Jinksy

What were the original meanings/concepts behind Sheol and Gehenna?

judge

Gehenna is the aramaic word for the valley of Hinnon. It is a place just outside Jerusalem. When Jesus used it he referred to it as the place where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die.
It seesm he was referring to the Aramaic translation of Isaiah chapt 66
From the
article referenced above, Jesus' saying on Gehenna (Mark 9:47-48), where he quotes part of Isa 66:24, again reflects targumic diction. The Hebrew and the Septuagint say nothing about Gehenna, but the targum has: " . . . will not die and their fire shall not be quenched, and the wicked shall be judged in Gehenna. . . ." The verse is alluded to twice in the Apocrypha (Jdt 16:17;Sir 7:17), where, in contrast to Hebrew Isaiah, it seems to be looking beyond temporal punishment toward eschatological judgment.
It seems this valley had taken on a meaning that was tied to eschatological events ("end time" events). There are of course many different ideas about "end time" events. The authors of the books in our NT seem unanimous that they were living in or on the verge of the "end times".



Judith 16

Sirach 7

Isaiah 66 The aramaic targum (translation) of this contains the reference to gehenna.

Mark 9:38-50

Notice also james 3:5-6 written long before the "official" doctrine of hell was laid down. The word hell there is actually gehenna.

judge

I forgot to mention one important point, the valley of Hinnon had apparently become the location of a rubbish dump where rubbish and even the bodies of the dead were burned.

Amlodhi

Exactly.

Hi judge,

I'm still looking at this and that's the part that is interesting to me. At the time Isaiah ch. 66 was penned, the eschatology is Jewish; whereby YHWH destroys his enemies (as in deader than a doornail), while his friends live happily to ripe old ages in "the new heavens and earth".


The enemies of YHWH who are destroyed (i.e. dead), have their corpses thrown into heaps (somewhere) to be decomposed by maggots and the fires of a refuse dump. The Aramaic Targum logically suspects that this location will be the valley of the son of Hinnom which was (at this time) being used for precisely this purpose. These burning and rotting corpses will be viewed (with horror) by all those coming to the new Jerusalem to worship YHWH.

I have read Christian commentaries which espouse the view that "their worm" is some unidentified part of the human soul that suffers eternal agony in hellfire. IMO, this is untenable both grammatically and contextually. The Isaiah 66:24 passage as it reads in the MT is:


The word "for" in the above passage is the Hebrew term ×›Ö´×™ (with the dagesh forte {not reproduced here}, phonetically: "kee"). The basic range of meaning for this term is, "for", "that", "because", "when".

If then, as some Christian commentaries would have it, the middle portion of this passage is referring to some unidentified portion of a human soul continuing to exist in some unviewable place, this sentence ceases to make any sense contextually. IOW, it doesn't make any sense to say that "(people) will be able to view the dead, rotting bodies because some part of the unseen soul is suffering in some unviewable place".

Neither does the statement that "their worm(s) shall not die" necessarily mean that the(se) worm(s) will never die. The same Hebrew terms and syntax (i.e. ל×? תמות ,"not shall die") are used in other places such as Judges 6:23 where YHWH tells Gideon "not (you) shall die". This, of course, is not taken to imply that Gideon is going to live forever. The same consideration applies to the concept of "not putting out the fires".

IOW, what the passage is conveying is that people will be able to view the dead bodies decomposing and burning in the dump simply because they will be left there to do so.

Thus, whether or not Isaiah actually had the valley of the son of Hinnom in mind as the dump site, it is curious that this passage is used to extrapolate the concept of an eternal fiery hell referred to as "Gehenna".

As always, namaste'

Amlodhi

judge

Hi Amlodhi, this is something I give some thought to as well. I suspect that
Matthew 25:31-46 had something to do with it and indeed this link has several quotes from "early church fathers" which seem to refer to it.
My own understanding is that Jesus here is using eschatological language and imagery to describe the coming of the end of the age , which was almost upon them.
When Yaweh rode on a cloud no one actually saw Yaweh, although it may have been a time of cataclysm. No one ever saw the rising sun darkened or the heaven and their constellations not show their light as described in Isaiah 13.
This was just the style of language to describe a "day of the lord".
Thus the "coming" of Christ on clouds of glory in fact occurred when the Roman armies came on Jerusalem.
The Lord often came against the jews rather than with them. Although the hebrew of zechariah 14:3 may be ambiguous the LXX is not and has the Lord fighting alongside the nations against Jerusalem.
I hope I have not gone too far off topic , but this seemed like an opprtunity to touch on these things with you as had been previously discussed.

Anyway, it seems that a geneartion or longer after these events followers of Christ began to re-interpret these things. The shepherd of Hermas suggests the parousia has been delayed, Justin in his attempts to prove the truth of Christ from the Hebrew bible goes astray as well.
The following quotes are a bit long but I think they sum it up well.

John N.D. Kelly
From Early Christian Doctrines
(On the First Century Christians' beliefs)
"..in the apostolic age, as the New Testament documents reveal, the Church was pervaded with an intense conviction that hope to which Israel had looked forward yearningly had at last been fulfilled. ..history had reached its climax and the reign of God, as so many of our Lord's parables imply, had been effectively inaugurated." (pp. 459-461)
"..[but by the middle of the second century] the Christian's confident and joyous assurance that the age to come has already broken into the present age has faded into the background. He looks upon God, not as the divine Father to Whom he has free access, but as the sternly just distributor of rewards and penalties, while grace has lost the primarily eschatological character it had in the New Testament and has become something to be acquired. ..the temptation to degenerate into a pedestrian moralism in which the "realized" element in its authentic eschatology finds no place was one to which Christianity was a much exposed in the patristic as in every other age." (pp.459-461)
"About the middle of the second century Christian eschatology enters upon a new, rather more mature phase. ..Justin teaches on the basis of Old Testament prophecy that, in addition to His coming in lowliness at His incarnation, Christ will come again in glory .. new emphases and fresh lines of thought begin to appear, partly for apologetic motives and partly as the result of growing speculation. The clash with Judaism and paganism made it imperative to set out the bases of the revealed dogmas more thoroughly. ..millenarianism, or the theory that the returned Christ would reign on earth for a thousand years, came to find increasing support among Christian teachers. We can observe these tendencies at work in the Apologists. Justin, as we have suggested, ransacks the Old Testament for proof, as against Jewish critics, that the Messiah must have a twofold coming. His argument is that, while numerous contexts no doubt predict His coming in humiliation, there are others (e.g. Is. 53:8-12; Ezek. 7f; Dan. 7:9-28; Zech. 12:10-12; Ps. 72:1-20; 110:1-7) which clearly presuppose His coming in majesty and power. The former coming was enacted at the incarnation, but the latter still lies in the future. It will take place, he suggests, at Jerusalem, where Christ will be recognized by the Jews who dishonored Him as the sacrifice which avails for all penitent sinners, and where He will eat and drink with His disciples; and He will reign there a thousand years. This millenerians, or "chialistic," doctrine was widely popular at this time. ..[But] he confesses that he knows pious, pure-minded Christians who do not share this belief.." (pp. 464-466)

As this happens believers must also begin to deal with matthew 25, and begin to see this as a future event rather than one past, and also begin to see the eternal punishment as meaning never ending, and never ending torture at that.
The greek word in matthew 25 apparently has the conotation of "never ending" whilst the hebrew term if I understand it does not necessarily carry this conotation.

As one who did for a time believe that eternal torture must be real. I think I felt that in some way I was "doing the right thing" by trying to believe all the right things, not to mention that I though I knew some who really deserved it.
Perhaps these tendencies in people enabled the idea to take root the way it did.

To be honest my own thoughts about these things are still evolving so am interested in any input

Amlodhi

Yes, the preteritism is probably too far off topic for this thread, however. . .


. . . this I agree with.

And this is exactly the type of 're-interpretation' (and extrapolation) I see in regard to the evolution of Valley of (the son of) Hinnom > Gehenna.


Indeed, that is my understanding too. But the interesting question is: From where is Jesus deriving this eschatological language?

IMO, this eschatological language seems to have come about precisely because there was a need to 're-interpret' texts such as (3rd?) Isaiah. Yet, the only reason that such 're-interpretation' would be necessary in the first place, is if the events actually predicted in these texts simply failed to materialize.

Thus, what is the value of saying that Jesus was using eschatological imagery if the source of this imagery was the 're-interpretation' (and extrapolation) of failed prophetic texts?


As are mine, judge, and that is as it should be. Provided, of course, that we are very, very careful to avoid eisegesis.

Amlodhi

judge

I would lean towards him deriving his language from aramaic targums at use in that time.

But is the inclusion of gehnna here really a re-interpretation? It may just be that when going from Hebrew to Aramaic passages were rephrased slightly to make them more contemporary.
There are dozens of English translations around today but each one is not necessarily a re-interpretation. Is the message a reinterptreation of the KJV or just more contemporary language.

Perhaps more interesting is the targummic version of the parable of the vineyard, where the teachers of the law knew that Jesus spoke it against them.
But again, there are other possibilities. Jesus knowing the targum is able , with great wit, to drive home a point to his audience.


How do we judge them as being failed though?


You are asking too much of me now!

Amlodhi

No, the inclusion of Gehenna in the Targum is not necessarily a re-interpretation, even though it is at least a mild (though logical) extrapolation. The re-interpretation involves divorcing the term Gehenna from its physical locale (i.e. the valley of ben Hinnom), extrapolating the imagery of the valley of ben Hinnom into the concept of eternal fiery torment in some other (unseen) place, and then conversely appropriating the term Gehenna as a proper name for this Hell.



From the date of composition, context, and various allusions which fix the time as being the end of the Babyonian captivity. For example:


Direct allusions to the release from Babylonian captivity, and to Jerusalem which had been described as desolate.


Another direct allusion to the release from captivity, return to Jerusalem, and to the vessels of YHWH which had been ordered returned by Cyrus.


Direct sequential accounting. 1st, sojourn in Egypt. 2nd, Assyrian persecution. And "now then"? The Babylonian captivity, of course.


Allusion to release from captivity and to developing contemporary Jewish eschatology; i.e. "never again shall come to you uncircumcised and unclean ones".


More developing eschatology.


As it happened, however, and contrary to the predictions, they didn't 'live happily ever after'. The uncircumcised and the unclean did come into Judah again, the nations that didn't serve Judah didn't perish, the people of Judah didn't live to ripe old ages and die happy, and the bodies of sinners weren't stacked in the valley of ben Hinnom.

But the subsequent and mandatory 're-interpretation' and extrapolation of such texts as future eschatology did, apparently, result in the general misapprehension (among others) that Gehenna means the Christian's fiery Hell.


<chuckle> Sometimes it's too much to ask of any of us. It is insidious; which is why such serious precautions must be observed.

As always, namaste'

Amlodhi

judge

Yes, this seems true. As far as I am aware this idea is not one that would have come from a jewish point of view. Some point to Josephus's discourse to the greeks on hades but I have read there is some doubt as to whether Josephus was really responsible for this work.
So if not a jewish idea then from where did it spring. I have heard it suggested it may have been a borrowed idea, but I am not sure of the details .
Do you know of any previous ideas of eternal fiery punishment?

Did not the greeks have some ideas like this?



Oh well. Progress not perfection ...as they say
:notworthy

judge

Just came across this quote which may be of interest to some reading this thread. It demonstrates that early on there was no real agreement amongst christians about the fate of the dead.

"In the first five or six centuries of Christianity there were six theological schools, of which four (Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, and Edessa, or Nisibis) were Universalist, one (Ephesus) accepted conditional immortality; one (Carthage or Rome) taught endless punishment of the wicked. Other theological schools are mentioned as founded by Universalists, but their actual doctrine on this subject is not known."
"The Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge"
by Schaff-Herzog, 1908, volume 12, page 96

One point though, I am doubtful that Edessa and Nisibis could have been considered the same as seems suggested.