On The Abuse of Certain Words Found in Scripture
"Consider this: the postmortem state is mentioned a total of sixty-five times in the [Old Testament] with the Hebrew word ‘sheol’ and should always be translated as “grave, pit, or hidden place.”… Yet, surprisingly, the King James translators of the [Old Testament] mistranslated Sheol thirty-one times as “hell” (derived from an Early Middle Ages Teutonic word (helle) that was etymologically non-existent when the Scriptures were originally written). So here we have a single Hebrew word (Sheol) with two opposing meanings ascribed to it by the English translators of the King James Bible. In other words, they found a cold place (grave) and a hot place (hell) in the same Hebrew word, Sheol. That just doesn’t compute! …
‘Happily, several of the later versions of Old Testament scriptures have either reduced or altogether eliminated the word “hell” as the translators make proper and scholarly corrections in keeping with the original Hebrew language intent. To see an example of this, compare Psalm 9:17 in the King James Version of the Bible with the later published New American Standard Bible. The NAS version (acclaimed to be more consistent with the original languages) has eliminated the word “hell” from all Old Testament scriptures. Many other versions of the Bible do not have the word “hell” in the Old Testament. …
The same obvious problem of mistranslation may be found in the New Testament wherever the word “hell” appears (compare Mt 23:33 NIV with Young’s Literal Translation). And most appalling of all, in every instance where the NT translators put the word “hell” in the mouth of Jesus, it’s a glaring mistranslation of the Greek word, Gehenna (Jerusalem’s city dump), or that other Greek word, hades, i.e., the unseen or hidden place used several times to describe the abode of the dead as consistent with “the grave” (sigh)…
One of the reasons for belief in a future hell of judgment is the fact that many Christians and theologians are abysmally uninformed of the historically recorded ‘hell-on- earth’ suffered by the nation of Israel in AD 68-70. The Roman armies, under General Titus, invaded Israel to subdue a Jewish revolt. Before the smoke of a three-year battle cleared, 978 towns were destroyed including Jerusalem with its magnificent Temple, one million Jews were slain, Gehenna (Jerusalem’s city dump) was choked with burning bodies, and, 90 thousand captives were carried away to serve as slaves throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire.
Many of the Hebrew prophets including Malachi (4:1); John the Baptist (Mt 3:10-12); Jesus (Mt 23:33-36 with Mk 13:1-37); Peter (Acts 2:4; and Paul (Heb 10:26-27) warned the people of Israel and others of this impending judgment. In most cases, the warnings went unheeded, except by the followers of Christ who fled to the mountains and escaped the carnage. These prophetic warnings have often been misinterpreted as implying a future threat of hell awaiting sinners. Instead, when they are read in the context of their past historical reality, the traditional concept of an eternal hell virtually disappears from the New Testament.”
Ivan A. Rogers
"Dropping Hell and Embracing Grace"
