Gehenna is most frequently described as a place of punishment (e.g., Matthew 5:22, Matthew 18:8-9 Mark 9:43-49) other passages mention darkness and "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (e.g., Matthew 8:12 Matthew 22:13). Apart from one use in James 3:6, this term is found exclusively in the synoptic gospels.
The most common New Testament term translated as "Hell" is γέεννα ( gehenna), a direct loan of Hebrew גהנום/גהנם ( ge-hinnom). Three different New Testament words appear in most English translations as "Hell": Kiddushin 4:14) also described in Assumption of Moses and 2 Esdras. īy at least the late or saboraic rabbinical period (500-640 CE), Gehinnom was viewed as the place of ultimate punishment, exemplified by the rabbinical statement "the best of medicians are destined to Gehinnom." (M. In the Greek Septuagint, the Hebrew word Sheol was translated as Hades. the Book of Enoch), and by the time of Jesus, some Jews had come to believe that those in Sheol awaited the resurrection of the dead either in comfort (in the bosom of Abraham) or in torment. By the third to second century BC, the idea had grown to encompass separate divisions in sheol for the righteous and wicked (cf. 31:15), a place of darkness, silence and forgetfulness (cf. Sheol was thought of as a place situated below the ground (cf. In ancient Jewish belief, the dead were consigned to Sheol, a place to which all were sent indiscriminately (cf. A few translations render it as "Tartarus" of this term, the Holman Christian Standard Bible states: " Tartarus is a Greek name for a subterranean place of divine punishment lower than Hades." The Greek verb ταρταρῶ ( tartarō, derived from Tartarus), which occurs once in the New Testament (in 2 Peter 2:4), is almost always translated by a phrase such as "thrown down to hell".Gehenna was a physical location outside the city walls where they burned garbage and where lepers and outcasts were sent, hence the weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The word is translated as either "Hell" or "Hell fire" in many English versions.
Theologians today generally see Hell as the logical consequence of rejecting union with God and with God's justice and mercy. Its character is inferred from teaching in the biblical texts, some of which, interpreted literally, have given rise to the popular idea of Hell. In Christian theology, Hell is the place or state into which, by God's definitive judgment, unrepentant sinners pass in the general judgment, or, as some Christians believe, immediately after death ( particular judgment).