What does the Bible actually say about hell?

What does the Bible actually say about hell?

Try this little numerical exercise. Write down this series of numbers on a piece of paper: 570, 54, 32, 14, 13, and 0. Now, here are two questions:

  1. Does the Bible ever “call” or literally mention “heaven?”
  2. Correct answer: YES! There are 570 matches in the original King James Version for original language words translated as “heaven.” And Scripture takes us to heaven—describing it in Isaiah 6, Daniel 7, and Revelation 4, 5, 6 for instance. The Apostle Paul also talks about a man he knew who was caught up to the “third heaven.” There is no disagreement about any of this.
  1. Do you know what the Bible “calls,” says, or literally mentions about “hell”?
  2. Correct answer: NOTHING! ZERO! And Scripture never takes us to hell by describing it to us. Any yet many scholars confidently assure us that “hell is vividly described in the pages of the New Testament.”

The Italians have a saying, “traduttore, traditore.” It literally means, “translator, traitor.” Or more freely, “all translators are traitors.” In this vein, here is a revealing statistic in the form of a graphic illustration regarding translation matches for the word “hell” throughout both the Old and New Testaments in a few notable translations, along with their original publication dates:

    • 54 matches in the original King James Version (1611)
    • 32 matches in the New King James Version (1982)
    • 14 matches in the New International Version (1978)
    • 13 matches in the New American Standard Bible (1971) and American Standard Version (1901)
    • 0 matches in Young’s Literal Translation (1862)—i.e., the word “hell” is not found once.

What’s going on? Why such great discrepancy among Bible translations? Do you see a trend here or sense a problem? Clearly, these differences indicate something is wrong, or at least changing. So, are any of these translators traitors, as the Italian saying goes? The reason for this variance from 54 to zero is there are no equivalent Hebrew words in the Old Testament or Greek words in the New Testament for the present-day term, concept, and eternal place of damnation variously and differently translated (or perhaps mistranslated) as “hell.”

Sources:

1Hell Yes / Hell No by John Noe

2Hell Is Real (But I Hate to Admit It) by Brian Jones

3Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright

4Love Wins by Rob Bell

5God Wins by Mark Galli