Exposing hell, part 2

What is the idea of hell actually based on?

In part 1 of this series, Exposing hell: The echo of fear-based faith and my return to the light, I wrote about fear that can suddenly resurface right when you are about to take an important step in your development, often exactly when you are stepping outside your comfort zone. One unexpected trigger can reopen an old track: fear that makes you believe staying small is safer than growing.

For me, as someone who left the church, that fear takes a specific form: fear of hell. The belief that by making ‘wrong’ choices in this life, you determine your eternal future after death. What I have learned is to stay present with that fear and examine what is actually happening in that moment. Which belief is being activated? What assumption lies underneath it? And does the story on which I once built those conclusions actually hold up?

In this second part, I want to do exactly that: look at what the Bible actually says about hell, and what the idea of hell as an eternal punishment after death is really based on. Many people assume that our current idea of ‘hell’ is directly and unambiguously taught in the Bible.

But is it?

The oldest texts: little afterlife, but a realm of the dead

In the earliest biblical texts, there is relatively little focus on a fully developed afterlife. The focus is on life here on earth: faithfulness, justice, injustice, restoration. The big themes play out in the concrete lives of people and nations, in blessing and calamity experienced within earthly life.

When the texts do speak about ‘after death,’ the Hebrew term she’ol is used, which you could translate as ‘the realm of the dead.’¹ She’ol is not described in detail, but is mainly seen as a gathering place for the dead. It is a way of naming death and making the reality of death speakable. There is no talk of hell, but neither is there talk of heaven. In other words: early biblical language about death is usually not moralizing, but existential: death is simply part of life.

There are exceptions in the Bible that highlight how remarkable the idea of heaven after death was: Enoch and Elijah are described as not dying like others, but being taken up, while still alive. That underlines that in the oldest texts, a ‘heaven versus hell’ framework is not assumed.

New Testament: hades and gehenna are often lumped together

In the New Testament, speaking about resurrection, judgment, and the future after death becomes much more prominent: in Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, and in the faith that Jesus has overcome death.

And this is exactly where the words in the original text matter. Because when it comes to ‘hell’, the New Testament uses two terms that are often lumped together in older Dutch translations: hades and gehenna. Both were regularly translated as ‘hell.’² That sounds logical, but it blurs the meaning, because hades and gehenna are not the same and do not carry the same associations.

Hades is the term used in the Greek text of the New Testament for the realm of the dead. If you are familiar with Greek mythology, you will recognize the word immediately as the name of the underworld. In the biblical context, hades functions as a designation for the realm of the dead, not automatically as a place of punishment.

Gehenna is different. When Jesus speaks about ‘hell,’ he consistently uses the word gehenna. Gehenna is not an abstract concept, but a form of a Hebrew place name: Ge Hinnom, the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, south of Jerusalem.³

That detail is strategically important. Jesus speaks in images his audience would immediately understand. In his time, people knew what he evoked when he said Gehenna. The valley carried a heavy charge, and in the imagery of that time and later it became associated with what is unclean, what is kept outside the city, and with fire. A place you did not want to be.

But there is an even deeper layer beneath that charge.

Ge Hinnom in the prophets: a place of horror and moral collapse

Gehenna was also the valley that, in the time of the prophet Jeremiah, became associated with practices described as unthinkable: the ritual of making children pass through fire, carried out by godless kings of Judah in imitation of surrounding peoples. Jeremiah calls it a horror and connects it to judgment on Jerusalem (Jer. 19:1–8).⁴

And right there we find a crucial line: such a thing “never entered God’s heart” (Jer. 19:5 and 7:31).⁵ That statement functions as a moral boundary marker. It says something about what God is not and does not will.

That makes Gehenna in Jesus’ mouth not a neutral ‘place after death,’ but loaded warning-language. It calls to mind what human violence and moral distortion can do. It is a word that unmasks what happens when faith becomes disconnected from love and conscience.

The lake of fire in Revelation: genre and imagery

Alongside Gehenna, there is another fire-image that often becomes decisive in debates about hell: the lake of fire in the final biblical book, Revelation. The word used there for fire is pyros.⁶

Even if it cannot be proven etymologically, pyros easily evokes associations with ‘pure.’ More importantly: in biblical imagery, fire often means more than literal fire. It can also point to testing, unveiling, and purification. We even recognize this in our language: ‘refined by fire.’ Fire removes impurities from metal, for example.

That fire is not always literal fire in the Bible is also clear in the story of Moses and the burning bush: fire that does not consume, but marks a holy space.⁷ A fire that creates distance and reveals at the same time. That opens a very different perspective than the inferno-image of fire as a purely sadistic instrument.

‘Eternal’ does not automatically mean ‘endless’

Then there is another word that makes the idea of hell so terrifying: eternal.

Many people hear ‘eternal’ and immediately think: endless. But in biblical context, that leap is not always self-evident. The word often translated as ‘eternal’ also carries ‘age’ language.⁸ It can be read as: belonging to an age, or of the age to come.⁹ ¹⁰

At the same time, it is important not to oversimplify. In other contexts, ‘eternal’ can carry the meaning of without end, for example when it speaks of God, kingship, or life. Which nuance is chosen is often a translation decision shaped by context and theological lens, not only a purely linguistic matter.

But this one insight already shifts the whole perspective. Once ‘eternal’ is not automatically equal to ‘endless, without escape,’ the question changes. You no longer assume a hell as an eternal torture chamber with no way out, but you are forced to ask a different, more honest question: if it does not mean that, what does it mean instead?

That moves us toward part 3. But first I want to look at the historical context in which the inferno-image took shape.

How did the inferno-image arise?

If you look at terminology and genre, it is difficult to extract from the Bible itself a tight, single picture of an eternal torture-hell as it lives in the collective imagination. That picture seems to have been formed within a historical melting pot.

The region where Christianity emerged and developed in the first centuries was a mix of ideas, theories, and cults. It is not surprising that cross-pollination occurred. We already saw the word hades from Greek mythology. In Greek mythology you also find tartarus: a punitive place in the underworld, connected to a tradition in which judgment and punishment are worked out as an ‘afterlife topography.’¹¹

And then there are texts outside the biblical canon that strongly influenced the imagination, such as the apocryphal Apocalypse of Peter (2nd century)¹² and the Apocalypse of Paul (4th century).¹³ This kind of visionary literature often works with concrete, vivid punishment images. These texts did not enter the biblical canon, but they did shape popular frameworks of imagination.

Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy (Inferno) played a major role in how hell looks in Western thought.¹⁴ His imagery became a kind of default picture. And what many people do not realize: Dante draws on classical sources, including Plato and Virgil. This shows that the inferno-image many people carry is strongly shaped by literature and culture, not only by the biblical text.¹⁵

Conclusion of part 2: hell is not a single biblical concept

When you bring the terms back to their contexts, a sober conclusion emerges: the Bible uses multiple words for different realities and images. She’ol is not Gehenna. Hades is not automatically a fiery punishment place. And ‘eternal’ is context-sensitive.

The image of hell as an eternal torture chamber is therefore not as unambiguously biblical as is often assumed. It has been shaped by translation choices, cultural influence, apocryphal imagination, and medieval literature.

So in part 3 I will move to the logical next question: if hell is not a single biblical concept, and our image has also been heavily influenced by factors outside the Bible, then what is it? And what fits the image of a God of Love?

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How is that for you?

This part was about language, context, and the stories we build. About how one word, in this case ‘hell’, has become loaded, and how that can, often unconsciously, shape our worldview until you begin to unmask what is really underneath.

But now it becomes personal: what image still lives in you? Which unconscious assumptions and beliefs still steer you? Because even if your mind no longer believes it, your system can still react as if it is true. As long as those unconscious assumptions have not been brought into the light, an old script can be triggered by one sentence, one suggestion, one question.

In an Explorer Call, we look together at where your script first started running, what lies beneath it, and how you return to a worldview that fits who you want to be now. So you can make conscious choices and truly experience and embody that new freedom in everyday life.

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📜 Plan your Explorer Moment
Feel. Remember. Return to what is true.

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This is part 2 in Exposing Hell, a series about fear of hell.
In part 1: The Echo of Fear-Based Faith and My Return to the Light
In part 3: So what is it, then? On setting things right, restoration, and love.