stop beating?\u00a0\u00a0 Is there something on the other side of life?\u00a0 Descriptions of hell (and heaven) are all rather speculative, more poetic than precise.<\/p>\n

The Hebrew word, \u0093Sheol,\u0094 describes the grave that awaits us all.\u00a0 It is a shadowy place, something we\u0092ve all glimpsed at a funeral, but never experienced from the inside. Our bodies are all bound for Sheol, irrespective of our beliefs or practices.\u00a0\u00a0 None escape physical death.<\/p>\n

When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into the Greek language, the word \u0093Hades\u0094 was chosen to describe the ground or pit our bodies are bound for.\u00a0 The Greek notion of Hades was more of a shady, mythological place than a physical grave.<\/p>\n

Within Greek mythology, Tartarus, is a place of judgment and torment, a pit much farther down than the more benign Hades. Only once does the word Tartarus appear in scripture.\u00a0 In 2 Peter 2:4, God punishes sinful angels by throwing them into Tarturus, a dark pit reserved for judgment.<\/p>\n

When the Bible was translated into English, Hades and Sheol were translated as Hell. Unfortunately, such a reference comes across as much more loaded than \u0093the grave.\u0094 It had eternal associations rather than tangible, temporal or physical meaning.
\nThe associations of hell with a fire, torment, and eternal anonymity start coming into play with a term like \u0093Gehenna.\u0094\u00a0 It is a destination we would all want to avoid.\u00a0\u00a0 It is a place where people who lack family, resources, and significance are discarded.\u00a0\u00a0 No one wants to feel so unloved, unacknowledged, or unnoticed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a passage from the book, BANNED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BIBLE. Visit Chalice Press, order the BANNED QUESTIONS books online or by phone and use the promotional code “BANNEDMAR” for a 40% discount. Hell, Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus are all labeled as \u0093Hell.\u0094 By most Christians. Are they really the same? Are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,42,48,11,17,10,37,1,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianpiatt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}