Time to re-post this. It may or may not be relevant what a word, such as "hell" might have meant in different country, language, culture etc. more than a few 100 years ago. Even in English common words have changed meaning over the years. For example, when we hear/read the word "truck" we think of a large boxy vehicle used for transporting large, heavy loads. "Truck" originally meant vegetables, then it came to mean a vehicle used for carrying vegetables. Sometimes it meant "to have dealings with" as in "I don't have any truck with them."
…..If is often argued in forums like this that "Gehenna" referred to a constantly burning trash dump in the valley of Ge Hinnom outside Jerusalem. There is no credible evidence from any historical source for that. There was a valley near Jerusalem which was used for a trash dump but it was the Kidron valley not Ge Hinnom.
https://www.researchgate.net/public...udy_of_the_City-Dump_of_Early_Roman_Jerusalem
Concerning only the existence of a Jewish belief in hell
not the validity of the historical faith, beliefs and practices of the ancient Jews. Below are quotes from three credible Jewish sources; the Jewish Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Judaica and the Talmud. Which to date have not been refuted.
…..According to these three sources, among the יהודים/Yehudim/ιουδαιων/Youdaion/Jews in Israel, before and during the time of Jesus, there was a significant belief in a place of everlasting torment of the wicked and they called it both sheol and gehinnom, which are translated Hades and Gehenna, respectively, in both the 225 BC LXX and the NT.
…..There were different factions within Judaism; Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes etc. and different beliefs about resurrection, hell etc. These differing beliefs do not refute anything in the following post.
[1]1917 Jewish Encyclopedia, Gehenna
The place where children were sacrificed to the god Moloch … in the "valley of the son of Hinnom," to the south of Jerusalem (
Josh. xv. 8, passim; II Kings xxiii. 10; Jer. ii. 23; vii. 31-32; xix. 6, 13-14). … the valley was deemed to be accursed, and "
Gehenna" therefore soon became a figurative equivalent for "hell." Hell, like paradise, was created by God (Sotah 22a);[Note,
“soon” in this passage would be about 700 BC +/-, DA]
[Note: this is according to the ancient Jews, long before the Christian era,
NOT any assumed/alleged bias of “modern” Christian translators. And at least 14 centuries before Dante'. DA]
”(I)n general …
sinners go to hell immediately after their death. The famous teacher Johanan b. Zakkai wept before his death because he did not know whether he would go to paradise or to hell (Ber. 28b).
The pious go to paradise, and sinners to hell(B.M. 83b).
But as regards the heretics, etc., and Jeroboam, Nebat's son,
hell shall pass away, but they shall not pass away" (R. H. 17a; comp. Shab. 33b). All that descend into Gehenna shall come up again, with the exception of three classes of men: those who have committed adultery, or shamed their neighbors, or vilified them (B. M. 58b).[/i]
… heretics and the Roman oppressors go to Gehenna, and the same fate awaits the Persians, the oppressors of the Babylonian Jews (Ber. 8b).
When Nebuchadnezzar descended into hell, [שאול/Sheol] all its inhabitants were afraid that he was coming to rule over them (Shab. 149a; comp.
Isa. xiv. 9-10). The Book of
Enoch [x. 6, xci. 9, etal] also says that it is
chiefly the heathen who are to be cast into the fiery pool on the Day of Judgment (x. 6, xci. 9, et al). "The Lord, the Almighty, will punish them on the Day of Judgment by putting fire and worms into their flesh, so that they cry out with pain unto all eternity" (
Judith xvi. 17).
The sinners in Gehenna will be filled with pain when God puts back the souls into the dead bodies on the Day of Judgment, according toIsa. xxxiii. 11 (Sanh. 108b).
Link:
Jewish Encyclopedia Online
Note, scripture references are highlighted in
blue.