Hades and Paradise to Hell and Heaven???

There is much confusion on this.
If we look at Rev. 20:14, we read that "death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire." (NASB).
However the KJV says that "death and hell were cast in to the lake of fire."
This would seem to equate hell with hades.

On the other hand, In Matthew 18:8-9, we have a situation where Jesus says "If your hand or foot causes you to stumble...if your eye causes you to stumble". The punishment for the first is "cast into the eternal fire". The punishment for the second is "cast into the fiery hell". Now, we can take this passage in one of two ways, 1) Increasing degrees of punishment, or 2) Hebrew parallelism, thus equating "eternal fire" and "fiery hell".

I take the second view, because elsewhere (Matthew 5:27ff; and Mark 9:43ff) the only word that is used is "hell"..."where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched".

Sheol is the name for the holding place in the OT. It is understood that Sheol consisted of a few parts, I think. Perhaps Paradise and Purgatory for no one was allowed to enter heaven until after Christ.

So then, we believe that Hades is purgatory, and there is no need for paradise within sheol, because those who can go straight to heaven, go there right away.

Christ told the thief on the cross that today he would be with him in paradise, and then he descended to the dead.

But if you want more info, just respond.

Here's an example from Revelation 20:

13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.
14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.


-Gehenna is understood to be eternal hell. Hades is a temporary fiery place, and it says that at the end of the world, there will be no more need for Hades and death and hades will be thrown into Gehenna.

Hades to us, is purgatory but it's complicated.


This essay might help:


"This focuses upon the belief in sheol. I'm going to suggest that what the Latin word, "purgatorio" signifies, that is the place where we are purged of disordered self-love, the Hebrew word, "sheol" can also signify or denote. Just like the Greek word "hades" can denote it. Three words, perhaps with the same reality, with proper distinctions made, if we had the time and the energy and the know-how and so on. But I would suggest that "hades," the Greek word, is not normally associated with just simply "hell fire." "Gehenna" is the word that Jesus uses for hell fire, "where the worm dieth not" and there's this unquenchable fire. That's actually borrowed from the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem, "ge-hin-nom," the valley of hin-nom, which was where King Manasus sacrificed thousands of Israelite children to Molek, a demon god. After that nobody wanted to live in such defiled land, so it became the garbage dump, with fires continually burning. Nobody wanted to get near it because of defilement. It was a haunt of demons.

That was the image that Christ used for hell, as we normally associate it, but hades is a term that admits to a kind of double usage as we will see and as scholars have seen. For instance, Ellard Bailey in a book, "Death in the Literature of the Old Testament" speaks about how throughout the Old Testament, the belief is found that the good and the evil go down to sheol, it's the place where the righteous and the unrighteous go. In Brown, Driver and Briggs, one of the most authoritative reference works for understanding Hebrew words, you can look up sheol, and there you find that sheol is divided into two sections, one for the evil and one for the good.

You can actually find in the apocryphal work of 1st Enoch that it is divided up further into four sections: the evil section into two sections, those who are evil and those who are really evil; and also two sections for the good as well. R. L. Harris in another study speaks of sheol as the grave. He has been heavily criticized by scholars across the board for trying to reduce the word sheol down to being merely the grave. He especially ignored a major work in German that I came across by Afmar Kiel.

Now I know you're not just going to rush out to a seminary book store and purchase all of these works and read them by tomorrow morning, but you can get the tape or you can take notes on this and perhaps get some of these sources later on. Another scholar by the name of Hiedel spoke of sheol as existing in the Old Testament for the righteous. He also did a word study of the underworld, the nether world and saw it associated with the evil.

One of the key studies I came across, however, is by a man named Alexander, an Evangelical Protestant with decidedly non-Catholic leanings entitled, "The Old Testament View of Life After Death in Familias" in 1986, I believe. He rejects a lot of views that would basically make an Old Testament look like primitive garbage. He shows that sheol throughout the Old Testament represented the abode of the dead, the underworld for both the wicked and the righteous. For the wicked it was dark and silent and terrifying and a kind of imminent or ultimate preparation for final punishment. But for the good, there was hope, not pleasure, not comfort necessarily, but hope, great hope.

Now, working through these scholars and their studies of the Old Testament doctrine of sheol, I'd also done my own study. I came to the conclusion that they were right, that the Old Testament has a firm teaching that you could find in many different strata or levels of Old Testament tradition and there you find this belief that the soul goes on living somehow in a shadowy world where the righteous and the unrighteous have a share, although it's distinct; and it is not a pleasant place. It is not a pleasant place at all.........."

http://catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0091.html

tmak said:

i do want more info. i still dont quite understand.
So does hades turn into hell and paradise turn into heaven later on???

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No, Hades doesn't turn into Hell. My understanding is that the Hell in the gospels is the Lake of Fire in Revelation. Therefore Hades is cast into Hell (the Lake of Fire). Rev. 20:14.

Paradise is used for a number of things. In the Greek Old Testament - the Septuagint, (often quoted from in the New Testament), Paradise refers to the Garden of Eden (in Genesis), or gardens beside a river (Num 24:6), a forest (Nehemiah 2:8), etc. In other words, paradise can mean a number of different things depending upon the context. I would say that "paradise" is some sort of a haven.

Can paradise mean Heaven? Yes, I believe that's the way Jesus referred to it to the thief on the cross.

In the book of Revelation, the Bible speaks of a New Heaven and a New Earth. (Rev 21:1). Does paradise turn into the New Heaven? I don't think so. Could it? Perhaps.

Maybe someone else has more insight into this. I think that there are some things that we won't find out until we reach glory. But that's okay. Even though God has told us a lot in His word, He is supposed to know more than we do. Don't sweat it too much.

I hope that some of this helps a little.

B. J. H.

In the OT everyone went to Sheol, or Hades, or the grave. The righteous waited there for Christ to save them, and the unrighteous waited there for final punishment. Christ "decended into Hell by the Cross", Hell here is refering to Hades. Christ brought the Gospel to the righteous in Hades, explaining to the OT saints how they prefigured Him and fit into His plan, and then broke assunder the gates of brass and the bars of iron, and lead the righteous out of Hades into Paradise, or the Bosom of Abraham. Now when we depart, we go either to Hades or to Paradise. At the end of time there will be the general Judgment, and the unrighteous who have waited in Hades will be cast with Satan and his angels into the lake of fire, or gahenna, or Hell, and the righteous will be lead to Heaven, or the Heavenly Jerusalem. Previously everyone was just a spirit in Hades or Paradise, but now the general ressurection has occured, and people are cast body, soul, and spirit into the Lake of Fire, or go body, soul, and spirit into Heaven.

CopticOrthodox said:

In the OT everyone went to Sheol, or Hades, or the grave. The righteous waited there for Christ to save them, and the unrighteous waited there for final punishment. Christ "decended into Hell by the Cross", Hell here is refering to Hades. Christ brought the Gospel to the righteous in Hades, explaining to the OT saints how they prefigured Him and fit into His plan, and then broke assunder the gates of brass and the bars of iron, and lead the righteous out of Hades into Paradise, or the Bosom of Abraham. Now when we depart, we go either to Hades or to Paradise. At the end of time there will be the general Judgment, and the unrighteous who have waited in Hades will be cast with Satan and his angels into the lake of fire, or gahenna, or Hell, and the righteous will be lead to Heaven, or the Heavenly Jerusalem. Previously everyone was just a spirit in Hades or Paradise, but now the general ressurection has occured, and people are cast body, soul, and spirit into the Lake of Fire, or go body, soul, and spirit into Heaven.

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That looked like a pretty good summation of the scriptural images, CopticOrthodox. I doubt though that the intent of scripture was to give us a map of the transcendent cosmos. Hades is a concept the ancient Hebrews had in common with pagan mythology. Is it a human search for meaning in death, or a divine answer? Seems to me to be more of a human search. The divine answer is "be faithful and good!"

The divine answer is "be faithful and good!"

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-which does not answer the question: "What if you are mostly faithful and mostly good."

What is this hell? There are three Greek words translated "hell" in the New Testament: tartaroo, hades, and gehenna.

Tartaroo is found only once (2 Peter 2:4), where the angels that sinned were cast down to hell, and delivered in chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment. Jude (v.6) says they are reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

Hades is defined as "the unseen world". It is called "hell" ten times. In I Corinthians 15:55, it is called "grave". It is the "hell" that delivered up the dead in Revelation 20:13.

Gehenna is the hell of Matthew 10:28. It is defined as the "valley of Hinnom", and was just outside the wall of Jerusalem, where the rubbish of the city was burned, including the carcasses of dead animals. The fire was not quenched, and the worms did not die. If any carcass was not completely burned, and rolled out of the fire, the worms destroyed it as they destroy all decaying flesh. It was a place of destruction, but not a place of torment. Gehenna is found twelve times. Nine times it is called "hell", and three times it is "hell fire".

Some people say that the "worm" of Mark 9:44,46 and 48 is man's immortal soul that never dies and burns forever. This is the only place in the New Testament where the word "worm" is used in the singular. It is from the Greek word skolex, which is defined as "a worm, maggot". The plural form is skolekbrotos, and is found in Acts 12:23, where Herod was "eaten of worms and gave up the ghost."

Mortal life is temporary life and man can destroy it. But if we place ourselves in God's hands we have the promise of eternal life, over which man has no jurisdiction. We need to fear God who can and will destroy the wicked in the judgment of complete destruction. (See Malachi 4:1-3). This judgment is symbolized by the complete destruction in the gehenna hell of Matthew 10:28.

In the Old Testament, the word "hell" is from only one Hebrew word, sheol, which is defined as the "unseen state" - practically the same definition as that given for the Greek word, hades. Sheol is translated as "hell" 31 times, "grave" 31 times, and "pit" 5 times.

Peter quoted David in reference to Christ's death by saying that His soul was not left in hell, neither did His flesh see corruption. (See Acts 2:25-32 and Psalm 16:10). According to these texts, Christ's soul was in hell, but was not left there. "Soul" and "life" are from the same Hebrew and Greek words; therefore, they are one and the same. Christ's life was in His Father's hands, and was given back to Him after three days in the grave. His grave, or tomb, was the Hebrew "hell", from the word sheol in Psalm 16:10; and the Greek "hell" from the word hades in Acts 3:21. Neither of these words has any connection with fire, and neither is a place of torment. Both are translated as "grave", which is the place to which all people go at death, both they that have done good, and they that have done evil. (See John 5:28,29). The only hope of conquering the grave that any of the dead have is to be resurrected from the hell that Jesus was in, and from which He was liberated.

Probably no one believes that Jesus went to a hell of literal fire for three days. The word "hell" is one of the most abused and misused words in the English language. Its original meaning was "to cover and bury". Look at the word "helmet", it covers the head. When a farmer planted his crops, or buried his apples or potatoes to keep them from freezing in the wintertime, he mounded in a pile and first covered them with straw, and then with a heavy layer of soil. This process was called "helling them in". To use the same meaning for a burial, we would say the dead one was "helled in".

The idea of torment in literal fire is from the philosophy of man, and not from the Bible. The Hebrew and Greek words, sheol and hades, are translated "hell", and also "grave". We read that in the grave "the wicked cease from troubling; and ... the weary be at rest" (Job 3:17). "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest" (Ecclesiastes 9:10). "Grave" in these two texts is from the Hebrew sheol, which is called "hell" in other places.

drmmjr,

Very interesting post!