There is no doubting that Jesus talked about hell – a lot. The problem we have, of course, is that when we read our English (or Welsh, French, German etc.) Bible and we see the word ‘hell’ being used, without doing some digging we can’t see what the original Greek was that the English is translating. I’m no Biblical language scholar but there are enough books and computer programmes available that makes the job a little easier and in the next few posts on the subject I want to take a closer look at these Scriptures.

In the NIV Jesus is recorded as using the word ‘hell’ twelve times (7 times in Matthew’s gospel; 3 times in Mark; twice in Luke). In eleven of these the Greek word that is translated is ‘Gehenna’; in the twelfth it is ‘Hades’.

We can deal with Hades fairly quickly and say that it started out as a term used in Greek mythology as the abode of the dead. Within Jewish thinking it developed into being the place the dead stayed until the time of final judgement – and in the Greek version of the Old Testament was used to translate the Hebrew word ‘Sheol’. Hades was not considered to be a place where the unrighteous were punished eternally. Neither was it ever defined in the same way as Gehenna so why the NIV translates it as ‘hell’ is a bit of a mystery. The NASB uses ‘Hades’ as does the revised edition of the Beibl Cymraeg Newydd (New Welsh Bible).

We find it on Jesus’ lips in Luke 16:23 – in that parable about the rich man and Lazarus. This tells the story of two dead men – one of whom finds himself ‘in torment’ while the other is comforted. Of course, this is a parable and the details are not meant to be taken literally. Its point is to teach those listening that how we live our life in the here and now is important. I do not believe that we are to take this story and develop a deep theology about the afterlife from it – otherwise we would have to conclude that the poor will enjoy the comfort of heaven just for being poor, or that the only way a person who enjoys comfort in this life gets to go to heaven is by embracing some pain before dying.

In this passage, therefore, it is safe to conclude that Jesus is using metaphor and hyperbole to make a point about life before death. Trying to mine it for truth about the afterlife is not advisable and taking it literally can lead to some very odd conclusions.

The previous post on the topic of hell can be found here.