Destroys what? When the soul returns to the God that gave it and the flesh to the dust from whence it came.
The HyperTexts Was Hell in the Original Bible?
The HyperTexts
Was Hell in the Original Bible?
Was "hell" in the original Bible? No, the word "hell" did not appear
anywhere in the original Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament (OT).
Not in a single verse! Furthermore the word "hell" is also
very hard to find in the New Testament (NT). You can easily confirm this by using an online Bible search tool to scan various Bible translations for the word "hell." Or you can refer to the table below, which was produced by Gary Amirault, a Bible scholar who has extensively researched the question of "hell" as a biblical teaching. I have added two translations to Amirault's original list: the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), sponsored by the famously literal and conservative Southern Baptist Convention, and the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE), produced by more than a hundred Bible scholars working for the Roman Catholic Church. Amazingly, even the most conservative Bible scholars now agree that the God of the Hebrew prophets never mentioned "hell"―
not even a single time―in Biblical chronologies covering thousands of years! You can confirm this astounding fact by reading the Bible and verifying that
"hell" was never mentioned even to the worst people at the worst times! The possibility of "hell" or suffering after death was never mentioned to Adam and Eve (the original sinners), nor to Cain (the first murderer), nor to the wicked people at the time of Great Flood, nor to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, nor even to the Pharaoh who defied Moses and his God repeatedly!
by Michael R. Burch, a "recovering fundamentalist"
The question raised by the table below is obvious. How can Christian churches continue to teach the dogma of "hell" when the Hebrew prophets, speaking for their God, never mentioned anything about "hell" or any possibility of suffering after death? And why did most of the writers of the NT also completely fail to mention "hell"? Modern Bible scholars seem to unanimously agree that the Hebrew word
Sheoland the Greek word
Hades do not mean "hell." This is because both
Sheol and
Hades clearly mean "the grave" or the abode of
all the dead, good and bad. King David said that if he made his bed in
Sheol, God would still be with him. Other psalmists, the sons of Korah, said that God would redeem their souls from
Sheol. Job asked to be hidden from suffering in
Sheol. In his famous Valley of the Dry Bones vision, Ezekiel prophesied that
all Israel would be resurrected and saved. But Israel himself said that he would be reunited with his son Joseph in
Sheol. How can all Israel be saved, if Israel himself is in hell? Each of these verses
clearly refutes the idea of a "hell" that cannot be escaped, where God is absent, and where suffering is eternal. Furthermore, anyone who studies Greek mythology or the Wikipedia page on Hades can easily see that Hades was not "hell" either, because it contained heavenly regions such as the Elysian Fields and the Blessed Isles. The Greek hell was Tartarus, and that word appears in only a single Bible verse (2 Peter 2:4). If you read my hyperlinked article below, I believe that I can prove this is the only verse in the Bible that actually mentions hell, but it was for fallen angels awaiting judgment and thus it was not for human beings, nor was it eternal.
If this subject interest you, I have created a simple, logical proof that there is
No Hell in the Bible, which you read without annoying ads by clicking the hyperlinked title. Now here is Gary Amirault's table ...