Does hell exist?

Anyone that has studied the Bible knows that it is enormously clear that a state of eternal torment awaits those that do not repent of their sins, and choose to follow a Jew that lived 2,000 years ago that was hung on a tree for the sins of the world.

My thought provoking post is not to question the idea of eternal torment which I believe is extraordinarily clear in the Bible, but to question the state, dimension, & location of that torment.

Recently I watched a couple documentaries on near-death experiences and the Christian explanation of hell. Mind you these documentaries were both made in the West, one was produced in America, the other produced in Europe. The experts they interviewed on the documentaries were either priests, pastors, or theologians from the Catholic, Orthodox, or the Evangelical Christian faith. They did not interview any experts with a Jewish background.

I forewarn you before I talk about this topic I am by far no expert on it. I have not read the majority of the Apocrypha or Pseudepigrapha or Talmud, I do not have any friends that are Jewish scholars, I have only read small excerpts from Dante's Divine Comedy, and I have not done any long-term study of this topic.

While watching these documentaries I realized that these experts talking on the subject didn't seem to have the same understanding of the concept of eternal torment that I now hold.

Their concept of eternal torment is the previous concept that I once held that I was taught in Bible School and most of the western churches I was discipled in, rather than the actual concept of eternal torment coming from the Hebrew Bible. The concept of eternal torment the modern West holds more so comes from a Divine Comedy written by the philosopher Dante Alighieri in the 14th Century.

This Divine Comedy has three parts titled Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. I can remember reading Dante's Inferno in my Freshman English class of which I'm assuming most high schoolers will absorb this Divine Comedy during their English schooling and has probably influenced the majority of American thinking on the topic of hell.

The Italian narrative poem traces the narrator's journey through the afterlife visiting first hell, then purgatory, and then paradise and presents an imaginative vision of the afterlife that provides great insight into the medieval Catholic worldview.

The story's imaginative visual experience of the afterlife is much more related to Greek thought than Hebrew thought. You could trace it's viewpoint back to a time before Christ to the 4th Century BC to Plato's Academy, the first official educational institution for Greek philosophy.

Greek philosophy viewed the positive afterlife as a deliverance from the material world and ascending to a more enlightened immaterial world after death vs. the Hebrew salvation of a restoration of the material world.

The Jews view of salvation was always a redemption of the physical world. A resurrection of the physical dead and a restoration of the physical Earth with eternity being viewed as endless ages of time.

The Greek philosophical view of eternal torment was a place called Hades or the underworld. The Greek philosophical idea of Hades tended to dominate the Jewish view of eternal torment as the Hebrew Bible & Christianity was adopted by the West. You can even find the word Hades in your Greek Bible translation today.

Now, the Jew that we believe in for the atonement of our sins described eternal torment as a place of crying and teeth grinding that would take place in the valley of Hinnom. A valley that is adjacent and in between the peaks of Mt. Moriah and Mt. of Olives on the perimeter of Jerusalem. The Greek New Testament translates this location as Gehanna. As this was the Greek name for the valley of Hinnom.

But if you ask a normal Western Christian today where eternal torment takes place they would normally say that it will take place in an underworld rather than the valley of Hinnom. As the Greeks tended to put an allegorical meaning to Jesus's words to make it fit into their philosophical view of an immaterial afterlife, which we westerners still do today for the most part.

But when a first century Jew heard Jesus's words would they have thought Jesus was referring to an immaterial underworld of Hades or the actual valley of Hinnom? Because Jesus's audience would not have been that familiar with the Greek underworld Hades. They were Jews not Greeks.

But in English we don't use the word Hades anymore, we use the word hell.

So where did the word "hell" come from?

Hell is an English word that you will only find in Western Bible translations.

Hell has Old English roots derived from the proto-Germanic term "helan." Originally, hell referred to the underworld or a place of the dead in Germanic mythology and folklore. Over time, especially in Christian theology, it became associated with a realm of punishment for the wicked after death. This concept of hell evolved, was influenced by various religions and cultures and majorly adopted by Christianity. In fact "hell" became the most used English word for eternal torment, which still is today.

Technically there is no hell in the original Bible manuscripts as the concept and idea of hell was I guess in some way an attempt to encapsulate the several Hebrew concepts and terms into a Greek view that could be understood by Grecco-Roman western thought.

You can tell this if you compare English Bible translations, the word hell appears in it a different number of times depending on which translation you use.

This was in fact the biggest key indicator to me that the concept of hell doesn't fit in the Hebrew Bible.

There are several concepts and terms from the Hebrew Bible that translators try to fit into this western concept of hell. One of the Hebrew terms is Sheol and some of the Greek terms are the grave, death, or Hades. Not to mention different dimensions or locations such as outer darkness, the bottomless pit / the abyss, Tartarus...etc.

One of the key verses to me that the concept of hell / the grave and eternal torment have to be two separate things is that the place of temporary torment will be cast into an eternal torment on the Day of the Lord.

‭‭Revelation‬ ‭20:14‬ ‭KJV‬‬

[14] And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

‭‭Revelation‬ ‭20:14‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

[14] Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

Revelation‬ ‭20:14‬ ‭NLT‬‬

[14] Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death.

Okay so what about all the near-death experiences or visionary experiences in which people are taken to experience a place of torment now and live to tell about it?

I have no idea. That's why I'm writing this post...ha

So do the people that die, experience torment and come back experiencing a type of purgatory? A type of temporary torment before the eternal torment?

Because according to scripture no one receives final judgment until Revelation 20 which is after the resurrection of the dead. So from my understanding no one goes to the Valley of Hinnom or the lake of fire until after the final judgment which is when the New Jerusalem comes to the Earth. But it seems maybe these other places like Sheol, the grave, death, the abyss would be in existence now?

In summation, in my opinion the Greek-Germanic western concept of hell doesn't fit into the Hebrew Bible. It's not a Jewish concept therefore, it can't be in ancient Jewish literature. That's why translators have such a difficult time with the term.

The Christian Bible is the Hebrew Bible. It is a collection of Jewish books written by Jews for Jews to Jews. There's only one true God and it's the God of the Jews.

The Jews are the divine administrators that God elected for the inheritance of salvation to the rest of the nations. To inherit salvation all peoples must convert to faith in the revelation God administrated to the Jews by His holy prophets with faith in the Jewish Messiah. (Micah 4:1-4, Zechariah 8:20-22) I'm just making the point that the Jewish story is the right story, (the Bible.)

As mentioned above, the Jews view of salvation was always a redemption of the physical world. A resurrection of the physical dead and a restoration of the physical Earth with eternity being viewed as endless ages of time. And we know that our Messiah still lives today in redeemed physical flesh.

This seems to align more with eternal torment being a physical place on the Earth such as the Valley of Hinnom that Jesus referred to, which would probably be seated outside of the New Jerusalem on Earth.

The Greek view places salvation and/or eternal torment into some other dimension that is void of space and time and somewhat forgets about the restoration of God's creation. In the Greek view, eternity kind of becomes some magical Elysian Fields of immaterial existence.

Our Jewish book, the Bible, and it's worldview is in contrast and competition with Greek philosophy, Germanic mythology, and every other pagan worldview.

I'll end with a final question, why do us Christians who follow this Jewish God embrace so many aspects of Greek and Germanic philosophy so frequently? As this topic is only one of many our western minds have in contrast with an ancient Jewish culture that authored the Bible. But this just seems to be one of the issues we need to work through as the writings of this ancient Jewish culture are embraced by other cultures with their own world views.

Fully adopting an ancient Jewish worldview in contrast to our own traditions and worldview seems to be nearly an impossible task. In fact nations often go to war over cultural worldview differences.

Happy thinking! Much love!

- Jeremy Gilbert