Homer wrote:
The KJV correctly translated hades as Hell.
backwoodsman wrote:Yes, I suppose it did. The question, of course, is what did 'hell' mean in 1611?
I respectfully disagree with both of you, but I appreciate your insightful question, backwoodsman. Here's why I disagree:
The murdering tyrant, Henry the VIII, wanted to divorce his wife (not for scriptural reasons), but the Pope wouldn’t sanction the king’s sinful request. To get his way, Henry hijacked the Church of England in 1534 and made it his personal religious stamp-of-approval for anything he wanted to do. Heathen Henry’s church, of course, did bless his unscriptural divorce (calling it an annulment). By decree, Henry had successfully replaced one corrupt religious organization with one even more corrupt—one that declared Henry, not Christ, as its head.
Seventy-seven years later, Henry’s church published the King James Version of the Bible, so it’s no wonder that it bears some Anglican stains. Despite those few stains, the KJV (by God’s grace) is an excellent translation. But there are some problems.
One of the KJV’s Anglican errors is its use of the word hell, with which the translators replaced the Hebrew word Sheol (OT) and the Greek word Hades (NT). Sheol means “the place of the dead” or “the grave.” Hades means the same thing. Neither Sheol nor Hades connotes a place of eternal fiery punishment of the wicked. All that those two words actually mean is the undifferentiated place of the dead, or the grave. Everybody goes there. If Sheol and Hades actually did accurately translate into the word Hell, then one would correctly conclude that everyone goes to Hell.
But the fact is that Hell does not mean what Sheol and Hades mean, so the KJV scholars and divines did not correctly translate Hades as hell, Homer. Here is a history of the word Hell:
"Hell comes to us directly from Old English hel. Because the Roman Church prevailed in England from an early date, the Roman—that is, Mediterranean—belief that hell was hot prevailed there too; in Old English hel is a black and fiery place of eternal torment for the damned. But because the Vikings were converted to Christianity centuries after the Anglo-Saxons, the Old Norse hel, from the same source as Old English hel, retained its earlier pagan senses as both a place and a person. As a place, hel is the abode of oath breakers, other evil persons, and those unlucky enough not to have died in battle. It contrasts sharply with Valhalla, the hall of slain heroes. Unlike the Mediterranean hell, the Old Norse hel is very cold. Hel is also the name of the goddess or giantess who presides in hel, the half blue-black, half white daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrbotha. The Indo-European root behind these Germanic words is kel-, "to cover, conceal" (so hell is the "concealed place"); it also gives us hall, hole, hollow, and helmet." (from The Free Dictionary)
And here’s Plato’s concept of that same mythological place:
“Of those who have done extreme wrong and, as a result of such crimes, have become incurable, of those are the examples made; no longer are they profited at all themselves, since they are incurable, but others are profited who behold them undergoing for their transgressions the greatest, sharpest, and most fearful sufferings evermore, actually hung up as examples there in the infernal dungeon, a spectacle and a lesson to such of the wrongdoers as arrive from time to time.” —Plato, Gorgias (380 B.C.E.)
So, while Plato and the Jews had some folks roasting in a dungeon, the Vikings had them shivering in a hidden freezer. Neither Sheol nor Hades speak of such scenarios. The fantasies of Plato, the rabbis, the Vikings, and the Reformers don't match what Scripture actually says.
The rabbinic speculations about Sheol/Hades (which they learned from pagan religions) became part of the complex collection of Jewish traditions that Jesus denounced. Those Jewish/pagan traditions were embraced by the Roman Catholics, and continued by the Reformers. And those Jewish/Romanist/Anglican concepts (as well as Norse mythology) were part of the mindset of the Anglican translators in 1604-1611. They should have left Sheol/Hades untranslated, or they should have used the actual meaning of those words, which is “the place of the dead” or “the grave.” But they didn’t, and that was a big mistake that has caused immeasurable confusion concerning the afterlife. The answer to backwoodsman's question may be that the Reformers chose “Hell” because it best represented their Old English/ Norse conception of the afterlife and their misunderstanding of words Sheol and Hades. Hell may be a good translation for Pagan mythology about the afterlife, but it fails as a translation for Sheol, Hades, Gehenna or Tartarus.
Satan has been spewing a flood of lies at the Church for 2,000 years (Rev. 12:15), and I think the pagan doctrine of hell is one of them. Tradition has left us a mess. We can either stay comfortably stuck in it, or we can exegete our way out. I am very thankful for Steve Gregg’s new book about hell. It is a powerful corrective to the pagan traditions of hell, and I hope it will help millions of Christians climb up out of that mess.
My years of being brainwashed by tradition have made it impossible for me
not to picture eternal fiery torment when I see the word Hell. So, whenever I see that word in my NKJV, I mentally cross it out and replace it with the correct word (Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, or Tartarus). I might even get a black permanent marker and redact the Hell out of my Bible.
