The word “hell” in Christian tradition is a catchall term encompassing a variety of New Testament references to consequences in the afterlife. The New Testament itself, however, uses a variety of images to speak of postmortem consequences. It may be more accurate to speak of a plurality of “hells” instead of a singular concept.
Gehenna: A Valley South of Jerusalem
A valley south of Jerusalem called the Valley of Ben Hinnom is associated in the Hebrew Bible with death and atrocity, including human sacrifice. In the New Testament, this physical, earthly location is called Gehenna, and becomes a symbol of postmortem, other-worldly judgment. While the most popular notion of hell in Christianity today imagines it as never-ending, Gehenna in the Bible is a place of final destruction. Nothing that experiences “Gehenna” endures. This word is often translated simply as “hell” in English. However, some modern translations prefer to preserve its historic symbolism by keeping the transliterated term “Gehenna.”
Hades: Dwelling Place of the Dead
Something similar happens with the term “Hades,” which is likewise often translated confusingly as “hell.” Unlike the Hebrew term Gehenna, however, this word’s origin is Greek. In Greek tradition Hades is the god of the underworld—the dwelling-place of the dead. Neither the god nor his realm are necessarily malevolent.
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterThe New Testament, following the Old Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, uses the word hades to translate the Hebrew word “sheol.” Sheol in the Hebrew Bible is not necessarily a place of judgment. In fact, all the dead go there. The restfulness or anguish of Sheol depend not on the nature of Sheol per se, but on the earthly behavior and experiences of the individuals who go there.
The Abyss (Tartarus)
Another concept often associated with hell is “the abyss.” This term seems close to the Greek idea of Tartarus, which is also mentioned in the New Testament. Unlike popular notions of hell, however, the Abyss can be escaped, and is mostly feared by demons rather than human beings. In a cryptic passage in the New Testament epistle of First Peter, the crucified Jesus is said to have visited and liberated imprisoned “spirits.”
Many interpreters have seen this as an allusion to an abyss-like concept—a holding place for the dead until their liberation through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. This gave rise to the teaching of the “harrowing of hell,” when Jesus descended to the place of the dead in order to offer salvation to its inhabitants.
Outer Darkness
In several of Jesus’s illustrative, fictional stories called parables, the Gospel of Matthew includes references to an “outer darkness” where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” While in English “gnashing of teeth” may evoke visions of physical torture, the phrase is used in the Bible to refer to extreme regret and anger, not corporal pain. Weeping likewise is associated with regret—sometimes even repentance—not physical torment.
In one parable, Jesus mentions people’s fate in a “fiery furnace,” and in another a prison of tortures. However, given their context in fictional stories it is not obvious that these are meant to be feared as literal postmortem realities.
Hell in Revelation: The New Testament’s Apocalyptic Vision
Biblical apocalyptic literature is characterized by highly imaginative, cinema-like visions into spiritual or other-worldly perspectives on things happening in the physical world. Apocalyptic texts do not necessarily have to do with the end of the world, and usually do not in the Bible. Hades appears in this literary genre in the New Testament book of Revelation, where it is said to be thrown along with death itself into a “lake of fire.” It is difficult to square the popular Christian understanding of hell as never-ending torment with Revelation’s depiction of it, since its end is clearly imagined in this case. However, apocalyptic literature is not meant to be historical or predictive in a literalistic sense, and the matter of hell’s temporality continues to be debated among Christian interpreters.
Is Hell Never-Ending in the New Testament?
The duration of post-mortem suffering is not clear in the New Testament. While the adjective “eternal” in English suggests never-ending time, it has a wider field of meaning in the New Testament and does not necessarily entail the absence of an ending. Revelation chapter 20 envisions the trio The Devil, an unnamed false prophet, and “the beast”—known also as “The Antichrist”—being tormented forever and ever in a “lake of fire.” However, that this is meant to teach never-ending torment of wicked human beings is not clear, especially given that Hades is seen in the same chapter as itself being thrown into the lake of fire.
Is Hell a New Testament Idea?
In combining the Hebrew concept of Sheol with the Greek concept of Hades, the New Testament and its Jewish-Greek literary predecessors—especially the Old Greek version of the Hebrew Bible—set the stage for an expanded and, sometimes, complex vision of postmortem torments that were subsequently subsumed under the moniker “hell.” The New Testament is owed some credit for keeping hell alive in Christian thought. However, none of the various concepts associated with hell in the New Testament appear originally therein.
Rather, the New Testament and the personalities whose stories it tells, including Jesus, assume the popular belief in postmortem consequences in their cultural milieu. Hell-like concepts are popular in other world religions as well, suggesting that the origins of the idea of an afterlife that includes consequences for wrong action or failure to act rightly are multiple and complex.
