Claim #2: Jesus didn’t teach a real Hell.
Jesus said that hell is real. (He didn’t, but he spoke several times about Gehenna, a violent, sad place just outside Jerusalem where child sacrifice once took place.)
The “Gehenna-was-a-flaming-garbage-dump-outside-Jerusalem” argument is nothing new. However, there may actually be no evidence; the best guess is that it was derived from a Jewish commentary on Psalm 27 dating to the 1200s A.D. What is known, however, is that Jesus’s use of “Gehenna” mirrored Old Testament prophets who had already used “Gehenna” (or, more accurately, the Valley of Hinnom) to describe the ultimate destination of the wicked hundreds of years prior to Jesus.
Jesus does use the word “Gehenna” to describe hell. But to be clear, he also uses the word “Hades,” which is universally understood to refer to the realm of punishment for the dead.
In Matt. 9:47 (the verse is paralleled in the other Gospels), Jesus says, “And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell.” The word here is indeed “Gehenna,” but notice that it’s being contrasted with the kingdom of God. If Jesus was talking about a place for outcasts near Jerusalem, he’d probably contrast it with Jerusalem. But instead, he contrasts it with God’s eternal kingdom.
Saying “Jesus never talked about hell, just this place called Gehenna” is a bit like historians 2,000 years from now combing through ancient Christian blog posts that complain about “Hollywood filth” and concluding, “See? The ancient 21st-century Christians never talked about the movie industry, just this town called Hollywood.”
My life would be a lot easier if Jesus never talked about hell. I could probably dismiss the doctrine and not worry so much about my unsaved friends and family. But the “Gehenna” argument is not a way out.
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