The book Every Knee Shall Bow by Thomas Allin and Mark T. Chamberlain outline some great points about the mistranslated concept of eternal hell that I wish modern Christians would educate themselves upon:
As instances of incorrect translations of the modern bible from the original Greek manuscripts, take the words translated "hell", "damnation", "everlasting", "eternal", "forever and ever". In the New Testament, "hell" is a translation of three widely different Greek words: "Hades", "Gehenna" and "Tartarus". "Gehenna" occurs 11 times in the New Testament as used by Jesus and once by James. In the original Greek, it is taken almost unchanged from the Hebrew (Ge-hinnom, i.e. valley of Hinnom), an example that our translators should have followed and rendered it "Gehenna" as it is. By translating it to the word "hell" with all of its connotations, they are assuming the part of commentators instead of translators.
The valley of Hinnom lay outside of Jerusalem. Once a pleasant valley, it later became the scene of Molech worship. The Valley of Hinnom, after being a place of pagan god worshop and human sacrifice, later became a garbage dump. Into it all sorts of waste and carcasses were thrown and a fire was kept burning.
The next term is "Hades". This is used to denote the state or place of spirits, both good and bad alike, after death and it has nothing to do with punishment. It occurs five times in the Gospels and Epistles, twice in Acts and four times in Revelation.
"Tartarus" occurs only once in the New Testament in 2 Peter. "God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment." Here Peter applies the term hell not to human beings but to fallen angels, and even they are not kept there forever, but while they are awaiting the judgment. Hence to reader it as "hell" is preposterous.
"Damnation" and "damned" are both translations of the Greek words krino and katarino, meaning "to judge" and "to condemn". Neither word contains the idea of everlasting torment. The English word "damn" carries with it the connotation of everlasting hell. But the Greek word merely means to judge, which by no means carries that terrifying connotation.
The word "hell" simply means the place of disembodied spirits when it translates as "Hades", or when the word "Gehenna" is used, it is a reference to the Valley of Hinnom, where the fires were kept burning not to inflict torment, but to purify.
The Greek words mistranslated "eternal", "everlasting" and "forever and ever" do not carry those meanings. The words in question are aion and aionios, which mean "age" and "ages" -- actual finite periods of time.
This is not to say that punishment is not pending for those who must atone for their sins. It is to say that the punishment is not ENDLESS. There is always a purpose to what God does and to punish in order to purify is for the purpose of restoring all things unto Himself.
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