In the last post I gave a brief intro to some important concepts for reading the Bible. I'm guessing more people might end up reading this post though, because it's a fiery topic, so here's a super fast recap.
The Bible was written for us, but not to us, in an ancient language 2000+ years ago, and the original audience had more in common with ancient Egypt than our modern world. Because of that, we have to do some work to understand what it all meant back then, otherwise all kinds of manic misreading can occur.
For example: hell.
When we read the word ‘hell’ in our Bibles, we automatically think of a place of fiery torment, where evil people go when they die. That picture however, is actually thanks to some powerful imagery we inherited from poets and artists in medieval times - ‘Dante's Inferno’ and the like—long after the Bible was written. And sadly this black and white, heavenly-bliss vs eternal-torment imagery has also been a favourite ‘motivational’ tool of too many preachers in modern times:
‘Where would you end up if you walked out of here and got hit by a Mack truck?’
I don't know why they still do it, personally. Jesus never tried to scare non-believers into change. But that's beside the point.
The point is that Jesus' original hearers lived centuries before medieval times and would have pictured something entirely different.
The word most often translated as ‘hell’ in your Bible occurs in a handful of places, mostly spoken by Jesus to an audience of fellow-Jews. Here are a couple of examples:
Matthew 7:13 ‘You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way.’
Or Matthew 5:30 ’If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.’
(Surprisingly I don't know anyone who's taken that one literally.)
The other occurrences of the word follow the same general tone as these.
Jesus didn't actually say the word ‘hell’ of course (because he didn't speak English). The word Jesus used when he gave these warnings was ‘Gehenna,’ which was the name of an actual place outside of Jerusalem. A local, well-known place that many Jews had seen and walked past. And as far as our record goes, the word was only used when talking to Jews who would have known the place. Almost all of the occurrences are from the lips of Jesus when he was talking to Jews. The only exception is James 3:6, which was written by James, but also written to Jews. The other books in the New Testament, whose readers included Greeks and Romans, avoided the term.
Because non-Jews wouldn't have understood the metaphor.
So every time the word ‘Gehenna’ was used, Gehenna was the place that came to mind. An actual local landmark, not some metaphysical place of eternal torment.
The question is Why? What is the significance of Gehenna? Why was it used as a warning? Here we need a lesson in ancient Israelite history, which isn't taught in our modern schools today (understandably) but was taught to Jewish kids back then.
Gehenna is another name for the Valley of Hinnom, which for Jesus' listeners did have a very ominous ring to it but for a different reason to our own. It was a place where criminals were buried and burned—failed revolutionaries and such. That's already a solid warning: ‘Be like them and you'll end up there too. It's better to lose a hand than your whole life.’ But that's only scratching the surface.
For the Jews, the word ‘Gehenna’ also brought to mind one of the darkest points in Israel's history, the point where Israel sacrificed their own children. The Valley of Hinnom was the place where child-sacrifices were made (and you can find this if you do a search for the phrase in the Old Testament). It was also the time when Israel was arguably furthest from God's ways, because God had told them over and over that he abhorred the practice of human sacrifice (strongest Hebrew word possible). Possibly the worst sin of them all. Israel was sacrificing children in worship to one of the gods of the neighboring nations.
It was a very dark time, a horrible blot in their own history, and one they looked back on with serious shame. When Jesus brings up this memory it's not a threat of eternal torment. It's a powerful warning and judgment on Israel that if they keep doing what they're doing, they are walking the path of evil, far from God. ‘The path of Gehenna is wide, and many people find it.’ What is the path of Gehenna? Violence and greed, sacrificing others to get your way.
You don't have to look hard to find that in our own culture, and in our own hearts.
This warning was strikingly relevant for the Jews too because at that time Israel was controlled by the Romans—a fact most Jews weren't too happy about (to put it mildly). We know that there were many who thought that what really needed to be done was to start a revolution and overthrow the evil Roman oppressors. They'd even tried it before, with varying success (heard of Judas Maccabaeus?). Jesus, on the other hand, warned that this way of violence would only get them in trouble. That's the way of death and destruction. The only way to real peace, Jesus preached, is to ‘love your neighbour and pray for your enemies.’
You don't have to fast-forward very far to see that for the most part his listeners just ignored him. Crucified the prophet and started a revolution to fight Rome anyway. And no surprise too that in 70AD the Romans came and brought death and destruction, quelling the revolution and leveling Jerusalem, temple and all.
Well, they were warned.
All of this is what came to mind when Jesus spoke of ‘Gehenna,’ and it is meant to come to mind when we read the word too. But of course we don't read the word Gehenna, because translators a few centuries ago saw the word and thought ‘Oh he means a place of fiery torment where people suffer forever.’ So they translated it ‘hell,’ wiping out all of the original cultural context in one fell swoop and flinging a whole strand of misguided theology into existence.
The Bible is a tricky book.