MEANING OF HELL AND GEHENNA.
By Kate Hulst
We should remember that the word rendered 'hell' in our language had no other signification than that of the grave, or of a covered place, either in the language from which it is translated, or in the English understanding of that word at the period of the translation of authorized version. In proof of these assertions we need only say that the Greeks used this same word to designate an ordinary pit in the ground, and that our English ancestors used to 'helle' their vegetables. When Christ used this expression, 'gehenna,' his Hebrew hearers at once thought of the valley without the city, where a fire burned continually, fed with brimstone, for the more perfect and swift destruction of what was cast therein. There the city of Jerusalem burned its refuse; there dead animals were cast as unclean; and there were also cast the dead bodies of criminals who were denied decent burial. But we must remember two things,—no living thing was ever cast into gehenna, for the Jewish law forbade such torture, even of animals; and everything that was cast there was so disposed for the purpose of utter destruction. So when Christ said, 'Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in gehenna,' what possible conception could his Hebrew hearers have had, except that destroy meant destroy, and that the soul was capable of destruction as well as the body? He could not have meant torture, for nothing was ever tortured in gehenna. The6language was to them plain and unmistakable; and it is only to people of centuries later, whose minds are confused by the traditions of men, that it appears misleading. —Kate Hulst, in Greenwich (N. Y.) Journal.