In this final part of our series on Hell, we discuss the location of Gehenna that is often mistakenly confused as being Hell, and Tartarus, which is the only true mention of Hell in the New Testament.

Gehenna

The Greek term γέεννα (“Gehenna”) comes from the Hebrew phrase גֵּיא הִנֹּם (gey-hinnom – “valley of Hinnom”) where children were burned alive to false gods (Jer 7:30). Although this location is often associated with Hell because of its description of being a place of torment and fire, that is not the most reasonable understanding of this place. Multiple times the New Testament says that people go into Gehenna with their bodies (Matt 5:29-30; 10:28; 19:9; Mark 9:43, 45)—it is not a purely spiritual realm. Below are all the occurrences of Gehenna in the New Testament:

• Matthew 5:22                   But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ shall be guilty before the Sanhedrin; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery Gehenna.
• Matthew 5:29                   But if your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into Gehenna.
• Matthew 5:30                  And if your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into Gehenna.
• Matthew 10:28                 And do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
• Matthew 18:9                   And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into the fiery Gehenna.
• Matthew 23:15                 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Gehenna as yourselves.
• Matthew 23:33                You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of Gehenna?
• Mark 9:43                          And if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire,
• Mark 9:45                          And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame, than, having your two feet, to be cast into Gehenna,
• Mark 9:47                           And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than, having two eyes, to be cast into Gehenna,
• Luke 12:5                             But I will show you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into Gehenna; yes, I tell you, fear Him!
• James 3:6                            And the tongue is a fire, the very world of unrighteousness; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our existence, and is set on fire by Gehenna.

Since the both the Old Testament (Dan 12:2) and the New Testament (John 5:28; Acts 24:14-15) speak of the wicked being resurrected and Revelation speaks of those wicked people being thrown into the Lake of Fire (Rev 20:5, 15), it is more natural to associate Gehenna with the Lake of Fire than it is to associate it with the bad part of Hades (Hell).

• Daniel 12:2                         And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to reproach and everlasting contempt.
• John 5:28                            Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.
• Acts 24:14                           But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I do serve the God of our fathers, believing everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the Prophets; having a hope in God, for which these men are waiting, that there shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.
• Revelation 20:5                The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
• Revelation 20:15              And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Tartarus

The only true mention of Hell in the New Testament is Peter’s use of ταρταρόω (“to cast into Tartarus”) in 2 Peter 2:4. In Greek thought, Tartarus was the location where evil people and the Titans (deities who predated of Olympian gods and who fought the Olympian gods) were confined for punishment.

• 2 Peter 2:4, 9, 12                    For if God did not spare angels who sinned, but cast them into the Tartarus and delivered them to chains of darkness, being kept for judgment… then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment… But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, blaspheming where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,

Peter describes the punishment of the sons of God of Genesis 6 as those angels (sons of God are high-ranking angels) being cast into Tartarus. The New Testament nowhere directly says that human spirits also go into Tartarus, but it is implied a few verses after the mention of Tartarus when Peter’s states that God keeps wicked people under punishment (2 Pet 2:9). Also, it was assumed commonly that evil people were punished in Tartarus; In 1 Enoch (which is quoted in Jude 1:14-15), first the sons of God from Genesis 6 are thrown into a place like Tartarus (1 Enoch 10:4) and then sinners are thrown into that place too (1 Enoch 10:12-14).

The point I am making is not that 1 Enoch is an inspired book that is wholly true. Instead, I am using 1 Enoch to show that the Jews and the Greeks had overlapping ideas about the afterlife that the New Testament authors held to be true.

Conclusion

Summary of Series

Hell (Part One): Hell is not mentioned in the Old Testament?

The Hebrew word Sheol (mistakenly translated as Hell in the KJV) sometimes means:
(i) a literal grave
(ii) a metaphorical extension of the grave to the concept of death
(iii) a metaphorical extension of the grave to the spiritual realm of the dead where both the righteous and wicked go.

Hell (Part Two): Historical and Cultural Contexts

Everyone (as far as we can tell) believed an afterlife in a spiritual underworld and the language of the Old Testament fits perfectly with that belief. No biblical author ever tried to refute this view. Egypt, where Israel had sojourned for 400+ years, understood that the righteous were rewarded in the afterlife while the wicked were punished. The Israelites leaving Egypt would have most likely held that same belief, and Moses made no attempt to correct that belief because he also believed that the wicked would be punished and the righteous rewarded.

Hell (Part Three): Hell in the New Testament? Hades

The New Testament word for Sheol is Hades. Hades was understood to be a spiritual place where the righteous were rewarded and the wicked were punished. Hades is not Hell; Hell is the part of Hades where the wicked are punished.

Both Greeks and Jews had such similar ideas about the afterlife that the Jews could use the Greek word Hades to refer to the underworld where the afterlife happened. Jesus’ parables and early Jewish literature show that they both understood Hades (called Sheol in the Old Testament) to be a place of punishment and reward.

Overall conclusion

Hell, the place of punishment for the disembodied spirits of the damned, was assumed to exist by both Greeks and Jews. It so commonly assumed to exist by the vast majority of society in Israel that it needed neither introduction nor explanation by any of the people that the New Testament authors were writing to. That is why no New Testament author explains Hell.

Peter’s mention of Tartarus, the Greek term for Hell, proves that the New Testament authors understood there to be a temporary place of punishment for the spirits of the wicked. The only way to argue that the New Testament does not have a concept of Hell is by ignoring what words like Hades and Tartarus meant when the New Testament was written. Hades presupposes Hell and Tartarus is a term for Hell.

Apart from the fact that most people assumed Hell to exist, the lack of focus in the New Testament on Hell is likely because of how insignificant it is compared to what follows. Resurrection to physical bodies in the Lake of Fire is so much more serious than Hell that Hell is barely worth talking about when what comes after Hell is so much worse.

The King James translation of Hades and Sheol as “Hell” has caused confusion for the church and opened an avenue for those who deny the existence of Hell in scripture to make their argument based on the valid observations that neither Sheol nor Hades are accurately understood as being places of punishment. Both contain places of punishment, but neither one is entirely just about punishment.

Although the KJV translators meant well, their attempt at bringing clarity by translating different words as Hell was ultimately unhelpful. The biblical authors wisely chose different words for good reasons, and we need to respect their decisions to do so, not try to cover it up in a vain attempt at clarifying the Bible. Thankfully, newer translations like the NASB 2020 and the LSB do not make these mistakes.

Up Next

In the next post, we will look at visual representations of how the New Testament and Old Testament saints conceptualized the cosmos (heaven, earth, and Hell), and debunk a lot of silly ideas along the way (like the Israelites thinking the sky was a solid object).