Truth Anyone?

[Robanan]

Alan Writes:

I wish some organization would expose the myth of Hell. Consider this, Sheol, a Hebrew term for grave and Hade, a Greek term for a mythical place of the dead has now been translated by English speaking translators to Hell, The meaning of which Chr--stians believe is completely made up and has no resemblance to the words it was translated from!!! Simple, but everybody believes this ridiculous and terrible translation that puts a mark on the great G-d of the universe.

Alan the following will answer this falsehood concerning the Ch--stian teaching of Hell.



Hawke Answers:

There are four words found in the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible that are translated as hell. (This is not true of all translations however, but of the widely used King James Version in particular.) The word hell, therefore creates much difficulty. The reason for this confusion is that the four different words have various meanings. A single English word cannot serve as an accurate translation for words having dissimilar meanings.

In the King James Version of the Bible we find that the word hell occurs 54 times. In the Old Testament the word hell is found 31 times. Each occurrence is the faithful rendering of a single Hebrew word, sheol. The definition of this word is simply a grave. In the New Testament the word hell appears 23 times. Here we find three different words used. The first is the Greek word hades. This word occurs 10 times and means "grave," similar to the Hebrew word sheol. The next word is tartaroo which is derived from tartaros or tartarus.

This Greek word occurs only once in 2 Peter 2:4.



"For if Yahweh spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;"



Here it simply means " a place of restraint, imprisonment, or incarceration." It is the only definition that even remotely resembles the doctrine of hell as taught in nominal religion. Here the angels that fell are reserved for final punishment in the lake of fire as per Matthew 25:41. They are restrained in darkness until that day.

The last word we want to look at is not Greek in origin but Semitic in origin--gehenna. This word actually forms a composite of two words, the first one is gay, a Hebrew word which means "gorge or valley." Hinnom is identified as a place outside Jerusalem where the aboriginal Canaanites once offered human sacrifices. Ge-Hinnom or Gay-Hinnom forms the word gehenna, which simply means "the valley of Hinnom."

Let's look at the meaning of the word hell. The word hell used by many sects of nominal religion has come to represent the "underworld." The true meaning of this word, however, bears no resemblance at all to any sort of "underworld." Hell is defined as follows:

Our modern word Hell, related to the Norse G-ddess of the Underworld
Hel, comes to us from the Old English and Old High German helan (to
conceal), which is derived from the Latin celare and the Greek kalyptein, and
is traceable back to the Indo-European root kel (to cover). Hell, as such, has
a history which extends back before Ch--stians started to threaten to send
people there.

Hell has also been referred to as Tartarus or Hades by the Greeks,
infernus (also inferum and inferi) in Latin, the Hebrews used Sheol, and New
Testament writers used Gehenna, thought to suggest ge-bene-hinnom from
2 Kings 23:10 (valley of the sons of Hinnom), a place where "no man might
make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Moloch."

The English word for hole is derived from this Indo-European root. The German word is hohl, meaning "empty" or hohle, meaning "a cave." Other German derivations are halle, meaning "a hall," and holle, the equivalent of hell. It can be seen from this evidence that hell means nothing more that a hole in the ground. The grave (if we are buried in one) is a hole in the ground dug for the purpose of burying the dead.

Alan, I hope this answers your question.

This apparent Truth is from http://truthonthenet.com/questions.htm