Now my objection to the renderings of Γέεννα, κρίσις, and aluvios, by "hell," "damnation," and "everlasting " -an objection in accordance with the instinctive feeling of thousands, as is obvious from the universal practice of avoiding those words-arises from these grounds :that as English words they have utterly lost their original significance; that by nine hundred and ninetynine out of every thousand they are understood in a sense which I see to be demonstrably unscriptural and untrue; and that they attribute to the sacred writers, and to our Blessed Lord Himself, meanings such as they never sanctioned, language such as they never used. Not one of them can be retained by our revisers without necessitating hereafter yet another revision. I would say this very humbly, but I cannot state it too strongly. It is a matter not of opinion but of fact. Whether men hold the doctrine of an irreversible doom to endless torments passed at death on all who die unforgiven or not, is not a question which can in any way affect the demonstrable meaning of Greek words, the undeniable duty of giving to those words such renderings only as do not stereotype foregone conclusions in matters of immemorial controversy. I know that inveterate prejudice, passing into second habit by centuries of tyrannous tradition, is invincible in all but the noblest souls. The roots of the mandrake were believed to strike very deeply into the soil, and when it was torn up it shrieked. Yet let every candid reader perpend these simple, undeniable, and indisputable facts. 1. The verb "to damn" and its cognates does not once occur in the Old Testament. No word conveying any such meaning occurs in the Greek of the New Testament. The words so rendered mean "to judge," "judgment," and "condemnation"; and if the word "damnation" has come to mean more than these words do—as, to all but the most educated readers, is notoriously the case-then the word is a grievous mistranslation, all the more serious because it entirely and terribly perverts and obscures the real meaning of our Lord's utterances; and all the more inexcusable, at any rate for us with our present knowledge, because if the word "damnation" were used as the rendering of the very same words in multitudes of other passages (where our translators have rightly translated them), it would make those passages at once impossible and grotesque.1 2. The word "Hell," in the Old Testament represents the single word Sheôl (bis), which means neither more nor less than "the unseen world," or "the world beyond the grave," and is in thirty-three places rendered "the grave." 2 In the New Testament it is used to render three words, neither of which conveys, or could have been originally intended to convey, the notion which all but the few now attach to "hell." Now if a word conveys meanings which are not necessarily involved in the original, it is an inadequate translation; if it conveys to the vast majority meanings which have nothing 1 The gratuitous introduction of "damnation for "judgment' into I Cor. xi. 29, and so into our Communion Service, has been a sad cause of spiritual loss to thousands of timid souls. 2 The word has in fact changed its meanings. It once meant (as is shown alike by our own and by Luther's version) merely "the underworld"; it has now come to mean a place of endless torment. See Ersch and Grüber, s. v., Hölle and Excursus II. p. 195. corresponding to them in the original, it is a mistrans lation; if it be deliberately retained after it has acquired a shade of meaning far darker than the original, and far darker than formerly belonged to it, is it too much to say that it will be a mistranslation which a multitude of readers will find it very hard to condone ? a. One of the three words rendered "hell" occurs but once, in 2 Pet. ii. 4 (raprapwoas). It is the Greek Tartarus, and ought to be so rendered. It cannot be rendered "hell," for it refers to an intermediate state previous to judgment (εἰς κρίσιν τηρουμένους). B. Another is Hades, which is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew Sheôl, and means "the unseen world," as a place both for the bad and the good (Acts ii. 27, 31). It tells directly against the received notion of "hell," because (like Tartarus in 2 Pet. ii. 4), it means an intermediate state of the soul previous to judgment.1 1 This is the word used in Luke xvi. 23 of Dives." In Hades he lift up his eyes being in torments." So far therefore from furnishing any argument in favour of the popular view, this parable tells distinctly against it, since it points to an intermediate condition-as Stier admits (Words of the Lord Jesus, iv. 223, E. Tr.) ;—and i shows how rapidly in that condition a moral renovation has been 7. A third is Gehenna. It is most essential that this word should be rightly understood, because (with the exception of James iii. 6-a mere incidental allusion in no wise bearing on the history of the word) it is used by our Lord alone. In the Old Testament it is merely the pleasant Valley of Hinnom (Ge Hinnom), subsequently desecrated by idolatry, and specially by Moloch worship, and defiled. by Josiah on this account. Used, according to Jewish tradition, as the common sewer of the city, the corpses of the worst criminals were flung into it unburied, and fires were lit to purify the contaminated air. It then became a word which secondarily implied (i) the severest judgment which a Jewish court could pass wrought in a sinful and selfish soul (see some excellent remarks in Mr. Cox's Salvator Mundi, p. 65). Neander goes perhaps too far in saying that it is foreign to the scope of the parable to give us any clue to the future life; but the expression "Abraham's bosom shows how utterly figurative it is, and Stier holds that the 66 torments" were meant to work repentance. Even Luther, Von Gerlach, &c., teach that "the whole conversation passed in the conscience." And Dives is "son" still. 1 See I Kings xi. 7; 2 Kings xxiii. 10 (Jer. vii. 31, xix. 10—14; Is. xxx. 33. See my "Rabbinic Eschatology" in Expositor, April 1878. |