I am still of the persuasion it is actual events. If it were a parable, then no reason to give a name (Lazarus) and speak of him having lived and died if he never did exist.
Even if it were a parable, a parable presents truth and facts meaning there would be a Hadean realm consisting of paradise and torment separated by a permanent, fixed gulf that cannot be crossed. It would be inhabited by the souls of those that have died. Abraham's physical body would be in the grave but his soul in paradise, Eccl 12:7 as was the soul of the thief on the cross next to Christ. People would also maintain their identity after death, maintain memory, can communicate and have sense of feeling. Neither place is the final eternal abode of souls for their will be a judgment and those in torment will move to an eternal abode hell - gehenna and those in paradise to eternal heaven.
Whether it's a parable or actual events, what is important is to understand what Jesus is teaching the Pharisees and the scribes/lawyers taught about how to inherit eternal life.
We have always been taught hell is a place where non-believers in God go to for eternity, but according to scripture this is not what hell is. Hell is described as the world of the dead, a place where the departed go that have died as being lowered in a grave/pit. There they are kept until the return of Christ to either stand in Gods Great White Throne judgment for those who are not found written in the Lambs Book of Life, Rev 20:11-15, or those who have died in Christ that will stand in his judgment to give an account for the things done here on earth, 2 Corinthians 5:10.
Hell is not the lake of fire as God gives us a description of the lake of fire as in fire and brimstone which can be used literal as in Sodom and Gomorrah burned to ashes and as a metaphor for torment, suffering, punishment or as Matthew 8:12 describes it as outer darkness. The New Testament description is a bottomless pit (abyss) (Revelation 20:3), a lake (Revelation 20:14), darkness (Matthew 25:30), death (Revelation 2:11), destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:9), everlasting torment (Revelation 20:10), a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 25:30), and a place of gradated punishment (Matthew 11:20-24; Luke 12:47-48; Revelation 20:12-13), everlasting fire Matthew 25:41, everlasting punishment, Matthew 25:46, lake of fire burning with brimstone.
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance: Hell
Hebrew # 7585 Sheol, Hades, or the world of the dead, grave, hell, pit
Greek # 86 place of departed souls, grave, hell
Greek # 1067 Gehenna, the Valley of the sons of Hinnom South of Jerusalem, figuratively and literal of place of punishment.
Greek # 5020. Tartaroo
tar-tar-o'-o from Tartaros (the deepest abyss of Hades); to incarcerate in eternal torment:--cast down to hell.
Hades is the English of the Greek word ᾅδης, just as Gehenna is the English for the Greek word γέεννα and Tartaros is the English word for the Greek word ταρταρόω
The English word hell, back in 1611, meant about the same as Hades, that being covered or unseen as in grave/pit. We do not see those in the grave as they are unseen to the eye as they are covered with dirt, or some placed in a tomb. The word hell is derived from the Saxon helan, to cover, and signifying merely the covered, or invisible place. The habitation of those who have gone from the visible terrestrial region to the world of spirits.
Jude 1:7 clearly states an example of eternal fire. This is the same Greek word that is used for everlasting fire and everlasting punishment as used in Matthew 18:8 and Matthew 25:41,46 (Notice: The place, as no real name is given, where the unsaved go is everlasting punishment, and not everlasting punishing. The punishment is eternal in its results, not in its duration. Unquenchable fire is a fire that cannot be quenched or put out until everything in its path is burned up.
Gehenna - Valley of Hinnom, Old Testament as Gai Ben-Hinnom, Tophet, in the Talmud as Gehinnam
The oldest historical reference to the valley is found in Joshua 15:8, 18:16 which describe tribal boundaries. The next chronological reference to the valley is at the time of King Ahaz of Judah who sacrificed his sons there according to 2 Chronicles 28:3. Isaiah does not mention Gehenna by name, but the burning place, Isaiah 30:33 in which the Assyrian army are to be destroyed, may be read Topheth, and the final verse of Isaiah which concerns the corpses of the same or a similar battle, Isaiah 66:24 , where their worm does not die. Also read Jeremiah 19:6-8 as a reference to the dead bodies that are thrown over the wall of Jerusalem into Gehenna/Tophet.
Flavius Josephus describes in his book of wars:
Now the seditious at first gave orders that the dead should be buried out of the public treasury, as not enduring the stench of their dead bodies. But afterwards, when they could not do that, they had them cast down from the walls into the valleys beneath. (War 5.12.3).
Matthew 5:29, 30; Mark 9:43-48 Jesus uses the prophetic symbolic of Gehenna as calling it hell or fires of hell meaning the grave/pit where many were burned to death there as the worm did not die there, meaning that there were always new maggots going through their life-cycles, feeding on the dead corpse. Also note Isaiah 66:24.
