This goes back to DtC’s earlier point that Luke used the word Hades. Hades was the word used throughout the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible), to translate the Jewish word sheol. In their earliest incarnations, both words described a remarkably similar experience (probably reflecting a general concept prevalent throughout the eastern Mediterranean), in which the dead shuffled around in a dreary state of not-quite-living, with neither joy nor true suffering, deprived of all the feelings of life other than existence (and a general depression).
In the centuries just prior to the birth of Jesus, Jewish theology began to explore the possibility of a more “active” afterlife, with actual reward for good behavior and suffering for bad behavior. In this period, some thought was given to the types of punishment and reward meted out. (In a way that was quite analogous to Dante’s later Divine Commedy with his circles of hell, purgatory, and heaven.) The New Testament passages that describe the torments of fire all use the word gehenna, taken from the imagery that DtC described, above, with the single exception of Luke’s parable. It would seem that DtC would read that as Luke’s way of referring to sheol, against which I would point out that Luke, knowing the Tanakh only from the Septuagint, may not have been familiar with all the nuances of the Hebrew terminology and used a word that would be familiar to his Greek-speaking audience without considering the ways that 21st century scholars would parse it. However, DtC is not simply making up his claim and does have linguistic support for it.
I see that tom has addressed the translation of aionion (which is an adjectival form of aion, meaning “age.” calling somethin aionion is essentially the equivalent of calling it an “age-y” amount of time. It doesn’t really translate precisely into English but it makes sense in Greek.
Moreover, the word translated as “punishment” (kolasin) does not mean “torture” or “torment.” The Greek word actually means “cutting back” or “pruning” as in pruning a tree. Figuratively, it meant “correction,” “chastisement,” or “punishment” in the sense of a legal penalty or sentence. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, Jesus is saying that the bad people will go to an “age-long pruning” or perhaps “age-long penalty.” As with all the other Gehenna references, the penalty is annihilation, not torture.
The citation is in the translations. Gehenna meant one thing, and Sheol/Hades another. I say that Luke’s parable refers to Sheol not only because Hades was the satndard Greek translation of that word but because the parable also references the “Bosom of Abraham” which was a specific region of Sheol, not Gehenna.
Thanks, tom. But my point is that, whatever word the authors used to describe the concept, they all appear to be referring to the same concept – an afterlife featuring fiery punishment for wrongdoing. It seems a stretch to me to argue (as DtC is doing) that because they used different words they must mean entirely different things. To my way of thinking, fiery punishment after death is fiery punishment after death, whatever you choose to call it.
Except that the passage from Matthew 25 specifically references the unrighteous being tossed into a fire:
What are the property prices there these days? As towns get built up I’ve seen some pretty nasty locales turned into pricey subdivisions and if nobody has developed Gehenna yet this could be a gound-floor opportunity.
Look it up where? I see nothing in any Biblical passage to support the idea of “different phases” of the afterlife. (And remember, we are discussing the concept of Hell as it appears in the Bible.)
All I see is the good getting rewarded and the bad receiving a fiery punishment (which may or may not be eternal, depending upon interpretation). The same concept seems to appear in Matthew, Mark, Luke and Revelation (see the passages cited above). I suspect the difference between “Sheol” and “Gehenna” and “Hades” as used by New Testament authors (a critical caveat) is about the same as the difference between “Satan” and “The Devil” and “Lucifer” as used by modern authors (i.e. not much).
I suspect (judging from the context in which the words appear) that “Sheol” and “Gehenna” and “Hades” as used by New Testament authors were all just roughly interchangeable references to the same basic concept of fiery punishment after death.
On re-reading the OP, I would say that we may have gotten a bit sidetracked. The issues of disagreement tend to focus on the aspect of eternal punishment and whether that particular concept arose before Christianity, along with Christianity, or arose within Christianity after the period that the New Testament was written. However, if we set aside the notion of eternal punishment (which was only one aspect sought by the OP), then I think that there is clear evidence that the idea of a flaming punishment is pretty well attested in the New Testament (with some metaphorical allusions to a similar fate from one or two passages in the Old Testament). (Even if we go with the idea that the fires will consume and destroy the evil person, it is pretty clearly more akin to punishment than reward.)
Once we throw “eternal” back into the mix, the question becomes much less clear.
What I meant was that you should look up the individual definition of each word. The “fiery” aspects which you’re so fixated on have explanations in their 1st century Jewish context which do not have to relate to the Christian idea of eternal Hell. If you want to assert that the NT authors used those terms to mean anything different from what they meant in their mainstream historical and cultural context, you need to explain why. " Ge-hinnom means “Valley of Hinnom” in Hebrew/Aramaic. Matthew transliterates the word to Greek as [symbol]geena[/symbol]. When Matthew says “Valley of Hinnom,” and he refers to it in exactly the same way as it was referred to in Jewish eschatology (i.e. as a site of annihilation for the unrighteous), why should you assume that it meant anything else? Gehenna was a physical place name for a specific valley in Jerusalem, it was not otherwordly or a name for anything in an afterlife.
Under the Greek influence of the Hellenistic period, there came to be a belief that Sheol was divided into good parts and bad parts which incorporated somen ideas about temporary punishments and rewards. The good part was called the “Bosom of Abraham,” and that’s where Jesus says that Lazarus went in the Luke’s parable. The fact that Luke referred to a specific part of Sheol ( which was routinely translated into Greek as “Hades”), would seem to confirm that he was talking about Sheol, would it not?
I think you’re getting hung up on some very superficial commonalities (Fire! Fire!) and refusing to look any deeper into linguistic or historical analysis because it doesn’t conform to what you want to believe. I have no dog in this fight. I don’t care if Jesus believed in Hell or not. It’s no skin of my nose either way. I’m just trying to explain what those passages say in Greek and what those places meant in a 1st century Palestinan Jewish context. You haven’t provided a reasn why they should be read any other way. Tell me why Matthew’s use of Gehenna does not refer to the Valley of Hinnon and why when he says that sinners will be cast into flames, we should infer that he means anything different from the common Jewish belief at the time that sinners would be annihilated in the Valley of Hinnom?
If Luke refers to good parts and bad parts of Sheol and calls the good part, the “Bosom of Abraham,” why should we read that as not referring to the common Jewish belief that Sheol divided in exactly that same way?
4 Ezra/2 Esdras(Author, a Palestinian Jew writing at about the same time as Matthew)
Chapter 7:
Assumption of Moses(Author Palestinian Jew writing at about the time that Jesus was born.)
The 1909 Jewish Encyclopedia article on Gehenna notes
and while many of the citations of the article are clearly to the period after Christian beliefs may have had an influence on Jewish thought, several of the references are to texts that were concurrent with the creation of the Christian scriptures or which preceded them.
With the literary allusions that appear in Jeremiah, (and by association, Isaiah) over 500 years earlier, in conjunction with the references in Enoch and the contemporary (if non-scriptural) references in Jewish literature, there is no reason to suppose that the word carried only its literal meaning of the Valley of Hinnon at that time that Luke, Matthew, and Mark used it. (In fact, given Luke’s background and audience, a literal meaning is the least likely one to assign it.)
I don’t have a dog in this fight either, except from an academic perspective.
Seems to me we’re in basic agreement that the New Testament does reference a fiery punishment for sinners in the afterlife. May or may not be eternal, depending on your interpretation.
Getting back to the OP, we might also consider where the punishment will take place. Most folks today envision Hell as being some underworld cavern. To my knowledge, the New Testament doesn’t support that. The location is either unspecified, or in the “Valley of Hinnom” as noted by DtC.
I already answered this. The word translated as “punishment” does not mean tormented. Literally, aionon kolasin means “age-lasting pruning.” The “punishment” was death.
Sorry, it seems to have already been developed. 