BIBLICAL BRIEFS 72
The word ‘hell’ does NOT appear even once in the Old Testament. Why is this seemingly important topic not even mentioned in the Old Covenant? It simply was not part of the Jewish paradigm! But if you look at the King James Version, the word “hell” does actually appear an astounding 31 times. In the authoritative American Standard Version does not refer to “hell” at all in the Old Testament, neither the Amplified Version, nor 10 other Bibles which are classic and contextual, free from dogma, and which claim to truly reflect the Jewish faith and beliefs. How very interesting – hell is actually missing in the Old Testament! If the word is mentioned in the New Testament, it is only used ten times in most translations. One starts wondering about the amazing mythologizing that this little word has experienced in our theology! Especially if in four cases (Matt. 5: 29-30; Mark 9:43 & 45) it is a repetitive Scripture dealing with the stumbling that is caused by the hand or the eye (an action which is clearly symbolic). The following two occurrences are also clearly metaphoric: Jam. 3: 6 says the tongue is set on fire from hell, and Matt. 23:15 speaks about characteristics of “a child of hell”. With less than four possible legitimate references to hell in the entire Bible, it forces one to look into the meaning of this word in Greek. The simple reason why all the above translations do not use the word “hell” is because it is an Anglo-Saxon word and does not appear in neither Hebrew nor Greek. In Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible, this theologian explains that the English word “hell” has erroneously sneaked into our translations. The original words in the Bible that are translated as “hell” in some dubious translations are the Hebrew word ‘sheol’, equivalent to the Greek word ‘hades’, in the Septuagint; and in the New Testament: ‘gehenna’ and ‘tartarus’. But these words mean something totally different from what we culturally and religiously understand by the word ‘hell’.
Dr. Tom Gouws
