Does anyone else think that Hell is not literal fire in the Bible?

Hell is on earth if you ask most!

It does sound rather fantastical, doesn’t it? I do think they meant it to be taken literally.

What do you think it means, @JenniferP?

Hades is the Greek word for Hell. If the lake of fire means Hell how can you throw Hell into itself? How can and something abstract like death be thrown into itself?

Hell doesn’t even exist in the Talmud, so either the omnipotent, omniscient God somehow forget to mention it to Moses and Leviticus, or it’s a bunch of crap dreamed up by a messianic cult about 2000 years ago.

I agree with ETpro. What kind of a sadistic God would do that?

@JenniferP Welcome to Fluther. In answer to that question, I would say that the kind of God men intent on controlling a band of bronze age waring tribes fearful of their environment and completely unable to understand or explain it would invent—that sort of God would do that. It’s interesting that the Asians invented Gods that were far less filled with aggression, jealousy and vengeance. In fact, mankind has invented over 3,000 know supreme beings, most of which are mutually exclusive. And you can tell a great deal about the state of development of a tribe or nation by the god or gods they invent.

Rob Bell just wrote a book called Live Wins. He has been branded a herritic because he puts fort the idea that we may not be doomed to hell. You are not alone.

To many (dare I say most) people, the fires of hell are allegorical, as a description to otherwise uneducated people of how horrible hell is.

But consider that it is the soul that is cast into hell, and the soul is not a physical entity, but the spirit of the person. A non physical entity segregated into a cosmological location without physical place except for its absence from God. The whole thing doesn’t stand a literal reading.

The idea of hell was inspired by Gehenna Valley, an actual place in biblical times. It was a place outside the Jerusalem where they burned their garbage.

Just so you guys know, I am not atheist. I just know the Bible doesn’t teach it.

Hell doesn’t exist. It’s a concept created by false, maniac religious teachers who wanted to take advantage of the imaginary existence of hell to scare people into doing what they want.

If I remember my bible history correctly, @Haleth is correct. In fact, the ditches where they threw and burned garbage, also became makeshift graves for the executed or otherwise unclaimed bodies.

Hades was the Greek god of the underworld as well as the name of the place bad people went. It was subsituted for the original Greek word during one of the translations of the bible. If you want to look up a better word, that shows up in earlier texts, look up ‘sheol’.

BUT, you always have to remember, that that book wasn’t written by CS Lewis or EE Milne. The books of the bible were written in ancient languages barely anyone knows now and they were written over hundreds of years, when word meanings and usage and translation changed. Take what you read ‘with a grain of salt’ as they say.

They were referring to the DMV.

@Blackberry * rimshot * Great Primus song, by the way.

What everyone else said. Also, I’ve heard theories that John was on some pretty hefty hallucinogenics when that book came about. Moses, too, but everyone knows that.

Fire is a real world physical phenomenon. If there are no atoms to vibrate there will be no fire.

I usually oppose interpreting the Bible “metaphorically” because the authors of the original texts probably understood a lot of this stuff literally.

But for hell, it’s hard to say. I think much of the imagery in Revelation is meant to be literal. For example, stars will fall out of the sky. This sounds stupid to us because we know that stars are huge balls of plasma thousands of times bigger than the Earth, but the ancient Jews and Romans thought that stars were tiny points of light or lamps in the sky, and they thought meteors were simply falling stars.

A lot of the imagery in Revelation seems very weird, and it is. Some of it is code, especially the imagery involving numbers. When you see the number 12 it’s supposed to represent Israel. Seven represents power; four represents wholeness or totality. Some names, like “Babylon,” are obviously meant to be symbolic of modern events (Babylon is Rome). But then, just because this stuff is symbolic doesn’t necessarily mean that the early Christians didn’t think it was literally true.

Revelation is actually part of a long and colorful tradition of apocalyptic texts; some Jewish apocalypses date to the much earlier Babylonian captivity, but the genre was also popular in Rome. (Apocalypses typically involve (1) a journey to heaven, where a vision is “revealed,” and (2) a description of violent “comeuppance” of the occupying power where God wreaks havoc on unbelievers). And some scholars think that this genre should be understood almost like action or horror movies. It’s supposed to be spectacular and over the top. And, like action/horror movies, new apocalyptic texts often seem to try to “outdo” older ones with gory and spectacular imagery.

So if you accept this view (and I think it’s reasonable) then asking if imagery from Revelation is supposed to be “literal” is a bit like asking if a spectacular action scene in Avatar or Transformers is supposed to have “really” happened. The answer is, in the world portrayed by the movie, “yes.” The problem is that this world is fictional.

@cazzie, the books of the Bible weren’t written in obscure ancient languages. The New Testament was written in Greek. It’s true that not a lot of people know ancient Greek today, but it’s not hard to translate.

I think way too much is made out of the need to translate Biblical texts into modern languages. You could say the same thing about Aristotle or Thucydides or the Iliad/Oddysey; some translations are better than others, for sure, but it’s not like we can’t come to any conclusions about what these ancient people thought or wrote because they were writing in ancient Greek.

I didn’t say obscure, but they were written over hundreds of years and we know what happens to languages over hundreds of years; they change.

Some sects see Revelation’s “lake of fire” to be a metaphor for complete destruction, not a place of torment. That interpretation is no doubt easier to reconcile with the idea of a compassionate God. But then there is a reference in Matthew 13:42 to the fate awaiting those who do evil: ”[The angels] will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” That doesn’t sound like euthanasia.

I would think that a Jewish audience reading about a “fiery furnace” would be reminded of the story in Daniel about how the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, built a fiery furnace as a particularly frightful instrument of execution.

Whether or not the “fire” of the “furnace” is literally a rapid oxidation reaction, and whether or not the agony lasts forever, it’s pretty clear that the Bible writers weren’t imagining that God would treat unrepentant sinners to a painless oblivion.

That may not fit well with the “God is love” message found elsewhere, but that’s the Bible for you.

I doubt that it’s actual chemical combustion, if that’s what you mean, but the general idea sticks. Revelations deals with many things that I don’t believe we’re able to really grok except via metaphor.

@thorninmud You have taken Matthew 13:42 out of its context, the explanation of the parable of the wheat and the tares.

“So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Emphasis mine.

@Nullo How do you feel the context should change my understanding?

I believe it is just the end of life. Jesus is described as being in “Hell” for three days after he died.

Hell is a state, not a place. So as @zenvelo said, you cannot apply physical charicteristics to it. I cannot comprehend past that. Maybe other people can.
Contradictory to that, this discussion made me think of another version of “hell”. I admit that I do not know the source (if anybody does, that could help). It was described as complete darkness with just one light (symbolizing God). When you try to go toward it, you never seem to get any closer. And you spend eternity trying to reach the light.

I like Dante’s version. Let the punisment fit the crime.

I always assumed that Jesus was fighting demons during his three days in hell.

He seems to spend most of his time fighting demons in the gospels (sans John).

I live right down the road from Hell, actually. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Norway

I would pose the question, “Does it matter?”

The Bible teaches that Hell is a miserable place. I’m more concerned with not ending up there, you know?

EDIT: For what it’s worth, I do believe this particular scripture means a literal lake of fire.

Disclosure, I’m a Christian and I’m not saying this to argue theology.
My take, when discussing profitic scripture, is that it is what it is and my belief about it won’t change the facts. I choose to focus on the scriptures that address me and how I respond. The key scripture is Matthew 25 which talks about dividing the sheep and the goats. I may not know if there is a literal hell fire and brimstone or not, but I do know that Jesus calls me to feed the poor, clothe the naked, tend to the sick, visit the imprisoned, and to treat strangers with hospitality.
If I live my life like a sheep instead of a goat then it really won’t matter if there is a lake of fire. I do what I do because I am motivated by love, not fear.

Most descriptions of ‘hell’ that come from near death experiencers, automatic writings and alleged mediumship communications describe it (hell) as being a dark, cold place devoid of love, not literal hellfire filled with demons. Personally I think that Hades in the Bible is really the lower realms of the afterlife, where the lower end of it is the dark void filled with evil spirits who once walked the earth while the upper end of Hades (or hell) is commonly known as the summerlands where most people who pass on from this life supposedly go to. Ironically, from what I’ve read about the afterlife, the upper ends of Hell/Hades (summerlands) are much more pleasant than even the best possible conditions on earth.

The true heavens are supposed to be known as the Celestial Realms. The conditions in the celestial realms are so pleasant and beautiful that the concept of this wonderous place can’t be described to us. When the Bible says that the gate to Heaven is narrow I really believe that it is describing the Celestial Realms, not the Summerlands where most people supposedly go to after this life ends. I believe that Hades is really all of the pleasant and unpleasant realms that exist underneath the Celestial Heavens.

I find it amazing that even the upper ends of ‘hell’ are too pleasant to describe to those on earth. However, and even more amazing to me, is that there are many more realms in which the conditions are always better than the realms before them, and there are a near infinite number of realms. I’ve even read somewhere that there are realms even above the Celestial ones. The Bible mentions about multiple heavens/realms several times in it.

@Paradox25 Where did you get all that? I have never heard in any belief system that most people go to hell, or that any part of hell was the least bit pleasant, let alone better than anything on earth,.

I agree with Paradox. Where did you get those ideas? The Bible doesn’t teach that. But it doesn’t teach that it is a place of literal fire either.