The Bible Hell, J.W. Hanson, Kenroy Hunter [black female authors txt] 📗

HADEES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

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 thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to Hell." "And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt 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: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hell: neither wilt thou 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