Hell According to Luke (Part 1)

The implication of the parable of Luke 16:19–31 is clear, there was never any hope of salvation for the rich man, even when he was alive.

Der reiche Mann in der Hölle.

Neither Heaven nor Hell

hell (n.)
also Hell, Old English hel, helle, "nether world, abode of the dead, infernal regions, place of torment for the wicked after death," from Proto-Germanic haljō "the underworld" (source also of Old Frisian helle, Old Saxon hellia, Dutch hel, Old Norse hel, German Hölle, Gothic halja "hell"). Literally "concealed place" (compare Old Norse hellir "cave, cavern"), from PIE root kel- (1) "to cover, conceal, save."¹

The following study is the result of a recent re-examination of the Lucan concept of the afterlife presented in the Third Gospel parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19–31).² Its primary thesis is that Lazarus’ paradisal place at the side of Abraham (Lk 16:22), and the rich man’s infernal place of torment (Lk 16:23), are not the final resting places called “heaven” and “hell,” as is generally supposed. Rather, they are two disparate sections of the same underworld, where all Jewish souls were believed to be interred until the general resurrection and final judgement of the dead at the conclusion of the Mosaic Covenant Age. This thesis is adduced from the finding that neither the common understanding of many in the contemporary church regarding the setting of this parable, nor the use of the name “hell” for the place Luke called hadēs, holds up under exegetical examination.

Prima facie, the contemporary doctrine that insists the rich man was in hell is undone because the narrative’s internal timing is pre-Resurrection (v. 31), that is, the events described took place long before the Day of Judgement (Mt 25:31; Rv 20:7–13); an inherent contradiction that essentially means the rich man was damned to hellfire before the day he was damned to hellfire (Ac 17:31; cf. Rv 20:15). This contradiction collapses into complete absurdity at Revelation 20:14–15, where it is prophesied that the “death” the rich man just experienced, and the “hell” wherein he now suffers, are themselves “cast into the lake of fire” before he is. Awareness of these, and other, intertextual incompatibilities no doubt impelled the earliest theologians of the church to set the foundations for many of the elaborate medieval notions of the afterlife such as Purgatory, Limbo,and the Harrowing of Hell.

As for the translation “hell,” it falters for the simple reason that it is semantically unsuitable, by which I mean, because it is anachronistic, the transference through translation of the semantic domain of the modern word hell over that of the Koine Greek hadēs is illegitimate. At the time of the parable’s composition, hadēs could not possibly have conveyed to Luke’s first century Greek readers the fifteen hundred years of European speculation, and mythologising, that the word hell conveyed to the first readers of the New Testament in English,³ never mind the extra five centuries of Enlightenment-induced theologising the word hell now conveys to its 21st century English readers.⁴

Hell in the KJV

Hell. Hell (from a Germanic root meaning “to cover”) is the traditional English translation of the Hebrew word Sheol, found sixty-five times in the Hebrew Bible, and of the Greek word Hades, used sixty-six times in the Apocrypha and ten times in the New Testament. In the NRSV these words are simply transliterated into English, and the translation “hell” is reserved for Gehenna.⁵

Today’s English-speaking churchgoer can be forgiven for still believing that the rich man of Luke 16:19–31 was suffering in the eternal flames of hell. After all, this is the impression the paraenetic teaching of the Roman Catholic, and the Protestant, church have always left in the minds of the faithful. Moreover, that is where the 1769 Blayney standardised Oxford revision of the 1611 King James Bible (KJV),⁶ the single most influential translation on the doctrine of popular English-speaking Christianity, says he was.

Luke 16:23

  KJV:   And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off,
          and Lazarus in his bosom.

  STR:  kai en tō hadē eparas tous ophthalmous autou huparchōn en basanois hora
          ton Abraam apo makrothen kai Lazaron en tois kolpois autou.⁷

  NKJV: And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off,
          and Lazarus in his bosom.

  NRSV: In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away
          with Lazarus by his side.

Comparing the four readings above, we see that where the 18th century KJV has the translation “hell,” the Greek text has hadē, which term the 1982 New King James Version (NKJV), and the 1989 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), suggest is better represented in modern English as “Hades.” Clearly, contra the KJV, the two updated versions have opted to transliterate, rather than translate, the original Greek name for the parabolic rich man’s location. This type of mismatch between the older and newer versions typically indicates a significant hermeneutical shift in the thinking of Bible translators, and a concomitant development in the dominant theological ideas within Christian academia.

This telling mismatch is reminiscent of the one at Matthew 24:3 KJV, which we examined in a previous study.⁸ There, where the Greek is literally “the end of the eon (aiōn),” the KJV reads “the end of the world,” while the current versions now read “the end of the age.” In light of what was learned in that study about the impact the KJV’s rendering of aiōn as world had on the laity’s view of eschatology, it is easy to suppose that the impact its translating hadēs as hell has had on the laity’s view of the afterlife is every bit as confounding, and enduring.

Hellish Traditions

hell (n.)
In Middle English, also of the Limbus Patrum, place where the Patriarchs, Prophets, etc. awaited the Atonement. Used in the KJV for Old Testament Hebrew Sheol and New Testament Greek Hades, Gehenna. Used figuratively for "state of misery, any bad experience" at least since late 14c. As an expression of disgust, etc., first recorded 1670s.¹

It goes without saying that, between the 1600s and today, the language, culture, and worldview of the English-speaking church has evolved to such a radical extent that, in the absence of any formal theological training, the commonly held doctrines of hell in the 17th century church would, to the modern believer, seem so alien in their ideation, and application, as to appear at best unchristian, and at worst unhinged.⁹ The thought of an all-loving Jesus consigning billions of forensically innocent non-Christians to the same punishment as inveterate murderers, rapists, and child-molesters, strikes us today as so patently unfair, it borders on sadistic psychopathy. In fact, the idea of even the most unrepentant of sinners having to endure a limited time of torture in a merciless dungeon between death and Kingdom Come seems unnecessarily excessive; but such notions were a mainstay in the fire-and-brimstone sermons of pious preachers from the days of the early church until well into the 1900s.

For much of Christian history the condemnation of unbelievers and evil-doers to the eternal torments of hell has not only been a formal item of Christian belief but a powerful and vividly portrayed aspect of the way in which the church has sought to ensure conformity of belief and reformation of life. But today it is questionable how many Christians … hold to that belief in anything like the same sense. Some, who would still hold to a division after death between the saved and the unsaved, prefer to speak of annihilation by exclusion from God’s presence rather than of torment. Others would … declare themselves agnostic about any form of post-mortem existence and understand any talk of hell as a poetic evocation of the horror of alienation from the way of God in the present. Many other examples could be given of beliefs which have at one time been a cardinal element in Christian teaching, but which have now been largely set to one side or transformed out of all recognition.¹⁰

The hyper-equalitarian social milieu in which the contemporary churchgoer is steeped, and its overweening moral squeamishness, would strike the Jacobean divines who penned the KJV as equally unchristian, and unhinged. Doubtless, king James’ handpicked translators would think it not only right, but proper, for the Divine Magistrate to torture whomsoever he wished, in whichever manner he wished, for however long he wished; a position that is, with regards to the judicial prerogatives of the Lord, eminently compatible with that of the Scriptures. Yet, because of the particularity of the milieux in which they were steeped, many of the aspects of the KJV translators’ conceptions of hell, which are incompatible with ours, are just as incompatible with the biblical conceptions of Sheol and Hades; their scholarly pretentions, and personal reveries, notwithstanding.

The divines of the first decade of seventeenth-century England were alert to the glamour of antiquity, in many ways consciously archaic in phraseology and grammar, meticulous in their scholarship and always looking to the primitive and the essential as the guarantee of truth. Their translation was driven by that idea of a constant present, the feeling that the riches, beauties, failings and suffering of Jacobean England were part of the same world as the one in which Job, David or the Evangelists walked. … The King James Translators could write their English words as if the passage of 1,600 or 3,000 years made no difference.¹¹

Of course, the passage of time did make a difference, particularly with the church in England. The long process of reformation from Roman Catholicism to Anglican Protestantism began in the lifetimes of the KJV translators. Their theological worldview, although nominally Protestant, was still informed by Catholic thinking. With regards to the doctrine of the afterlife, and the abode of the dead, they thought largely in Medieval Catholic terms, such as Purgatorium (“Purgatory”), Limbus patrim (“Limbo of the Patriarchs”), and Limbus infantium (“Limbo of (unbaptised) Children”), to name a few.

PURGATORY Centuries-old dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. The term itself is derived from the Latin purgare, which means “to cleanse” or “to purify.” ... The Council of Lyons in 1274 articulated the doctrine. The Council of Florence in 1439 defined it as both penal and purificatory in nature. In 1563 the Council of Trent recognized the validity of suffrages performed for the benefit of those in purgatory. … Related to purgatory there are two additional specialized abodes for the dead. Limbus infantium is reserved for infants who die before baptism. … Old Testament saints were consigned to Limbus patrim prior to Christ’s atoning work, after which they were translated to heaven.

Roman Catholics appeal to Matt. 12:32; 1 Pet. 3:18–20; 4:6; and 1 Cor. 3:15 for biblical support of the dogma. They also appeal to 2 Maccabees 12:38–45 in the OT Apocrypha for support. None of these texts explicitly articulates a doctrine of Purgatory; the doctrine is formed from extrabiblical tradition.¹²

The artificial irritant around which these dubious pearls formed was the belief that Christ descended into hell between his death and his resurrection, in order to lead the pre-Christian saints to heaven. First articulated in the 4th century AD, in various creeds, and in the writings of the ante-Nicene fathers, the idea eventually became known as the “Harrowing of Hell,” and was a popular theme in the plays and paintings of the Middle Ages.¹³ As with Purgatory and Limbo, serious theological consideration was given by the contemporaries, both Catholic and Reformed, of the KJV divines, as to the motive and manner of Christ’s harrowing of hell.

The “harrowing of hell” … is based on New Testament references to resurrection “from the dead,” not just “from death” (Matt 17:9; Luke 24:5; Acts 4:10; Rom 4:24; 1 Cor 15:20). The idea … continued to be developed throughout church history. For example, medieval writers like Abelard spoke of Jesus’ power invading hell, and Aquinas described Jesus’ mission to deal with saints and sinners in Purgatory and Limbo (Summa Theologiæ III.52.2, 4–8). Luther described Jesus’ descent in twofold terms: 1) as vicarious identification with the sinner, and 2) as victor over hell (Luther, “Tourgau Sermon on Christ’s Descent into Hell”; see Kolb and Nestingen, Sources and Contexts, 245–55). Calvin especially emphasized the vicarious suffering of our torments (Institutes II.16.8, compare Heb 5:7–8). However, Bucer and Bezer saw this descent as a mere metaphor for “grave.”¹⁴

So, what the KJV committeemen had in mind when they translated hadēs as hell was as different to that of the NT authors, as it is to ours today. Which is not to say there were no similarities at all. Obviously, since the 17th century doctrines developed from the descriptions, actual and supposed, of the afterlife dispersed throughout the Roman Catholic canon, shared characteristics with the concepts of the original authors are bound to exist. In the case of the limbo of the patriarchs, who can fail to see the points of correspondence with the rich man’s abode in the Lucan parable? The great patriarch, the purgatorial heat, the grave imagery, the expanses, the chasm, and the anguished confinement; they are all there, certainly. However, what is not there is what reveals to us the millennium-and-a-half wide gulf fixed between the hell of the KJV divines, and the hadēs of the Evangelist: Christian Hope.

The implication of the parable is clear, there was never any hope of salvation for the rich man, even when he was alive. Neither his Jewish heredity, nor his Jewish upbringing, provided him with genuine saving faith, so he died as he lived, constitutionally deaf to the spirit of the Law. A lifetime of instruction in the commandments, of breathing the atmosphere of Torah observance, had failed to inculcate in him any sense of covenantal obligation to alleviate the suffering and poverty of his fellow Jew, Lazarus.¹⁵ In the horrifying, post-mortem moment of absolute clarity, when he saw Abraham, the great patriarch of the Jewish race, and the beggar Lazarus, feasting together as sumptuously as he was wont to do in life, the tormented rich man understood that, not only was his final condemnation on the day of judgement certain, but so, too, was that of his similarly impenitent brethren. Indeed, at the end of Luke's withering narrative, we learn the fate of any Jew who was deaf to Moses and the Prophets, and therefore incapable of recognising, or believing, the one greater than Moses (Ac 13:27, 38-39; He 3:3), who was soon to rise from the dead (Lk 16:30–31).

TO BE CONTINUED ...

1.  From the Online Etymology Dictionary entry on hell.
2.  The traditional position of the Church, that the author of the Third Gospel is the Evangelist known as Luke, is maintained throughout. That this same Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles is likewise maintained.
3.  “Parts of the Bible had been translated into Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, but not until the end of the fourteenth century had there been a complete text.” Adam Nicolson, God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2004), 248.
4.  Along with inducing theologians into “tracing the evolution of a lofty idea of God from crude primitive origins,” in order to defend against the caricature of God as a “timeless tyrant, … the Enlightenment did a further service to Christianity by ridiculing hell.” John McManners, “Enlightenment: Secular and Christian (1600 -1800),” in Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 282.
5.  My emphasis. Bo Reicke, “Hell,” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993), 277.
6.  Samuel Macauley Jackson, ed., The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. II (New York; London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1908–1914), 199.
7.  This is my transliteration of Stephen’s 1550 Textus Receptus: With Morphology. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2002. Since the STR Greek text in my Logos edition has no punctuation or diacritics, I decided, for the sake of clarity, to represent the heavy breathing marks from the Nestle Aland text of this verse with “h,” capitalise abraam and lazaron, and place a full-stop at the end.
8.  For a deep-dive into the difficulties with the Matthew 24:3 KJV translation, see my post “Excursus – A World of Difference”.
9.  “The preaching of hell fire … seems so unchristian now in its use of the weapon of fear.” McManners, “Enlightenment,” 297.
10.  My emphasis. Maurice Wiles, “What Christians Believe,” in Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Pr
11.  Nicolson, God's Secretaries, xii.
12.  My emphasis. Robert Stewart, “Purgatory,” in Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2003), 1350.
13.  F. L. Cross and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. rev. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 475, 742.
14.  My emphasis. Dale A. Brueggemann, “Descent into the Underworld, Critical Issues,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016, n.d.).
15.  “In order to know that the rich should not live in luxury while the poor starve, a revelation from beyond the grave is not necessary because the scriptures are sufficient.” Richard J. Bauckham, “Lazarus,” in New Bible Dictionary (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1996), 679.