MischievousMonkey
Gor bu dëgër
I didn't say that. I said errors were made in the traduction of the bible. If you write a book and I translate it in french committing errors during the process, you aren't responsible for them.
Some explained it way better than me:
the Bible wasn't composed in English. They're modern translations of the words sheol, gehenna, hades, and tartarus. Many of these are transliterated into "hell," which is a Germanic word that connoted an unpleasant afterlife before the arrival of Christianity in Europe. The eternal torture in common conception is the product of this entrenched cultural view of the afterlife and European imaginations.
To put this briefly, Gehenna was a garbage dump on the outskirts of Jerusalem where garbage was burned. Generally, when hell is mentioned in the bible near "wailing and gnashing of teeth," this is the word originally used. The implication is that, in one way or another, that which is useless will be disposed of. Sheol and hades were Hebrew and Greek terms respectively, and both referred to cultural ideas of an afterlife that was suffused with melancholy and longing for lost life followed by a sort of forgetting and/or oblivion. To be in Hades was to reflect sadly on your short life before drinking from Lethe and forgetting it all; to be in Sheol was to be without form, personhood, or purpose - and everyone went there regardless of character.
For all these words, there is no connotation of eternal jumper cables on your testicles. Hell might be viewed as a place of cleansing, disposal, forgetting, or oblivion. What it is notis far more important: the eternal life prepared for those who choose it.
(Tartarus is also used, but only when referring to the place where rebellious angels were condemned - and this is really important - to a Greek audience. That illustrates an important point: in the Bible, a Jewish concept is already being translated imperfectly using terms that would nonetheless best convey the idea to the audience. Tartarus was the place where the pre-Olympian Titans were cast down by Zeus, so it's a good analogue for describing the place of pre-human fallen angels.)
To put this briefly, Gehenna was a garbage dump on the outskirts of Jerusalem where garbage was burned. Generally, when hell is mentioned in the bible near "wailing and gnashing of teeth," this is the word originally used. The implication is that, in one way or another, that which is useless will be disposed of. Sheol and hades were Hebrew and Greek terms respectively, and both referred to cultural ideas of an afterlife that was suffused with melancholy and longing for lost life followed by a sort of forgetting and/or oblivion. To be in Hades was to reflect sadly on your short life before drinking from Lethe and forgetting it all; to be in Sheol was to be without form, personhood, or purpose - and everyone went there regardless of character.
For all these words, there is no connotation of eternal jumper cables on your testicles. Hell might be viewed as a place of cleansing, disposal, forgetting, or oblivion. What it is notis far more important: the eternal life prepared for those who choose it.
(Tartarus is also used, but only when referring to the place where rebellious angels were condemned - and this is really important - to a Greek audience. That illustrates an important point: in the Bible, a Jewish concept is already being translated imperfectly using terms that would nonetheless best convey the idea to the audience. Tartarus was the place where the pre-Olympian Titans were cast down by Zeus, so it's a good analogue for describing the place of pre-human fallen angels.)
