When did Hades change its name to Hell?

Answer 1

Hades is the name of a Greek God of the underworld, and Hel is the name of a Norse Goddess of the underworld. Christians just stole the names. It was just an attempt to vilify the Pagans. The Christian underworld is really known as Gehenna.

Answer 2

The Greek word is hades, the Hebrew word is sheol and the English word is hell or grave. They all mean the same thing. The grave of man.

Answer 3

Hades (sheol) was refered to as the grave and Hell (gehena) was refered to as the Lake of Fire.

Answer 4

1157 A.D. - Legal documents are on file in the Yorkshire clark's office.

Answer 5

When the Christians commandeered his vessel.

Answer 6

HADES (Ha´des).

This is the common transliteration into English of the corresponding Greek word hai´des. It perhaps means “the unseen place.” In all, the word “Hades” occurs ten times in the earliest manuscripts of the Christian Greek Scriptures.—Mt 11:23; 16:18; Lu 10:15; 16:23; Ac 2:27, 31; Re 1:18; 6:8; 20:13, 14.

The King James Version translates hai´des as “hell” in these texts, but the Revised Standard Version renders it “Hades,” with the exception of Matthew 16:18, where “powers of death” is used, though the footnote reads “gates of Hades.” “Hades” rather than “hell” is used in many modern translations.

The Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (from Genesis to Malachi) uses the word “Hades” 73 times, employing it 60 times to translate the Hebrew word she´ohl´, commonly rendered “Sheol.” Luke, the divinely inspired writer of Acts, definitely showed Hades to be the Greek equivalent of Sheol when he translated Peter’s quotation from Psalm 16:10. (Ac 2:27) Inversely, nine modern Hebrew translations of the Christian Greek Scriptures use the word “Sheol” to translate Hades at Revelation 20:13, 14; and the Syriac translation uses the related word Shiul.

In all but two cases in which the word Hades is used in the Christian Greek Scriptures it is related to death, either in the verse itself or in the immediate context; the two other instances are discussed in the following paragraph. Hades does not refer to a single grave (Gr., ta´phos), or to a single tomb (Gr., mne´ma), or to a single memorial tomb (Gr., mne·mei´on), but to the common grave of mankind, where the dead and buried ones are unseen. It thus signifies the same as the corresponding word “Sheol,” and an examination of its use in all its ten occurrences bears out this fact.

In its first occurrence, at Matthew 11:23, Jesus Christ, in chiding Capernaum for its disbelief, uses Hades to represent the depth of debasement to which Capernaum would come down, in contrast with the height of heaven to which she assumed to exalt herself. A corresponding text is found at Luke 10:15. Note the similar way in which Sheol is used at Job 11:7, 8.

Jesus and Congregation Delivered. Concerning the Christian congregation, Jesus said, at Matthew 16:18, that “the gates of Hades [“powers of death,” RS] will not overpower it.” Similarly, King Hezekiah, when on the verge of death, said: “In the midst of my days I will go into the gates of Sheol.” (Isa 38:10) It, therefore, becomes apparent that Jesus’ promise of victory over Hades means that its “gates” will open to release the dead by means of a resurrection, even as was the case with Christ Jesus himself.

Since Hades refers to the common grave of mankind, a place rather than a condition, Jesus entered within “the gates of Hades” when buried by Joseph of Arimathea. On Pentecost of 33 C.E., Peter said of Christ: “Neither was he forsaken in Hades nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God resurrected, of which fact we are all witnesses.” (Ac 2:25-27, 29-32; Ps 16:10) Whereas “the gates of Hades” (Mt 16:18) were still holding David within their domain in Peter’s day (Ac 2:29), they had swung open for Christ Jesus when his Father resurrected him out of Hades. Thereafter, through the power of the resurrection given him (Joh 5:21-30), Jesus is the Holder of “the keys of death and of Hades.”—Re 1:17, 18.

Manifestly, the Bible Hades is not the imagined place that the ancient non-Christian Greeks described in their mythologies as a “dark, sunless region within the earth,” for there was no resurrection from such mythological underworld.

Illustrative Use. At Revelation 6:8 Hades is figuratively pictured as closely following after the rider of the pale horse, personalized Death, to receive the victims of the death-dealing agencies of war, famine, plagues, and wild beasts.

The sea (which at times serves as a watery grave for some) is mentioned in addition to Hades (the common earthen grave), for the purpose of stressing the inclusiveness of all such dead ones when Revelation 20:13, 14 says that the sea, death, and Hades are to give up or be emptied of the dead in them. Thereafter, death and Hades (but not the sea) are cast into “the lake of fire,” “the second death.” They thereby figuratively ‘die out’ of existence, and this signifies the end of Hades (Sheol), the common grave of mankind, as well as of death inherited through Adam.

The remaining text in which Hades is used is found at Luke 16:22-26 in the account of “the rich man” and “Lazarus.” The language throughout the account is plainly parabolic and cannot be construed literally in view of all the preceding texts. Note, however, that “the rich man” of the parable is spoken of as being “buried” in Hades, giving further evidence that Hades means the common grave of mankind.

HELL

A word used in the King James Version (as well as in the Catholic Douay Version and most older translations) to translate the Hebrew she´ohl´ and the Greek hai´des. In the King James Version the word “hell” is rendered from she´ohl´ 31 times and from hai´des 10 times. This version is not consistent, however, since she´ohl´ is also translated 31 times “grave” and 3 times “pit.” In the Douay Version she´ohl´ is rendered “hell” 64 times, “pit” once, and “death” once.

In 1885, with the publication of the complete English Revised Version, the original word she´ohl´ was in many places transliterated into the English text of the Hebrew Scriptures, though, in most occurrences, “grave” and “pit” were used, and “hell” is found some 14 times. This was a point on which the American committee disagreed with the British revisers, and so, when producing the American Standard Version (1901) they transliterated she´ohl´ in all 65 of its appearances. Both versions transliterated hai´des in the Christian Greek Scriptures in all ten of its occurrences, though the Greek word Ge´en·na (English, “Gehenna”) is rendered “hell” throughout, as is true of many other modern translations.

Concerning this use of “hell” to translate these original words from the Hebrew and Greek, Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (1981, Vol. 2, p. 187) says: “HADES . . . It corresponds to ‘Sheol’ in the O.T. [Old Testament]. In the A.V. of the O.T. [Old Testament] and N.T. [New Testament], it has been unhappily rendered ‘Hell.’”

Collier’s Encyclopedia (1986, Vol. 12, p. 28) says concerning “Hell”: “First it stands for the Hebrew Sheol of the Old Testament and the Greek Hades of the Septuagint and New Testament. Since Sheol in Old Testament times referred simply to the abode of the dead and suggested no moral distinctions, the word ‘hell,’ as understood today, is not a happy translation.”

It is, in fact, because of the way that the word “hell” is understood today that it is such an unsatisfactory translation of these original Bible words. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, unabridged, under “Hell” says: “fr[om] . . . helan to conceal.” The word “hell” thus originally conveyed no thought of heat or torment but simply of a ‘covered over or concealed place.’ In the old English dialect the expression “helling potatoes” meant, not to roast them, but simply to place the potatoes in the ground or in a cellar.

The meaning given today to the word “hell” is that portrayed in Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost, which meaning is completely foreign to the original definition of the word. The idea of a “hell” of fiery torment, however, dates back long before Dante or Milton. The Grolier Universal Encyclopedia (1971, Vol. 9, p. 205) under “Hell” says: “Hindus and Buddhists regard hell as a place of spiritual cleansing and final restoration. Islamic tradition considers it as a place of everlasting punishment.” The idea of suffering after death is found among the pagan religious teachings of ancient peoples in Babylon and Egypt. Babylonian and Assyrian beliefs depicted the “nether world . . . as a place full of horrors, . . . presided over by gods and demons of great strength and fierceness.” Although ancient Egyptian religious texts do not teach that the burning of any individual victim would go on forever, they do portray the “Other World” as featuring “pits of fire” for “the damned.”—The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, by Morris Jastrow, Jr., 1898, p. 581; The Book of the Dead, with introduction by E. Wallis Budge, 1960, pp. 135, 144, 149, 151, 153, 161, 200.

“Hellfire” has been a basic teaching in Christendom for many centuries. It is understandable why The Encyclopedia Americana (1956, Vol. XIV, p. 81) said: “Much confusion and misunderstanding has been caused through the early translators of the Bible persistently rendering the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades and Gehenna by the word hell. The simple transliteration of these words by the translators of the revised editions of the Bible has not sufficed to appreciably clear up this confusion and misconception.” Nevertheless, such transliteration and consistent rendering does enable the Bible student to make an accurate comparison of the texts in which these original words appear and, with open mind, thereby to arrive at a correct understanding of their true significance.