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Hell (noun) Old English hel, helle, "abode of the
dead, place of torment for the wicked," from
Proto-Germanic haljō "the underworld"
1): a nether world
in which the dead continue to exist
2): the
realm of the devil and demons in which condemned people suffer
everlasting punishment
3):
a place or state of misery, torment, or wickedness
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Hell
us a word that comes to us
from the Old English where it means "hidden". The Christian doctrine
of Hell
is infinitely extreme and dreadfully fearful with respect to the
fate of unbelievers. If we limit ourselves to what the Bible implies, Heaven is located somewhere up in
the sky and Hell is located deep in the Earth.
Hell
is primarily a Christian concept, evoking images of the selections
of new Jewish arrivals at a Nazi concentration camp. Christian
tradition portrays the recently deceased as lining up before Saint
Peter to be either rewarded with Heaven or condemned to Hell.
Christian doctrine says that after
descending into Hell, Jesus ascended to Heaven where he sits
at God’s right hand.
If
this is so,
we have to ask (as many
have),
Exactly
where is he sitting?”
"Where is
Heaven? and “Where is Hell?"
Every time the Bible mentions a location for Hell, it is
“downward”. The world knows that the roaring fires of magma are all
that can be found in the depths of the Earth, but Christians
continue to think of Hell as being located in that general area or
direction. Psalm 63:9 actually says that those who go to hell
are literally going into the “lowest parts of the earth.”
According to The Jewish Encyclopedia,
Sheol (Hebrew for hell)
is the place of the dead and it is divided into as many as five
compartments and it is described as man's eternal house.
1t is spoken of as a land with gates.
Here the dead meet without distinction of rank or
condition—the rich and the poor, the pious and the wicked, the old
and the young, the master and the slave. The dead continue after a
fashion their earthly life, yet they are mere shadows. Still, on
occasion, the dwellers in Sheol have the gift of making known their
thoughts and feelings.
The highest
division in Sheol was known as the "Bosom of Abraham."
The worst was known as Gehenna or Tophet.
The New Testament speaks of Hell as being divided into two parts
- Paradise (Luke 16:22-23) and Prison (I
Peter 4:18-19. The Jewish Encyclopedia says that Hell(Sheol)
is the place of the dead and is divided into as many as five
sections with varying degrees of pleasure or suffering.
In the Bible, the four words from which the word hell
is translated are:
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Hell is divided into as many as five sections, with varying degrees of pleasure and suffering.
In the Bible, there
are four words from which the word hell is translated they are:
1) Sheol (Hebrew) which occurs 65 times in the Hebrew Manuscripts of the Old Testament, and it means the place of the dead soul or the place of the dead body, depending on the context.
2) Hades (Greek) occurs 11 times in the Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament. Hades is the world of the dead in Greek myth. The myth says that the dead are ferried across the River Styx by the boatman Charon. On the other side they go either to the Elesian Fields or Tartarus. One is place of delight, the other a place of suffering. Jesus declares that the gates of Hell shall not withstand his mission, (Matt. 15:19.
3) Gehenna (Hebrew) occurs 12 times in the Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament. The word is derived from the Hebrew word. gehinnom - the Valley of the sons of Hinnom- a valley near Jerusalem where, at one time or another, children were sacrificed by fire in connection with pagan rites. For years, this valley was used as the city dump. A fire was constantly kept alight there to burn up and consume all of the city’s unwanted rubbish. In later Jewish writings Gehenna came to mean the place of punishment for sinners (Assumption of Moses 10:10; 2 Esdras 7:36). It is Jesus who uses the Greek word gehenna 11 out of the 12 times it appears. James (James 3:6) uses it clearly in an allegorical sense.
4) Tartarus (Greek) occurs only once in the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in the following verse. For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell (tartarus) and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment.(2 Peter 2:4) This is clearly a reference to the Greek myth in which a deep abyss was created to be used to imprison the Titans and other eternal beings the gods of Olympus considered a threat..Later it became a place in which souls were judged after death and where the wicked received divine punishment.
delight, the other a place of suffering.
In Matt.15:19,Jesus declares that the
gates of Hell shall not withstand his mission.
In The Odyssey, Homer's directions gives that place of
the dead spirits is located in England because it
is cloudy and gloomy when compared with sun-shiny
Greece, were that Hell, or Hades, is located underground and is ruled over by Hades,
Pluto or Dis — all names for the same god. It was located on the
other side of the river Styx. On the other side of the river were
either the Elesian Fields or Tartarus. One is place of
delight, the other a place of suffering.
To
reach Hades, one is rowed across the river Styx by Charon who is
paid for his services by the coins placed on the dead person’s eyes.
Those who lacked the proper bribe for Charon were condemned to wander as Earth-bound on the near
bank of the river Styx for eternity.
According to a 2018 Pew Research Center on religion and public life,
only a small minority of New Agers believe in the existence of Hell. |
Hell