Very good piece
OzSpen, i like your style.
One thing I find missing is how both greek and Norse mythology has been scrubbed from Hades, Tartarus ( deepest depths of Hades where only the wicked reside) and Hell.
The article give a brief, but decent backgroun view of Gehenna and Shoel but completely lacks a description of the origin of the others.
Why?
SB,
I provide brief background information on Sheol/Hades, Gehenna and Tartarus in my article,
Do evil doers experience eternal destruction or annihilation at death?
The problem with understanding Tartarus is that it appears only once in the NT at 2 Peter 2:4,"For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [tartarus] and committed them to chains [or pits] of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgement";
So Tartarus is the destiny of fallen angels. Bauer, Arndt & Gingrich's Greek lexicon gives this meaning: 'Tartarus, thought of by the Greeks as a subterranean place lower than Hades where divine punishment was meted out, was so regarded in Jewish apocalyptic as well (Job 41:24)' (BAG 1957:813). Moulton & Milligan translate 2 Pet 2:4 as 'hold captive in Tartarus'.
Tartarus is used in 2 Peter 2:4 to refer to angels and where they were cast. He was using a word that in Greek literature meant a place of conscious torment in the netherworld. It did not mean non-existence, but referred to their being reserved in the place of mental anguish and terror until the day of judgment (Morey 1984:135).
In Marvin Vincent's word studies he states of Tartarus, 'It is strange to find Peter using this Pagan term, which represents the Greek hell, though treated here not as equivalent to
Gehenna, but as the place of detention until the judgment' (
Word Pictures in the New Testament, vol 1, p. 691).
Encyclopaedia Britannica provides this explanation of the link between Tartarus and Greek mythology:
Tartarus, the infernal regions of ancient
Greek mythology. The name was originally used for the deepest region of the world, the lower of the two parts of the underworld, where the gods locked up their enemies. It gradually came to mean the entire underworld. As such it was the opposite of
Elysium, where happy souls lived after death. In some accounts Tartarus was one of the personified elements of the world, along with
Gaea (Earth) and others. According to those accounts, Tartarus and Gaea produced the monster
Typhon.
Compare Hades (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2019. s.v.
Tartarus).
Oz
Bibliography
Morey, R. A. 1984.
Death and the Afterlife. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House Publishers.
Vincent, M R 1887/1969.
Word Studies in the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, vol 1.
