Fine Bible question, DLL!
Allow me to lay some groundwork, please. Jehovah's Witnesses are often accused of "Having their own Bible," actually its the other way around. The beautiful KJV is a sectarian translation produced by the Anglican church in honor of the wrong king ... James. KJV thoroughly confuses the Hebrew and Greek words dealing with death & the condition of the dead, which you can easily verify with a Young's concordance:
NEPHESH [Soul] is translated 33 ways
SHEOL [the grave]: 31 times Hell, 31 times Grave, 3 times Pit
GEHENNA, HADES & TARTARUS are all translated "hell"
Only the NWT is consistent with NEPHESH, rendering it all 754 times as "soul". The first 4 times it appears it applies to animals, as it often does in the Hebrew text.
SHEOL is always as transliterated as "sheol" in the NWT, which practice is also followed by the ASV, RSV, NEB, Catholic Jerusalem Bible and others.
NWT renders HADES (10), GEHENNA (12) TARTARUS (1) unchanged directly in the main text so you instantly understand the meaning of the original Greek. The KJV renders all three "hell" a confusion followed by many other translators. What do these Greek words mean?
HADES is the Greek equivalent of SHEOL, mankind's common grave, There is no work nor wisdom nor knowledge nor device in sheol, ...O that thou wouldst hide me in sheol...Out of the belly of sheol cried I [Jonah's potential grave in the fish]...Hades gave up the dead in it Ecc 9:10 Job 14:13 Jonah 2:2 Rev 20:13
TARTARUS doesn't apply to humans, appears only at 2 Pet 2:4 as the place [condition of darkness, restraint] into which demons were thown. However these spirits still roam the earth. Matt 8:16, 28. They're cast out of fellowship with God.
GEHENNA was literally the Valley of the son of Hinnom, outside the SW wall of Jerusalem where once apostate Jews burned their children to Molech. [Jer 7:31, 19:5, 32:35] To desecrate it, after their return from Babylon they made it the city dump into which sometimes dead criminals where cast. The fires were kept with brimstone [sulphur] and bodies that didn't reach the flames was consumed by maggots. See Mark 9:43-45 Where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched Gehenna is a symbol of eternal destruction, the same as the Lake of Fire. To be cast therein was to be considered unworthy of resurrection. Its the eternal fire prepared for the devil. Living persons weren't cast into Gehenna, it was not a place of torture! You can verify this, there's voluminous proof.
Gehenna is not Hades! The term Jesus used in Luke 12:5 was Gehenna.
and is parallel to Matt 10:28: Rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna [I've quoted the ASV1901 and inserted the footnote #6: Gr: Gehenna. With the NWT no footnote is necessary]
Jesus said both soul and body are destroyed. That's my point! The Anglican Church emphatically repudiated the doctrine of a burning hell years ago. I'm glad they finally got it right! May Jehovah grant your prayers for wisdom, DLL!
Don Martini |
