Gehenna


Gehenna or Gehinnom is thought to be a small valley in Jerusalem. In the Hebrew Bible, Gehenna was initially where some of the kings of Judah sacrificed their children by fire. Thereafter, it was deemed to be cursed.
In rabbinic literature, Gehenna is also a destination of the wicked. Gehinnom is not Hell, but originally a grave and in later times a sort of purgatory where one is judged based on one's life's deeds, or rather, where one becomes fully aware of one's own shortcomings and negative actions during one's life. The Kabbalah explains it as a "waiting room" for all souls. The overwhelming majority of rabbinic thought maintains that people are not in Gehinnom forever; the longest that a Jew can be there is said to be 11 months, however there has been the occasional noted exception.
This is different from the more neutral Sheol/Hades, the abode of the dead, although the King James Version of the Bible translates both with the Anglo-Saxon word hell.
In the King James Version of the Bible, the term appears 13 times in 11 different verses as Valley of Hinnom, Valley of the son of Hinnom or Valley of the children of Hinnom. The Valley of Hinnom is the modern name for the valley surrounding Jerusalem's Old City, including Mount Zion, from the west and south. It meets and merges with the Kidron Valley, the other principal valley around the Old City, near the southeastern corner of the city.

Etymology

Gehenna ; from Γέεννα, Geenna from, also ; Mishnaic Hebrew: /, Gehinnam/Gehinnom
English "Gehenna" represents the Greek Geenna found in the New Testament, a phonetic transcription of Aramaic Gēhannā, equivalent to the Hebrew Ge Hinnom, literally "Valley of Hinnom".
This is known in the Hebrew Bible as Gei Ben-Hinnom, literally the "Valley of the son of Hinnom", and in the Talmud as or Gehinnom.

Geography

The exact location of the Valley of Hinnom is disputed. Older commentaries give the location as below the southern wall of ancient Jerusalem, stretching from the foot of Mount Zion eastward past the Tyropoeon to the Kidron Valley. However the Tyropoeon Valley is usually no longer associated with the Valley of Hinnom because during the period of Ahaz and Manasseh, the Tyropoeon lay within the city walls and child sacrifice would have been practiced outside the walls of the city. Smith, Dalman, Bailey and Watson identify the Wadi ar-Rababi, which fits the description of Joshua that Hinnom valley ran east to west and lay outside the city walls. According to Joshua, the valley began at En-rogel. If the modern Bir Ayyub is En-rogel, then Wadi ar-Rababi, which begins there, is Hinnom.

Archaeology

at other Tophets contemporary with the Bible accounts of the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh have been established, such as the bones of children sacrificed at the Tophet to the goddess Tanit in Phoenician Carthage, and also child sacrifice in ancient Syria-Palestine. Scholars such as Mosca have concluded that the sacrifice recorded in the Hebrew Bible, such as Jeremiah's comment that the worshippers of Baal had "filled this place with the blood of innocents", is literal, while Mark Smith has stated that in the seventh century BC child sacrifice was a Judean practice performed in the name of Yahweh. Yet, the biblical words in the Book of Jeremiah describe events taking place in the seventh century in the place of Ben-hinnom: "Because they have forsaken Me and have made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods, that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind; therefore, behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of Ben-hinnom, but rather the valley of Slaughter". J. Day, Heider, and Mosca believe that the Molech cult took place in the valley of Hinnom at the Topheth. No archaeological evidence such as mass children's graves has been found; however, it has been suggested that such a find may be compromised by the heavy population history of the Jerusalem area compared to the Tophet found in Tunisia. The site would also have been disrupted by the actions of Josiah "And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.". A minority of scholars have attempted to argue that the Bible does not portray actual child sacrifice, but only dedication to the god by fire; however, they are judged to have been "convincingly disproved".

The concept of Gehinnom

Hebrew Bible

The oldest historical reference to the valley is found in, which describe tribal boundaries. The next chronological reference to the valley is at the time of King Ahaz of Judah who sacrificed his sons there according to. Since Hezekiah, his legitimate son by the daughter of the High Priest, succeeded him as king, this, if literal, is assumed to mean children by unrecorded pagan wives or concubines. The same is said of Ahaz' grandson Manasseh in. Debate remains as to whether the phrase "cause his children to pass through the fire" referred to a religious ceremony in which the moloch priest would walk the child between two lanes of fire, or to literal child sacrifice; throwing the child into the fire.
The Book of Isaiah does not mention Gehenna by name, but the "burning place" in which the Assyrian army is to be destroyed, may be read "Topheth", and the final verse of Isaiah which concerns of those that have rebelled against God,.
In the reign of Josiah a call came from Jeremiah to destroy the shrines in Topheth and to end the practice,. It is recorded that Josiah destroyed the shrine of Molech on Topheth to prevent anyone sacrificing children there in. Despite Josiah's ending of the practice, Jeremiah also included a prophecy that Jerusalem itself would be made like Gehenna and Topheth.
A final purely geographical reference is found in to the exiles returning from Babylon camping from Beersheba to Hinnom.
Frequent references to 'Gehenna' are also made in the books of Meqabyan, which are considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

Targums

The ancient Aramaic paraphrase-translations of the Hebrew Bible known as Targums supply the term "Gehinnom" frequently to verses touching upon resurrection, judgment, and the fate of the wicked. This may also include addition of the phrase "second death", as in the final chapter of the Book of Isaiah, where the Hebrew version does not mention either Gehinnom or the Second Death, whereas the Targums add both. In this the Targums are parallel to the Gospel of Mark addition of "Gehenna" to the quotation of the Isaiah verses describing the corpses "where their worm does not die".

Rabbinical Judaism

The picture of Gehenna as the place of punishment or destruction of the wicked occurs frequently in classic rabbinic sources. Gehenna is considered a purgatory-like place where the wicked go to suffer until they have atoned for their sins. It is stated in most Jewish sources that the maximum amount of time a sinner can spend in Gehenna is one year. The Mishnah names seven Biblical individuals who do not get a share in Olam Ha-Ba: Jeroboam, Ahab, Menasseh, Doeg the Edomite, Ahitophel, Balaam, and Gehazi. According to the opinion of Rabbi Yehuda, Menasseh got a share in Olam Ha-Ba The worst part of Gehenna is called Tzoah Rotachat.
The traditional explanation that a burning rubbish heap in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem gave rise to the idea of a fiery Gehenna of judgment is attributed to Rabbi David Kimhi's commentary on . He maintained that in this loathsome valley fires were kept burning perpetually to consume the filth and cadavers thrown into it. However, Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck state that there is neither archaeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources. Also, Lloyd R. Bailey's "Gehenna: The Topography of Hell" from 1986 holds a similar view.
There is evidence however that the southwest shoulder of this valley was a burial location with numerous burial chambers that were reused by generations of families from as early as the seventh until the fifth century BC. The use of this area for tombs continued into the first centuries BC and AD. By 70 AD, the area was not only a burial site but also a place for cremation of the dead with the arrival of the Tenth Roman Legion, who were the only group known to practice cremation in this region.
In time it became deemed to be accursed and an image of the place of destruction in Jewish folklore.
Eventually the Hebrew term Gehinnom became a figurative name for the place of spiritual purification for the wicked dead in Judaism. According to most Jewish sources, the period of purification or punishment is limited to only 12 months and every Sabbath day is excluded from punishment. After this the soul will move on to Olam Ha-Ba, be destroyed, or continue to exist in a state of consciousness of remorse. Gehenna became a metonym for "Hell" due to its morbid prominence in Jewish religious texts.
Maimonides declares, in his 13 principles of faith, that the descriptions of Gehenna, as a place of punishment in rabbinic literature, were pedagocically motivated inventions to encourage respect of the Torah commandments by mankind, which had been regarded as immature. Instead of being sent to Gehenna, the souls of the wicked would actually get annihilated.

Christianity (New Testament)

In the synoptic Gospels the various authors describe Jesus, who was Jewish, as using the word Gehenna to describe the opposite to life in the Kingdom. The term is used 11 times in these writings. In certain usage, the Christian Bible refers to it as a place where both soul and body could be destroyed in "unquenchable fire".
Christian usage of Gehenna often serves to admonish adherents of the religion to live pious lives. Examples of Gehenna in the Christian New Testament include:
Another book to use the word Gehenna in the New Testament is James:
The New Testament also refers to Hades as a place distinct from Gehenna. Unlike Gehenna, Hades typically conveys neither fire nor punishment but forgetfulness. The Book of Revelation describes Hades being cast into the lake of fire. The King James Version is the only English translation in modern use to translate Sheol, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna as Hell. In the New Testament, the New International Version, New Living Translation, New American Standard Bible all reserve the term "hell" for the translation of Gehenna or Tartarus, transliterating Hades as a term directly from the equivalent Greek term.
Treatment of Gehenna in Christianity is significantly affected by whether the distinction in Hebrew and Greek between Gehenna and Hades was maintained:
Translations with a distinction:
Translations without a distinction:
Many modern Christians consider Gehenna to be a place of eternal punishment. Annihilationist Christians, however, imagine Gehenna to be a place where "sinners" are tormented until they are eventually destroyed, soul and all. Some Christian scholars, however, have suggested that Gehenna may not be synonymous with the Lake of Fire, but a prophetic metaphor for the horrible fate that awaited the many civilians killed in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

Quran

The name given to Hell in Islam, Jahannam, directly derives from Gehenna. The Quran contains 77 references to the Islamic interpretation of Gehenna but does not mention Sheol/Hades, and instead uses the word 'Qabr'.