An important part of this discussion is to understand what Scripture teaches about the doctrine of eternal punishment. And what better place to start than what Jesus Himself taught about the reality of hell.

In coming entries we will look at concepts such as Aion, Hades, Sheol and Apollumi.

But now let us turn our sights onto the most commonly used Greek word that is translated as hell by some interpreters: Gehenna. The word Gehenna appears 12 times in Scripture.

William Barclay said this about the word:

Gehenna…means the Valley of Hinnom, a valley to the south-west of Jerusalem. It was notorious as the place where Ahaz had introduced the fire worship of the heathen God Molech, to whom little children were burned.…2 Chronicles 28:2-4. Josiah had stamped out that worship and ordered that the valley should be forever after an accursed place…it became the place where the refuse of Jerusalem was cast out and destroyed. It was a kind of public incinerator. Always the fire smoldered in it, and a pall of thick smoke lay over it, and bred a loathsome kind of worm which was hard to kill (Mark 9:44-48). So Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, became identified in people’s minds with all that was accursed and filthy, the place where useless and evil things were destroyed.

The first time Jesus utters the word is in the midst of His sermon on the mount in Matthew 5:22 “…and whoever says, ‘You fool! will be liable to the hell (Gehenna) of fire.”

It is important to note that the initial hearers of this message, the Jews, would automatically think of specific and literal place. It is a mistake to translate this as hell. Later in this sermon Jesus will discount the Mosaic code’s emphasis on an “eye for an eye.” The translation of uttering the word fool condemning one to the fires of hell would belie the context.

In addition, this is the first time the word is uttered. What first-century listener is gonna think that Jesus is talking about hell? He didn’t have to tell them what He was saying because they knew.

And not only that, Jesus tells us in verse 26 that it is for a limited duration!

The other passages that use the term bear this out. For sake of brevity, I will just list the passages for you to look up on your own:

Matthew 5:29, 30
Matthew 10:28
Luke 12:4, 5
Matthew 18:9
Mark 9:43–45
Matthew 23:15
Matthew 23:33
James 3:6

None of these passages suggest a never-ending, eternal punishment. Look at Matthew 5:29, 30 if Jesus is referring to an everlasting torment than He is guilty of the greatest understatement in history when he says that it is better to lose one of your members than to be cast into hell.

I have to cut this shorter than I would like because I have to leave the office for a while. However, I want to get something up now so we can begin the discussion. I will leave you with some quotes from others:

The whole Bible is Oriental. Every line breathes the spirit of the East, with its hyperboles and metaphors, and what to us seem utter exaggerations. If such language be taken literally,
its whole meaning is lost. When the sacred writers want to describe the dusky redness of a lunar eclipse, they say the moon is “turned into blood.” He who perverts Scripture is not the man who reduces this sacred poetry to its true meaning. Nay, that man perverts the Bible who
hardens into dogmas the glowing metaphors of Eastern poetry—such conduct LANGE calls “a moral scandal.” So with our Lord’s words. Am I to hate my father and mother or pluck out my right eye literally? Or take a case by Farrar. Egypt is said to have been an iron furnace to the Jews (De.4:20; Jer. 11:4), and yet they said, “it was well with us there,” and sighed for its enjoyments (Nu. 11:18). Therefore I maintain that no doctrine of endless pain can be based on
Eastern imagery, on metaphors mistranslated very often, and always misinterpreted.

–Thomas Allin

The valley bore this name at least as early as the writing of Joshua (Josh. 15:8; 18:16), though nothing is known of its origin. It was the site of child-sacrifices to Moloch in the days of Ahaz and Manasseh (apparently in 2 Kings 16:3; 21:6). This earned it the name “Topheth,” a place to be spit on or abhorred. This “Topheth” may have become a gigantic pyre for burning corpses in the days of Hezekiah after God slew 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in a night and saved Jerusalem (Isa. 30:31-33; 37:26). Jeremiah predicted that it would be filled to overflowing with Israelite corpses when God judged them for their sins (Jer. 7:31-33; 19:2-13). Josephus indicates that the same valley was heaped with dead bodies of the Jews following the Roman siege of Jerusalem about A.D. 69-70…Josiah desecrated the repugnant valley as part of his godly reform (2 Kings 23:10). Long before the time of Jesus, the Valley of Hinnom had become crusted over with connotations of whatever is “condemned, useless, corrupt, and forever discarded.” (Ed Fudge, The Fire That Consumes

And from Thomas Thayer in 1855:

The first time Christ uses the word Gehenna is in Matt. V 22, 29, 30. But not a word of preparation or notice that now, for the first time, the terrible dogma is announced on divine authority. He speaks as calmly as if He were wholly unconscious of the burthen of such a revelation; and the people seem equally unmoved under the awful declaration. And what is singular, it is not presented by itself, in a positive form, unmixed with anything else, as its importance most surely demanded; but is slipped in merely as a comparative illustration, among other judgments, of the greater moral demands of the Gospel, and the strictness with which it enforced obedience.

They, the Jews, had said, “Whosoever shall kill, shall be in danger of the judgment;” but Christ says, whosoever is angry with his brother without cause, is in danger of a punishment equal to that of the judgment (the inferior court of seven judges); and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca (a term of contempt, shallow-brain or blockhead), shall be in danger of a punishment equal to that inflicted by the council (the superior court of seventy judges, which took cognizance of capital crimes); but whosoever shall say, “Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire,” or of a punishment equal in severity to the fire of Gehenna.

Now, if Christ used the term Gehenna to reveal endless woe, and that for the first time, would He not have said this, and fixed forever the meaning of the word? And yet not the slightest intimation do we have of any such new and awful meaning. The Jews were familiar with it, and used it constantly to symbolize any great punishment or judgment coming on the earth; and they must of course suppose He used it as they did, since He gave them no notice to the contrary. If, therefore, He did give it the new signification of endless punishment after death, they could not understand Him, and He failed of His purpose for want of such explanation as they, and we, had a right to expect.

But there is another consideration deserving notice. The difference between the sinfulness of saying Raca or Blockhead, and Fool, is hardly great enough to warrant such a difference in punishment as is involved in the supposition. Townsend justly says, to imagine that Christ, for such a slight distinction as Raca and Thou fool, “would instantly pass from such a sentence as the Jewish Sanhedrim would pronounce, to the awful doom of eternal punishment in hell-fire, is what cannot be reconciled to any rational rule of faith, or known measure of justice.” There is no proportion between the slight difference in guilt and the tremendous, infinite difference in punishment. But if the comparison is between penalties symbolized by stoning to death, inflicted by the Sanhedrim council, and burning alive in Gehenna, then there is proportion, some relation of parts; because the difference between death by stoning and death by burning is not certainly very great; but the difference between death by stoning and endless torment is infinite.

It is impossible, therefore, to believe that Christ, in this first use of Gehenna, intended to reveal the doctrine, without an accusation against His fidelity and justice.