Monthly Archives: August 2024

Gehenna and the Persistence of Mistranslation

Here’s a great piece, by the brilliant Jacob Wright, on the unsustainability of the Hell doctrine. This is from one of his Facebook posts.

Unfortunately, the comments on this piece from the usual bunch of Infernalists[1] matched exactly his predictions. Obviously these people have it so set in their minds that their Hell exists, that they are completely unable/unwilling to countenance any other opinion[2].

Over to Jacob:


“Hell” is not in the Bible. “Gehenna” is. “Hell” is a mistranslation. “Gehenna” is the right translation. Either you’re ignorant of this, or you’ve read it and yet choose to deliberately go with the mistranslation. Now you know.

The concept of “hell”, or eternal torment in the afterlife is literally and exactly nowhere in the Old Testament. “Gehenna” however is in the OT just a few times. It is a literal place, right outside of Jerusalem, where Israel practiced gross idolatry and later became called “the Valley of Slaughter” because of its reputation of idolatry and loathsomeness. Dead bodies were thrown in Gehenna and they were eaten by worms and turned to ashes by fire. This provides the context of Jesus usage of “Gehenna”.

Jesus quotes Isaiah when talking about Gehenna when he says “where the worm doesn’t die and the fire is not quenched”. He’s referring back to the valley of Gehenna, directly quoting Isaiah 66:24, which says “…the dead bodies, the worms that eat them up will not die and the fire that consumes them will not be quenched.” This literally happened. Dead bodies were eaten up by unquenchable fire and worms fed on the dead bodies until they were consumed to nothing.

Interesting thing is, go to that Valley of Slaughter today and look in it and you will not see the fire still burning nor will you see immortal worms feeding on miraculously preserved dead bodies. The bodies are gone, the worms are gone, the fire is gone. The point is that the fire would not be deterred in burning up the dead bodies to nothing, the worms would not be deterred in eating up the dead bodies to nothing. And keep in mind these are mortal dead bodies in this life, not immortal conscious souls in the afterlife.

To read eternal torment into that is either gross ignorance or deliberate deception.

Even “eternal fire” or “eternal punishment” is a mistranslation, as “eternal” is a mistranslation of the Greek word “aionios”, which does not mean “never-ending” or anything of the sort. It means “of the age to come”, or to Plato, who may have invented the word, it means something which has its origin in God, or the unseen realm. It has nothing to do with ongoing, never-ending time. “Other-worldly” is a pretty good translation of “aionios”. “Eternal” is not.

There is literally no verse in scripture that can prop up the ridiculous, pagan, non-Jewish concept of eternal torment.

Spread the word to try to get rid of the ignorance on this issue.

This is not some new politically correct idea that people are making up because they don’t like hard biblical truths. There is a long list of early fathers who rejected eternal torment because they understood these correct meanings of words, they didn’t believe in the immortality of the soul (a pagan Greek belief), they had a touch of sanity (a good thing to have for theology), and they recognized that the scriptures either taught conditional immortality and/or final universal reconciliation. Eternal torment was the minority belief in the early church, and amongst those who were less familiar with the original meanings of the text. It did not become the prominent belief until after 500 AD, with the help of the violent organized institutional church under Constantine.

Hell is not a good translation of Gehenna and it never will be. Gehenna was a real place with a real history in the Jewish mind, and it must be read in that context. Once it is read in that context, the idea of eternal torment falls to pieces, as it should.

I predict now that people will come on here quoting mistranslated verses ripped out of their context to try to prop up their beloved tradition of humans being tortured forever for not believing the same things as them. It is an evil and demonic idea which finds no basis in reason, love, justice, the scriptures, or the universe we observe. I have found that most of these people have not studied without confirmation bias nor have seriously considered the existential weight of this issue. They just accept what they are told. Nor have they probably ever had a dearly loved one that died an unbeliever. For them, it is completely fine that a bunch of dumb humans they don’t know or have empathy for burn alive forever. Such a thing they wouldn’t give a second thought or shed one tear over.

It is normal for us to not want to go through the discomfort of questioning and reconstructing what we believe, because of the fear drilled into us for years, or facing the rebuke of our religious community, so we protect the only thing we’ve known and stay uncontroversially within the bounds of groupthink.

Hell is not a good translation of Gehenna and it never will be. Gehenna was a real place with a real history in the Jewish mind, and it must be read in that context. Once it is read in that context, the idea of eternal torment falls to pieces, as it should.

– Jacob M. A. Wright, used here with his kind permission

 

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
1 Infernalists: People who believe in a literal place of torment – ‘Hell’ – that lasts forever and ever after death, and that the people who will be in there are everyone who does not believe the exact same things that they themselves believe.
2 So why aren’t these people out shouting it from the rooftops??

The Outsiders

Be careful of listening to the outsiders.

People who only know you from a distance.
People who aren’t invested in your life.
People who profit from your stress or pain.
People who take more than they give.

The news… outsider.
The Bible… outsider.
The pastor… outsider.
The influencer… outsider.

Nothing outside of you should rule or define what’s inside of you.
Instead, filter and discern everything through the insiders.

The Divine within… insider.
Your chosen family… insider.
Your inner voice… insider.

Live and love, only from the inside out… always.

 – Chris Kratzer, shared with his kind permission