2. Hades — The universally allowed statement that the N. T. has shed a light on the mysteries of life and immortality which is only in an inferior degree discov- ered in the O. T., is seldom more distinctly verified than in the uncertainty which attaches to Sheol (the difficul- ty of distinguishing its various degrees of meaning, which it is generally felt exist, and which our A. Y. has endeavored to express by an equal balance between Hell and Grave), in contrast with the distinction which is tmpUed in the about equally frequent terms of Hades and Gehenna, now to be described. The "Ac?//? of the N. T. was suggested, no doubt, by its frequent occurrence in the Sept. The word was originally unaspirated, as in Homer's 'Atc^ao irvXai {H. v, 646; ix, 312), and He- siod's 'AiBttD Kvva xa^Keoipwvov (Theog. 311), and Pin- dar's 'MSav Xaxuu {Pyth. v, 130). This form of the word gives greater credibility to the generally received derivation of it from a privat. and iStlp, to see. (The
learned authors of LiddeU and Scott's Greek Lex. [s. v. "A(5;/c,'] throw some doubt on this view of the origin of the word, because of its aspirated beginning, in Attic Greek. But siu^ely this is precarious ground. Is it certain that even in Attic writers it was invariably as- pirated? ^schylus [Sept. c. Theb. (Paley) 310] has 'kx^q. TT^diaiiai \icith the lenis~\, according to the best editing. It is true that this is in a chorus, but in the Agam. 1505, also a choral line, we read /irjCtv tv"Aicov Hiya\avxei~<[t [with the aspirate], as if the usage were uncertain. Possibly in the elliptical phrase tv 'Aicov [scil oi'(c(^] the aspirate occiurs because tlie genitive is really the name of the God [not of the region, which might, for tlistinction, have been then unaspirated]). Plutarch accordingly explains it by atiStg Kai cwparov {De Isid. et Osir. p. 382), and in the Etynwl. Magn. ci()T]Q is defined as x^C^ov dcptjyig, ckotovq altoviov kuI ^6- (pov 7rtir\i]ponii>ov . . . iv ib ovdiv iSXiTro/iti'. Hades is thus " the invisible place or 7-egion ,•" " Locus visibus nostris subtractus," as Grotius defines it.
3. Gehenna ( r'itvva) is composed of the two Heb. words X'lSi {ralleij) and mill {Hinnom, the name of the pro- prietor of the valley). In the Sept. Taitvva ij used in Josh, xviii. 16 to designate "the valley of the son of Hin- nom" the full expression of which is Bin"")2 "•». The shorter appellation 13217 "^r? occurs in the same verse. The Rabbinical writers derive CiH from WT}}, '■•rugire" [to groan or mourn, in Ezek. xxiv, 23], as if indicative of the cries of the children in the horrid rites of the ]Mo- loch-worship (see Buxtorf, Lex. Rob. p. 108 ; (ilassius [ ed. Dathii J , Philolog. Sacr. i, 806). The etymological remarks have paved our waj"- to the next section of our subject.
(II.) Biblical Meaning of these three Terms.— 1 . Mean- ings o/bixa, Sheol.— {!.) The " Grave." Much contro- versy has arisen whether within the meaning of Sheol shoiild be included "the grave;" indeed this is the only question of difficidty. The fact, which we have already stated, that our A.Y. translates VlH'^i quite as often l:)y "grave" as by the general term "hell," supplies a prima facie reason for including it. Without, ho\v'ever, in- sisting on the probability that polemical theology, rath- er than Biblical science, influenced our translators, at least occasionally, in their rendering of the word, we may here adduce on the other side the telling fact that of all the ancient versions not one translates in any pas- sage the Hebrew Sheol by the equivalent oi grave. The other Greek translators, like the venerable Sept., so far as their fragments show (see Origen, Hexapla, passim), everywhere give "AiSijg for biSwJ (sometimes they use for the locative case the older and better phrase elg, iv "AiSov, sometimes the more recent and vulgar tic rvv "Awj]v, tv r(p"A(f{?). The Samaritan text in the seven passages of the Pentateuch has either ST^iU {Siol) or b^X'i'O. Onkelos and Jonathan everj'where, except in five passages, retain blX'^. The Peshito everywhere in both Testaments renders the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Ifades by [^1"''>:J] Shiid; and, as we have al- ready .seen, the Yulg. translates the same words in both the O. T. and the N. T. by inferus (pliu-. Inferi mostly), and, above all, Infernus (see above for particulars). It is to the later Targumists (the pseudo-Jonathan and the Jerusalem Targum), and afterwards to the Rabbinical doctors of the JMiddle Ages, that we trace the version of the "sepidchre" and "the grave" (thus in Gen. xxxvii, 33 : xlii, 38 ; xliv, 29, 31, these Targumists ren- dered Sheol by Xri'^'Sp "^2 [the house of burial] ; sim- ilarly did they render Psa. cxli, 7; Job \-ii, 9; xiv, 13; xvii, 13, 16 ; xxi, 13 ; Eccles. ix, 10, and other passages, in which it is observable how often they have been fol- lowed by our translators). See, for more information on this point, archbishop Usher, Works [by Elrington], iii, 319-321 ; and, more fully, Bottcher (p. 68-70, sec. 146- 149), who quotes Rashi and Aben Ezra [on Gen. xxxvii,
HELL
167
HELL
351; D. Kimchi (Lib. Radic. s. v. bixd); and other Eabbis who expressly admit the grave, within the scope of the meaning o{ iSkeol; Bottcher also quotes a ven^ long- array of commentators and lexicographers [Rabbi Mardochai Nathan, with extravagant one-sidechiess, in his Jlebr. Concord, gives no otlier sense to Sheol but ^2p, the ff)-ave^, who follow the Rabbinical doctors herein ; and he adds the names of such writers as deny the meaning of the grave to the Hebrew Sheol: among these occur the learned Dutch divines Vitringa and Ve- nema. The latter of these expressly affirms, "jsixd mdlo modo ad sepidchrum pertinebit" {Comment, ad Ps. i, 501), To the authorities he mentions Ave woiUd add, as maintaining the same view, the learned Henry Ains- worth (on Gen. xxxvii, 35, Works, p. 135), who tbaws an important distinction; "VlXp, the grave, the word meaneth not the grave digged or made with hands, which is named in Hebrew "l3p, but it meaneth the common place or state of death" (a similar distinction is drawn by Luther [Enarr. in Genes, xlii, 38] ; 12p is only the grave in which an actual interment takes place ; none that die unburied can have this word used of them; their receptacle is PlX'iD, "commune quoddam receptaculum non corporum tantum sed et animarum, ubi omnes mortui congregantur." Ann. Seneca [lib. viii, controvers. 4] observes between natural burial and arti- ficial— "Omnibus natura sepulturam dedit," etc. So Lucan, vii, 818, says — " Capit omnia tellus Qute genuit ; cfi'li) togitur, qui non habet urnam." Pliny [Hist. Nat. vii, 51] di;<tinguishes between natural burial by apply- ing to it the word sepelire, and burial by ceremony by using of it the synonyme humare) ; Nicolaus {De Sepul- chris Ilebr. i, 8-14), who shows that PlXt^J is never used of funeral pomp, nor of the burial of the body in the ground; Eberhard Busmann, who [in 1682] wrote Dis- sertatio philol. de Scheol Hebr., makes a statement to the effect that he had examined all the passages in the O. T., and pronoimces of them thus — "Nullum eormn (exccpto forsan luio vel altero, de quo tamen adhuc du- bitari potest) de sepulchre necessario est intelligemlum . . . multa tamen contra ita sunt comparata ut de sepulchro niillo modo intelligi possint, nee debeant." Some mod- ern writers, who have specially examined the subject, also deny that PlX'iJ ever means "the grave." Thus Breecher, On the Immortcdity of the Soul as held by the Jews (and Vareau, Comment, de Immort, ac vitccfut. no- tit. 1807).