Was Hell in the Original Bible (the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament)?

The HyperTexts

Was Hell in the Original Bible?

Was "hell" in the original Bible? No, the word "hell" did not appear anywhere in the original Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament (OT). Not in a single verse! Furthermore the word "hell" is rapidly disappearing from the New Testament (NT) and no longer appears anywhere in 28 of the more accurate versions. You can easily confirm this by using an online Bible search tool to scan various Bible translations for the word "hell." Or you can refer to the table below, which was produced by Gary Amirault, a Bible scholar who has extensively researched the question of "hell" as a biblical teaching. I have added two translations to Amirault's original list: the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), sponsored by the famously literal and conservative Southern Baptist Convention, and the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE), produced by more than a hundred Bible scholars working for the Roman Catholic Church. There is not a single instance of the word "hell" in the NABRE. Amazingly, even conservative Bible scholars now agree that the biblical God and his Hebrew prophets never mentioned "hell"―not even a single time―in Biblical chronologies covering thousands of years!

You can confirm this astounding fact by reading the Bible and verifying that "hell" was never mentioned even to the worst people at the worst times! The possibility of "hell" or suffering after death was never mentioned to Adam and Eve (the original sinners), nor to Cain (the first murderer), nor to the wicked people at the time of Great Flood, nor to the wicked people of Sodom and Gomorrah, nor even to the Pharaoh who defied Moses and his God repeatedly!

by Michael R. Burch, a "recovering fundamentalist"

The question raised by the table below is obvious. How can Christian churches continue to teach the dogma of "hell" when the Hebrew prophets, speaking for their God, never mentioned anything about "hell" or any possibility of suffering after death? And why did most of the writers of the NT also completely fail to mention "hell"? Modern Bible scholars unanimously agree that the Hebrew word Sheol and the Greek word Hades do not mean "hell." This is because both Sheol and Hades clearly mean "the grave" or the abode of all the dead, good and bad. King David said that if he made his bed in Sheol, God would still be with him. Other psalmists, the sons of Korah, said God would redeem their souls from Sheol. Job asked to be hidden from suffering in Sheol. In his famous Valley of the Dry Bones vision, Ezekiel prophesied that all Israel would be resurrected and saved. But Israel himself said that he would be reunited with his son Joseph in Sheol. How can all Israel be saved, if Israel himself is in hell? Each of these verses clearly refutes the idea of a "hell" that cannot be escaped, where God is absent, and where suffering is eternal.

David meant that when he died and made his bed in the grave, God would still be with him.

The sons of Korah meant that God would redeem their souls from death and the grave.

Job meant that he would be safe from suffering when he was dead and lying in his grave.

Israel meant that he would join his son Joseph in the grave when he died.

Furthermore, anyone who studies Greek mythology or the Wikipedia page on Hades can easily see that Hades was not "hell" either, because it contained heavenly regions such as the Elysian Fields and the Blessed Isles. The Greek hell was Tartarus, and that word appears in only a single Bible verse (2 Peter 2:4). If you read my hyperlinked article below, I explain that this is the only verse in the Bible that actually mentions hell, but it was for fallen angels awaiting judgment and thus it was not for human beings, nor was it eternal.

This leaves only one word that might be translated as "hell" and that's the Hebrew word Gehenna. As you can see in the table below, a small number of translations still cling to Gehenna meaning "hell." But that makes absolutely no sense for the following reasons:

(1) Gehenna is not "hell" but a physical location in Israel known in Hebrew as Gehinnom, or the Valley of Hinnom. Today Gehenna is a lovely park and tourist attraction.

(2) Wonderful archeological discoveries have been made in Gehenna, including the healing pool of Siloam and small silver amulets containing the oldest Bible verse in existence: the benediction "The LORD bless thee and keep thee; the LORD make his countenance to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee." Those are wonderfully comforting words to have been discovered in "hell," don't you think?

(3) The few verses that contain the word Gehenna are the work of just one author of the Bible: whoever wrote the oldest gospel, the gospel of Mark. The verses in question were copied by the authors of Matthew and Luke. What are the odds that only one writer in the long history of Bible authorship knew about "hell" if it really exists? That makes no sense at all. It's obvious that Gehenna is yet another mistranslation.

If this subject interest you, I have created a simple, logical proof that there is No Hell in the Bible, which you read without annoying ads by clicking the hyperlinked title. Now here is Gary Amirault's table ...

"HELL" IN THE BIBLE	OT	NT	Total
King James Version (KJV), based on inferior corrupted texts	31	23	54
New King James Version (NKJV), still wrong about Sheol being "hell"	19	13	32
New International Version (NIV) the best-selling Bible, still wrong about Gehenna	0	13	13
American Standard Version (ASV)	0	13	13
New American Standard Bible (NASB)	0	13	13
Revised English Bible (REB)	0	13	13
New Living Translation (NLT)	0	13	13
Amplified Bible (AMP)	0	13	13
Revised Standard Version (RSV)	0	12	12
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)	0	12	12
Darby	0	12	12
New Century Version (NCV)	0	12	12
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) Southern Baptist literal translation	0	11	11
New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) Roman Catholic	0	0	0
Wesley's New Testament (1755)	0	0	0
Scarlett's N.T. (1798)	0	0	0
The New Testament in Greek and English	0	0	0
Young's Literal Translation (1891)	0	0	0
Twentieth Century New Testament (1900)	0	0	0
Rotherham's Emphasized Bible (1902)	0	0	0
Fenton's Holy Bible in Modern English (1903)	0	0	0
Weymouth's New Testament (1903)	0	0	0
Jewish Pub. Soc. Bible Old Testament (1917)	0	0	0
Panin's English New Testament (1914)	0	0	0
The People's New Covenant (1925)	0	0	0
Hanson's New Covenant (1884)	0	0	0
Western N.T. (1926)	0	0	0
NT of our Lord and Savior Anointed (1958)	0	0	0
Concordant Literal NT (1983)	0	0	0
The N.T., A Translation (1938)	0	0	0
Emphatic Diaglott, Greek/English Interlinear	0	0	0
New American Bible (1970)	0	0	0
Restoration of Original Sacred Name Bible	0	0	0
Tanakh, The Holy Scriptures, OT (1985)	0	0	0
The New Testament, A New Translation	0	0	0
Christian Bible (1991)	0	0	0
World English Bible	0	0	0
Orthodox Jewish Brit Chadasha [NT Only]	0	0	0
Original Bible Project (Dr. James Tabor)	0	0	0
Zondervan Parallel N.T. in Greek and English	0	0	0
Int. NASB-NIV Parallel N.T. (1993)	0	0	0
A Critical Paraphrase of the N.T. (1960)	0	0	0
Complete Jewish Bible	0	0	0
New Catholic Bible (NCB)	0	0	0
Tree of Life Version (TLV)	0	0	0
World English Bible (WEB)	0	0	0