Is the word “hell” in the Old Testament

The King James Bible had the most number of cases where we found the word “hell” in the Old Testament.

Almost without exception, all the other leading Protestant Bibles didn’t have the nerve to do what the King’s translators did, that is, take the Hebrew word “Sheol” where everyone went, according to the Old Testament teachings, and divide it into “hell,” a place for the unrighteous, and “grave” or “pit,” presumably the place for the righteous. They translated this word according to their theology, and not according to the Hebrew.

...Where one translation had “hell,” another had “grave.” In other words, those translations that tried to put “hell” into the Old Testament couldn’t agree with each other as to which verses spoke of “hell” and which spoke of the “grave.”

• The New American Standard Bible: 1977

and he said, “I called out of my distress to the LORD, And He answered me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; Thou didst hear my voice.”

• The New International Version: 1973

He said: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From the depthes of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry.

• The Living Bible: 1971

“In my great trouble I cried to the Lord and he answerd me; from the depths of death I called, and Lord, you heard me!”

• The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts (Lamsa): 1957

I cried to the Lord in my distress and he answered me; out of the depths of Sheol cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

• Good News Bible: 1976

“In my distress, O Lord, I called to you, and you answered me. From deep in the world of the dead I cried for help, and you heard me.”

• The Holy Bible an American Translation: 1976

…and said: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered me. From the belly of the underworld I cried, and You heard my voice.”

• New Catholic Liturgical Bible: 1963

Jona 2:3 Out of my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me; from the midst of the nether world I cried for help, and you heard my voice.

• New Revised Standard Version: 1989

…saying, “I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.”

• The Amplified Bible: 1965

And said, I cried out of my distress to the Lord, and He heard me; out of the belly of Sheol cried I, and You heard my voice.

• The New King James Version: 1985

And he said: “I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, And He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice.

...In the New Testament, three words were translated into “hell” by the King James translators: Hades (unseen), Gehenna (Jerusalem’s city dump), and Tartarus (Greek mythology’s prison for the Titans). None of these words is the “lake of fire” in Revelation.

almost all Bibles have abandoned the KJV’s handling of these words..

The concept of evil men going to a place of torment after death first appeared in Jewish apocryphal writings of 3 to 1 B.C. These writings came from the thoughts of the Babylonian religions which the Jews brought back with them from Babylon. It was these books which spoke of eternal separation of good and evil and equating it to man’s ultimate fate. Many Jews mixed these teachings with Judaism which brought about great problems. These writings, found their way into the Greek Septuagint. The Septuagint was used by the early Church. From there these writings got into the Latin Vulgate.

Each translation also relied heavily on other translations. Tyndale, for example, borrowed greatly from Martin Luther. The King James directly copied much from previous translations that came directly from the Latin Vulgate. Many of the early Common Language Bibles contained the Apocryphal writings. These writings had a great effect on their view of things and on how to translate other portions of the Bible. Jewish Bibles of today do not contain them. They do not belong in the Scriptures! But the Roman Catholic Bibles, Orthodox Bibles, and the original King James Bible as well as many early Common language Bibles contained them.

Most translations that mention it at all, mention it only 12 to 14 times, the King James being the King of Hell mentioning only it 22 times in the New Testament, not even once per book! Many translations don’t even mention the word “hell” even once! Now if the Creator is the All-Powerful, All-Knowing, Sovereign One, surely He did a terrible job of warning mankind of their terrible fate. . .if eternal punishment awaited them.

when researching Bible translations to come across the fact that in 1851 the American Bible Society compared six different editions of the King James Bible and discovered over 24,000 variations between the editions of the same Bible translation! How could there be an inerrant King James Bible when even the different editions of the King James Bible had ten’s of thousands of variant readings!?

in the very first year of the King James Bible, two different printings of the very same King James were not the same.

So how did "hell" enter the Bible? Ironically, the only Jews who believed in "hell" at the time of Jesus were the Pharisees. We know this from the Jewish historian Josephus, a contemporary of Paul. The Pharisees probably "borrowed" the concept of "hell" from the pagan Greeks after Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East during the "silent" period between the writing of the OT and NT. Like the ancient Greeks, the Pharisees undoubtedly found that the threat of "hell" increased their power, revenues and profits. Later, when the pagan Roman emperor Constantine demanded that Catholic bishops "come together" and agree on what became known as the Nicene Creed, he commissioned fifty Bibles, a huge and very expensive undertaking in those days. It seems possible that the more hellish verses may have entered the Bible at that time, as "hell" was a great way to scare up money and put even more power in the hands of church and state. The verses about slaves obeying their masters and citizens obeying unjust rulers could have been added at the same time, for similar reasons. Can any Christian believe that Jesus Christ would have endorsed slavery, or people blindly obeying rulers like Hitler (or Constantine)?

Michael R. Burch, states at his website:

Chad Holtz is a Methodist pastor who was asked to resign by members of his rural North Carolina congregation after he questioned the Christian dogma of an "eternal hell." Holtz had made positive remarks about the bestseller book Love Wins, written by Rob Bell, another pastor who questions the existence of "hell." (Bell was the focus of the cover of the April 25, 2011 issue of TIME Magazine, captioned "What If There's No Hell?")

Holtz agreed to leave his church in what he termed a "divorce." In an interview published online Holt said, "We do these somersaults to justify the monster god we believe in ... Am I really going to be saved just because I believe something, when all these good people in the world aren't?"

I believe Holtz made a very important point: one that is seldom voiced by Christians. If Jesus will cause or allow Mohandas Gandhi and Jewish Holocaust victims to suffer for all eternity, when the Christian Bible clearly says that Jesus is the only savior and that human beings can't save themselves, wouldn't that make Jesus a monster? If an all-knowing God created human beings foreseeing in advance that many (or any) of them would suffer for all eternity, wouldn't that make God a monster? And if Christian mothers believe in "hell," how can they give life to babies who might end up in "hell" — wouldn't that make them monsters?

This is the horror of hell-based Christianity: it turns God, Jesus and Christian mothers into monsters willing to play eternal roulette with the souls of innocent children.

Chad Holtz is not the first Christian pastor to lose his job after expressing the hope that God will not allow anyone to suffer for all eternity. One of the most interesting cases is that of Carlton Pearson, a charismatic minister who once appeared on national television, where he reached large audiences on a weekly basis. His program was one of the most-watched shows carried by the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Pearson pastored one of the largest churches in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was made a bishop of his denomination, and served on the board of regents of Oral Roberts University, his alma mater. He campaigned for George W. Bush, was invited to the White House, and met with and counseled former presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. Pearson was also a talented gospel singer who won two Stellar Awards and was nominated for a Dove Award. When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah building in nearby Oklahoma City, Pearson appeared on the Larry King show. He was a rising star — a shooting star — in the televangelical heavens.

And yet he was far from a "happy camper." Like many Christians, Pearson harbored deep resentment in his heart for God because he believed that when his grandparents died, they went to "hell" (his grandmother had "backslidden" by drinking and his grandfather was a "womanizer"). Then one day while watching the terrible suffering of Rwandan refugees on TV, Pearson's resentment and anger boiled over and he cried out, "God I don't know how you're gonna call yourself a loving God and allow those people to suffer so much, then just suck them into hell!" According to Pearson, he heard God reply, "Is that what you think we're doing?" and he received the understanding that "hell" exists here on earth, not in the afterlife.

References

https://www.biblestudytools.com/deuteronomy/32.html

http://what-the-hell-is-hell.com/2011/bible-translations-that-do-not-teach-eternal-torment/

http://www.thehypertexts.com/No%20Hell%20in%20the%20Bible.htm