Not so. What Jesus spoke of almost each time that "hell" is the translated word in our modern Bibles was "Gehenna" a literal valley outside of Jerusalem.
Quoting Benjamin Corey:Growing up I was often told that “Jesus talked more about hell than he did heaven”, but I don’t once remember being encouraged to actually research from a historical and grammatical perspective what Jesus was actually talking about when he used the word “hell”. (In their defense, I don’t think I ever had a religious leader with advanced theological training, so they probably didn’t realize that someone might want to “look this up” either).
The first discovery one will make on such an investigation, is the inconvenient truth that the word “hell” didn’t exist in first century Israel. This brings up one crucial problem when translating/interpreting the Bible apart from any scholastic work: we see English words that have specific linguistic and cultural connotations and meanings, and read those meanings into an ancient text which may, or may not, have intended to send the same meaning.
The word “hell” becomes a prime example: the word we use today, doesn’t actually appear in language until approximately AD 725– long after the first century. In addition, the word doesn’t come from Hebrew at all, but rather is ultimately rooted in Proto-Germanic. According to the
The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, the word “hell” was adopted into our vocabulary as a way to introduce the pagan concept of hell into Christian theology– which it did quite successfully.
Therefore, we know right off the bat that when we read scripture in English, we’re not actually reading what was originally said and risk reading
into the text instead of getting
back to the original historical and grammatical meaning of the text. We do this in many areas, which is why competency in Biblical languages or at least Koine Greek, is a mandatory requirement at legitimate institutions of higher theological learning– and why one would do well to hold theology in humility until they are well versed in the grammatical and historical realities of any given ancient text.
It is true however, that we do see– and not infrequently– Jesus refer to “hell”. So what was he talking about?
It’s easy to dismiss something in scripture as just being “metaphorical” without having an intelligent reason to back that up, so we’ve got to go deeper. In this case, we find that Jesus was actually referring to a literal place– and not a literal place of the future, but a literal place of first century Israel. “Hell” was a place that the people of Jesus’ time
could actually go and see (image below
). So, what was it? Here you go:
The word Jesus uses in Greek is γέεννα (Gehenna), which actually means “The Valley of the Son of Hinnom”. An over simplified description of Gehenna would be that it was the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem; this was the place where both garbage and dead bodies would be discarded and consumed by a fire that was likely always burning. The location goes all the way back to the book of Joshua, and was a place where bad things happened– child sacrifice, bodies were cremated, etc. Basically, imagine a dump where garbage is burned– add into that the vision of burning bodies and a historical connotation of child sacrifice, and you’ll see that it wasn’t a very desirable place. However, it was a very
literal place and the original audience of Jesus would have understood it as such. They would not have heard the word “Gahenna” and thought of our concept of hell– they would have realized Jesus was talking about an actual place outside the city. ~
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfundie/what-jesus-talked-about-when-he-talked-about-hell/ END
As far as Luke 16 goes? I think one should go back to chapter 11, where this whole conversation is given more context. Jesus was addressing the Pharisee's hypocrisy of how they were [mis]treating the poor. Jesus takes the opportunity to tell two parables about what true hospitality looks like.
5
Meaning of Hades (ᾅδης)
There are differences in the way the word ᾅδης has been translated (“in ᾅδης, where he was in torment” 16:23). Most of the major English translations chose to use the Greek transliteration Hades (e.g., NIV, NASB, ESV, NRSV), whereas the KJV is infamously known for its usage of Hell, and yet a couple opted for the phrase “the place of the dead” (e.g., NLT, CEB).
Hades (ᾅδης) is used a total of ten times in the New Testament (NT), and it is always referring to the place of the dead.
29 If Jesus were to use this parable to describe what happens to the wicked in Hell (i.e., in the Final Judgment), he would likely have used the word Gehenna (γέεννα) instead.
30 In addition,
since the five brothers are still alive while the rich man is in torment, it is unlikely that the final resurrection or judgment has taken place. Theologically, in this regard, “the possibility of a coherent eschatology in the parable is dropped altogether.”
31
