What Did Jesus Teach About Hell (Part One)

Let's look at the teachings of Jesus on hell as found in the four gospels. The word hell does not appear at all in the English translations of gospel of John so there is nothing to look at there. The word does appear frequently in the "synoptic" gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  There are two Greek words translated as hell in our English Bibles which appear in those gospels. The first word is “hades” which simply means “the place of the dead.”  It is equivalent to the Hebrew word Sheol and carries no connotation of any kind of torment or punishment.  It is simply the place where the dead await the end of time and the final judgment. The word hades is used in several passages of Jesus’ teachings.  For example, it is the term used in his statement “I will build my church and the gates of hell (hades) will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). The idea there is that the powers of death will not prevail against the church.

The second Greek word appearing in the gospels and translated as hell in our English translations is the word Geena. The English transliteration of this word is Gehenna, which means the Valley of Hinnom. This was a literal valley in the city of Jerusalem.  Jesus uses this place as a metaphor for judgment, death and destruction.  In doing this, Jesus is echoing the Prophet Jeremiah.  In Jeremiah’s time the city of Jerusalem faced imminent destruction from the pagan armies of Babylon. Jeremiah prophesied that when the Babylonian armies entered the city, the Valley of Hinnom would be called the Valley of Slaughter, because the dead bodies of the Israelites would be heaped up there (Jeremiah 7:31-33).  We know from history that in 586 BC the Babylonians did destroy the city of Jerusalem and burned the Jewish temple to the ground.  They carried the surviving Jews into captivity in Babylon.

In Mark 9:45, we read that Jesus says, “..if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”

Here Jesus is adding another layer from the Old Testament in addition to using the physical place Gehenna (with its historical reference) as a picture of death and destruction. He is echoing the words of the prophet Isaiah, who writing hundreds of years before Jeremiah, prophesied a return to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile, which he called a “new heavens and a new earth.” He also warned that the worshippers in this restored Jerusalem would “go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me.  For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be abhorrence to all flesh” (Isaiah 66:22-24). The prophet Isaiah is not speaking of any kind of post-mortem punishment here, despite the poetic language of unquenchable fire and worms who do not die. He is simply referring to dead bodies being observed by the living.

What did Jesus mean by adding this passage from Isaiah to his use of Jeremiah’s metaphor of Gehenna as a place of destruction? One way to understand it is that Jesus was prophesying the imminent destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies, and warning the people that if they did not cease from their sins, they would be killed and thrown onto a pile of dead bodies in the Valley of Hinnom just like in Jeremiah's day. These bodies would be eaten by worms and burned by fire.

What sins was Jesus referring to specifically? Perhaps He was referring to the violent tendencies of the zealots.  The zealots were a group of Jewish people in 1st century Palestine who believed it was God's will for them to violently attack the Roman oppressors. One example of this movement was the violent revolutionary Barabbas, who is mentioned in the gospels. Jesus knew that the rebellion and violence of the Jewish zealots directed against Rome would ultimately bring down the wrath and full power of the Roman empire on Jerusalem. Then the entire city would be destroyed and most of its inhabitants would be killed.  This tendency toward revolutionary violence was often thought of in Jewish culture as being in accordance with God's will.  Violent historical figures like Judas Maccabeus were celebrated by the Jewish people during Jesus' time. Jesus' teachings on non-violence and love for one's enemies were strongly at odds with this belief.

Much of Jesus’ ministry centered on non-violence as God’s way of responding to the Roman occupation.  For example, if a Roman soldier demanded that you carry his pack for one mile, Jesus said to carry it for two miles.  If a Roman slaps you on the cheek, turn your other cheek. Sadly, Jesus’ teachings and warnings went unheeded. The zealots succeeded in launching a violent uprising against the Romans, which is chronicled in the historian Josephus' book "The Jewish War." In 70 AD the Roman armies led by the future emperor Titus entered the City of Jerusalem.  The inhabitants were slaughtered and the Temple was burned to the ground.  It was 586 BC once again. Jerusalem became a horrific, burning collection of corpses - a Gehenna.

Therefore it's possible that in most of these passages on Gehenna, Jesus was not speaking of a post-mortem judgment, but of a temporal judgment coming about 40 years in the future, in 70 AD. Some of Jesus’ ministry in the gospels is given to warning about this time period in 66-70 AD, where Jerusalem is first surrounded by Roman armies and then destroyed (see Mark 13, Luke 21 and Matthew 24).  Jesus taught that the current generation of Jewish people would not pass away until his warnings were fulfilled. Jesus echoed Jeremiah’s pronouncements about Gehenna because a very similar situation was about to unfold, but this time instead of the Babylonians, the Romans would be the agents of destruction.

It is possible that in some cases in the synoptic gospels Jesus may have had a post-mortem place of fire and suffering in mind when he used the metaphor of the Valley of Hinnom.  That will be the subject of my next post.