Chapter 9 – Gehenna: New Testament

I recently revised my book on hell and I’ve decided to post the updated chapters on this site. This is much more than a tour through the underworld. The Christian doctrine of hell drives us to take a closer look at Scripture, church history, and the character of God. If you downloaded a previous Kindle version, you can get the updated version by following these steps.

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Have you ever wondered why a person acts a certain way and then you met his or her parents and things suddenly made sense? Likewise, when we study the Bible’s references to hell, it’s essential that we know the backstory.

Bible study can be like detective work. It requires readers to pay attention to details and follow clues. While researching hell in Scripture, I started to feel like a private investigator.

Gehenna in the New Testament

Since we can say the same basic thing using a variety of words, we should not think that tracking down a single word can reveal everything we need to know about anything. Nonetheless, in our study of hell in the Bible, no single word is more important than gehenna. With one exception in the New International Version (2 Pet 2:4), every reference to hell is derived from this word.

We’ve already discovered the Old Testament background of the word gehenna. Here are the New Testament references to hell or the place called Gehenna (NIV). I have inserted the word Gehenna in brackets in each passage.

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, “Raca,” is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, “You fool!” will be in danger of the fire of hell [Gehenna]. (Matt 5:22)

If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell [Gehenna]. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell [Gehenna]. (Matt 5:29–30)

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell [Gehenna]. (Matt 10:28)

But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell [Gehenna]. Yes, I tell you, fear him. (Lk 12:5)

If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell [Gehenna]. (Matt 18:8–9)

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell [Gehenna] as you are. (Matt 23:15)

You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell [Gehenna]? (Matt 23:33)

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell [Gehenna], where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell [Gehenna]. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell [Gehenna], where “the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.” Everyone will be salted with fire. (Mk 9:43–49)

The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell [Gehenna]. (Jas 3:6)

 Observations

What key points do you observe from the preceding statements? Here’s my list.

•  Eleven of the twelve uses are found in the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew (7), Mark (3), and Luke (1). James 3:6 is the only reference outside the Gospels: “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell [Gehenna].” While James links Gehenna with fire as we have seen in the Gospels, I think it’s safe to assume that he was not envisioning a tongue literally on fire. Since the comment in James is metaphorical, brief, and doesn’t add to our understanding of Gehenna, we can exclude it from consideration.
• The only person who mentions Gehenna in the Gospels is Jesus.
• Jesus primarily talks about Gehenna to his disciples. The only place where the disciples are not included is Matthew 23, where Jesus addresses the teachers of the law and Pharisees (vv. 15, 23). This data leads Heath Bradley to conclude, “Anytime Jesus talks about hell, he is talking either to his own disciples or to religious people who see themselves as insiders.  Jesus never once threatened hell as a means of gaining converts.”[i] The one exception to Bradley’s assertion is Matthew 5. Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5–7 concludes with this comment, “When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching” (7:28). So “crowds” heard his Gehenna comments in Matthew 5. For the most part, though, Bradley is right and we can agree that there are no  examples of Jesus threatening “hell as a means of gaining converts.”
• Jesus primarily uses Gehenna as a serious warning. For example, “And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell [Gehenna]” (Matt 5:22), and “How will you escape being condemned to hell [Gehenna]?” (23:33). Gehenna is the place where people with their “whole body” will be thrown (5:29) and the site where God can destroy “soul and body” (10:28).
• Gehenna is associated with “fire” (Matt 5:22), “eternal fire” (18:8), which is also translated “age-during” fire (YLT), fire that “never goes out” (Mk 9:43) also translated “unquenchable fire” (ESV), and “worms” (v. 48). Quoting Isaiah, it is the place “where ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched’” (v. 48). Gehenna, then, is the place of divine judgment with fire, human bodies, and worms or maggots.
• The human body and body parts are mentioned repeatedly: “your whole body,” “right eye,” “right hand,” “one part of your body,” “two hands,” “two feet.” Additionally, “soul and body” is mentioned.[ii]

Question

Have you ever seen a detail that you couldn’t shake from your mind? Maybe you saw something in an unusual place and the question kept pestering you: How did that get there? That’s how I felt when I realized that Jesus was essentially the only one to use Gehenna in the New Testament. How could that be? Why did others not mention the place of eternal judgment?

Many have noticed Jesus’ recurring references to “hell.” In fact, some even believe Jesus created the concept. For example, in his Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain’s Satan character claims that Jesus invented hell.[iii] But there is something that many have overlooked in the way Jesus uses Gehenna.[iv]

In the previous chapter we saw that Gehenna means the Valley of Hinnom. According to the Old Testament, the Hinnom Valley was located on the southern slope of Jerusalem. Further, it was no ordinary ravine; it was the place where the horrors of child sacrifice and idolatry were practiced. As a result, God promised that his judgment would be carried out on evildoers in this valley; their bodies would become food for the birds and wild animals.

Could Jesus have been using Gehenna in the same way as Jeremiah? In other words, when Jesus said Gehenna, was he thinking of the valley outside of Jerusalem—the site of idolatry, massacre, and destruction? Or was he using Gehenna to refer to afterlife judgment?

Earthly Clues

To answer that question we must first ponder this question: Did Jesus predict physical destruction like the Old Testament prophets?

Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple (Mk 13:2), great distress (Matt 24:21), and vultures gathering around carcasses (24:29). And he commanded his followers to flee to the mountains when they saw specific signs of the coming destruction (24:16). According to Luke, here’s what happened during Jesus’ final visit to the capital city:

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” (19:41–44)

Is it possible, then, that Jesus’ references to Gehenna refer to the physical valley outside of Jerusalem where Roman soldiers would throw dead bodies forty years later?

It’s possible for the following reasons. First, that’s how Gehenna was used in the Old Testament, which was the Bible     Jesus knew. Second, it fits with Jesus’ predictions of physical destruction, including a temporal reference:

You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell [Gehenna]? . . . Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.” (Matt 23:33–36) [v]

Third, it fits with the actual destruction that was carried out by the Romans in AD 70. Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, writes,

Now the seditious at first gave orders that the dead should be buried out of the public treasury, as not enduring the stench of their dead bodies. But afterwards, when they could not do that, they had them cast down from the walls into the valleys beneath.[vi]

Presumably Gehenna was one of “the valleys beneath” that was filled with corpses. Finally, seeing things this way fits with the detail that I could not shake from my mind, with only one exception (Jas 3:6), Jesus is the only one who mentions Gehenna in the New Testament. And he is the only one who uses Gehenna in connection with divine judgment.

When the apostles went out and preached in the book of Acts, they didn’t warn people about Gehenna. They didn’t even mention the valley of eternal flames. Why not? If they had learned from Jesus about a place of eternal punishment called Gehenna, wouldn’t they have had a moral obligation to tell others about it? After all, Jesus was their Lord and they heard his Gehenna warnings several times. How could they not tell others about the place with eternal fire and worms that will never die? Granted, the word Gehenna would not have meant much to those outside Israel’s borders, but they still could have explained the concept without using the word. As we have seen, though, in the book of Acts the early preachers talked about the day of judgment then stopped. Descriptions of the horrors of hell and the pleasures of heaven are absent. Nor do we find other New Testament authors employing Gehenna warnings as Jesus does in the Gospels. How can this be? Why do New Testament references to Gehenna essentially disappear after Matthew, Mark, and Luke?

Likewise, in the Apostolic Fathers—books written in Greek by the church leaders of the first and second centuries AD[vii]—we have only one reference to Gehenna. In 2 Clement 5:4, the author quotes Jesus’ statement in Matthew 10:28: “do ye have no fear of those that slay you, and can do nothing more to you, but fear him who after your death hath power over body and soul, to cast them into the flames of hell [Gehenna].”[viii]

If Jesus repeatedly used Gehenna to refer to the place of afterlife punishment, why do we have no examples of the early preachers and writers using this term? What is going on here?

Perhaps they didn’t think Jesus was talking about what we think he’s talking about when we read the word hell. I know this is an argument from silence, but sometimes silence speaks louder than words. The earthly clues lead Andrew Perriman to conclude:

Nothing that Jesus says about the punishment of Gehenna compels us to think that he is speaking of the afterlife, that he is describing post mortem punishment rather than an ante mortem punishment.[ix]

Summary

Hopefully, this chapter encourages you to begin understanding Gehenna by envisioning the physical valley outside of Jerusalem. Some of this confusion could have been avoided if translators had used Gehenna instead of hell in their English Bible versions. At least that would have left it up to interpreters to explain the meaning.

We’ve only arrived at a possibility, but it’s a possibility many have not considered because they have only read the word “hell” in English without any background knowledge of Gehenna.

But is it also possible that Jesus used Gehenna with an afterlife meaning? Did anyone else use Gehenna in that way? It’s time to meet more ancient authors.

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[i] Heath Bradley, Flames of Love: Hell and Universal Salvation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), 70.

[ii] This observation comes from Kim G. Papaioannou in “The Development of Gehenna between the Old and New Testaments.” Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism, chap. 18.

[iii] Twain writes, “Meek and gentle? By and by we will examine this popular sarcasm by the light of the hell which he invented.” Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings, ed. Bernard DeVoto (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 46.

[iv] I believe I was initially inspired to explore the line of thinking in this chapter by reading Gregg, chap. 5. Gregg and others claim that Gehenna was a garbage dump in Jesus’ time, but many scholars believe that idea has now been discredited so I have not included that concept in this chapter.

[v] This insight comes from Gregg, Hell, chap. 5.

[vi] Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, trans. William Whiston (London: Cambridge, 1737), 5.12.3., http://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus.

[vii] These books include 1 & 2 Clement, The Letters of Ignatius, The Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians, The Martyrdom of Polycarp, The Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas, The Shepherd of Hermas, The Epistle to Diognetus, and Fragments of Papias, Fragments from Irenaeus. See Michael W. Holmes trans. & ed., The Apostolic Fathers in English (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006).

[viii] www.earlychurchtexts.com/public/apostfaths/clem_i.html

[ix] Andrew Perriman, Heaven and Hell in Narrative Perspective (P.OST, 2011), Kindle, 392.