The Bible Hell
J.W. Hanson 1888

Part 1- INTRODUCTION
Part 2 - SHEOL AND HADEES IN O.T.
Part 3 - THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF HELL
Part 4 - HADEES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Part 5 - TARTARUS
Part 6 - GEHENNA
Part 7 - CONCLUSION

For more on Hell see :

The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment

What Does the Bible Teach About Hell

Hell NO!

The Silence of God concerning Hell

What Does the Bible Teach About Hell

Hell

The Bible Hell
Part 1

INTRODUCTION

Preface
The Bible Hell
The English Word Hell
Four Words Translated Hell

PREFACE

The brief excursus on the word "Hell" contained in this volume, aims to treat the subject in a popular style, and at the same time to present all the important facts, so fully and comprehensively that any reader can obtain in a few pages a birds-eye-view of "The Bible Hell."

The author ventures to hope that any one who will read candidly, not permitting the bias of an erroneous education to warp his judgment, will not fail to agree with the conclusions of this book,----that the doctrine of unending sin and woe finds no support in the Bible teachings concerning Hell.

THE BIBLE HELL

Does the Bible teach the idea commonly held among Christians concerning Hell? Does the Hell of the Bible denote a place of torment, or a condition of suffering without end, to begin at death? What is the Hell of the Bible? Manifestly the only way to arrive at the correct answer is to trace the words translated Hell from the beginning to the end of the Bible, and by their connections ascertain exactly what the divine Word teaches on this important subject. It seems incredible that a wise and benevolent God should have created or permitted any kind of an endless hell in his universe. Has he done so? Do the Scripture teachings concerning Hell stain the character of God and clothe human destiny with an impenetrable pall of darkness, by revealing a state or place of endless torment? Or do they explain its existence, and relieve God's character, and dispel all the darkness of misbelief, by teaching that it exists as a means to a good end? It is our belief that the Bible Hell is not the heathen, nor the "orthodox" hell, but is one that is doomed to pass away when its purpose shall have been accomplished, in the reformation of those for whose welfare a good God ordained it.

THE ENGLISH WORD HELL

The English word Hell grew into its present meaning. Horne Tooke says that hell, heel, hill, hole, whole, hall, hull, halt and hold are all from the same root. "Hell, any place, or some place covered over. Heel, that part of the foot which is covered by the leg. Hill, any heap of earth, or stone, etc., by which the plain or level surface of the earth is covered. Hale, i.e., healed or whole. Whole, the same as hale, i.e., covered. It was formerly written whole, without the w, as a wound or sore is healed, or whole, that is, covered over by the skin, which manner of expression will not seem extraordinary if we consider our use of the word recover. Hall, a covered building, where persons assemble, or where goods are protected from the weather. Hull, of a nut, etc. That by which a nut is covered. Hole, some place covered over. 'You shall seek for holes to hide your heads in.' Holt, holed, hol'd holt. A rising ground or knoll covered with trees. Hold, as the hold of a ship, in which things are covered, or the covered part of a ship."

The word was first applied to the grave by our German and English ancestors, and as superstition came to regard the grave as an entrance to a world of torment, Hell at length became the word used to denote an imaginary realm of fiery woe.

Dr. Adam Clarke says: "The word Hell, used in the common translation, conveys now an improper meaning of the original word; because Hell is only used to signify the place of the damned. But as the word Hell comes from the Anglo-Saxon helan, to cover, or hide, henee the tiling or slating of a house is called, in some parts of England (particularly Cornwall), heling, to this day, and the corers of books (in Lancashire), by the same name, so the literal import of the original word hades was formerly well expressed by it."---Com. in loc.

FOUR WORDS TRANSLATED HELL

In the Bible four words are translated Hell: the Hebrew word Sheol, in the original Old testament; its equivalent, the Greek word Hadees, in the Septuagint; and in the New Testament, Hadees, Gehenna and Tartarus.

Part 1 INTRODUCTION
Part 2 SHEOL AND HADEES IN O.T.
Part 3 THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF HELL
Part 4 HADEES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Part 5 TARTARUS
Part 6 GEHENNA
Part 7 CONCLUSION

The Bible Hell
Part 2

SHEOL AND HADEES IN THE O.T.

Five Old Testament Texts Claimed
Meaning Of the Word
Sheol Rendered Grave
Sheol Rendered Hell
All the Sheol Texts
Testimony Of Scholars
Heathen Ideas Of Hell

The Hebrew Old Testament, some three hundred years before the Christian era, was translated into Greek, but of the sixty-four instances where Sheol occurs in the Hebrew, it is rendered Hadees in the Greek sixty times, so that either word is the equivalent of the other. But neither of these words is ever used in the Bible to signify punishment after death, nor should the word Hell ever be used as the rendering of Sheol or Hadees for neither word denotes post-mortem torment. According to the Old Testament the words Sheol, Hadees primarily signify only the place, or state of the dead. The character of those who departed there did not affect their situation in Sheol, for all went into the same state. The word cannot be translated by the term Hell, for that would make Jacob expect to go to a place of torment, and prove that the Savior of the world, David, Jonah, etc., were once sufferers in the prison-house of the damned. In every instance in the Old Testament, the word grave might be substituted for the term hell, either in a literal or figurative sense. The word being a proper name should always have been left untranslated. Had it been carried into the Greek Septuagint, and then into the English, untranslated, Sheol, a world of misconception would have been avoided, for when it is rendered Hadees, all the materialism of the heathen mythology is suggested to the mind, and when rendered Hell, the medieval monstrosities of a Christianity corrupted by heathen adulterations is suggested. Had the word been permitted to travel untranslated, no one would give to it the meaning now so often applied to it. Sheol, primarily, literally, the grave, or death, secondarily and figuratively the political, social, moral or spiritual consequences of wickedness in the present world, is the precise force of the term, wherever found.

Sheol occurs exactly sixty-four times and is translated hell thirty-two times, pit three times, and grave twenty-nine times. Dr. George Campbell, a celebrated critic, says that "Sheol signifies the state of the dead in general, without regard to the goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery."

FIVE OLD TESTAMENT TEXTS CLAIMED

Professor Stuart (orthodox Congregational) only dares claim five out of the sixty-four passages as affording any proof that the word means a place of punishment after death. "These," he says, "may designate the future world of woe." "They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to Sheol." "The wicked shall be turned into Sheol, and all the nations that forget God." "Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold of Sheol." "But he knoweth that the ghosts are there, and that her guests are in the depths of Sheol." "You shall beat him with a rod, and shall deliver his soul from Sheol. He observes: "The meaning will be a good one, if we suppose Sheol to designate future punishment." "I concede, to interpret all the texts which exhibit Sheol as having reference merely to the grave, is possible; and therefore it is possible to interpret" them "as designating a death violent and premature, inflicted by the hand of Heaven."

An examination shows that these five passages agree with the rest in their meaning:
Ps. 9:17: "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." The wicked here are "the heathen," "mine enemies," i.e.; they are not individuals, but "the nations that forget God," that is, neighboring nations, the heathen. They will be turned into Sheol, death, die as nations, for their wickedness. Individual sinners are not meant.

Professor Alexander, of the Theological Seminary, Princeton, thus presents the correct translation of Ps. 9:17, the only passage containing the word usually quoted from the Old Testament to convey the idea of post-mortem punishment. "The wicked shall turn back, even to hell, to death or to the grave, all nations forgetful of God. The enemies of God and of his people shall not only be thwarted and repulsed, but driven to destruction, and that not merely individuals, but nations." Dr. Allen, of Bowdoin College says of this text: "The punishment expressed in this passage is cutting off from life, destroying from the earth by some special judgment, and removing to the invisible state of the dead. The Hebrew term translated hell in the text does not seem to mean, with any certainty, anything more than the state of the dead in their deep abode." Professor Stuart: "It means a violent and premature death inflicted by the hand of heaven." Job 21:13: "They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave."

It would seem that no one could claim this text as a threat of after-death punishment. It is a mere declaration of sudden death. This is evident when we remember that it was uttered to a people who, according to all authorities, believed in no punishment after death.

Proverbs 5:5, "her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell." This language, making death and Sheol parallel, announces that the strange woman walks in paths of swift and inevitable sorrow and death. And so does Prov. 9:18: "But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell." Sheol is here used as a figure of emblem of the horrible condition and fate of those who follow the ways of sin. They are dead while they live. They are already in Sheol or the kingdom of death.

Proverbs 23:13-14, "Withhold not correction from the child; for if you beat him with the rod, he shall not die. You shall beat him with the rod, and shall deliver his soul from hell." Sheol is here used as the grave, to denote the death that rebellious children experience early, or it may mean that moral condition of the soul which Sheol, the realm of death signifies. But in no case is it supposable that it means a place or condition of after-death punishment in which, as all scholars agree, Solomon was not a believer.

MEANING OF THE WORD

The real meaning of the word Stuart concedes to be the under-world, the religion of the dead, the grave, the sepulcher, the region of ghosts or departed spirits. (Ex. Ess.): "It was considered as a vast and wide dominion or region, of which the grave seems to have been as it were only a part or a kind of entrance-way. It appears to have been regarded as extending deep down into the earth, even to its lowest abysses. . . . . In this boundless region lived and moved at times, the names of departed friends."

But these five passages teach no such doctrine as he thinks they may teach. The unrighteous possessor of wealth goes down to death; the nations that forget God are destroyed as nations; lewd women's steps lead downward to death; their guests are on the downward road; the rod that wisely corrects the unruly child, saves him from the destruction of sin. There is no hint of an endless hell, nor of a post-mortem hell in these passages, and if not in these five then it is conceded it is in no passage containing the word.

That the Hebrew Sheol never designates a place of punishment in a future state of existence, we have the testimony of the most learned of scholars, even among the so-called orthodox. We quote the testimony of a few:

Rev. Dr. Whitby: "Sheol throughout the Old Testament, signifies not a place of punishment for the souls of bad men only, but the grave, or place of death."

Dr Chapman: "Sheol, in itself considered has no connection with future punishment."

Dr. Allen: "The term Sheol itself, does not seem to mean anything more than the state of the dead in their dark abode."

Dr. Firbairn, of the College of Glasgow: "Beyond doubt, Sheol, like Hades, was regarded as the abode after death, alike of the good and the bad."

Edward Leigh, who says Horne's, "Introduction," was "one of the most learned understanding of the original languages of the Scriptures," observes that "all learned Hebrew scholars know the Hebrews have no proper word for hell, as we take hell."

Prof. Stuart: "There can be no reasonable doubt that Sheol does most generally mean the underworld, the grave or sepulchre, the world of the dead. It is very clear that there are many passages where no other meaning can reasonably be assigned to it. Accordingly, our English translators have rendered the word Sheol grave in thirty instances out of the whole sixty-four instances in which it occurs."

Dr. Thayer in his Theology of Universalism quotes as follows: Dr. Whitby says that Hell "throughout the Old Testament signifies the grave only or the place of death."

Archbishop Whately: "As for a future state of retribution in another world, Moses said nothing to the Israelites about that."

Milman says that Moses "maintains a profound silence on the rewards and punishments of another life."

Bishop Warburton testifies that, "In the Jewish Republic, both the rewards and punishments promised by Heaven were temporal only-such as health, long life, peace, plenty and dominion, etc., diseases, premature death, war, famine, want, subjections, captivity, etc. And in no one place of the Mosaic Institutes is there the least mention, or any intelligible hint, of the rewards and punishments of another life."

Paley declares that the Mosaic dispensation "dealt in temporal rewards and punishments. The blessings consisted altogether of worldly benefits, and the curses of worldly punishments.

Prof. Mayer says, that "the rewards promised the righteous, and the punishments threatened the wicked, are such only as are awarded in the present state of being."

Jahn, whose work is the textbook of the Andover Theological Seminary, says, "We have no authority, therefore, decidedly to say, that any other motives were held out to the ancient Hebrews to pursue good and avoid evil, than those which were derived from the rewards and punishments of this life."

To the same important fact testify Prof. Wines, Bush, Arnauld, and other distinguished theologians and scholars. "All learned Hebrew scholars know that the Hebrews have no word proper for hell, as we take hell."

[Footnote: Encyc. Britan., vol. 1. Dis. 3 Whateley's "Peculiarities of the Christian Religion," p.44, 2d edition, and his "Scripture Revelations of a Future State," pp. 18, 19, American edition. MILMAN'S "Hist. of Jews," vol. 1, 117. "Divine Legation," vol. 3, pp. 1, 2 & c. 10th London edition. PALEY'S works, vol. 5. p. 110, Sermon 13. Jahn's "Archaeology," 324. Lee, in his "Eschatology," says: "It should be remembered that the rewards and punishments of the Mosaic Institutes were exclusively temporal. Not an allusion is found, in the case of either individuals or communities, in which reference is made to the good or evil of a future state as motive to obedience."]

Dr. Muenscher, author of a Dogmatic History in German, says: "The souls or shades of the dead wander in Sheol, the realm or kingdom of death, an abode deep under the earth. There go all men, without distinction, and hope for no return. There ceases all pain and anguish; there reigns an unbroken silence; there all is powerless and still; and even the praise of God is heard no more."

Von Coelln: "Sheol itself is described as the house appointed for all living, which receives into its bosom all mankind, without distinction of rank, wealth or moral character. It is only in the mode of death, and not in the condition after death, that the good are distinguished above the evil. The just, for instance, die in peace, and are gently borne away before the evil comes; while a bitter death breaks the wicked like as a tree."

SHEOL RENDERED GRAVE

Consult the passages in which the word is rendered grave, and substitute the original word Sheol, and it will be seen that the meaning is far better preserved: Gen. 37: 34-35: "And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sack-cloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him." It was not into the literal grave, but into the realm of the dead, where Jacob supposed his son to have gone, into which he wished to go, namely, to Sheol.

Gen. 42:38 and 44: 31, are to the same purport: "And he said, My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he is left alone: if mischief befall him by the way in the which ye go, then shall you bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave." "It shall come to pass, when he sees that the lad is not with us, that he will die: and your servants shall bring down the gray hairs of your servant our father with sorrow to the grave." The literal grave may be meant here, but had Sheol remained untranslated, any reader would have understood the sense intended.

I Samuel 2: 6: "The Lord kills, and makes alive: he brings down to the grave, and brings up."
I Kings 2: 6-9: "Do therefore according to your wisdom, and let not his old age (gray hair) go down to the grave in peace. Now therefore hold him not guiltless: for you are a wise man, and know what you ought to do unto him; but his old age bring down to the grave with blood."
Job 7: 9: "As the cloud is consumed and vanishes away: so he that goes down to the grave shall come up no more."
Job 14:13, "Oh that You would hide me in the grave, that You would keep me secret, until Your wrath be past, that You would appoint me a set time, and remember me."

Of Korah and his company, it is said, "They and all that belonged to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the congregation." - Num. 16:33.
Job 17:13-14, "If I wait, the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness. I have said to corruption, You are my father: to the worm, You are my mother, and my sister."
Job 21:13, "They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave."
Job 33:21-22, "His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen: and his bones that were not seen stick out. Then his soul draws near unto the grave, and his lie to the destroyers."
Ps. 6:5, "In the grave who shall give You thanks?"
Ps. 30:3, "O Lord, You have brought up my soul from the grave: You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit."
Ps. 88:3, "For my soul is full of troubles, and my soul draws near to the grave."
Prov. 1:12, "Let us swallow them up alive as the grave."
Ps. 20:3, "In the grave who shall give thee thanks?"
Ps. 141:7, "Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth."
Song Sol. 8:6, "Jealousy is cruel as the grave."
Ecc. 9:10, "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, where you are going."
Isa. 38:18, "For the grave cannot praise You, death cannot celebrate You, they that go down into the pit cannot hope for Your truth."
Hos. 14:14, "I will ransom them from the power of the grave-O grave, I will be your destruction."
Job 33:22, "His soul (man's) draws near unto the grave."
I Kings 2:9, "But his old age you bring down to the grave with blood." Job 24: 19: "Drought and heat consume the snow-waters; so does the grave those which have sinned."
Psalm 6:5, "For in death there is no remembering You, in the grave who shall give You thanks."
Psalm 31:17, "Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave."
Psalm 89:48, "What man is he that lives, and shall not see death? Shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave?
Prov. 30:16, "The grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire that says not, It is enough."
Isa. 14:11, "Your pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of your violins; the worm is spread under you, and the worms cover you." On Isa. 38: 18: "For the Grave (Sheol, Hadees) cannot praise You; death cannot celebrate You; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for Your truth."

Prof. Stuart says: "I regard the simple meaning of this controversial place (and of others like it, e.g., Ps. 6:5; 30:9; 88:11; 115:7; Comp. 118: 17) as being this namely, "The dead can no more give thanks to God nor celebrate his praise among the living on earth, etc." And he properly observes (pp. 113-14): "It is to be regretted that our English translation has given occasion to the remark that those who made it have intended to impose on their readers in any case a sense different from that of the original Hebrew. The inconsistency and irregularity with which they have rendered the word Sheol even in cases of the same nature, must obviously afford some apparent ground for this objection against their version of it."

Why the word should have been rendered grave and pit in the foregoing passages, and hell in the rest, cannot be explained. Why it is not grave or hell, or better still Sheol or Hadees in all cases, no one can explain, for there is no valid reason.

SHEOL RENDERED HELL

The first time the word is found translated Hell in the Bible is in Deut. 32:22-26, "For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest Hell, Sheol-Hadees, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mishiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs. I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men."

Thus the lowest Hell is on earth, and its torments consist in such pains as are only possible in this life: "hunger," "the teeth of beasts," "the poison of serpents," "the sword," etc.; and not only are real offenders to suffer them, but even "sucklings" are to be involved in the calamity. If endless torment is denoted by the word, infant damnation follows, for into this hell "the suckling and the man of gray hairs go," side by side. The scattering and destruction of the Israelites, in this world, is the meaning of fire in the lowest hell, as any reader can see by carefully consulting the chapter containing this first instance of the use of the word.

Similar to this are the teachings wherever the word occurs in the Old Testament: "For You will not leave my soul in Hell nor suffer Your holy one to see corruption." Ps. 16:10. Here "corruption" is placed parallel with Sheol, or death.

"Though they dig into Hell, then shall my hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, then will I bring them down." Amos 9:2.
"If I ascend up into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Hell, behold, You are there." Ps. 139:8.
"It is as high as heaven; what can You do? deeper than Hell; what can You know." Job 11:8.
The sky and the depths of the earth are here placed in opposition, to represent height and depth. A place of torment after death was never thought of by any of those who use the word in the Old Testament.

If the word means a place of endless punishment, then David was a monster. Ps. 55:15: "Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into Sheol-Hadees!"

Job desired to go there. 14:13: "Oh, that You would hide me in Sheol-Hadees.

Hezekiah expected to go there. - Isa 38:10: "I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of Sheol-Hadees.

Korah, Dathan and Abiram (Numbers 16:30-33) not only went there "but their houses, and goods, and all that they owned," "and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that belonged to Korah, and all their goods. They, and all that belonged to them, went down alive into Sheol-Hadees, and the earth closed upon them; and they perished from among the congregation."

It is in the dust - Job 17:16, "They shall go down to the bars of Sheol-Hadees, when our rest together is in the dust."

It has a mouth, is in fact the grave, see Ps. 141:7, "Our bones are scattered at Sheol's-Hadees' mouth, as when one cuts and cleaves wood upon the earth."

It has gray hairs, Gen. 42:38, "And he said, my son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he is left alone: if mischief befall him by the way in which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol-Hadees."

The overthrow of the King of Babylon is called Hell.
Isa. 14:9-15, 22-23, "Hell, Sheol-Hadees, from beneath is moved for you to meet you at your coming; it stirs up the dead for you, even all the chief ones of the earth; it has raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto you, are you also become weak as we? Are you become like unto us? Your pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of your harps; the worm is spread under you, and the worms cover you. For I will rise up against them says the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, says the Lord. I will also make it a possession for the wading bird, and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the broom of destruction, says the Lord of hosts." All this imagery demonstrates temporal calamity, a national overthrow as the signification of the word Hell.

The captivity of the Jews is called Hell.
Isa. 5:13-14, "Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge; and their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore Sheol-Hadees, has enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure; and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoices, shall descend into it.

Temporal overthrow is called Hell.
Ps. 49:14, "Like sheep they are laid in the grave, death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in Sheol-Hadees, from their dwelling."

Ezek. 32:26-27, "And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to Sheol-Hadees with their weapons of war, and they have laid their swords under their heads." Men are in hell with their swords under their heads. This cannot mean a state of conscious suffering.

Hell is to be destroyed.
Hos. 13:14, "Oh grave I will be your destruction."
I Cor. 15: 55: "Oh grave (Hadees) I will be your destruction."
Rev. 20:13,14,  "And death and Hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire."

Sheol is precisely the same word as Saul. If it meant Hell, would any Hebrew parent have called his child Sheol? Think of calling a boy
Sheol (Hell)!

Nowhere in the Old Testament does the word Sheol, or its Greek equivalent, Hadees, ever denote a place or condition of suffering after death; it either means literal death or temporal calamity. This is clear as we consult the usage.

Hence David, after having been in Hell was delivered from it:
Ps. 18:5; 30:3, "O Lord, You have brought up my soul from the grave; You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. When the waves of death compassed me the floods of ungodly men made me afraid." "The sorrows of Hell, Sheol-Hadees compassed me about; the snares of death prevented me," so that there is escape from Hell."

Jonah was in a fish only seventy hours, and declared he was in hell forever. He escaped from Hell.
Jon. 2:2, 6, "Out of the belly of Hell (Sheol-Hadees) I cried, and You heard my voice, earth with her bars was about me forever."
Even an eternal Hell lasted but three days.

It is a place where God is and therefore must be an instrumentality of mercy.
Ps. 139:8, "If I make my bed In Hell (Sheol-Hadees), behold You are there."

Men having gone into it are redeemed from it.
I Sam. 2:6, "The Lord kills and makes alive, He brings down to the grave (Sheol-Hadees) and brings up."

Jacob wished to go there.
Gen. 37:35, "I will go down into Sheol (the grave, Hades) unto my son mourning."

ALL THE SHEOL TEXTS

Besides the passages already given, we now record all the other places in which the word Sheol-Hadees, occurs. It is translated Hell in the following passages:
Ps. 86:13, "You have delivered my soul from the lowest Hell."
Ps. 156:3, "The pains of Hell got hold on me: I found trouble and sorrow."
Prov. 15:11, 24, "Hell and destruction are before the Lord. The way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from Hell beneath."
Prov. 23:14, "You shall beat him, and deliver his soul from Hell."
Prov. 27:20, "Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied."
Isa. 28:15, 18, "Because you have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with Hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with Hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then you shall be trodden down by it."
Isaiah 57:9, "You did debase yourself even unto hell."
Ezek. 31:16-17, "I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to Hell with them that descend into the pit: and all the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water, shall be comforted in the nether parts of the earth. They also went down into Hell with him, unto them that be slain with the sword; and they that were his arm, that dwelled under his shadow in the midst of the heathen."
Jonah 2:2 says, "Out of the belly of Hell cried I, and You heard me."
Hab. 2:5, "Also because he is transgressed by wine, he is a proud man who neither stays at home, who enlarges his desire as Hell and is as death, and cannot be satisfied."

We believe we have recorded every passage in which the word Sheol-Hadees occurs. Suppose the original word stood, and we read Sheol or Hadees in all the passages instead of Hell, would any unbiased reader regard the word as conveying the idea of a place or state of endless torment after death, such as the English word Hell is so generally supposed to denote? Such a doctrine was never held by the ancient Jews, until after the Babylonish captivity, during which they acquired it of the heathen. All scholars agree that Moses never taught it, and that it is not contained in the Old Testament.

Thus not one of the sixty-four passages containing the only word rendered Hell in the entire Old Testament, teaches any such thought as is commonly supposed to be contained in the English word Hell. It should have stood the proper name of the realm of death, Sheol.

Men in the Bible are said to be in hell, Sheol-Hadees, and in "The lowest hell," while on earth. Deut. 32:22; Jon. 2:2;
Rev. 6: 8.

Men have been in Hell, Sheol-Hadees, and yet have escaped from it. Ps. 18:5, 6; II Sam.; Jon 2:2; Ps. 116:3; 86:12-13. Ps. 30:3; Rev. 20:13.

God delivers men from Hell, Sheol-Hadees. I Sam. 2:6.

All men are to go there. No one can escape the Bible Hell, Sheol-Hadees. Ps. 89:48.

There can be no evil there for there is no kind of work there. Eccl. 9:10.

Christ's soul was said to be in Hell, Sheol-Hadees.
Acts 2:27-28.

No one in the Bible ever speaks of Hell, Sheol-Hadees as a place of punishment after death.

It is a way of escape from punishment. Amos 9:2.

The inhabitants of Hell, Sheol-Hadees are eaten of worms, vanish and are consumed away. Job 7:9, 21; Ps. 49:14.

Hell, Sheol-Hadees is a place of rest. Job 17:16.

It is a realm of unconsciousness. Ps. 6:5; Is. 38:18;
Eccl. 9:10.

All men will be delivered from this Hell. Hos. 13:14.

Hell, Sheol-Hadees, will be destroyed. Hos. 13:14;
I Cor. 15:55; Rev. 20:14.

At the time these declarations were made, and universally accepted by the Hebrews, the surrounding nations all held entirely different doctrines. Egypt, Greece, Rome, taught that after death there is a fate in store for the wicked that exactly resembles that taught by so-called orthodox Christians. But the entire Old testament is utterly silent on the subject, teaching nothing of the sort as the sixty-four passages we have quoted show and as the critics of all churches admit. And yet "Moses was learned in all the wisdom in all the wisdom of the Egyptians"
(Acts 7: 22) who believed in a world of torment after death. If Moses knew all about this Egyptian doctrine, and did not teach it to his followers, what is the unavoidable inference?

TESTIMONY OF SCHOLARS

Dr. Strong says, that not only Moses, but "every Israelite who came out of Egypt, must have been fully acquainted with the universally recognized doctrine of future rewards and punishments." And yet Moses is utterly silent on the subject.

Dr. Thayer remarks: "Is it possible to imagine a more conclusive proof against the divine origin of the doctrine? If he had believed it to be of God, if he had believed in endless torments as the doom of the wicked after death, and had received this as a revelation from heaven, could he have passed it over in silence? Would he have dared to conceal it, or treat so terrible a subject with such marked contempt? And what motive could he have had for doing this? I cannot conceive of a more striking evidence of the fact that the doctrine is not of God. He knew whence the monstrous dogma came, and he had seen enough of Egypt already, and would have no more of her cruel superstitions; and so he casts this out, with her abominable idolatries, as false and unclean things."

So that while the Old Testament talks of ten thousand things of small importance, it has not a syllable nor a whisper of what ought to have been told first of all and most of all and continually. No one is said to have gone to such a place as is now denoted by the word Hell, or to be going to it, or saved from it, or exposed to it. To say that the Hell taught by partialist Christians existed before Christ, is to accuse God of having permitted his children for four thousand years to tumble into it by millions, without a word of warning from him. Earth was a flowery path, concealing pitfalls into infinite burnings, and God never told one of his children a word about it. For four thousand years then the race got on with no knowledge of a place of torment after death. When was the fact first made known? And if it was not necessary to the wickedest people the world ever knew, when did it become necessary?

The future world as revealed in the Old Testament is a conscious existence never described as a place or state of punishment. Prof. Stuart well calls it "the region of darkness or ghosts. It was considered as a vast and wide domain or region of which the grave was only a part or a kind of entrance-way. It appears to have been regarded as extending deep down into the earth, even to the lowest abysses. In this boundless region lived and moved at times the manes (or ghosts) of departed friends."

Bishop Lowth: "In the under-world of the Hebrews there is something peculiarly grand and awful. It was an immense region, a vast subterranean kingdom, involved in thick darkness filled with deep valleys, and shut up with strong gates; and from it there was no possibility of escape. There whole hosts of men went down at once; heroes and armies with their trophies of victory; kings and their people were found there where they had a shadowy sort of existence as manes or ghosts neither entirely spiritual nor entirely material, engaged in the employments of their earthly life though destitute of strength and physical substance." All was shadowy and unreal beyond death until Christ came and brought immortality to light through his Gospel.

Whitby on Acts 2:27, "That Sheol throughout the Old Testament, and Hadees in the Septuagint, answering to it, signify not the place of punishment, or of the souls of bad men only, but the grave only, or the place of death appears, first, from the root of it, Sheol, which signifies to ask, to crave and require. Second, because it is the place to which the good as well as the bad go, etc."

HEATHEN IDEAS OF HELL

During all the time that generations following generations of Jews were entertaining the ideas taught in these sixty-four passages, the surrounding heathen believed in future, endless torment. The literature is full of it. Says Good in his "Book of Nature": "It was believed in most countries 'that this Hell, Hadees, or invisible world, is divided into two very distinct and opposite regions, by a broad and impassable gulf; that the one is a seat of happiness, a paradise or elysium, and the other a seat of misery, a Gehenna or Tartarus; and that there is a supreme magistrate and an impartial tribunal belonging to the infernal shades, before which the ghosts must appear, and by which they are sentenced to the one or the other, according to the deeds done in the body. Egypt is said to have been the inventors of this important and valuable part of the tradition; and undoubtedly it is to be found in the earliest records of Egyptian history.'  [It should be observed that Gehenna was not used before Christ, or until 150 A. D. to denote a place of future punishment."]

Homer sings:

"Here in a lonely land, and gloomy cells, The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells; The sun ne'er views the uncomfortable seats, When radiant he advances or retreats. Unhappy race! whom endless night invades, Clouds the dull air, and wraps them round in shades."

Virgil says:

"The gates of Hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way." Just in the gate, and in the jaws of Hell, Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell, And pale Diseases, and repining Age, Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage; Here Toils, and Death, and Death's half-brother Sleep Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep; With anxious pleasures of a guilty mind, Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind; The Furies' iron beds; and Strife, that shakes Her hissing tresses, and unfolds her snakes. Full in the midst of this infernal road, An elm displays her dusky arms abroad; -- The god of sleep there bides his heavy head; And empty dreams on ev'ry leaf are spread. Of various forms unnumbered spectres more, Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door. Before the passage horrid Hydra stands, And Briarius with his hundred hands; Gorgons, Geryon with his tripe frame; And vain Chimera vomits empty flame."

Dr. Anthon says, "As regards the analogy between the term Hadees and our English word Hell, it may be remarked that the latter, in its primitive signification, perfectly corresponded to the former. For, at first, it denoted only what was secret or concealed; and it is found, moreover, with little variation of form and precisely with the same meaning in all the Teutonic dialects. The dead without distinction of good or evil, age or rank, wander there conversing about their former state on earth; they are unhappy and they feel their wretched state acutely. They have no strength or power of body or mind. . . Nothing can be more gloomy and comfortless than the whole aspect of the realm of Hadees, as pictured by Homer."

The heathen sages admit that they invented the doctrine.
Says Polybius: "Since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passions and violence, there is no other way to keep them in order but by the fear and terror of the invisible world; on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously, when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods, and of the infernal regions." B. vi. 56.

Strabo says: "The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, and by those terrors and threatenings which certain dreadful words and monstrous forms imprint upon their minds. . . . For it is impossible to govern the crowd of women, and all the common rabble, by philosophical reasoning, and lead them to piety, holiness and virtue-but this must be done by superstition, or the fear of the gods, by means of fables and wonders; for the thunder, the aegis, the trident, the torches (Of the Furies), the dragons, etc., are all fables, as is also all the ancient theology." Geo. B. I. Seneca says: "Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment-seat, etc., are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors." How near these superstitious horrors--these heathen inventions.

Part 1 - INTRODUCTION
Part 2 - SHEOL AND HADEES IN O.T.
Part 3 - THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF HELL
Part 4 - HADEES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Part 5 - TARTARUS
Part 6 - GEHENNA
Part 7 - CONCLUSION

The Bible Hell
Part 3

THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF HELL

The Christian Idea Of Hellashas sometimes been, may be seen by quoting the following testimonies. Do they resemble anything in the Old Testament? Do they not exactly copy the heathen descriptions? Where did these ideas come from? They are not found in the Old Testament? And yet the world was full of them when Christ came. Read the verse of Pollok as lurid and blasphemous as it is vigorous:

Wide was the place,
And deep as wide, and ruinous as deep.
Beneath I saw a lake of burning fire,
With tempest tost perpetually, and still
The waves of fiery darkness, gainst the rocks
Of dark damnation broke, and music made
Of melancholy sort; and over head,
And all around, wind warred with wind, storm howled
To storm, and lightning forked lightning, crossed,
And thunder answered thunder, muttering sound
Of sullen wrath; and far as sight could pierce,
Or down descend in caves of hopeless depth,
Thro' all that dungeon of unfading fire,
I saw most miserable beings walk,
Burning continually, yet unconsumed;
Forever wasting, yet enduring still;
Dying perpetually, yet never dead.
Some wandered lonely in the desert flames,
And some in fell encounter fiercely met,
With curses loud, and blasphemies, that made
The cheek of darkness pale; and as they fought,
And cursed, and gnashed their teeth, and wished to die
Their hollow eyes did utter streams of wo.
And there were groans that ended not, and sighs
That always sighed, and tears that ever wept,
And ever fell, but not in Mercy's sight
And Sorrow, and Repentance, and Despair,
Among them walked, and to their thirsty lips
Presented frequent cups of burning gall.
And as I listened, I heard these being curse
Almighty God, and curse the Lamb, and curse
The Earth, the Resurrection morn, and seek,
And ever vainly seek for utter death.
And to their everlasting anguish still,
The thunders from above responding spoke
These words, which thro' the caverns of perdition
Forlornly echoing, fell on every ear-
"Ye knew your duty but ye did it not"
The place thou saw'st was Hell; the groans thou heard'st
The wailings of the damned-of those who would
Not be redeemed-and at the judgment day,
Long past for unrepented sins were damned.
The seven loud thunders which thou heard'st, declare
The eternal wrath of the Almighty God.
There in utter darkness, far
Remote, I beings saw forlorn in wo.
Burning, continually yet unconsumed.
And there were groans that ended not, and sighs
That always sighed, and tears that ever wept
And ever fell, but not in Mercy's sight;
And still I heard these wretched beings curse
Almighty God, and curse the Lamb, and curse
The Earth, the Resurrection morn, and seek,
And ever vainly seek for utter death;
And from above the thunders answered still,
"Ye know your duty, but ye did it not."

Such descriptions are not confined to poetry. Plain prose has sought to set forth the doctrine in words equally repulsive and graphic. Rutherford, in his "Religious Letters," declares that hereafter "Tongue, lungs and liver, bones and all shall boil and fry in a torturing fire,--a river of fire and brimstone, broader than the earth!"

Boston, in his 'Fourfold State,' says: "There will be universal torments, every part of the creature being tormented in that flame. When one is cast into a fiery furnace, the fire makes its way into the very bowels, and leaves no member untouched; what part then can have ease when the damned sinner is in a lake of fire, burning with brimstone?"

Buckle, in his "Civilization in England," thus sums up the popular doctrine: "In the pictures which they drew, they reproduced and heightened the barbarous imagery of a barbarous age. They delighted in telling their hearers that they would be roasted in great fires and hung up by their tongues. They were to be lashed with scorpions, and see their companions writhing and howling around them. They were to be thrown into boiling oil and scalding lead. A river of brim-stone broader than the earth was prepared for them; in that they were to be immersed. . . Such were the first stages of suffering, and they were only the first. For the torture besides being unceasing, was to become gradually worse. So refined was the cruelty, that one Hell was succeeded by another; and, lest the sufferer should grow callous, he was, after a time, moved on, that he might undergo fresh agonies in fresh places, provision being made that the torment should not pall on the sense, but should be varied in its character as well as eternal in its duration.

"All this was the work of the God of the Scotch clergy. It was not only his work, it was his joy and his pride. For, according to them, Hell was created before man came into the word; the Almighty, they did not hesitate to say, having spent his previous leisure in preparing and completing this place of torture, so that when the human race appeared, it might be ready for their reception. Ample, however, as the arrangements were, they were insufficient; and Hell not being big enough to contain the countless victims incessantly poured into it, had, in these latter days, been enlarged. But in that vast expanse there was no void, for the whole of it reverberated with the shrieks and yells of undying agony. Both children and fathers made Hell echo with their piercing screams, writhing in convulsive agony at the torments which they suffered, and knowing that other torments more grievous still were reserved for them." And it was not an infinite Devil, but a just and merciful God who was accused of having committed all this infernal cruelty.

Michael Angelo's Last Judgment is an attempt to de-scribe in paint, what was believed then and has been for centuries since. Henry Ward Beecher thus refers to that great painting. (Plymouth Pulpit, Oct. 29, 1870): "Let any one look at that; let any one see the enormous gigantic coils of fiends and men; let any one look at the defiant Christ that stands like a superb athlete at the front, hurling his enemies from him and calling his friends toward him as Hercules might have done; let any one look upon that hideous wriggling mass that goes plunging down through the air-serpents and men and beasts of every nauseous kind, mixed together; let him look at the lower parts of the picture, where with the pitchforks men are by devils being cast into caldrons and into burning fires, where hateful fiends are gnawing the skulls of suffering sinners, and where there is hellish cannibalism going on-let a man look at that picture and the scenes which it depicts, and he sees what were the ideas which men once had of Hell and of divine justice. It was a nightmare as hideous as was ever begotten by the hellish brood it-self; and it was an atrocious slander on God. . . . I do not wonder that men have reacted from these horrors-I honor them for it."

Tertullian says: "How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates liquifying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then ever before from applause."

Jeremy Taylor, of the English Church, says: "The bodies of the damned shall be crowded together in hell, like grapes in a wine-press, which press one another till they burst; every distinct sense and organ shall be assailed with its own appropriate and most exquisite sufferings."

Calvin describes it: "Forever harassed with a dreadful tempest, they shall feel themselves torn asunder by an angry God, and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings, terrified by the thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight of this hand, so that to sink into any gulf would be more tolerable than to stand for a moment in these terrors."

Jonathan Edwards said: "The world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of fire, in which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always be in tempest, in which they shall be tossed to and fro, having no rest day or night, vast waves and billows of fire continually rolling over their heads, of which they shall forever be full of a quick sense within and without; their heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins and their vitals, shall forever be full of a flowing, melting fire, fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements; and, also, they shall eternally be full of the most quick and lively sense to feel the torments; not for one minute, not for one day, not for one age, not for two ages, not for a hundred ages, nor for ten thousand millions of ages, one after another, but forever and ever, without any end at all, and never to be delivered."

And Spurgeon uses this language even in our own days: "When you die, the soul will be tormented alone: that will be a hell for it, but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then you will have twin hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth thy body will lie, asbestos-like, forever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall forever play his diabolical tun of Hell's Unutterable Lament."

"A Catholic Book for Children" says: "The fifth dungeon is a red-hot oven in which is a little child. Hear how it screams to come out! see how it turns and twists itself about in the fire! It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. To this child God was very good. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much worse in Hell. So God, in his mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood."

Now the horrible ideas we have just quoted were not obtained from the Old Testament, and yet they were fully believed by the Jew and Pagan when Christ came. From where came these views? If the New Testament teaches them, then Christ must have borrowed them from uninspired heathen. What does the New Testament teach concerning Hell?

Within a few years Christians have quite generally abandoned their faith in material torments, and have substituted mental anguish, spiritual torture. But the torment, the anguish, the woe and agony are only faintly hinted by any possible effect of literal fire. The modification of opinion from literal fire to spiritual anguish, gives no relief to the character of God, and renders the "orthodox" hell no less revolting to every just and merciful feeling in the human heart, no less dishonorable to God. It is woe unspeakable to millions, without alleviation and without end, inflicted by a being called God, ordained by him from the foundation of the world for those he foresaw, before their birth, would inevitably suffer that woe, if he consented to their birth, compelling his wretched children to cry for endless eons in the language of Young (Night Thoughts):

"Father of Mercies! why from silent earth
Did you awake and curse me into birth,
Tear me from quiet, banish me from night,
And make a thankless present of Thy light,
Push into being a reverse of Thee
And animate a clod with misery?

This question never can be answered. Good men groping in the eclipse of faith created by the false doctrine of an endless Hell, have tried in vain to see or explain the reason of it. Albert Barnes, (Presbyterian,) voices the real thought of millions, when he says: "That any should suffer forever, lingering on in hopeless despair, and rolling amidst infinite torments without the possibility of alleviation and without end; that since God can save men and will save a part, he has not proposed to save all-these are real, not imaginary, difficulties. . . . My whole soul pants for light and relief on these questions. But I get neither; and in the distress and anguish of my own spirit, I confess that I see no light whatever. I see not one ray to disclose to me why sin came into the world; why the earth is strewn with the dying and the dead; and why man must suffer to all eternity. I have never seen a particle of light thrown on these subjects, that has given a moment's ease to my tortured mind. . . . I confess, when I look on a world of sinners and sufferers-upon death-beds and grave-yards-upon the world of woe filled with hosts to suffer for ever: when I see my friends, my family, my people, my fellow citizens when I look upon a whole race, all involved in this sin and danger-and when I see the great mass of them wholly unconcerned, and when I feel that God only can save them, and yet he does not do so, I am stuck dumb. It is all dark, dark, dark to my soul, and I cannot disguise it."

Part 1 - INTRODUCTION
Part 2 - SHEOL AND HADEES IN O.T.
Part 3 - THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF HELL
Part 4 - HADEES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Part 5 - TARTARUS
Part 6 - GEHENNA
Part 7 - CONCLUSION

The Bible Hell
Part 4

HADEES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

Meaning Of Hadees
Opinions Of Scholars
Heathen Corruptions
Jewish and Pagan Opinions
Thrust Down To Hadees
Jesus Went To Hadees
The Gates Of Hadees
Hadees Is On Earth
Hadees Destroyed
It Is A Parable
Does Not Teach Endless Torment
The Teaching Of the Parable
Hadees Is Temporary

The word Hadees occurs but eleven times in the New Testament, and is translated Hell ten times, and grave once. The word is from a, not, and eulo, to see, and means concealed, invisible. It has exactly the same meaning as Sheol, literally the grave, or death, and figuratively destruction, downfall, calamity, or punishment in this world, with no intimation whatever of torment or punishment beyond the grave. Such is the meaning in every passage in the Old Testament containing the word Sheol or Hadees, whether translated Hell, grave or pit. Such is the invariable meaning of Hadees in the New Testament. Says the "Emphatic Diaglott:" "To translate Hadees by the word Hell as it is done ten times out of eleven in the New Testament, is very improper, unless it has the Saxon meaning of helan, to cover, attached to it. The primitive signification of Hell, only denoting what was secret or concealed, perfectly corresponds with the Greek term Hadees and its equivalent Sheol, but the theological definition given to it at the present day by no means expresses it."

MEANING OF HADEES

The Greek Septuagint, which our Lord used when he read or quoted from the Old Testament, gives Hadees as the exact equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol, and when the Savior, or his apostles, use the word, they must mean the same as it meant in the Old Testament. When Hadees is used in the New Testament, we must understand it just as we do (Sheol or Hadees) in the Old Testament.

OPINIONS OF SCHOLARS

Dr. Campbell well says: "In my judgment, it ought never in Scripture to be rendered Hell, at least, in the sense wherein that word is now universally understood by Christians.

In the Old Testament, the corresponding word is Sheol, which signifies the state of the dead in general without regard to the goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery. In translating that word, the seventy have almost invariably used Hadees. It is very plain, that neither in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, nor in the New, does the word Hadees convey the meaning which the present English word Hell, in the Christian usage, always conveys to our minds."-Diss. Vi., pp. 180-1.

Donnegan defines it thus: "Invisible, not manifest, concealed, dark, uncertain."-Lex. p. 19.

Le Clere affirms that "neither Hadees nor Sheol ever signifies in the Sacred Scripture the abode of evil spirits, but only the sepulchre, or the state of the dead."

HEATHEN CORRUPTIONS

It must not be forgotten that contact with the heathen had corrupted the opinions of the Jews, at the time of our Savior, from the simplicity of Moses, and that by receiving the traditions and fables of paganism, they had made void the word of God. They had accepted Hadees as the best Greek word to convey their idea of Sheol, but without investing it at first with the heathen notions of the classic Hadees, as they afterwards did. What these ideas were, the classic authors inform us. "The Jews had acquired at Babylon a great number of Oriental notions, and their theological opinions had undergone great changes by this intercourse. We find in Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom of Solomon, and the later prophets, notions unknown to the Jews before the Babylonian captivity, which are manifestly derived from the Orientals. Thus, God represented under the image of light, and the principle of evil under that of darkness; the history of good and bad angels; paradise and Hell, etc., are doctrines of which the origin, or at least the positive determination, can only be referred to the Oriental philosophy." (Milman's Gibbon ch. 21. of it, or the heathen and "evangelical" descriptions of Hell are wholly false.)

Dr. Thayer in his "Origin and History," says: "The process is easily understood. About three hundred and thirty years before Christ, Alexander the Great had subjected to his rule the whole of Western Asia, including Judea, and also the kingdom of Egypt. Soon after he founded Alexandria, which speedily became a great commercial metropolis, and drew into itself a large multitude of Jews, who were always eager to improve the opportunities of traffic and trade. A few years later, Ptolemy Soter took Jerusalem, and carried off one hundred thousand of them into Egypt. Here, of course, they were in daily contact with Egyptians and Greeks, and gradually began to adopt their philosophical and religious opinions, or to modify their own in harmony with them."

"To what side soever they turned," says the Universalist Expositor, "the Jews came in contact with Greeks and with Greek philosophy, under one modification or another. It was round them and among them; for small bodies of that people were scattered through their own territories, as well as through the surrounding provinces. It insinuated itself very slowly at first; but stealing upon them from every quarter, and operating from age to age, it mingled at length in all their views, and by the year 150 before Christ, had wrought a visible change in their notions and habits of thought."

We must either reject these imported ideas, as heathen inventions, or we must admit that the heathen, centuries before Christ, discovered that of which Moses had no idea. In other words either uninspired men announced the future fate of sinners centuries before inspired men knew anything.

JEWISH AND PAGAN OPINIONS

At the time of Christ's advent Jew and Pagan held Hadees to be a place of torment after death, to endure forever.

"The prevalent and distinguishing opinion was, that the soul survived the body, that vicious souls would suffer an everlasting imprisonment in Hadees, and that the souls of the virtuous would both be happy there and in process of time obtain the privilege of transmigrating into other bodies."  (Campbell's Four Gospels, Diss. 6, Pt. 2, & 19.) Of the Pharisees, Josephus says: "They also believe that souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that, under the earth, there will be rewards and punishments, according as they lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again." (Antiquites, B. 18, Ch. 1, 3. Whiston's Tr.")

These doctrines are not found in the Old Testament. They are of heathen origin. Did Jesus endorse them? Let us consult all the texts in which he employed the heathen word Hadees.

THRUST DOWN TO HADEES

Matt. 11:23 and Luke 10:15, "And you, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to Hell." "And you, Capernaum, which are exalted to heaven, shall be thrust down to Hell." Of course, a city never went to a place of torment after death. The word is used here just as it is in Isa. 14, where Babylon is said to be brought down to Sheol or Hadees, to denote debasement, overthrow, a prediction fulfilled to the letter. Dr. Clarke's interpretation is correct: "The word here means a state of the utmost woe, and ruin, and desolation, to which these impenitent cities should be reduced. This prediction of our Lord was literally fulfilled; for, in the wars between the Romans and Jews, these cities were totally destroyed; so that no traces are now found of Bethsaida, Chorazin or Capernaum."

JESUS WENT TO HADEES

That Hadees is the kingdom of death, and not a place of torment, after death, is evident from the language of Acts 2:27, "You will not leave my soul in Hell: neither will you suffer thy holy one to see corruption." Verse 31: "His soul was not left in Hell, neither his flesh did see corruption," that is his spirit did not remain in the state of the dead, until his body decayed. No one supposes that Jesus went to a realm of torment when he died. Jacob wished to go down to Hadees to his son mourning, so Jesus went to Hadees, the under-world, the grave. The Apostle's Creed conveys the same idea, when it speaks of Jesus as descending into Hell. He died, but his soul was not left in the realms of death, is the meaning.

THE GATES OF HADEES

Matt. 14:18, "And I say also unto you, That you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." The word is here used as an emblem of destruction. "The gates of Hadees" means the powers of destruction. It is the Savior's manner of saying that his church cannot be destroyed.

HADEES IS ON EARTH

Rev. 6:8, "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth." All the details of this description demonstrates that the Hell is on earth, and not in the future world.

The word also occurs in Rev 1:18, "I am He that lives, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore, Amen; and have the keys of Hell and of death." To understand this passage literally, with the popular view of Hell added, would be to represent Jesus as the Devil's gate keeper. If Hell is a realm of torment, and the devil is its king, and Jesus keeps the keys, what is he but the devil's janitor, or turnkey? The idea is that Jesus defies death and the grave, evil, destruction, and all that is denoted either literally or figuratively by Hadees, the under-world. Its gates open to him.

Cannon Farrar in Excursus II, "Eternal Hope," observes: "Hell has entirely changed its old harmless sense of 'the dim under-world,' and that, meaning as it how does, to myriads of readers, 'a place of endless torment by material fire into which all impenitent souls pass forever after death,' - it conveys meanings which are not to be found in any word of the Old or New Testament for which it is presented as an equivalent. In our Lord's language Capernaum was to be thrust down, not 'to Hell,' but to the silence and desolation of the grave (Hadees); the promise that 'the gates of Hadees' should not prevail against the church is perhaps a distinct implication of her triumph even beyond death in the souls of men for whom he died; Dives uplifts his eyes not 'in Hell,' but in the intermediate Hadees where he rests till the resurrection to a judgment, in which signs are not wanting that his soul may have been meanwhile ennobled and purified."

HADEES DESTROYED

I Cor. 15:55, "O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?" This is parallel to Hos. 14:14, where the destruction of Hadees is prophesied. Whatever Hadees means, it is not to endure forever. It is destined to be destroyed. It cannot be endless torment. That its inhabitants are to be delivered from its dominion, is seen from Rev. 20:13, "And Death and Hell delivered up the dead that were in them." This harmonizes with the declaration of David, that he had been delivered from it already. (Ps. 30:3; II Sam. 22:5,6). It does not retain its victims always, and hence, whatever it may mean, it does not denote endless imprisonment. Hence the next verse reads, "And death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire." Can a more striking description of utter destruction be given than this? Of course the language is all figurative, and not literal. Hell here denotes evil and its consequences. It is in this world, it opposes truth and human happiness, but it is to meet with a destruction so complete that only a sea of fire can indicate the character of its destruction.

Says Prof. Stuart: "The king of Hadees, and Hadees itself, i.e., the region or domains of death, are represented as cast into the burning lake. The general judgment being now come, mortality having now been brought to a close, the tyrant death, and his domains along with him, are represented as cast into the burning lake, as objects of abhorrence and of indignation. They are no more to exercise any power over the human race." Ex. Es. p. 133. 'And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man also died, and was buried; and in Hell (Hadees) he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom." Luke 16:22, 23. If this is a literal history, as is sometimes claimed, of the after-death experiences of two persons, then the good are carried about in Abraham's bosom; and the wicked are actually roasted in fire, and cry for water to cool their parched tongues. If these are figurative, then Abraham, Lazarus, Dives and the gulf and every part of the account are features of a picture, an allegory, as much as the fire and Abraham's bosom. If it be history, then the good are obliged to hear the appeals of the damned for that help which they cannot bestow! They are so near together as to be able to converse across the gulf, not wide but deep. It was this opinion that caused Jonathan Edwards to teach that the sight of the agonies of the damned enhances the joys of the blest!

IT IS A PARABLE

1. The story is not fact but fiction: in other words, a parable. This is denied by some Christians who ask, Does not our Savior say: "There was a certain rich man?" etc. True, but all his parables begin in the same way, "A certain rich man had two sons, and the like.

In Judges 9, we read, "The trees went forth, on a time, to anoint a king over them, and they said to the olive tree, Do you reign over us." This language is positive, and yet it describes something that never could have occurred. All fables, parables, and other fictitious accounts which are related to illustrate important truths, have this positive form, to give force, point, life-likeness to the lessons that they inculcate.

Dr. Whitby says: "That this is only a parable and not a real history of what was actually done, is evident from the circumstances of it, namely, the rich man lifting up his eyes in Hell and seeing Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, his discourse with Abraham, his complaint of being tormented in flames, and his desire that Lazarus might be sent to cool his tongue, and if all this be confessedly parable, why should the rest be accounted history?" Lightfoot and Hammond make the same general comments, and Wakefield remarks, "To them who regard the narrative a reality it must stand as an unanswerable argument for the purgatory of the papists."

It occurs at the end of a chain of parables. The Savior had been illustrating several principles by familiar allegories, or parables. He had exhibited the unjustifiable murmurings of the Pharisees, in the stories of the Lost Sheep and of the Lost Piece of Silver, and the parable commencing the sixteenth chapter was directed to the Scribes and Pharisees, that class of Jews being represented by the Unjust Steward. They had been unfaithful and their Lord would shortly dismiss them. The account says: "And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him," showing, unequivocally, that the force and power of his references were felt.

He continued to illustrate his doctrines and gave to them a marked emphasis by his striking and beautiful stories. He then struck into this parable designing not to relate an actual incident but to exhibit certain truths by means of a story. It is clearly absurd to say that he launched immediately from the figurative mode of instruction in which he had all along been indulging, into a literal exhibition of the eternal world, and without any notice of his changed mode of expression, actually raised the vail that separates this life from the future! He was not accustomed to teach in that way.

And this brings us to another proof that this is a parable. The Jews have a book, written during the Babylonish Captivity, entitled Gemara Babylonicum, containing doctrines entertained by Pagans concerning the future state not recognized by the followers of Moses. This story is founded on heathen views. They were not obtained from the Bible, for the Old Testament contains nothing resembling them. They were among those traditions which our Savior condemned when he told the Scribes and Pharisees, "You make the word of God of none effect through your traditions," and when he said to his disciples, "Beware of the leaven, or doctrine of the Pharisees."

Our Savior seized the imagery of this story, not to endorse its truth, but just as we now relate any other fable. He related it as found in the Gemara, not for the story's sake, but to convey a moral to his hearers; and the Scribes and Pharisees to whom he addressed this and the five preceding stories, felt - as we shall see - the force of its application to them.

Says Dr. Geo. Campbell: "The Jews did not, indeed, adopt the pagan fables, on this subject, nor did they express themselves entirely, in the same manner; but the general train of thinking in both came pretty much to coincide. The Greek Hadees they found well adapted to express the Hebrew Sheol. This they came to conceive as including different sorts of habitations, for ghosts of different characters." Now as nothing resembling this parable is found in the Old Testament where did the Jews obtain it, if not from the heathen?

The commentator, Macknight, Scotch Presbyterian, says truly: "It must be acknowledged that our Lord's descriptions are not drawn from the writings of the Old Testament, but have a remarkable affinity to the descriptions which the Grecian poets have given. They represent the abodes of the blest as lying adjacent to the region of the damned, and separated only by a great impassable gulf in such sort that the ghosts could talk to one another from its opposite banks. If from these resemblances it is thought the parable is formed on the Grecian mythology, it will not at all follow that our Lord approved of what the common people thought or spoke concerning these matters, agreeably to the notions of Greeks. In parables, provided the doctrines instilled are strictly true, the terms in which they are instilled may be such as are most familiar to the people, and the images made use of are such as they are best acquainted with."

DOES NOT TEACH ENDLESS TORMENT

But if it were a literal history, nothing could be gained for the terrible doctrine of endless torment. It would oblige us to believe in literal fire after death but there is not a word to show that such fire would never go out. We have heard it claimed that the punishment of the rich man must be endless, because there was gulf (chasm, chasma) fixed so that those who desired to could not cross it. But were this a literal account, it would not follow that the gulf would last always.

For are we not assured that the time is coming when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low?" Isa. 40:4. When every valley is exalted what becomes of the great gulf? And then there is exalted, what said of the duration of the sufferings of the rich man. If the account be a history it must not militate against the promise of "The restitution of all things spoken by the mouth of all God's holy prophets since the world began." There is not a word intimating that the rich man's torment was never to cease. So the doctrine of endless misery is after all, not in the least taught here. The most that can be claimed is that the consequences of sin extend into the future life, and that is a doctrine that we believe just as strongly as can any one, though we do not believe they will be endless, nor do we believe the doctrine taught in this parable, nor in the Bible use of the word Hell.

But allowing for a moment that this is intended to represent a scene in the spirit world, what a representation we have! Dives is dwelling in a world of fire in the company of lost spirits, hardened by the depravity that must possess the residents of that world, and yet yearning in compassion for those on earth. Not totally depraved, not harboring evil thoughts but benevolent, humane. Instead of being loyal to the wicked world in which he dwells as anyone bad enough to go there should be, he actually tries to prevent migration there from earth, while Lazarus is entirely indifferent to everybody but himself. Dives seems to have more mercy and compassion than does Lazarus.

THE TEACHING OF THE PARABLE

But what does the parable teach? That the Jewish nation, and especially the Scribes and Pharisees were about to die as a power, as a church, as a controlling influence in the world; while the common people among them and the Gentiles outside of them were to be exalted in the new order of things. The details of the parable show this: "There was a certain rich man clothed in purple and fine linen." In these first words, by describing their very costume, the Savior fixed the attention of his hearers on the Jewish priesthood. They were emphatically the rich men of that nation. His description of the beggar was equally graphic. He lay at the gate of the rich, only asking to be fed by the crumbs that fell from the table. Thus dependent were the common people, and the Gentiles on the Scribes and Pharisees. We remember how Christ once rebuked them for shutting up the kingdom of heaven against these. They lay at the gate of the Jewish hierarchy. For the Gentiles were literally restricted to the outer court of the temple. Therefore in Rev. 11:12 we read: "But the court, which is without the temple, leave out, and measure it not, for it is given unto the Gentiles." They could only walk the outer court, or lie at the gate. We remember the anger of the Jews at Paul, for allowing Greeks to enter the temple. This is the significance of the language of the Canaanitish woman, Matt. 15:27, who desired the Savior to heal her daughter. The Savior, to try her faith, said: It is not meet to cast the children's bread to the dogs." She replied, "Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their Mater's table." The prophet (Isa. 1:6) represents the common people of Israel as "full of wounds, bruises, and putrifying sores." The brief, graphic descriptions given by the Savior, at once showed his hearers that he was describing those two classes, the Jewish priesthood and nation on the one hand and the common people, Jews and Gentiles, on the other.

The rich man died and was buried. This class died officially, nationally and its power departed. The kingdom of God was taken from them and bestowed on others. The beggar died. The Gentiles, publicans and sinners were translated into the kingdom of God's dear son where is neither Jew nor Greek, but where all are one in Christ Jesus. This is the meaning of the expression "Abraham's bosom." They accepted the true faith and so became one with faithful Abraham. Abraham is called the father of the faithful, and the beggar is represented to have gone to Abraham's bosom, to denote the fact which is now history, that the common people and Gentiles would accept Christianity and become Christian nations, enjoying the blessing of the Christian faith.

What is meant by the torment of the rich man? The misery of those proud men, when soon after their land was captured and their city and temple possessed by barbarians, and they scattered like chaff before the wind - a condition in which they have continued from that day to this. All efforts to bless them with Christianity have proved unavailing. At this very moment there is a great gulf fixed so that there is no passing to and fro. And observe, the Jews do not desire the gospel. Nor did the rich man ask to enter Abraham's bosom with Lazarus. He only wished Lazarus to alleviate his sufferings by dipping his finger in water and cooling his tongue. It is so with the Jews today. They do not desire the gospel; they only ask those among whom they sojourn to tolerate them and soften the hardships that accompany their wanderings. The Jewish church and nation is now dead. Once they were exalted to heaven, but now they are thrust down to Hadees, the kingdom of death, and the gulf that yawns between them and the Gentiles shall not be abolished till the fullness of the Gentiles shall come in, and "then Israel shall be saved."

Lightfoot says: "The main scope and design of it seems this: to hint the destruction of the unbelieving Jews, who, though they had Moses and the prophets, did not believe them, nay would not believe though one (even Jesus) arose from the dead."

Our quotations are not from Universalists, but from those who accepted the doctrine of eternal punishment, but who were forced to confess that this parable has no reference to that subject. The rich man or the Jews were and are in the same Hell in which David was when he said: "The pains of Hell (Hadees) got hold o