However, the actual Bible definition of ‘Hell’ is vague, so vague in fact that it doesn't actually exist. Yeah, that is pretty vague if you ask me. “Huh? What is he rambling on about now?” I hear you ask. I urge you to hear me out. The Bible doesn't actually mention “Hell” as the Church teaches it, and it can be argued that it isn't even mentioned at all. How? Well, I shall be spending the remainder of the argument explaining how.
Mistranslation
The Bible uses four words to mean “hell”. Well, it doesn’t really, it would be correct to say that these four words have been commonly mistranslated from their original language to mean hell (I’m looking at you, KJV). Now, before I explain this, I’m going to discuss the number of occurrences of the word ‘hell’ in each of the editions of the Bible.
‘The Latin Vulgate’, which was the edition used by the Catholic Church for a millennium, contains 111 occurrences, with 87 and 24 in the Old and New Testaments, respectively. It is interesting to note, however, that the King James Version contains 54 (31 and 23), and the Young’s Literal Translation contains exactly 0 occurrences of ‘hell’. Notice how each edition doesn’t agree with each other at all, and how the edition used by the Medieval Church contains the most occurrences of ‘hell’ of any other edition. This can be explained rather simply:
2 Peter 2:4 wrote:Original Greek wrote:Εἰ γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ἀγγέλων ἁμαρτησάντων οὐκ ἐφείσατο, ἀλλὰ σειραῖς ζόφου ταρταρώσας παρέδωκεν εἰς κρίσιν τηρουμένους,KJV wrote:For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
Here, the Greek verb ‘ταρταρόω’ or ‘throw down to Tartarus’ is used. For those of you unfamiliar with Greek Mythology, Tartarus was one of the possible destinations in the Greek afterlife, along with the Asphodel Meadows (where ordinary souls would be sent) and the Elysian Fields (where the great, heroic souls would be sent). Tartarus, however, was a place of darkness for the evil souls. With this context in mind, the fully (literal) translated verse makes more sense:
For if God messengers who sinned did not spare, but with chains of thick gloom, having cast [them] down to Tartarus, did deliver [them] to judgment, having been reserved,
What we can therefore deduce from this verse is that the ‘fallen angels’ are to be confined to Tartarus (not hell) until they are judged (not eternity). This also specifically addresses angels and not men, thus making any reference to this to support the concept of man’s damnation utterly futile.
Isaiah 14:15 wrote:Original Hebrew wrote:אַךְ אֶל-שְׁאוֹל תּוּרָד, אֶל-יַרְכְּתֵי-בוֹר.KJV wrote:Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
שְׁאוֹל or ‘Sheol’ is another word that was mistranslated. The actual meaning of ‘Sheol’ is ‘the pit’ or ‘the grave’, and instead of being a place of damnation, it is meant to be a resting place for both the righteous and the unrighteous. Therefore, that verse would be better translated as:
Yet thou shalt be brought down to the grave, to the sides of the pit.
Matthew 5:29 wrote:εἰ δὲ ὁ ὀφθαλμός σου ὁ δεξιὸς σκανδαλίζει σε, ἔξελε αὐτὸν καὶ βάλε ἀπὸ σοῦ:συμφέρει γάρ σοι ἵνα ἀπόληται ἓν τῶν μελῶν σου καὶ μὴ ὅλον τὸ σῶμά σου βληθῇεἰς γέενναν.
A transliterated form of the Hebrew ‘Gehenna’ is used here, γέεννα. In many versions of the Bible, this is translated as ‘Hell’, but once again, this is a mistranslation. Gehenna is in fact a physical valley, known as a ‘place of burning’. It was known as this because ‘Gehenna’ was Jerusalem’s waste dump, with a fire kept constantly alight to incinerate all of the waste. Therefore, a correct translation is:
But, if thy right eye doth cause thee to stumble, pluck it out and cast from thee, for it is good to thee that one of thy members may perish, and not thy whole body be cast to Gehenna.
Indeed, none of the manuscripts ever talk about a fire that will torture and punish the sinful at all. If there is indeed a spiritual meaning to this, I refer you to Malachi 3:2, in which God is described as a “refiner’s fire”, which suggests that this ‘Gehenna’ is merely intended as being a cleansing fire rather than a horrendously torturous fire.
Acts 2:31 wrote:Original Greek wrote:προϊδὼν ἐλάλησεν περὶ τῆς ἀναστάσεως τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὅτι οὔτε ἐγκατελείφθη εἰς ἅδην οὔτε ἡ σὰρξ αὐτοῦ εἶδεν διαφθοράν.KJV wrote:He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.
The Greek word ᾅδης or ‘Hades’ is used here in place of ‘Sheol’, which I have covered earlier. Therefore the KJV is wrong yet again, as the Bible is in fact referring to a place of the dead and not ‘hell’.
Pagan Origin of ‘Hell’
Now that I have explained that the Bible doesn’t contain any reference to the ‘Hell’ that is so widely taught in Christianity. However, there has to be a reason why this teaching was introduced.
Firstly, it should be noted that Jewish teachings of ‘Sheol’ began to alter slightly around the time of the Second Temple, when the Jews were under occupation by the Persians. Whilst never actually taught in the Bible, certain Jewish teachers began to teach that ‘Sheol’ was a place solely for the wicked; whereas others continued to teach that it was for both the righteous and the wicked.
This can be explained rather simply, as these teachers were clearly influenced by the Persian ‘Zoroastrianism’, the first religion of its kind to teach the idea of a ‘hell’, because they were being occupied by the Persians when this teaching first began appearing. Further evidence of this can be seen in the Book of Daniel:
Daniel 12:2 wrote:And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to long-lasting* life, and some to shame and long-lasting* contempt.
*The Hebrew word עוֹלָם or ‘olam’ here is often mistranslated as ‘everlasting’ (as in ‘lasts forever’), but in fact correctly translates as ‘long-lasting’.
Although slightly vague, this passage is the first hint in the Bible to a form of ‘resurrection’ or ‘life after death’, which is also a Zoroastrian belief. Conveniently, the Book of Daniel was written at the time of the Persian occupation.
With this in mind, Paganism also began to affect the teachings of Early-Christians after the death of Jesus. In A.D. 70, the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and exiled the Jewish population to parts of the Roman Empire. With the Early-Christians now scattered to Greece and Rome, they began to adopt some of the Pagan teachings there, specifically the idea of punishment after death, which evolved into the Christian concept that we now call ‘Hell’.
The Medieval Church and the Latin Vulgate
The doctrine of ‘Hell’ began to flourish beginning in the 5th Century, as can be seen through ‘The Gospel of Nicodemus’. The aforementioned Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible was indeed the worst offender of mistranslating words into ‘hell’, and interestingly enough the Latin Vulgate was the sole edition of the Bible used by the Church for over a millennium. Indeed, many were persecuted for attempting to translate the Bible into English, most notably John Wycliffe.
This allowed the Medieval Church to heavily exaggerate the concept of ‘Hell’ despite not actually existing in the original translation. The intent of this was to terrorise the masses with the threat of eternal damnation and suffering, which not ensured the absolute loyalty of the People, but also ‘encouraged’ them to make donations of land and money and purchase ‘indulgences’. Indeed, this influence is even powerful today, as ‘Hell’ still remains a doctrine of most if not all Churches of Christianity across the world, and still plays an important factor in the faith of many Christians.
Conclusion
The Church has been spreading false teachings of the Bible for almost two millennia now, which is the result of mistranslation in certain texts and pagan influence from the Greeks and Romans. Whilst this may come as a shock to many Christians, this also means that they need not fear ‘Hell’, unless they still wish to subscribe to the teachings of the world’s many Churches.
Sometimes, as a Christian, you have to choose to believe what the Bible teaches or what the Church teaches.
