Not "Hell" but "Burning Trash Dump"

A concept manufactured from a lot of separate ideas.

This article looks that the Greek words that are translated into statements about “hell” in Jesus’s words. Readers may be surprised to learn that many of these references were clearly meant to be humorous. Christ never described someone “going to Hell” in the way that phrase is used today. 

The Words

The keyword is gehenna, which is not a Greek word, but the Greek version of the Hebrew name (Hinnom) of the perpetually burning trash dump in a small valley below the walls of Jerusalem. People also burned diseased animals and human corpses there. The burning of the diseased is an important symbol here. Judean only burned the dead when they were diseased, but Jesus also used the term “the dead” to describe those spiritually dead (see this article). So it the burning of the deceased is an analogy. It isn’t easy to make the case that he uses it to refer to an aspect of the afterlife for reasons we will explain.

Jesus also uses another Greek term, also translated as “hell” so readers cannot see the difference, only three times, hades (Matthew 11:23,Matthew 16:18, Luke 16:23). This term does refer to the concept of an afterlife, but it is the Greek and Roman concept. The Aramaic/Hebrew version of this concept is sheol, a word Jesus never uses. The concept was a twilight existence where memories of a person fade, but they persist as a shade. In the first verse, Jesus says that this is a potential fate of Capernaum. In this next, he says that this is not the fate of the “church” built on Simon as “the rock”” In neither case can we consider him describing an afterlife. Jesus denied this type of afterlife when he said that God is not a god of the dead but of the living (Matthew 22:32, Mark 12:27). 

This article will also look briefly at other descriptions that people take as Christ’s references to “hell.” Many of these references are plainly humorous. This is one reason why mainstream Christianity so seldom recognizes Jesus’s use of humor is because the concept of “hell” is so valuable. In that case, it may be that that fact undermines so many traditional ideas, such as eternal punishment in “hell.”

The Use of “Gehenna”

Jesus first uses this term, gehenna,  in the Sermon on the Mount, the best example of Jesus as an entertainer. Almost every other line in that series of quotes would generate amusement if presented in the original word order. Jesus refers to the burning trash heap in Matthew 5:22, Matthew 5:29, and Matthew 5:30, (and parallel verses in Mark). The last two are particularly interesting because they are so clearly meant to be a humorous exaggeration, almost outrageously so. The “plucking out eye” and “cutting off hand” phrases are repeated later in Matthew 18:8 and Matthew 18:9, again, in a wildly exaggerated comical vein. In such verses, gehenna is clearly identified with “fire,” a topic discussed below.  

In his next long series of verses in Matthew, the Sending of the Apostles, Jesus says in Matthew 10:28, (KJV) “And do not fear those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Fear yourselves, however, but rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” The “hell” here is again, gehenna. The Greek word translated as “soul” is psyche, which has a meaning closer to “self”, that is, the part of you that experiences your life and has your memories (see this article). Notice this burning of diseased trash includes both the self and body. Going back to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus only describes two paths: one to life (Matthew 7:14 ) and one to destruction (Matthew 7:13). This is consistent with the Biblical view of the OT, “The “soul that sins, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18). Nowhere does the OT suggest eternal torture of the self any more than Jesus does. 

Does this mean we are entirely destroyed? No, because Jesus describes people as existing of not just “body and soul” but also “mind”, “heart”, and “spirit”. You can read this article about all of these concepts, but the point is that, just like your body isn’t you, neither is your psyche, that is, your memories, all of you either. The most important thing that is left is your anima (“spirit”). The spirit and perhaps the “mind” and the “heart,” as the core of personal desires, survives the burning trash heap, but Christ doesn’t say how. Perhaps in the “outer darkness” discussed below. 

Perhaps one of the funniest images of gehenna is Matthew 23:15, when Jesus describes the writers and Pharisees as “sons of gehenna.” Were there orphaned children who made their living scavenging trash as there are in many large cities today? If so, the reference categorized the “scholarly” work of the religious leads as scavenging trash. The fact that people burned diseased corpses in gehenna is also relevant to this verse because Jesus uses it to refer to those the Pharisees converted. Equating their teaching with a disease that spreads death, (see this article).

Hell as Fire

Jesus also uses various images of fire, especially in his parables, which relate to the idea of gehenna. He also uses the “outer darkness.” We will discuss the concept of “fire” first, though both images are connected. 

Christ uses “light” as a metaphor for knowledge (See this article. This article relates to his use of fire because fire is “light (knowledge) used as a destructive or, more precisely, transformative. force.” This is important because in Christ’s very last parable, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, he describes a separation of the worthy from the unworthy with the unworthy. The unworthy are sent into “everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” He uses a similar image in the Parable of the Weed, where the weeds are thrown in an “oven” at the end. 

In neither of these verses does Jesus describe the fire as punishment. In the first, he describes the fire as everlasting, but the Greek word means “perpetual.” This is a description, the fires of the trash heap, gehenna, were also kept burning because there was always more trash. This doesn’t mean what was tossed into it is eternally suffering.

Fire is undoubtedly painful, but the pain is temporary. Remaining in fire seems to destroy but does it? We know now that nothing is destroyed, only transformed. Jesus seems to have understood that as well. 

Fire was not described an environment for some types of continued life in torture but one of transformation. What is destroyed? The Parable of the Sheep and Goats tells us “devils and their angels”. The word translated as “devil” (diabolos) means “slanderous,” and “backbiting,” and Christ makes it clear that “devils” are basically “liars”. (See this article on the Greek words for “satan”.) The Greek term for “angels”, aggelos, (see this article) means simply “messengers”, so the messengers who carry lies. So what is destroyed by fire? The lies of a worthless life and its communication to others.

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Jesus also describes fire as productive. The type of oven mentioned in the Parable of the Weeds is specifically a type of bread oven fueled by the waste foliage in agriculture. In other words, the good wheat is baked into bread by weeds, transformed into heat. Exposure to lies matures us, changes dough into bread. 

Notice that both the productive and destructive roles of fire connect to its role in producing light. The power of light, that is, knowledge, destroys that which builds on lies. Truth does not torture untruth; it simply changes it. Jesus says gehenna destroys the dishonest self, the “self” built on lies. However, the heat of that light, the knowledge also transforms the immature soul into a more valuable form. 

Hell as the Outer Darkness

The last and most humorous phrase Jesus uses to describe what happens to worthless people is saying that they are “cast into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” He used this phrase in Matthew 8:12, Matthew 22:13, Matthew 25:30, and nearly in Matthew 24:51. in the context of the “crimes” involved, for example, not wearing the right clothes, this phrase seems again to be primarily a humorous exaggeration, but it is an instructive one.

First, because the “outer darkness” seems to be the opposite of “fire”, but it is the opposite of the light of knowledge. The “gnashing of teeth” phrase captures the idea of “backbiting” (another meaning of diabolos), but the Greek words also mean “the chattering of teeth”, which indicates cold. In Matthew 24:51, Jesus describes this as the place where “actors” go. For Jesus, actors are another symbol for liars. Nowhere does Christ describe the outer darkeness as a permanent state of existence. More likely, it simply describes living a lie, living in darkness, unhappy and resentful. 

The Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man

With all this as background, we are ready to look at the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:23). First, it is important to note that this story is about hades, not the concept of gehenna. Hades was the Greek concept of the afterlife, not the concept that Jesus teaches, that is, the purification of gehenna’s fire. However, despite this story’s poor fit with everything else Jesus says about the afterlife, it has become the template for modern concepts of hell.

There are several very odd things about this story. First, seemingly it offers views of both “heaven” and “hell.” However, Christ’s preferred term for hell, gehenna, is not used, neither is the Greek term he uses consistently to refer to heaven, “the realm of the skies,” (see article here about this term), Jesus’s more frequent topic. However, he mentions neither of these words in this story, making it a thing apart.

Instead of “heaven,” the good place in this story is “Abraham’s bosom,” where “bosom” is the Greek kolpos, a word meaning “bosom”, “lap”, “fold of a garment”, and “womb.” It describes how people recline together on couches when eating, next to each other’s laps. Not only doesn’t Jesus mention “Abraham’s bosom” elsewhere, but this is the only time he uses the Greek term kolpos in any context. However, Jesus does describe people coming from “the east and west” to sit at Abraham’s table (Matthew 8:11 ) and recline at the table of the Divine (Luke 13:29).

We should also point out that this parable does not involve an example from people’s everyday experiences. The word “parable” means “analogy.” Jesus usually used our experience in this world to illustrate unworldly ideas. This story isn’t a metaphor in that sense at all. 

There are other odd things about this parable. In most of Christ’s parables, the speaking characters have no names. Jesus’s parables were about archetypes. Not only does this story have names for its characters, but one of those characters has the name of Jesus’s friend, Lazarus, a man raised from the dead--coincidence? Another character, Abraham, is one of the patriarchs, who Jesus says is not dead (Matthew 22:32). Jesus puts words in the mouth of Abraham, but would people of his time have taken such a story seriously? Or heard it simply as a lecture about those who asked for signs in order to believe? A frequent topic for Jesus. Does this tale seem realistic in terms of other things Jesus says about the afterlife? It seems much less real, harder to understand, more light-hearted.

This story is mostly funny. It uses several uncommon words not used elsewhere by Jesus. On its surface, calling “heaven” the “bosom of Abraham” is funny, not serious. Describing the Greek hades as Judaic is funny. Using the name of a friend is funny Putting words in the mouth of Abraham is funny. These ideas would have been entertaining to the listeners of the time, not taken seriously as they are today. 

However, the biggest giveaway is the ending. Abraham says, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Who rises from the dead in the Gospels? Lazarus. Who else? Jesus. This ending is a punchline.

At this time in Jesus’s life, this joke might not be as funny as it is now. After all, when Christ told this story, he had not yet risen from the dead. Perhaps Lazarus had not either. However, as we read it, he has. But what does Jesus have Abraham saying? That he, Jesus, will not be believed even though he rose from the dead? Then what was the point in rising from the dead? More specifically, he says that people who found reasons to distrust the prophets will also distrust Jesus. This claim is true. 

However, did Jesus mean for this story to be the basis of our views of “hell?” He certainly gives us enough clues to tell us this story is not realistic. Taken in the larger context of Jesus’s teaching, the story doesn’t fit. My feeling, however, is that religious leaders found the threat of Lazarus’s hell too helpful in terms of controlling people to let it stand as what it is: a story about trust.

Conclusion

If we take Jesus’s statements about gehenna, hades, the outer darkness, as all about “hell,” we are connecting dots that Jesus did not put in place. Hades and gehenna are two different concepts translated to the same English words to mislead us. Gehenna was a real place, an analogy, a place where people burn dead, diseased bodies. The burning stopped the spread of disease, the “yeast” of the Pharisees. In descriptions of the fire of gehenna by Jesus it is productive, the fire of ovens used to bake bread.

In my mind, “burning” means to transform, purify the spirit, stopping the disease of lie spreading, not a form of torture.  Modern Christian views of hell are less related to anything Jesus taught than what is known as The Discourse to the Greek concerning Hades, a work originally misattributed, but now thought to be written by Hippolytus of Rome, a second-century Christian theologian.