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Gehenna.
The place where, according to Jesus in the synoptic Gospels, sinners are
punished after death. A few times Hades (See Hell)
is also treated as such a place of punishment (Matthew
11.23; Luke
10.14; Luke
16.23), but it is cited
more often as the realm of death in general. (The NRSV translates Grk. geenna
as "hell.")
Gehenna was originally the Hebrew name of a valley just south
of Jerusalem’s southwestern hill ( Joshua
15.8) called "the
valley of Hinnom" (gÙ<
hinn¿m)
or "the valley of Hinnom’s son(s)" (gÙ<
ben(ê) hinn¿m);
Map 9. Under the influence of the Aramaic form gÙhinnŒ(m),
the Greek transliteration of the word became geenna. "Hinnom"
may be understood as the representative of a Jebusite group that once
dominated the place in question, but the Bible mentions only the valley. In
boundary lists it forms the border between Judah and Benjamin south of the
Jebusite city (Joshua 15.8;
Joshua 18.16),
implying that Jerusalem belonged to Benjamin.
The later view of Gehenna as a place of punishment, especially
by fire, is anticipated in an Isaianic reference to a large topheth, or
burning place, near Jerusalem, said to be lit by the Lord to punish the
Assyrians and their king ( Isaiah
30.33). A further stage in
the development of the relevant concepts is reached in the report concerning
King Josiah’s cultic reform of 622 bce, which implied a desecration of
similar topheths in Judah, especially one found in the valley of Hinnom and
dedicated to Molech for children (2
Kings 23.10; cf. 2
Chronicles 28.3; 2
Chronicles 33.6). The
elimination ordered by Josiah was not entirely successful, for somewhat later
Jeremiah made repeated attacks on the topheth and said the valley of Hinnom
would become a general burial place (Jeremiah
7.31; Jeremiah
19.11; Jeremiah
32.35).
On the basis of such passages and influenced by parallelism
with Persian ideas of a judgment in fire, Jewish apocalypticism made the
valley of Hinnom a place of punishment within an eschatological milieu. In a
vision ascribed to Enoch a cavity was depicted, into which the faithful Jews,
gathered on the holy mountain, would look down to see the righteous judgment
and eternal punishment of all godless and cursed people (1 Enoch 26.4; 27.2–3).
No name appears here, but since the details of the picture indicate the
topography of Jerusalem, the cavity in question must have been meant as the
valley of Hinnom. The joining of the eschatological perspective to Jerusalem
then led to an explicit use of the name Gehenna for that place of punishment,
a usage that emerges in texts of the first century ce in the New Testament
(e.g., Matthew 5.22;
Matthew 10.28;
Matthew 23.15;
Matthew 23.33;
James 3.6)
and in Jewish apocalypse (e.g., 2
Esdras 7.36, in the Latin
translation "Gehenna") Oxford Companion to the Bible
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