Hell Know: it doesn't last forever! - Softcover

Johnstone, Theodore

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1490775706 ISBN 13: 9781490775708

Publisher: Trafford, 2016

Synopsis

Having practiced medicine for more than 55 years, Dr. Johnstone has witnessed more than one of his patients take their last breath. But sometimes, in his mind, questions popped up. Is the persons soul in the presence of its maker? Or is the soul now suffering in the flames of hell? Or did it simply die with the body and with it will soon be encrypted, buried, or cremated? What is the soul anyway? Is it conscious? Can it feel all of the stimuli coming to it from light, sound, heat, taste, smell, and touch? If so then a soul in heaven would be able to appreciate all of the blessings of that place, but if in hell; it would be suffering in the torment of eternal flames that never consume or destroy. However, if the soul dies with the body, then it would experience nothing. The above questions are not so meaningful if the person who has just died in your presence is not a loved one. However, a loved ones death makes these questions come alive, sometimes with strong emotions not the least of which is sorrow. Dr. Johnstone experienced these feelings one summer afternoon, when he was called by his mother, who was at the bedside of his dying sister, to come to the hospital and pronounced her dead. Recently retired, Dr. Johnstone decided to research Scripture for himself to find answers in it, as to what happens to a person after death. In an effort to prevent bias from forming in his mind, he decided not to consult with any commentaries, but confine his studies mainly, but not exclusively, to The New International and King James versions of the Bible along with an English translation of the Septuagint. He also decided to obtain help from the Interlinear Bible, written in Hebrew, Greek, and English, in conjunction with The New Strongs Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. From these sources, he performed a metaphoric autopsy to ferret out the answers to the souls postmortem existence. The pathology report, portrayed in Hell Know, came as a complete surprise.

About this title

About the Author

Born in 1932, then at age 17, I was challenged by the sudden death of my father, which left me with the responsibility of running the family dairy farm, and getting an education at the same time. In succession, I graduated from high school in 1951, college in 1955, and medical school in 1959, having paid for 90% of my education with money earned from running the farm. I have had no formal Biblical training in a seminary, nor have I had any education in Hebrew or Greek languages. The information I needed for writing the book, derived from careful study of the Interlinear Bible and The New Strongs Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible Red-Letter Edition. Anyone with a high school education and dedication, will find that these two books can give one the needed grasp of Hebrew and Greek to write a book similar to mine. In addition to the aforementioned books, I bought a Greek-English translation of the Septuagint, which helped tremendously. However, I must admit that I would have had a lot of trouble writing Hell Know without considerable prior knowledge of the KJV Bible. I can thank my mom and Grandmother for teaching me this.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Hell Know

Does It Last Forever?

By Theodore Johnstone

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2016 Theodore R. Johnstone
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-7570-8

Contents

Chapter One: Hades, 1, 
Chapter Two: Ge(h)enna, 14, 
Chapter Three: Isolation or the Eradication of Evil, 25, 
Chapter Four: Biblical Evidence Used to Support an Everlasting Hell, 36, 
Appendices A, B, and C, Three KJV Old Testament Translations of Sheol, 51, 
All Sixty-Four Old Testament English Translations of Sheol are Noted, Taken from Seven Different Biblical Versions, 69, 

CHAPTER 1

Hades

Like mistletoe attached to a tree limb, theological dualism is a tenacious psychological adherent to various branches of our modern societies, be they religious or secular. Theological dualism can be described as the belief that each human being is composed of two separate but related entities, the physical body and the spiritual soul. The former is made from physical matter, whereas the latter is thought to be a nonmaterial essence that can see, hear, feel, think, speak, move, reason, choose, and remember. The soul, at death of the body, is thought to separate from the corpse and continue to exist in a conscious immortal state, retaining all of the previously mentioned mental and neurological functions of the human brain.

Some branches of Christianity openly accept the dualistic concept and are comforted at the funeral of a loved one whose soul has been consigned, by the preacher's words, to the courts of heaven. In Islam, belief in an afterlife existence differs from that of Christianity mainly by how one avoids hell and enters into the bliss of heaven. However, many in our secular community with an atheistic mindset claim freedom from roots of dualism. Notwithstanding, every time one of them tells someone to "go to hell" or uses other common expressions, such as "Oh my god" or "for heaven's sakes," they show that the roots of dualism are subtly present in their minds.

For these traditions in our societies, an attempt will be made to show our debt to ancient Greek polytheism and mythological concepts. Moving from Greek thinking to the Hebrews and from them to us, these beliefs are found in modern Christian and Islamic societies. Our approach will ignore any influence on this subject possibly coming from Egyptian or Eastern Religions.

Looking back in history, from our vantage point now, we can see that ancient Greek culture was more advanced than other cultures existing at that time. For instance, in ancient times, Greek knowledge of mathematics and geometry along with astronomy far exceeded that of other cultures. In addition, because of their salient position in these arenas, the Greeks no doubt thought that their philosophy and religion were also superior to others. With this thinking as their modus operandi, they couldn't resist attempts at introducing their language, customs, mathematics, and religion, etc., into surrounding cultures. This desire increased even more after Alexander the Great conquered much of the then known world. The Greeks were so successful in their endeavor of inculcating their culture into others around them that it continued even after Rome conquered the Greeks and beyond to the present, as when you learned the Pythagorean Theorem back in high school.

Beginning soon after Alexander conquered the homeland of the Hebrews, the Greeks used political as well as psychological pressures in their effort to Hellenize the Jews. To aid in their attempt at changing Jewish culture, the Greeks built ten cities in Palestine known as the Decapolis. One of these cities, actually a remodel of an existing ancient one, was Beth Shan, located just south of the Lake of Galilee, on the west side of the Jordan River. From here, the Jewish people living around Galilee were introduced to Greek customs, culture, language, and religion.

Beth Shan had all of the usual Greek trappings. Among these were a race track and a stadium where duels to the death between two men or between one man and one furious animal were often scheduled. Also, Beth Shan could boast about its gymnasium where both men and women participated at the same time in the nude. In all of this milieu, which included amphitheater plays, the Greeks introduced the Jews to stories of their polytheistic gods and Greek terms. Some of these included ghosts or conscious souls in Hades and Tartarus, all of which were ideas foreign to Jews and completely missing, as we will soon learn, from the original Hebrew writings of the Old Testament.

Beth Shan became the "Las Vegas," so to speak, of Palestine, where for more than three centuries before the time of Christ, Hellenization of the Jews gradually occurred during inter-testament times and continued even after the Romans succeeded the Greeks. To show that common Jewish people had become acquainted with some Greek terms by the time Jesus arrived on the scene, check out several New Testament references regarding a few Greek words. "Ghosts" are noted in Mark 6:49 (NIV). "Tartarus," simply translated as "Hades," is found in 2 Peter 2:4 (NIV) and "Hades" is mentioned in Revelation 20:14 (NIV).

To understand better the Greek thinking and influence in their attempt at Hellenization of the Jews during their occupation of Palestine and beyond, we need to become acquainted with Greek mythology and religious beliefs. Students of Greek history, by studying Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey," written around 800 BC, have been able to piece together what the Greeks believed regarding their souls' after-death existence. This will give us a nearly complete outline of the religious beliefs of Greeks during Old Testament, inter-testament, and New Testament times.

A Summary of Greek Mythological Concepts of the Soul

1. The ancient Greeks were polytheistic, worshiping many gods.

2. One of these Greek gods, Hades, was ruler of the dead. His kingdom went by the name Hades as well. It was thought to exist deep underground in the netherworld of the dead and was divided into three sections, Elysian Fields, a very pleasant place, followed by Asphodel Fields (Meadows), a less desirable location, and finally Tartarus, the lowest and worst level of the three, where existed a river of fire called Pyriphlegethon.

3. After a person's death, the soul separated from the body. Then Hermes, another Greek god, led the dead person's soul to the river Styx in the netherworld.

4. After being paid a coin, Charon, an aged boatman, ferried the soul across the river Styx to the gates of Hades. (Relatives of the dead person were supposed to place a coin in the mouth of the corpse to pay Charon for the crossing. If he was not payed, that soul was doomed to wander over the face of the earth, as a ghost.)

5. Arriving at the gates of Hades, Kerberos, a three-headed guard dog, allowed a soul to enter Hades but never to leave.

6. Once inside the gates of Hades, three judges of souls, namely, Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aiakos, decided the soul's eternal destination. Their decision was based on the good or bad activities of the soul's owner during his or her life. The souls of good people were sent to Elysian Fields, the pleasant place, whereas souls of ordinary folks were sent to Asphodel Fields, a rather boring location; but souls of bad people were confined to Tartarus, a very hot location, the heat coming from Pyriphlegethon, the river of fire.

Once judged and assigned a place in Hades, it became the permanent afterlife location of the soul. There was no evidence of a mythological resurrection, where a soul could be reunited with its former body. However, knowledge of Greek mythology is only the first step toward understanding how Greek dualism became a part of Hebrew society and ours somewhat later. An introduction to the Septuagint is also required.

The Septuagint (LXX), an Introduction of Theological Dualism into Hebrew Thought

In addition to the Greek influences coming from the cities built by them in Palestine, the Greeks also created a library in Alexandria, Egypt, where scholars from various nations and cultures were encouraged to come, study, and record their knowledge. During inter-testament times, it is believed that seventy Jewish scholars received a commission during Ptolemy Philidelphus' reign (285-247 BC) to come down to Alexandria and translate all of the ancient sacred Hebrew scrolls of the Old Testament into Greek. When completed, this extraordinary accomplishment was known as the Septuagint or LXX, the Roman numerals for seventy. Over time, it became the Old Testament Scriptures for the Greek speaking Jews, at the time of Jesus, and subsequently for Christians who wrote the New Testament in Greek.

Millennia later, scholars began to think that the Hebrew text, from which the Septuagint had been translated into Greek, seemed to differ in various places from the Masoretic Hebrew text that formed the basis for almost all Old Testament English translations, including the KJV (King James Version), NIV (New International Version), and The Interlinear Bible as well. (The Hebrew Masoretic text is thought to be one of the oldest and fairly well-preserved Old Testament texts in existence.) Two of the differences between the Masoretic text and the perceived Hebrew text, from which the Septuagint had been translated included: (1) a different order of the biblical books in the LXX, from those of the Hebrew canon, although the numbered chapter and verses, added to each many years later, are almost identical; (2) several books known as the Apocrypha not found in the Hebrew Masoretic text, were included in the LXX. The inclusion of these books as inspired writings in the Septuagint is considered by some scholars to be heretical.

Aside from the inclusion of the Apocrypha, there is another important area where the Greek translation of the Septuagint produces a number of theological issues. It is interesting to note that in sixty of the sixty-four places where the Hebrew word Sheol (meaning "grave") is found in the Masoretic Old Testament text; the same locations for Sheol in the Septuagint were translated sixty times into the Greek word Hades instead of mnemeion, the Greek word for "grave." Appendices A, B, & C, in the back of this book, detail all sixty mistranslations.

This may be the first hint that some educated Jews, fluent in both Hebrew and Greek languages, had become culturally Hellenized to the point that they were believing some of the Greek mythology. This would include the after-death existence of a conscious immortal ghost or soul that could see, hear, feel, think, speak, move, reason, choose, and remember. If the mistranslation of Sheol into Hades was done purposefully by the seventy Hebrew scholars, this could mean that they already had begun to disbelieve the Hebrew Scripture, which taught, "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything," (Ecclesiastes 9:5 KJV), or "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish," (Psalm 146:4 (KJV).

Believing Greek mythology instead of Scripture would eliminate the need for a Judgment Day, because on the soul's arrival at Hades, it already would have been judged by the three Haitian judges. This would make the resurrection, described in Job 19:25-27, or the ransom from the power of the grave recorded in Hosea 13:14, irrelevant.

It is not known for sure why the seventy Jewish scholars mistranslated Sheol into Hades. But we do know that more than two centuries later, the Sadducees, who formed a large portion of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish ruling body in Jerusalem), did not believe in a resurrection, Acts 23:8 and Matthew 22:23. Perhaps the Sadducees were "theological descendants," so to speak, of the scholars in Alexandria who had mistranslated Sheol into "Hades" in the Septuagint.

Some Historic Background

An outline of the sequence of the aforementioned events leading to these translations may yield clues as to why three different English word translations for Sheol occurred in the KJV Old Testament. This info also may yield reasons why belief in Greek dualism spread throughout Western and Near Eastern civilizations. (The dates below, for the most part, are approximations).

1. 800 BC – Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey," written in Greek about this time, are where beliefs in ancient Greek mythology were recorded.

2. 433 BC – Malachi, written about then, formed the last book of the Hebrew Old Testament Masoretic text.

3. 330 BC – Alexander the Great conquered Palestine and Egypt.

4. 250 BC – The estimated time the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into the Greek Septuagint.

5. 100 AD – The New Testament was written in Greek near the end of this era and somewhat later.

6. 410 AD – Augustine, a Christian Theologian, was first to write about everburning Hell.

7. 650 AD – Mohammad introduced to the Christian doctrine of hell, added it to Islam.

8. 1300 AD – The time Dante's "Divine Comedy" was written. This epic about hell, purgatory, and heaven marked the end of the Middle Ages and summarized nine hundred years of evolution of Christian thinking that occurred in Western civilization.

9. 1611 – In that year the KJV English translation of the entire Bible was completed.

10. 1808 – The year Charles Thompson's English translation of the Septuagint from Greek into English was published.

11. 1978 – The year the NIV English translation of the entire Bible was published by the New York Bible Society International.

The Masoretic text has formed the basic Hebrew text for most English translations of the Old Testament. This has happened even though some changes may have occurred in the original text. The Hebrew alphabet has twenty-two letters, none of which are vowels. Sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries AD, the Masorites took it upon "themselves to add vowel signs to the Hebrew alphabet." This resulted in a number of changes occurring in the Hebrew Masoretic text, some of which may be considered heretical.

As scholars accumulated evidence for these changes, it seemed to indicate that the perceived Hebrew text from which the Septuagint had been translated into Greek differed from the Masoretic text from which the Septuagint supposedly was translated. Also, even though the Masoretic text may have antedated the perceived Hebrew text by centuries, it seems the Septuagint has an advantage in some areas for correcting problems noted in the Masoretic text. This became more apparent when both the Septuagint and the Masoretic texts were compared after each had been translated into English.

Here is one example that might have perplexed you while studying your KJV Bible. Why does the KJV, translated from the Masoretic text, state in Genesis 46:27 that seventy of Jacob's family moved with him to Egypt? Yet Stephen in Acts 7:14 (KJV) said that there were seventy-five people who moved with Jacob to Egypt. This discrepancy is explained, when it is understood that the Septuagint says that seventy-five people moved with Jacob to Egypt. This indicates that Stephen had learned his Old Testament history from the Septuagint and that this scripture was being studied by Greek speaking Jews at the time of Christ. Stephen was not the only person in New Testament times who studied the Septuagint.

Proof that the author of the book of Hebrews also studied it is found in Hebrews 10:5. There, the KJV New Testament quotes the English translated Septuagint word for word from Psalm 40:6, "But a body hast thou prepared me." ... However, Psalms 40:6 (KJV) translated from the Masoretic text says, "Mine ears hast thou opened." ... This quotation says nothing about a body being prepared but only the ears being opened.

It is interesting to note that Peter and Paul had memorized parts of the Septuagint. Peter, in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, quoted Psalm 16:8-11. That Psalm, recorded by Luke, in Acts 2:25-28 is from the Septuagint and contains the Greek word Hades. Peter undoubtedly preached his sermon in Hebrew or maybe Aramaic and probably did not say the Greek word Hades. Regardless, Hades, in the written Psalm, had to wait 1,500 years before the KJV scholars translated it into "hell," as in, "Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption." Peter commented on this verse in Acts 2:31.

This mistranslation of Hades into hell brings up a serious question. At death, what happened to the righteous soul of Jesus? Jesus told Mary, after His resurrection, that He had not yet gone to His Father. If Jesus' righteous soul had not gone to heaven immediately after His death, then surely it wouldn't have gone to Hades or hell. With this info, Peter, knew Jesus's soul had spent the weekend in the grave. His quotation of Psalm 16 from the Septuagint tells us three things:

1. Peter was familiar with the Septuagint

2. For him, Hades meant the same as Sheol or the grave

3. This is one of the first places where the Greek word Hades was introduced into the Greek New Testament text.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:55, quoted part of a verse from Hosea 13:14, which was a text from the Septuagint containing the Greek word Hades twice. But the half of the verse that Paul quoted from memory, contained the Greek word Hades only once. However, this time, the KJV scholars did not mistranslate Hades into the English word "hell" but translated it correctly into the English word "grave" as follows. "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" In fact, in every instance, except for two out of the eleven places, where the word Hades is found in the Greek New Testament, it makes more sense to translate Hades as "grave" in English.

Both Peter and Paul's quotations from the Septuagint noted above, contain the Greek word, Hades. Each is an example of how, Hades, was introduced from the Septuagint into the New Testament text, with little notice, because both documents were written in Greek. But none of the ten out of the eleven times that Hades is found in the Greek New Testament tell us why the KJV scholars translated it into hell. However over time, many minds had been filled with descriptions of hell as in Dante's "Divine Comedy" and from contemporary paintings of souls writhing in eternal flames. So in 1611, when the KJV scholars recalled from their study of Greek mythology that Tartarus, a division of Hades, contained Pyriphlegethon a river of fire, this mental image seemed close enough to their concept of hell to translate Hades, as well as Tartarus into the English word hell. (Tartarus is found only once in the Greek New Testament, translated by the KJV into hell in 2 Peter 2:4.)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Hell Know by Theodore Johnstone. Copyright © 2016 Theodore R. Johnstone. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Trafford
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1490775706
• ISBN 13: 9781490775708
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 84