AN INQUIRY

INTO THE MEANING. OF THE WORDS SHEOL, HADES, TARTARUS AND GEHENNA.

CHAPTER I.

WORDS, which are signs of ideas, were used by the inspired writers in their ordinary acceptation, as they must be by all who speak and write to be understood. In order, therefore, to have a correct view of their language, it is necessary to ascertain what sense they affixed to their words, and this we can only learn by consulting scripture usage. That men have attached ideas to some scripture terms which they were never meant to convey, will not be denied. That this is not 1 the case with the words Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna, which we propose to examine, ought not to be taken for granted.

SECTION I.

ALL THE PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CONSIDERED, IN WHICH SHEOL OCCURS, TRANSLATED PIT, GRAVE, AND HELL, IN THE COMMON VERSION.

MOST Christians have supposed that the word hell denotes a place of eternal punishment for all the wicked.

Wherever they meet the word, it calls up the idea of such a place, and by many it will be deemed the worst of heresies to give it any other signification. The cry of heresy ought not, however, to deter us from candidly inquiring, "what is truth?" on this deeply interesting question.

There are four words in the original languages of the Bible, which are translated by the word hell, in our common version. These are Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna. The first two are translated grave, as well as hell; the two last always hell in the common version.

There is one fact, which deserves attention at the outset, of which many readers of the Bible are ignorant. In the Old Testament, Sheol, hell, never means a place of eternal misery for the wicked.* This is indisputable. No one can doubt it who will take the trouble to examine for himself. Nor is this a novel opinion, a discovery of mine. The fact is attested by some of the ablest writers who believed in endless misery. Dr. Campbell, in his 6th Preliminary Dissertation, writes:As to the word Hades, which occurs in eleven places in the New Testament, and is rendered hell in all, except one, where it is translated grave, it is quite common in the classical authors, and frequently used by the Seventy, in the translation of the Old Testament. In my judgment it ought never in Scripture to be rendered hell, at least in the sense wherein that word is now universally understood by Christians. In the Old Testament, the corresponding word is Sheol, which signifies the state of the dead in general, without regard to the goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery. In translating that word, the Seventy have almost invariably used Hades. This word is also used sometimes in rendering the nearly synonymous words or phrases bor and abne

*Professor Stuart says, "Sheol designates future punishment," but adds, we must also admit, that it does not determine, of itself, the duration of that punishment."-Exeget. Essays, p. 107.

bor, the pit, and stones of the pit, tsal moth, the shades of death, dumeh, silence. The state is always represented under those figures which suggest something dreadful, dark and silent, about which the most prying eye and listening ear can acquire no information. The term Hades is well adapted to express this idea. It was written anciently, as we learn from the poets (for what is called the poetic is nothing but the ancient dialect) aides, ab a privatio et eido video, and signifies obscure, hidden, invisible. To this the word hell, in its primitive signification, perfectly corresponded. For, at first, it denoted only what was secret or concealed. This word is found, with little variation of form, and precisely in the same meaning, in all the Teutonic dialects.

"But though our word hell, in its original signification, was more adapted to express the sense of Hades than of Gehenna, it is not so now. When we speak as Christians, we always express by it the place of the punishment of the wicked after the general judgment, as opposed to heaven, the place of the reward of the righteous. It is true, that, in translating heathen poets, we retain the old sense of the word hell, which answers to the Latin orcus, or rather infernus, as when we speak of the descent of Eneas, or of Orpheus, into hell. Now, the word infernus, in Latin, comprehends the receptacle of all the dead, and contains both Elysium, the place of the blessed, and Tartarus, the abode of the miserable. The term inferni comprehends all the inhabitants, good and bad, happy and wretched. The Latin words infernus and inferni bear evident traces of the notion that the repository of the souls of the departed is under ground.* This appears also to have been the opinion of both Greeks and Hebrews, and indeed of all antiquity. How far the ancient practice of burying the body may have contrib

* What sacred writer, I ask, says, "the repository of the souls of the departed is under ground?" We shall see afterwards, from Dr. Campbell himself, and Whitby, that this is a heathen notion. Mr. Stuart confirms this.

uted to produce this idea concerning the mansion of the ghosts of the deceased, I shall not take upon me to say; but it is very plain, that neither in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, nor in the New, does the word Hades convey the meaning which the present English word hell, in the Christian usage, always conveys to our minds.

"It were endless to illustrate this remark, by an examination and enumeration of all the passages in both Testaments wherein the word is found. The attempt would be unnecessary, as it is hardly now pretended by any critic, that this is the acceptation of the term in the Old Testament. Who, for example, would render the words of the venerable patriarch Jacob, Gen. 37: 35, when he was deceived by his sons into the opinion that his favorite child Joseph had been devoured by a wild beast, I will go down to hell to my son mourning?' or the words which he used, ch. 42: 38, when they expostulated with him about sending his youngest son, Benjamin, into Egypt along with them, 'Ye will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to hell?' Yet in both places the word, in the original, is Sheol, and in the version of the Seventy, Hades. I shall only add, that, in the famous passage from the Psalms, 16: 10, quoted in the Acts of the Apostles, Acts 2: 27, of which I shall have occasion to take notice afterwards, though the word is the same both in Hebrew and in Greek, as in the two former quotations, and though it is in both places rendered hell in the common version, it would be absurd to understand it as denoting the place of the damned, whether the expression be interpreted literally of David the type, or of Jesus Christ the antitype, agreeably to its principal and ultimate object."-I have made this long quotation from Dr. Campbell at the outset for several reasons.

1st. It shows that Sheol of the Old Testament, and Hades of the New, both translated by our English word hell, did not originally signify a place of misery for the wicked, but simply the state of the dead, without regard