David J. Stewart #fundie

David J. Stewart #fundie jesus-is-savior.com

The word "hell" occurs 31 times in the Old Testament in the King James Bible. In the Old Testament of the NIV it occurs - ZERO! The word "hell" is NOT in the Old Testament of the NIV!

And what do they do with "hell"? Take PSALM 9:17 for example: The King James reads, "The wicked shall be turned into HELL. . ." The NIV, reads, "The wicked return to the GRAVE. . ." We ALL "return to the GRAVE"! By removing "hell" the NIV perverts Psalm 9:17 into nonsense!

In the New Testament the NIV zaps out "hell" 9 times. And what "clearer" "easier to understand" word does the NIV "update" hell with? Five times they use - HADES! (Matt 16:18, Rev 1:18, 6:8, 20:13,14) What "common person" understands HADES? Everybody knows what HELL is! Do you know what HADES is? Hades is not always a place of torment or terror. The Assyrian Hades is an abode of blessedness with silver skies called "Happy Fields". In the satanic New Age Movement, Hades is an intermediate state of purification! Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines HADES: "the underground abode of the dead in Greek MYTHOLOGY". The NIV perverts your Bible into MYTHOLOGY!

26 comments

old comment by Jamaican Castle

Sometimes "clarity" is deceptive. If a work mentions Hell, I have a strong suspicion of what they meant, but if it originally said Hades, that may or may not mean the same thing. Someone writing in Greek, with a background in Greek mythology (or writing to an audience with such a background, perhaps to convert them or explain tenets of their new faith in a familiar way), may have meant Hades to mean a place of eternal punishment, or any afterlife, with neither positive or negative connotations, or possibly the god (although that would be unlikely in a Christian source).

@checkmate: He may mean the Elysian Fields, which were indeed part of Hades in some myths (as is usual for Greek mythology, this changes from source to source) and were indeed paradisaical. There was also a third part of Hades if you weren't bad enough for the bad parts or good enough for Elysium.

old comment by Creedence Leonore Gielgud

>What "common person" understands HADES? Everybody knows what HELL is! Do you know what HADES is?

Anyone who's graduated the 6th grade. At least I remember a little Greek mythology from grade school social studies, and I grew up in the Bible Belt.

>Hades is not always a place of torment or terror.

True, but neither is Hell, or Hel--Hell was the Old English form of the word, but the word had variations in all Germanic languages. It is the hall of the giantess of the same name. She was the daughter of Loki, but it is unclear whether or not she was considered a goddess herself--Loki was a Jotun as well, though he became the blood-brother of Odin, and was elevated to the status of god through his association with both Odin and Thor. Odin is said to have appointed Hel to rule over Hel. According to Snorri Sturluson, evil men were sent to Hel to be punished, whereas people who died of disease or old age were sent to Hel, who was said to provide them with shelter, food, and basically to see to their needs.

Hell did not appear in the Old or New Testaments, because it was not a word known to the Greeks, Romans, or Hebrews. Hades was a word that was well known to Greek and Roman world, which also produced the New Testament. It was foreign to the Ancient Hebrews prior to the spread of Greek learning after the conquest of Alexander the Great.

@2053045

David is anti-Semitic, so his response would be something along the lines of, "they're doing it just to spite me, and therefore Jesus," only a lot more long-winded and not at all self-aware.

old comment by checkmate

@Jamaican Castle

@checkmate: He may mean the Elysian Fields, which were indeed part of Hades in some myths (as is usual for Greek mythology, this changes from source to source) and were indeed paradisaical. There was also a third part of Hades if you weren't bad enough for the bad parts or good enough for Elysium.

The Greek concept of the Underworld was a merger of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory; Davie, as is his usual, is just trying to pretend that the Heaven part is the only part of the Underworld...

Yes, that's fine for the Elysian Fields or other concepts of the Greek Hades, but in the passage I quoted he explicitly states "the Assyrian Hades". Neither the Assyrian nor the Babylonian underworld, either in the Pre-Sargonic, Old Babylonian, Neo- or Late Babylonian period has any such concept.

old comment by The Reptilian Jew

I like how according to this loon Hell is mentioned 31 times in the Old Testament when Judaism has no concept of Hell at all. The closest idea is "Sheol", an empty void where the shades of the dead reside, but even that's not entirely consistent (for example Sheol is occasionally referred to as a being instead of a place). Judaism isn't all that concerned with the afterlife actually. Please refer to the Jewish phrase "it's not the dead who praise the Lord". Unlike your little death-cult take on Christianity we're more concerned with life.
If anything the KJV perverts the Bible more by turning those phrases about death or the afterlife to be about Hell, when Judaism doesn't have that concept.