Gehenna

This article is about the Biblical term that has been interpreted as analogous to the concept of "Hades", "Hell" or "Purgatory". For other uses, see Gehenna (disambiguation).
Gehenna
(Valley of the Son of Hinnom)

Valley of Hinnom, c. 1900
Gehenna
(Valley of the Son of Hinnom)

Location in Jerusalem,
south of Mount Zion

Geography
Coordinates 31°46′6.262″N 35°13′49.58″E / 31.76840611°N 35.2304389°ECoordinates: 31°46′6.262″N 35°13′49.58″E / 31.76840611°N 35.2304389°E
Watercourses Gey Ben Hinnom Stream

Gehenna (/ɡɪˈhɛnə/; Ancient Greek: γέεννα), Gehinnom (Rabbinical Hebrew: גהנום/גהנם) and Yiddish Gehinnam, are terms derived from a place outside ancient Jerusalem known in the Hebrew Bible as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom (Hebrew: גֵיא בֶן־הִנֹּם or גיא בן-הינום); one of the two principal valleys surrounding the Old City.

In the Hebrew Bible, the site was initially where apostate Israelites and followers of various Ba'als and other Canaanite gods, including Moloch (or Molech), sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6). Thereafter it was deemed to be cursed (Jer. 7:31, 19:2-6).[1]

In Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scripture, Gehenna is a destination of the wicked.[2] This is different from the more neutral Sheol/Hades, the abode of the dead, although the King James Version of the Bible usually translates both with the Anglo-Saxon word Hell.

In the King James Version of the Bible, the term appears 13 times in 11 different verses as "Valley of Hinnom", "Valley of the son of Hinnom" or "Valley of the children of Hinnom."

Etymology

English "Gehenna" represents the Greek Ge'enna (γέεννα) found in the New Testament, a phonetic transcription of Aramaic Gēhannā (ܓܗܢܐ), equivalent to the Hebrew Ge Hinnom, literally "Valley of Hinnom".

This was known in the Old Testament as Gai Ben-Hinnom,[3] literally the "Valley of the son of Hinnom",[4] and in the Talmud as גהנם Gehinnam or גהנום Gehinnom.

Citation: In the New American Standard Bible, Joshua 15:8 (see below) notes, "Then the border went up the valley of Ben-Hinnom (גֵּיא בֶן־הִנֹּם) ("Gai ben Hinnom") to the slope of the Jebusite on the south (that is, Jerusalem); and the border went up to the top of the mountain which is before the valley of Hinnom to the west, which is at the end of the valley of Rephaim toward the north." Joshua is describing the boundaries of the tribe of Judah.

Keil and Delitzsch note in their Commentary on the Old Testament,[5] "It (the boundary of the tribe of Judah) then went up into the more elevated valley of Ben-Hinnom, on the south side of the Jebusite town, i.e., Jerusalem (see at Jos 10:1), and still farther up to the top of the mountain which rises on the west of the valley of Ben-Hinnom, and at the farthest extremity of the plain of Rephaim towards the north. The valley of Ben-Hinnom, or Ben-Hinnom (the son or sons of Hinnom), on the south side of Mount Zion, a place which was notorious from the time of Ahaz as the seat of the worship of Moloch (Kg2 23:10; Ch2 28:3; Ch2 33:6; Jer 7:31, etc.), is supposed there, but of whom nothing further is known (see Robinson, Pal. i. pp. 402ff.)." This reference in Joshua is the first mention in the Old Testament of this "Valley of the Sons of Hinnom."

This valley, as Keil and Delitzsch note, is "on the south side of the Jebusite town, i.e., Jerusalem." This valley is mentioned five times in the Book of Jeremiah (7:31,32 19:2,6 32:35) as the place in which the people would "burn their sons and daughters in the fire" as part of the worship of Moloch as noted by Keil and Delitzsch.[5]

In the Qur'an, Jahannam (جهنم) is a place of torment for sinners and non-believers, or the Islamic equivalent of Hell.[6]

Geography

Tombs in the Valley of Hinnom

The exact location of the Valley of Hinnom is disputed. Older commentaries give the location as below the southern wall of ancient Jerusalem, stretching from the foot of Mount Zion eastward past the Tyropoeon to the Kidron Valley. However the Tyropoeon Valley is usually no longer associated with the Valley of Hinnom because during the period of Ahaz and Manasseh, the Tyropoeon lay within the city walls and child sacrifice would have been practiced outside the walls of the city. Smith (1907),[7] Dalman (1930),[8] Bailey (1986)[9] and Watson (1992)[10] identify the Wadi er-Rababi, which fits the data of Joshua that Hinnom valley ran East to West and lay outside the city walls. According to Joshua, the valley began in En-Rogel. If the modern Bir Ayyub is En-Rogel then the Wadi er-Rababi which begins there is Hinnom.[11]

Archaeology

Main article: Tophet

Child sacrifice at other Tophets contemporary with the Bible accounts (700–600 BCE) of the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh have been established, such as the bones of children sacrificed at the Tophet to the goddess Tank in Phoenecian Carthage,[12] and also child sacrifice in ancient Syria-Palestine.[13] Scholars such as Mosca (1975) have concluded that the sacrifice recorded in the Hebrew Bible, such as Jeremiah's comment that the worshippers of Baal had "filled this place with the blood of innocents", is literal.[14][15] Though as yet there is no archaeological evidence such as mass children's graves, such a find may be compromised by the heavy population history of the Jerusalem area compared to the Tophet found in Tunisia.[16] The site would also have been disrupted by the actions of Josiah "And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech." (2 Kings 23). A minority of scholars have attempted to argue that the Bible does not portray actual child sacrifice, but only dedication to the god by fire; however, they are judged to have been "convincingly disproved" (Hay, 2011).[17]

The concept of Gehinnom

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament

The oldest historical reference to the valley is found in Joshua 15:8, 18:16 which describe tribal boundaries.

The next chronological reference to the valley is at the time of King Ahaz of Judah who sacrificed his sons there according to 2 Chron. 28:3. Since his legitimate son by the daughter of the High Priest Hezekiah succeeded him as king, this, if literal, is assumed to mean children by unrecorded pagan wives or concubines. The same is recorded of Ahaz' grandson Manasseh in 33:6. There remains debate about whether the phrase "cause his children to pass through the fire" meant a simple ceremony or the literal child sacrifice.

Valley of Hinnom, 2007.

The Book of Isaiah does not mention Gehenna by name, but the "burning place" 30:33 in which the Assyrian army is to be destroyed, may be read "Topheth", and the final verse of Isaiah which concerns of those that have rebelled against God, Isaiah 66:24.

In the reign of Josiah a call came from Jeremiah to destroy the shrines in Topheth and to end the practice Jeremiah 7:31-32, 32:35. It is recorded that King Josiah destroyed the shrine of Molech on Topheth, to prevent anyone sacrificing children there in 2 Kings 23:10. Despite Josiah's ending of the practice, Jeremiah also included a prophecy that Jerusalem itself would be made like Gehenna and Topheth (19:2-6, 19:11-14).

A final purely geographical reference is found in Neh. 11:30 to the exiles returning from Babylon camping from Beersheba to Hinnom.

Targums

The ancient Aramaic paraphrase-translations of the Hebrew Bible supply the term "Gehinnom" frequently to verses touching upon resurrection, judgment, and the fate of the wicked. This may also include addition of the phrase "second death", as in the final chapter of the Book of Isaiah, where the Hebrew version does not mention either Gehinnom or the Second Death, whereas the Targums add both. In this the Targums are parallel to the Gospel of Mark addition of "Gehenna" to the quotation of the Isaiah verses describing the corpses "where their worm does not die".[18]

Extra-Biblical documents

Aside from the Targums, there is a lack of direct references to Gehenna in the Apocrypha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha and Philo. However, there seems to be an allusion to Gehenna ("shall send worms and fire ... feel pain and weep forever") in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith 16:17, especially when considering the addition of Gehinnom to "fire and worms" in Isaiah 66:24 in the targums. One ought not assume a unanimous acceptance of this kind of figurative concept of the Valley of Hinnom since it exceeds or even contradicts the semantic used in the Books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Josephus does not deal with this aspect of the history of the Hinnom Valley in his descriptions of Jerusalem for a Roman audience. Nor does Josephus make any mention of the tradition commonly reported in older Christian commentaries that in Roman times fires were kept burning and the valley became the rubbish dump of the city, where the dead bodies of criminals, and the carcasses of animals were thrown.

The southwestern gate of Jerusalem, overlooking the valley, came to be known as "The Gate of the Valley" (Hebrew: שער הגיא‎).

Rabbinical Judaism

The picture of Gehenna as the place of punishment or destruction of the wicked occurs frequently in the Mishnah in Kiddushin 4.14, Avot 1.5; 5.19, 20, Tosefta t. Bereshith 6.15, and Babylonian Talmud b.Rosh Hashanah 16b:7a; b. Bereshith 28b. Gehenna is considered a Purgatory-like place where the wicked go to suffer until they have atoned for their sins. It is stated that the maximum amount of time a sinner can spend in Gehenna is one year. There are also four people who do not get a share in Olam Ha-Ba.[19] Those people are Doeg the Edomite, Ahitophel, Balaam, and Gehazi.

Due to Jewish religious tradition regarding the bloodiness of its history, Gehenna became a metonym for "Hell" or any similar place of punishment in the afterlife.

The traditional explanation that a burning rubbish heap in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem gave rise to the idea of a fiery Gehenna of judgment is attributed to Rabbi David Kimhi's commentary on Psalm 27:13 (ca. 1200 CE). He maintained that in this loathsome valley fires were kept burning perpetually to consume the filth and cadavers thrown into it. However, Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck state that there is neither archaeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources.[20] Also, Lloyd R. Bailey's "Gehenna: The Topography of Hell"[21] from 1986 holds a similar view.

There is evidence however that the southwest shoulder of this valley (Ketef Hinnom) was a burial location with numerous burial chambers that were reused by generations of families from as early as the seventh until the fifth century BCE. The use of this area for tombs continued into the first centuries BCE and CE. By 70 CE, the area was not only a burial site but also a place for cremation of the dead with the arrival of the Tenth Roman Legion, who were the only group known to practice cremation in this region.[22]

In time it became deemed to be accursed and an image of the place of destruction in Jewish folklore.[23][24] However, Jewish folklore suggests the valley had a 'gate' which led down to a molten lake of fire.

Eventually the Hebrew term Gehinnom[25] became a figurative name for the place of spiritual purification for the wicked dead in Judaism. According to most Jewish sources, the period of purification or punishment is limited to only 12 months and every Sabbath day is excluded from punishment.[26] After this the soul will ascend to Olam Ha-Ba (the world to come), be destroyed, or continue to exist in a state of consciousness of remorse.[27]

New Testament

In the synoptic gospels Jesus uses the word Gehenna 11 times to describe the opposite to life in the Kingdom (Mark 9:43-48).[28] It is a place where both soul and body could be destroyed (Matthew 10:28) in "unquenchable fire" (Mark 9:43).

Gehenna is also mentioned in the Epistle of James 3:6, where it is said to set the tongue on fire, and the tongue in turn sets on fire the entire "course" or "wheel" of life.

The complete list of references is as follows:

Some Christian groups believe "Gehenna" symbolizes eternal destruction with no hope of resurrection, and that it is the same as the "lake of fire" mentioned in the Book of Revelation (20:14).[29]

Translations in Christian Bibles

The New Testament also refers to Hades as a place distinct from Gehenna. Unlike Gehenna, Hades typically conveys neither fire nor punishment but forgetfulness. John's vision in the Book of Revelation describes Hades being cast into the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:14). The King James Version is the only English translation in modern use to translate Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna as Hell. The New International Version, New Living Translation, New American Standard Bible (among others) all reserve the term hell for the translation of Gehenna, transliterating Hades as a term directly from the equivalent Greek term.

Treatment of Gehenna in Christianity is significantly affected by whether the distinction in Hebrew and Greek between Gehenna and Hades was maintained:

Translations with a distinction:

Translations without a distinction:

Many modern Christians understand Gehenna to be a place of eternal punishment called hell.[31]

Annihilationists understand Gehenna to be a place where sinners are eventually utterly destroyed, not tormented with literal pain forever. Christian Universalists, who believe that God will eventually reconcile all souls to himself, interpret the New Testament references to Gehenna in the context of the Old Testament and conclude that it always refers to the imminent divine judgment of Israel and not to everlasting torment for the unsaved. Jehovah's Witnesses explain that it is named after a garbage dump located outside of ancient Jerusalem, and dead bodies and garbage were burned there, but the living were not. So, they believe that it is not a hell but a symbol of complete destruction.[32][33][34]

The Valley of Hinnom is also the traditional location of the Potter's Field bought by priests after Judas' suicide with the "blood money" with which Judas was paid for betraying Jesus.

Quran

The name given to Hell in Islam, Jahannam, directly derives from Gehenna.[35] The Quran contains 77 references to Gehenna (جهنم), but no references to Hades (هيدز).

Literary references

[Moloch] made his Grove
The pleasant Vally of HINNOM, TOPHET thence
And black GEHENNA call'd, the Type of Hell.

'The fires of hell,' I tell him, 'the tortures of Gehenna are too good for you.'

And thus, joy suddenly faded into horror, and the most beautiful became the most hideous, as Hinnom became Gehenna.

Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

...convinced me that I had but jumped from purgatory into gehenna.

To have to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna.

Jean Valjean saw the outlit. A condemned soul who, from the midst of the furnace, should suddenly perceieve an exit from Gehenna, would feel what Jean Valjean felt.

'...a slavery that would last as long as he lived' 'Well, Gehenna is for people and not for dogs' he had once heard a water carrier say.[36]

When I am gone, they must call me Shaitan, the Emperor of Gehenna. The wheel must turn and turn and turn along the Golden Path.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Jewish Encyclopedia: Gehenna: "The place where children were sacrificed to the god Moloch was originally in the "valley of the son of Hinnom," to the south of Jerusalem (Josh. xv. 8, passim; II Kings xxiii. 10; Jer. ii. 23; vii. 31-32; xix. 6, 13-14). For this reason the valley was deemed to be accursed, and "Gehenna" therefore soon became a figurative equivalent for "hell.""
  2. ↑ Catholic Encyclopedia: Hell: "However, in the New Testament the term Gehenna is used more frequently in preference to hades, as a name for the place of punishment of the damned. ... held in abomination by the Jews, who, accordingly, used the name of this valley to designate the abode of the damned (Targ. Jon., Gen., iii, 24; Henoch, c. xxvi). And Christ adopted this usage of the term." Jewish Encyclopedia: Gehenna: Sin and Merit: "It is frequently said that certain sins will lead man into Gehenna. The name "Gehenna" itself is explained to mean that unchastity will lead to Gehenna (; 'Er. 19a); so also will adultery, idolatry, pride, mockery, hypocrisy, anger, etc. (Soṭah 4b, 41b; Ta'an. 5a; B. B. 10b, 78b; 'Ab. Zarah 18b; Ned. 22a)."
  3. ↑ "2 Chronicles 28:3 (NIV)".
  4. ↑ "2 Chronicles 28:3 (ESV)".
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cmt/kad/jos015.htm
  6. ↑ Cyril Glassé, translated Huston Smith The new encyclopedia of Islam 2003 p175 "Hell. The place of torment where the damned undergo suffering most often described as fire, a fire whose fuel is stones and men. Names of hell used in the Koran are An-Nar ("the fire"), Jahannam ("Gehenna"), .."
  7. ↑ Smith, G. A. 1907. Jerusalem: The Topography, Economics and History from the Earliest Times to A.D. 70. London.
  8. ↑ Dalman, G. 1930. Jerusalem und sein Gelande. Schriften des Deutschen Palastina-Instituts 4
  9. ↑ Bailey, L. R. 1986. Gehenna: The Topography of Hell. BA 49: 187
  10. ↑ Watson, Duane F. Hinnom. In Freedman, David Noel, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, New York Doubleday 1997, 1992.
  11. ↑ Geoffrey W. Bromiley International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J - 1982
  12. ↑ Geoffrey W. Bromiley International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: Q-Z -1995 p259 "Stager and Wolff have convincingly demonstrated that child sacrifice was practiced in Phoenecian Carthage (Biblical Archaeology Review, 10 [1984], 30–51). At the sanctuary called Tophet, children were sacrificed to the goddess Tank and her .."
  13. ↑ Hays 2011 "..(Lev 18:21-27; Deut 12:31; 2 Kgs 16:3; 21:2), and there is indeed evidence for child sacrifice in ancient Syria-Palestine." [Footnote:] "Day, Molech, 18, esp. n. 11. See also A. R. W. Green, The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (SBLDS 1; Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975)."
  14. ↑ P. Mosca, 'Child Sacrifice in Canaanite and Israelite Religion: A Study on Mulk and "pa' (PhD dissertation. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1975)
  15. ↑ Susan Niditch War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence 1995 p 48 "An ancient Near Eastern parallel for the cult of Molech is provided by Punic epigraphic and archaeological evidence (Heider:203). J. Day, Heider, and Mosca believe that the Molek cult took place in the valley of Hinnom at the Topheth (J. Day:83; Heider:405; Mosca: 220, 228), ... Many no doubt did as Heider allows (269, 272, 406) though J. Day denies it (85). ... Heider and Mosca conclude, in fact, that a form of child sacrifice was a part of state-sponsored ritual until the reform of the ..."
  16. ↑ Richard S. Hess, Gordon J. Wenham Zion, City of Our God 1999 p 182 "The sacrifices of children and the cult of Molech are associated with no other place than the Hinnom Valley. ... of Jerusalem, the Jebusites (brackets mine).40 As yet, no trace has been located through archaeological search in Ben- Hinnom or in the Kidron Valley. ... Carthage was found in an area of Tunis that has had little occupation on the site to eradicate the evidence left of a cult of child sacrifice there."
  17. ↑ Christopher B. Hays Death in the Iron Age II & in First Isaiah 2011 p 181 "Efforts to show that the Bible does not portray actual child sacrifice in the Molek cult, but rather dedication to the god by fire, have been convincingly disproved. Child sacrifice is well attested in the ancient world, especially in times of crisis."
  18. ↑ McNamara, Targums and Testament, ISBN 978-0716506195
  19. ↑ Babylonian Talmud. Sanhedrin (7) Ch. 11 "Chelek"
  20. ↑ Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud and Midrasch, 5 vols. [Munich: Beck, 1922-56], 4:2:1030
  21. ↑ Lloyd R. Bailey, "Gehenna: The Topography of Hell," Biblical Archeologist 49 [1986]: 189
  22. ↑ Gabriel Barkay, "The Riches of Ketef Hinnom." Biblical Archaeological Review 35:4-5 (2005): 22–35, 122–26.
  23. ↑ "The place where children were sacrificed to the god Moloch was originally in the "valley of the son of Hinnom," to the south of Jerusalem (Josh. xv. 8, passim; II Kings xxiii. 10; Jer. ii. 23; vii. 31-32; xix. 6, 13-14). For this reason the valley was deemed to be accursed, and "Gehenna" therefore soon became a figurative equivalent for 'hell'." GEHENNA - Jewish Encyclopedia By : Kaufmann Kohler, Ludwig Blau; web-sourced: 02-11-2010.
  24. ↑ "gehenna." Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary. 27 Aug. 2009. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gehenna>.
  25. ↑ "Gehinnom is the Hebrew name; Gehenna is Yiddish." Gehinnom - Judaism 101 websourced 02-10-2010.
  26. ↑ "The place of spiritual punishment and/or purification for the wicked dead in Judaism is not referred to as Hell, but as Gehinnom or She'ol." HELL - Judaism 101 websourced 02-10-2010.
  27. ↑
  28. ↑ Blue Letter Bible. "Dictionary and Word Search for geenna (Strong's 1067)".
  29. ↑ What Really Is Hell?—Official Website of Jehovah's Witnesses
  30. ↑ Murdoch & Read (2004) Early Germanic literature and culture’’, p. 160.
  31. ↑ Metzger & Coogan (1993) Oxford Companion to the Bible’’, p. 243.
  32. ↑ New World Translation -With References, pp1574-1575, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
  33. ↑ Insight on the Scripture, Volume I, pp905-906, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
  34. ↑ What does the Bible really teach?,Ch.7,sec20, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
  35. ↑ Richard P. Taylor -Death and the afterlife: a cultural encyclopedia 2000 "JAHANNAM From the Hebrew ge-hinnom, which refers to a valley outside Jerusalem, Jahannam is the Islamic word for hell."
  36. ↑ Isaac Bashevis Singer in The Slave (1962)

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