Lost Stories Gem #39
Why All the Confusion About Hell and Eternity
When many of us think about Hell, we envision Jonathan Edwards preaching fire and brimstone to terrified congregants clutching the arms of their pews, or Renaissance paintings of demons torturing souls in flames for all eternity. Yet this vivid imagery may not reflect what The Bible actually teaches. The confusion about Hell is real, and it permeates our theology, our culture, and our fear of the afterlife.
As it turns out, what The Bible really says about Hell is far more complex and nuanced than tradition has handed down to us. But the problem isn’t that Scripture is unclear on the subject; it’s that we’ve inherited layer upon layer of misunderstanding, filtered through Greek philosophy, medieval art, and centuries of theological debate.
Sheol of The Old Testament: Not Hell as We Know It
Here’s something that surprises most people: the concept of Hell as a place of eternal torment never even appears in The Old Testament. Not once.
Instead, the Hebrew scriptures describe a place called Sheol where the souls of the dead reside—a shadowy realm of darkness, gloom, and silence. Both the righteous and the unrighteous go there, separated by a vast gulf, but both experience an existence cut off from God’s direct presence. More than a place of punishment, Sheol is portrayed as more akin to the grave itself, without the moral dimension we now associate with Hell.
The Book of Ecclesiastes makes this startlingly clear. The writer states that all creatures, righteous and unrighteous alike, share the same fate:
For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of the beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there’s no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place; all came from the dust, and all return to the dust.
This isn’t a doctrine of retribution. This is a description of mortality itself.
How Greek Philosophy Changed Everything
So what happened? How did Sheol become the fiery Hell of popular imagination?
The seeds of this shift were planted around 250 BC, when Jewish scholars translated The Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, creating what theologians call The Septuagint Bible. This translation was necessary and valuable. That’s because Greek is a precise language, far more specific than Hebrew with its sparse vocabulary and absence of vowels. When God sent His Son “in the fullness of time,” as Scripture says, He did so in an era when Greek was the dominant language. Ironically, though, the translation itself wasn’t the problem.
However, the culture behind the language was another matter. Greek civilization carried philosophical concepts foreign to Hebrew thought, particularly regarding the afterlife. When the translators rendered the Hebrew Sheol into Greek, they chose the word Hades. And so it was that this single translation choice would reshape Christian theology in ways that no one at the time could have ever imagined.
In Greek mythology, Hades was the abode of the dead, but far below it lay Tartarus, a horrific dungeon of torment reserved for superhuman beings called the Titans. Remarkably, these Titans bore an uncanny resemblance to the Nephilim—the giants—described in Genesis 6, the offspring of the sons of God and human women. Apparently, the parallels were so striking that early Church Fathers began conflating the two concepts.
The Watchers and the Emergence of Eternal Punishment
Second-century Church Fathers like Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Clement of Alexandria were familiar with an influential text called The First Book of Enoch. This work described God’s judgment of rebellious angels called the Watchers, who had corrupted humanity by fathering the Nephilim. Their punishment was imprisonment in the lowest depths of Hades, equated in Greek thought with Tartarus.
Within two centuries of Christ’s birth, Hades transformed from simply the abode of the dead into a place of eternal torment. Irenaeus declared: “Eternal fire is prepared for sinners.” Justin Martyr insisted: “We believe that every man will suffer punishment in eternal fire according to the merits of his deeds.” Clement went further, asserting that immortal souls would endure “endless vengeance of quenchless fire.”
Greek philosophy had married biblical language, and the result of this marriage was a doctrine entirely foreign to Old Testament thought.
The Problem of Immortal Souls
Underlying this shift was another assumption borrowed from Greek philosophy rather than Scripture: the doctrine of the immortal soul. According to Plato and other Greek thinkers, the soul is inherently eternal and indestructible. But this concept isn’t clearly taught in the Hebrew scriptures.
If we accept the biblical view instead, then the soul is sustained by God’s presence and God’s grace. Apart from God, it doesn’t naturally endure forever. This distinction matters profoundly when interpreting what Jesus said about eternity.
What Jesus Really Said About Eternal Punishment
Critics rightly point to Jesus’ own words about Hell. He spoke of eternal fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth, and the separation of sheep and goats. But here we face a critical linguistic issue.
The Greek word Jesus and the writers of The New Testament used is aionios, translated as “eternal.” Yet aionios is derived from aion, meaning “age” or “cycle of time.” According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, aionios describes something that relates to a particular age or era, not necessarily something literally without end.
Consider how the word functions: when Jesus promises “eternal life,” we’re speaking of life sustained by the Eternal God. The eternity comes from God’s nature, not from the thing itself. But when we say “eternal punishment,” we’re applying the same word to something that exists apart from God’s sustaining power. As such, the consistency breaks down.
Throughout Scripture, God’s blessings are described as everlasting, but His punishments are consistently portrayed as having defined durations. The psalmist writes: “For His anger lasts for just a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime.” This pattern repeats across the biblical record.
The Abyss, the Ocean, and Divine Mercy
Scripture contains another overlooked detail. Enoch speaks of Hades as the Abyss, located beneath the Earth’s oceans. Ancient Hebraic tradition held that the ocean was a repository for human sin, a place of cleansing where defilement could be washed away. The Greeks held a similar view. Homer’s Iliad describes men casting their guilt into the sea to be made clean again.
The prophet Micah captured this profound truth:
He’ll have compassion on us; He’ll tread our iniquities underfoot. Yes, You’ll cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
In The Book of Revelation, the Apostle John described a future moment when “death and Hell give up their dead, and each of them is judged according to their deeds. Then death and Hell are thrown into the Lake of Fire.” This isn’t a continuation of eternal punishment. This is the abolition of death and Hell themselves. In the new creation, “there’ll be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, because the former things will have passed away.
Finding Truth Through Multiple Perspectives
The Lost Stories Channel teaches that truth emerges when artistic, scientific, and theological perspectives are considered together. The doctrine of Hell is no exception. When we:
Examine the original languages carefully
Compare Old Testament and New Testament concepts
Consider how Greek culture influenced early Christian theology
Notice the consistent biblical pattern of time-specific punishments
And recognize that immortality comes from God, not from human nature
We discover a different picture than the one tradition has painted. We see that humans aren’t immortal by nature, so that anyone separated from the divine presence in the coming judgment will inevitably fade like twilight shadows, like seedlings without sunlight, like flames without oxygen.
We see that God judges the dead specifically according to their deeds—no more and no less, which clearly demonstrates that His mercies are infinite in nature, whereas His judgments are finite, and not endless retribution. As such, death and Hell themselves are destined to one day cease to exist.
This isn’t a soft or permissive doctrine that mischaracterizes God’s judgment of human sin. Rather, it’s the doctrine of a God Who takes evil seriously, Who judges righteously, and Who intends ultimately to restore all creation. In the end, it’s a picture far more consistent with a God of mercy and truth than the endless torture chamber of medieval theology.
Learning More
If this exploration of Hell, judgment, and divine mercy has stirred your curiosity, consider diving deeper into the interconnections between faith, history, and theology. The Lost Stories Channel offers blogs, essays, books, audios, and videos that examine biblical passages often misunderstood or overlooked by mainstream teaching. Many address the great misconceptions we’ve inherited about the nature of God, the afterlife, and humanity’s ultimate destiny.
