The concept of hell as understood today—a place of eternal punishment, hell fires, devils and so on, a place we enter after the final judgment at the end of time or, in the popular mind, right after death—does not have the same meaning that it had in its own time when the word Sheol was used in Hebrew. It meant the grave, the pit, or the abyss. And indeed, the etymology of the word points back to saal, meaning to burrow or to dig. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia (here), it is the place where “the dead meet (Ezek. xxxii.; Isa. xiv.; Job xxx. 23) without distinction of rank or condition—the rich and the poor, the pious and the wicked, the old and the young, the master and the slave—if the description in Job iii. refers, as most likely it does, to Sheol. The dead continue after a fashion their earthly life.” Understood in this way, Sheol is therefore pretty much the same sort of place as the Greek Hades, the under-world. Not surprisingly, when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the word Hades was used to translate Sheol. Both are realms of shades, not specifically of punishment. And, come to think of it, our own word, hell, is derived from hole, hollow, and the Anglo-Saxon helan, meaning to hide. In Latin it is infernus, thus the “below.”
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (here), the meaning associated with this word changed with the rise of Christianity. After Christ’s ascension to heaven, the just go to heaven and hell then becomes the place of the damned. Thus references to Sheol in the Old Testament refer to a realm of shades where everybody goes; in the New Testament a new word is often used, Gehenna, derived from a term meaning Valley of Hinnom, an actual geographical location where in Israel Moloch had once been worshipped.
The upshot of all this is that our concept of hell is relatively new and closely associated with Christianity and the doctrine of redemption.
Now, of course, Old and New Testaments are both considered the Word of God, literally by some branches of Christianity. Therefore concepts like a vengeful God—e.g. “The Lord is a jealous God and avenging, the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.” Nahum 1:2—are combined with the New Testament concept of hell. And from this combination of concepts arises the popular controversy over hell in our times. On one side are those who cannot believe that God could be vengeful, never mind what Nahum of Elkosh said. Therefore the concept of a realm where the wicked go to be eternally tortured is thought to be unworthy of God.
The other side, in effect, argues that actions have consequences, that a law governs reality, and that you can’t simply “get away with it.” But. And there is a but here. But given their beliefs, particularly in the authority of the Bible and its literal truth, they give this idea—actions have consequences—the most lurid form possible, thereby weakening that idea’s unassailable logic.
But the much more scary thought, for someone of my age—when the Heavenly Gates become visible ahead—is the Hindu concept of hell. It simply is that we must come back, if we are bad, back into this dimension, starting as babies again—and if we’ve been very wicked in this life, our re-entry will be at a much less favorable level than we’ve enjoyed in our current life. In the Hindu conceptualization hell is right here; and now. And if you wish for proofs of that, study history and read the papers. And if you are well off, comfortable, indeed complacent, just ponder a rephrasing of one of Jesus' famous sayings: “Satan’s house has many mansions.”
Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Startled in the Primeval Forest
In a book I was reading by a distinguished professor, historian, and priest of the Church of England (Owen Chadwick), I came across a quote from the Bible that sounded unfamiliar. I followed the footnote to the back of the book and discovered that the quote came from Wisdom 3:1-6. I was startled, but only a little, because somewhere in my depths I knew there was a Book of Wisdom, something to do with Solomon. The Layman’s Parallel Bible lies within my grasp (four versions: King James, The Modern Language, The Living Bible, The Revised Standard Version). I knew that it didn’t have that book in it, but I checked it anyway. I was right. Odd. Odd because, Chadwick introduced his quote by saying:
Several questions now arose. Why did an Anglican, on October 31, 1941, find the “lesson for the day” pointing to verses in the Book of Wisdom, a book that is missing in what for Anglicans is the authorized KJ version...unless, as might be, he was using the Bible as an oracle and opening it at random. My next task was to run all of this down. In doing so I found myself in the primeval forest of the western religious tradition, an amazing, fascinating ecosystem, if you like.
It turns out that the Book of Wisdom first appears in the second of three major versions of the Bible, the Septuagint. That book was created by translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Long ago. Precisely (if that’s the word) during the third and second centuries BC. The translation was completed in 132 BC. Now one oddity here is that this Greek translation has a Latin name. Septuagint means seventy. This version came to be known, later, to Latin speakers, as “translation by seventy men,” of which the word “seventy” became the abbreviation used in ordinary speech and writing. The seventy translators incorporated several books into this version not present in the Hebrew original. The Book of Wisdom was one of these; it was originally written in Greek. The third major version is the Latin translation, known as the Vulgate, derived from versio vulgate, the “common version,” thus understood by everybody—at least in the fourth century AD when it was commissioned. Of this word we still retain the English “vulgar,” thus common with an attitude. The Vulgate also contains the Book of Wisdom and twelve other books called deuterocanonical in the Catholic tradition; these same books, plus four others, are part of the Authorized King James Bible, but not the King James Bible “Lite,” as it were. On that more soon.
Before I discovered KJV Lite, I had to learn what “deuterocanonical” meant. Turns out that all of the books of the Hebrew Bible, thus of the Old Testament, are part of the official canon of the Catholic church. The books included in the Septuagint in addition came to be labeled as part of the “second canon”—thus also officially recognized as inspired. The word therefore means “belonging to the second canon.” This is a primal forest. We should not expect things to be simple. In the Protestant tradition, the word Apocrypha has come to be used. The word means hidden or obscure or, perhaps, more obscure books. Whatever the name used, these books are not recognized by Protestant churches as part of the canon; thus they are not viewed as divinely inspired. Protestants stick with the Hebrew Bible. And this stance, in part at least, explains why the King James Bible no longer carries the Apocrypha. The other part of the explanation is economic. Startled by that? Or just bemused? The latter, in my case.
Beginning in the 1770s, innovations in printing began to make large print runs possible. To reduce costs—and in efforts to attract a large Protestant market for the King James Version—publishers began omitting the Apocrypha from the book. Those active in the Church of England, like professor Chadwick, continued to use the “full” editions for good reasons. In the life of the Anglican Church, some “lessons for the day” referred to these books, and it is then startling to open the Bible and find them missing.
The realms of faith are just as vast, complex, and organic as all the rest of reality. It’s life, once more, if on another level…
---------------
Chadwick's book referenced above is The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1975.
When at last I got home after 11 p.m., dog-tired and empty and wretched, I opened a Bible and found, reluctantly, the lesson for the day…This suggested to me—that phrase of his, “a Bible”—an ordinary Bible. And in the household of an Anglican priest that would be the so-called Authorized Bible, therefore the King James. Puzzled now, I went off to find my Jerusalem Bible, a modern translation that appeared in the 1960s. And yes. There, in that Catholic Bible, there it was, the Book of Wisdom, sandwiched between the Songs of Solomon and Ecclesiastes.
Several questions now arose. Why did an Anglican, on October 31, 1941, find the “lesson for the day” pointing to verses in the Book of Wisdom, a book that is missing in what for Anglicans is the authorized KJ version...unless, as might be, he was using the Bible as an oracle and opening it at random. My next task was to run all of this down. In doing so I found myself in the primeval forest of the western religious tradition, an amazing, fascinating ecosystem, if you like.
It turns out that the Book of Wisdom first appears in the second of three major versions of the Bible, the Septuagint. That book was created by translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Long ago. Precisely (if that’s the word) during the third and second centuries BC. The translation was completed in 132 BC. Now one oddity here is that this Greek translation has a Latin name. Septuagint means seventy. This version came to be known, later, to Latin speakers, as “translation by seventy men,” of which the word “seventy” became the abbreviation used in ordinary speech and writing. The seventy translators incorporated several books into this version not present in the Hebrew original. The Book of Wisdom was one of these; it was originally written in Greek. The third major version is the Latin translation, known as the Vulgate, derived from versio vulgate, the “common version,” thus understood by everybody—at least in the fourth century AD when it was commissioned. Of this word we still retain the English “vulgar,” thus common with an attitude. The Vulgate also contains the Book of Wisdom and twelve other books called deuterocanonical in the Catholic tradition; these same books, plus four others, are part of the Authorized King James Bible, but not the King James Bible “Lite,” as it were. On that more soon.
Before I discovered KJV Lite, I had to learn what “deuterocanonical” meant. Turns out that all of the books of the Hebrew Bible, thus of the Old Testament, are part of the official canon of the Catholic church. The books included in the Septuagint in addition came to be labeled as part of the “second canon”—thus also officially recognized as inspired. The word therefore means “belonging to the second canon.” This is a primal forest. We should not expect things to be simple. In the Protestant tradition, the word Apocrypha has come to be used. The word means hidden or obscure or, perhaps, more obscure books. Whatever the name used, these books are not recognized by Protestant churches as part of the canon; thus they are not viewed as divinely inspired. Protestants stick with the Hebrew Bible. And this stance, in part at least, explains why the King James Bible no longer carries the Apocrypha. The other part of the explanation is economic. Startled by that? Or just bemused? The latter, in my case.
Beginning in the 1770s, innovations in printing began to make large print runs possible. To reduce costs—and in efforts to attract a large Protestant market for the King James Version—publishers began omitting the Apocrypha from the book. Those active in the Church of England, like professor Chadwick, continued to use the “full” editions for good reasons. In the life of the Anglican Church, some “lessons for the day” referred to these books, and it is then startling to open the Bible and find them missing.
The realms of faith are just as vast, complex, and organic as all the rest of reality. It’s life, once more, if on another level…
---------------
Chadwick's book referenced above is The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1975.
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