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What is the etymology of the word 'hell," who was Hel in Norse mythology,and why did some translators chose that word to replace sheol/hades?

Update:

According to Pyriform link, "a pagan concept and word fitted to a Christian idiom" Do you agree?

4 Answers

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  • ?
    Lv 6
    2 years ago

    What the Norsemen or any other pagan group believe is irrelevant to the Bible.

    Only one scripture is required.in Revelations hell and death are thrown into the

    lake of fire making hell a temporary holding place for the spirits that sinned.

    Since you are not interested in what the Bible teaches concerning the spirit,

    you will have to wait for the judgment.

  • Jeremy
    Lv 6
    3 years ago

    As for the concept, I think the modern interpretation is a confluence of both multiple sources. Many Christians insist that if you question hell, you are rejecting what has always been agreed upon by the Church, yet the doctrine of eternal torment was not a widely held view for at least the first five centuries of the church. These concepts didn't really start to take hold until St. Augustine. Augustine himself studied the works of Plato, who linked some of his ideas to prevailing Greek mythology, including the locations of Hades and Tartarus. In Greek mythology, Tartarus is the location deep below Hades where the Titans were enslaved and the wicked were tormented. According to Plato, this is where divine punishment was meted out. These ideas proposed by Plato are not from the Bible. They are Greek philosophy and mythology. Before Augustine, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, especially the Judean, everyone went to the same resting place (Sheol), and only a very few lucky ones went to see only a glimpse of heaven (like Ezekiel).

    Norse mythology is only a branch of a mythology shared among the different Germanic tribes - Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, Teutonic, and Gothic, among others. Along with the related Celtic mythology, these were the religions considered pagan by the Church. The Norse cultures became Christian from around 1000 to 1200. So, Augustine's ideas would have been already in place. But, missionaries at this time often adopted elements of the native belief systems of the people they were trying to convert. “Easter”, for example, was taken from Eostre, the name of the Germanic goddess of fertility and spring. So, no doubt some of the modern ideas of hell could have been adopted from appropriation of Helheim.

    As for translation, there are three words translated "Hell" in the New Testament, Hades and Tartarus, which are Greek, and Gehenna, which is the Greek form of the Hebrew words Gee and Hinnom, meaning "the valley of Hinnom." The area was not only a burial site but also a place for cremation of the dead, which in turn became a figurative name for the place of spiritual purification for the wicked dead in Judaism.

    So, is related to that Hel, yes, but both are derived from the Proto-Indo-European “haljo,” which meant “underworld.” And “haljo” itself comes from the root “kel-” which meant “conceal.” But, it isn't necessarily that one directly led to the other. It is more that both words share the same Proto-Germanic roots for similar concepts.

  • 3 years ago

    The fact that any mythology has hell in their language means someone taught it before them, the bible talks of three primary types of hell, I can find ' £- 8 or ' £- 9 references to hell and punishment , maybe there is a tenth

    Hades and Gehhenna and tarteroos are not the primary hells, the Greeks taught tarteroos so, why did Paul use that word? When he was a hebrew jewish Pharisee and a Roman citizen...

    Gehenna refers to a the fires of the garbage site where fires burned trash, and Jude talks about the fallen angels that were imprisoned in the earth until they appeared from the earth as demons according to the book of Enoch which makes no sense, to me.

    Make no bones about it, outer darkness , this is what Jesus taught, and Paul talked about spirit prison which is mentioned in issaiah and Jonah talked about Sheol, but in Jonah's case it was a spirit place of sheol

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