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Do the words Abyss or Tartarus refer to hell?

By Jeremy Myers
14 Comments

Do the words Abyss or Tartarus refer to hell?
http://media.blubrry.com/one_verse/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/597557721-redeeminggod-152-do-the-words-abyss-or-tartarus-refer-to-hell-2-peter-24.mp3

(#AmazonAdLink) What is hell bookMy book, (#AmazonAdLink) What is Hell? is now available (#AmazonAdLink) on Amazon. I am doing a series of podcast studies that focus on some of the content from the book. The studies look at the eight key terms that are often equated with hell, and about a dozen key passages that are thought to teach about hell.

If you want to learn the truth about hell and what the Bible actually teaches about hell, make sure you get a copy of my book, (#AmazonAdLink) What is Hell?

Also, if you are part of my discipleship group, there will be an online course about hell as well.

In a previous study, we looked at whether or not the Hebrew word sheol refers to hell. We saw that it does not. It means “grave,” and is literally the hole in the ground in which dead bodies are laid.

But what about the New Testament Greek words abyss, gehenna, hades, and tartarus? Do these words refer to hell as a place of eternal suffering and torment for unbelievers? We have already learned that gehenna does not refer to hell, and next week we will consider the term “hades.” Today we look at the other two, abyss and tartarus.

Does the “abyss” refer to hell?

The Greek word abussos is often translated as “abyss” or “pit.” The word means “bottomless” and refers to a hole or pit of immeasurable depth.

TehomIn the LXX (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament), abussos is often used to translate the Hebrew word tehom, which means “the deep” and refers to the deepest parts of the sea (cf. Gen 1:2; 7:11; 8:2, 7; Psa 32:7; 35:7; 41:8; 104:6; Job 38:16; Jon 2:6; Isa 44:27; 51:10; 63:13; Ezek 26:19; 31:4, 15; Dan 3:55).

But the Hebrew concept of “the deep” (tehom) is not just equivalent to the deep parts of the ocean. As I taught in my podcast on Genesis 1:2 (and forthcoming commentary on Genesis 1), the word tehom was “an ancient, mysterious, and menacing word. To ancient minds, it was an evil word.” It carries the idea of powerful forces of chaos arrayed against the order of God’s creation.

When it comes to thinking about the relationship between “hell” and the abyss, we see that since the abyss refers to deepest parts of the sea on this world, it cannot refer to some sort of afterlife experience where people burn and suffer for eternity.

The abyss, the deep, tehom, is a symbol of the power of chaos arrayed against God and the order of creation. It is not a place where people go after they die to suffer in flames for all eternity.

The symbolic nature of the abyss is especially significant in the book of Revelation, where the word is used most frequently in the New Testament. Since the beast came out of the sea (Rev 11:7; 13:1; 17:8), this symbolizes that the beast brings chaos. And indeed, when the abyss is opened, chaos, in the form of fire and smoke, comes up out of the pit (Rev 9:1-2, somewhat like a volcano that rises from the sea).

But ultimately, just as Jesus sent a demonic horde back into the depths of the sea (Luke 8:31), so also, God will send the beast back into the abyss from whence he came (Rev 20:1-3).

So as with sheol, the abyss does not represent hell. The abyss is literally the deep waters of the ocean, and it symbolizes chaos and disorder in God’s creation. When people go down into the abyss, it symbolizes their death in the depths of the ocean (Ezek 26:19).

the abyss is not hellSimilarly, to be delivered from the abyss is to be delivered from death in the sea (cf. LXX Psa 105:9; Jon 2:6; Isa 63:13).

No reference to the abyss ever contains descriptions of fire, suffering, or the torture of people for eternity.

Therefore, the word abyss cannot refer to a place of everlasting suffering and torment in the fires of hell.

But what about tartarus?

Does “Tartarus” refer to hell?

Another word from Scripture which might possibly refer to hell is the word tartarus. The word is only used in 2 Peter 2:4 (in the verb form, tartaroō), where Peter describes God’s action of casting the angels who sinned down into hell, delivering them in chains of darkness while they awaited judgment.

To understand Peter’s words, it is important to identify the symbolism of Tartarus, and also the event to which Peter refers. Let us first consider the symbolism of Tartarus.

tartarusSince the Bible nowhere else speaks of Tartarus, we must assume that Peter had the Greek and Roman mythology of Tartarus in mind when he wrote of it. In Greek mythology, the word tartarus spoke of two things. It was first of all the name of the one of the original primordial deities. However, the word tartarus also speaks of a place. In this way, the word tartarus is like hadēs, which also refers to a place and a god in Greek mythology.

As a place, tartarus was thought to be a dungeon of suffering and torment for the Titans. The Titans were the second generation of primordial deities, and ruled during the legendary Golden Age of humanity, but were eventually defeated by the third generation of gods, the Olympians, which are the Greek and Roman gods that most people are familiar with (Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, etc.).

When the Olympian deities defeated the Titans, the Titans were sent to Tartarus to suffer. Humans typically went to Hades rather than Tartarus, though later mythology describes how some of the “worst” humans were sent to Tartarus, such as King Sisyphus for violating the rules of hospitality, and King Tantalus for killing and eating his own son.

So by referencing Tartarus, is Peter endorsing the Greek and Roman mythology about this place?

No. While Peter is certainly alluding to this myth, we cannot accept that he is endorsing the idea of multiple generations of deities waging war with each other in primordial history. Peter is referring to the myth to make a point, without endorsing the myth itself. “Concepts from the cultural background may be taken up without acceptance of their underlying ideology” (Johnston, (#AmazonAdLink) Shades of Sheol, 25.).

Even today, Christians might talk about Achilles’ heel or Cupid’s arrows, reference the days of the week or the months of the year, and even celebrate Christmas, Easter, and Halloween, all without any sort of endorsement of the pagan mythology that lies at the roots of all these terms and holidays. Peter is likely doing exactly the same thing with Tartarus.

However, having said that, the Greek and Roman myths do bear some resemblance to various events recorded in Scripture. So maybe in referring to tartarus in which angels were bound with chains as they await judgment, Peter is pointing his readers to one of these biblical events.

There are two possible options.

Option 1: The Angels Bound in Chains of Darkness Refers to the Angelic Rebellion

Some believe that Peter is referring to the angelic rebellion which is purportedly described in Isaiah 14:12-21 and Ezekiel 28:1-19 (cf. Luke 10:18; Heb 12:22; Rev 9:1; 12:3-9). As to the timing of this event, some believe it occurred before Genesis 1:1, others believe it occurred in a “gap” of time that might exist between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, while a third group thinks it occurred sometime after the final day of creation in Genesis 2:3, but before the serpent comes to tempt Eve in Genesis 3:1.

So in this view, regardless of when the angels rebelled against God, He bound them with chains of darkness and sent them to a place called Tartarus to await judgment.

Option 2: The Angels Bound in Chains of Darkness Refers to the Sons of God of Genesis 6

nephilimA second view is that Peter is referring to the flood which came upon the earth as a result of the sons of God having children with the daughters of men (Gen 6:1-4). The offspring of this union is referred to as the Nephilim, which might have also been the “giants” among men (Gen 6:4; Num 13:33; Deut 3:11; Josh 11:21-22; 1 Sam 17).

Support for this view is found in 1 Peter 3:19-20, where Peter indicates that Jesus preached to the spirits who were in prison, who sinned in the days of Noah. Jude 6 also speaks about angels who did not keep their proper abode being bound by God with chains of everlasting darkness until the day of judgment.

As a result of what happened in Genesis 6:1-4, God may also have restricted or limited the actions and behavior of the angels so that they could not sin in such ways again.

Both views, however, suffer from one significant problem.

If the angels who sinned (either during a rebellion or preceding the flood) were all bound with chains of darkness and sent away into Tartarus, how is it that Jesus encountered evil spirits during His earthly ministry?

Furthermore, how is it that Satan still prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking whom He may devour (1 Pet 5:8)? Satan was, after all, one of the angels who rebelled. If all the demons and evil spirits are already bound, then why are we instructed to stand against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places (Eph 6:12)?

If fallen angels are already abound, how is it that Satan can be bound again for a thousand years (Rev 20:2)?

2 Peter 2:4 is symbolic for something other than a literal chaining of angels in a place called Tartarus

It appears, therefore, that nearly all of the imagery in 2 Peter 2:4 is symbolic for something other than a literal chaining of angels in a place called Tartarus. Support for this idea is found in Wisdom of Solomon 17:17, which describes the ninth plague of darkness that came upon Egypt (Exod 10:21-29) as a “chain of darkness.”

In fact, the entire chapter of Wisdom of Solomon 17 seems to be referenced by Peter. The chapter speaks of captives of darkness and prisoners of a long night who engage in secret sins and suffer from a self-kindled fire (17:2-6). The chapter says that the darkness came upon them from Hades (17:14), and so they were kept in a prison not made of iron (17:16).

All of this imagery describes the ninth plague of darkness that came upon Egypt. Literal chains and prisons were not involved at all. The imagery instead refers to the oppressive darkness that struck the people of Egypt with fear and caused them to be immobilized, as if they were bound with chains.

This appears to be the meaning of 2 Peter 2:4.

Since fallen angels have always been active after they rebelled against God, and have apparently not been literally bound with chains in some mythical Tartarus, Peter’s words must be understood symbolically, as referring to the fear of God that fallen angels feel as they wait in trembling for the judgment of God to come upon them (Jas 2:19).

The rebellious angels are immobilized in some sense by the fear (the chains of darkness) of the judgment that will come upon them from God.

chains of darkness tartarus

Even if this view is not accepted, and someone wants to think that God truly did lock away fallen angels with chains of darkness in some mythological location called Tartarus, it is still important to note that Peter’s description says nothing about humans being sent there.

So even if Tartarus truly is a prison for fallen angels as they await judgment, Scripture does not teach in any way that humans are sent there.

Whether Tartarus is a literal spiritual prison for fallen angels or a symbolic way of referring to the fear of God that fallen angels feel and the judgment of God that is coming upon them, it is not describing a hellish place of suffering and torment for human beings.

There is no passage in Scripture which says that humans will be sent to Tartarus.

Therefore, just like sheol, abyss, gehenna, and the outer darkness, the word tartarus does not teach about a place called “hell” where humans will be sent to suffer and burn for all eternity.

Whatever Tartarus is, humans do not experience it at all.

Conclusion

This brief study has shown that the words “abyss” and “tartarus” do not refer to hell as a place of eternal suffering for the unbelieving dead. Unbelievers will not spend eternity suffering in the abyss or in tartarus.

So far in our study, we have seen the same thing about sheol, gehenna, and the outer darkness. Next week we will consider the word hades. Join us then!

what is hellDo you have more questions about hell? Are you afraid of going to hell? Do want to know what the Bible teaches about hell? Take my course "What is Hell?" to learn the truth about hell and how to avoid hell. This course costs $297, but when you join the Discipleship group, you can to take the entire course for free.

God is Redeeming God, Redeeming Scripture, Redeeming Theology, z Bible & Theology Topics: 2 Peter 2:4, abyss, Genesis 6:1-4, hell, Nephilim, tartarus, tehom, the deep, what is hell

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Did the Flood of Genesis 6-8 really happen, and if so, did God really send it?

By Jeremy Myers
18 Comments

Did the Flood of Genesis 6-8 really happen, and if so, did God really send it?

The flood of Genesis 6-8 is one of the most troubling passages of Scripture due to its violent portrayal of God. In general, there are three approaches to understanding the flood event.

1. Resistance is futile! Assimilate or die!

This view says this about Genesis 6-8:

It happened exactly as the text says, and God is sometimes very violent. Deal with it. If you don’t like this, God will probably be even more violent toward you in eternity when you burn in hell. But I love God, so He’ll be nice to me. And even though God said He would never again destroy the earth with water (Genesis 8:21), in the future, God will send a flood of fire upon the earth to destroy everyone again (2 Peter 3:6-7).

the waters of the flood(Note: I include Greg Boyd’s “Divine Withdrawal” view in this category. He argues that God finally got fed up with the evil of mankind, and so He withdrew His divine hand of protection that was holding back the destructive floodwaters, thereby allowing them to destroy humanity. In this view, God didn’t do the destroying Himself; He simply stepped back to let the destroyer have its way with humanity. In a personal conversation with Greg Boyd, I related to him the following video clip, and he agreed that for the most part, it represents his position.)

2. Flood? What flood? We don’t need no stinking flood!

This second view says this about Genesis 6-8:

The account is some sort of myth. Maybe it complete fiction. Maybe it’s a fable of some sort that teaches a lesson about God’s hatred of sin. Maybe there was some sort of local flood that might have happened a long time ago, but it certainly didn’t cover the earth and kill everyone. Whatever happened (if anything happened at all), it didn’t happen as the text says.

People who hold this view also reject the historical accuracy of many other passages in Scripture as well. Some will even reject the historicity of the miracles of Jesus, including His resurrection.

I have never been comfortable with calling anything in Scripture an error, partly because such an approach often allows people to simply pick and choose which passages they like and which ones they don’t, consigning the texts they don’t like into hermeneutical oblivion. In other words, writing off a text as “error” allows a person to avoid seriously studying and teaching that text, thereby ignoring or missing the deep truth(s) it contains.

3. The Correct View

(That’s a joke! I’m proposing a view, which I think has a lot of merit in Scripture…)

(Oh, and I believe the flood truly happened. I believe the worldwide flood is an historical event. There is lots of sociological and geological support for the flood, which I won’t dive into here. But regardless, my view of the flood can still be true even if there was no worldwide flood.)

Before I suggest a third view, note two things from the text:

1. People were violent before the flood (Genesis 6:5, 11, 13).

The stated reason for God sending the flood is because the earth was filled with violence. God seems opposed to how violent mankind has come, and so decides to do something about it.

2. People were violent after the flood (Genesis 8:21)

The flood brought no change to the evil and violent tendencies of the human heart.

Isn’t this strange? If the stated reason for the flood was to stop the violence of humanity, then God seems to have failed in His task of stopping violence. Is God so foolish that He couldn’t look at the hearts of humanity before the flood and see that even if He killed them all, the survivors and their descendants would continue to constantly live with evil hearts and violent lives?

To ask the question is to answer it. Of course God is not foolish! Something else must be going on behind the scenes.

So … Wait … God hates violence?

As soon as we start looking for what this “something else” might be, some other details from the text start to jump out from the page.

For example … God states at the beginning of the account that He is sorry He made mankind because they are so evil and violent (Genesis 6:6).

Ok, so God is opposed to violence. That’s a good thing.

But then … to show how opposed He is to all the violence that covers the face of the earth … God engages in the greatest act of violence possible by drowning all the people and animals on the earth (except for those on the ark)?

So to stop the violence that covers the earth, God sends a violent flood to cover the earth?

Something’s not right here.

Yes, “God is God and can do what He wants,” but this seems a bit over the top, even for God.

family drowning in the floodIs this just a divine example of the bad parenting advice “Do as I say; not as I do?”

If so, then since we become like the God we worship, it is no wonder that people were just as violently evil after the flood as they were before.

It is a very, very tiny step from believing that “God is extremely violent against evil people” to “God wants me to engage in violence against evil people.” Indeed, the rest of biblical history (along with all human culture) reveals this exact step taking place over and over and over again.

If God really is so violent, why wasn’t Jesus?

Jesus was adamantly opposed to all forms of murderous violence, even against His so-called “enemies.”

He didn’t call down fire from heaven, but rather rebuked His disciples for thinking such things (Luke 9:54). He didn’t call down angels to defend Himself (Matthew 26:53). He even told Peter to put away His sword, and then He healed the man that Peter has struck (Matthew 26:52).

Yes, Jesus cleansed the temple, but no human or animal died, nor does the text say anyone was even hurt (Matthew 21:12-17; Mark 11:15-19; Luke 19:45-48; John 2:13-16). Yes, Jesus told his disciples to buy a sword , but this was to fulfill prophecy; not so they could actually use it. And don’t even get me started on the book of Revelation.

If it is true, as Scripture says, that Jesus fully reveals God to us (John 1:14, 18; 14:9-11; 2 Cor 4:4; Php 2:6; Col 1:15; Heb 1:2-3), but Jesus was never violent, then we are faced with a choice: Either (A) God truly is violent and Scripture is lying when it says that Jesus fully reveals God to us, or (B) Scripture is not lying, and Jesus does truly reveal God to us, and therefore God is not violent, and we need to understand all those violent texts in some other way.

I go with Option B: Scripture is not lying, and Jesus is not violent, so neither is God.

Isn’t that a contradiction?

If Scripture is not lying, but Scripture says God is violent, while Jesus shows that God is not violent, isn’t this a contradiction?

It initially seems so.

But with one small little tweak on how you read the Bible, it all falls into place.

Most people think the Bible reveals God to us. And while it does to some extent, the ultimate revelation of God is found in Jesus Christ (whom we read about in Scripture, of course). But Jesus shows us how to read the Bible. Jesus provides the interpretive lens through which to study Scripture.

Jesus crucifiedAnd when we look to Jesus, and specifically the most violent aspect of the life of Jesus, His crucifixion, and we carefully see what is being done to Jesus on the cross, we discover something surprising.

God didn’t kill Jesus on the cross; we humans killed Jesus on the cross … and we blamed God for it. Humans killed Jesus and claimed they did so in God’s name, to fulfill God’s will.

But they weren’t fulfilling God’s will. They were doing the opposite. They were committing the greatest sin in human history. And they were completely ignorant of what they were doing. This is why Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

Through the cross, we see Jesus showing us how to understand the “violence of God.” The “violence of God” against Jesus on the cross is not God’s violence at all, but is rather the violence of humans which we then blame God for.

Since we (1) Believe God is violent, we (2) become like the God we worship by engaging in our own violence, and (3) justify our violent actions by blaming our violence on God.

But Jesus entered into this twisted framework of violent theology and blew it up from the inside. Through His death and resurrection, Jesus showed (1) that God is supremely non-violent and that (2) we humans are the violent ones.

Once we see this revelation of Jesus on the cross, we then discover that all the other violent portions of Scripture reveal exactly the same thing.

The violent texts of the Bible do not reveal God to us … they reveal us to us. The violent passages of Scripture are not a revelation of the heart of God; they are a revelation of the heart of humanity.

But humans didn’t send the flood!

So now we come back around to the flood. The flood event is extremely violent, and the text blames this violence on God. This fact invites us to read the flood through the lens of the crucifixion.

2 Peter 2 the flood

And when we do, we realize that the flood account of Genesis 6–8 sounds like the explanation that is offered for any natural disaster throughout human history.

“God sent Hurricane Katrina on the people of New Orleans because of Mardi Gras and Voodoo.”

“God sent the Indonesian Tsunami because the people there are Muslim and Hindu.”

“God caused my neighbor to get in a car wreck because he said some profane things about God when I invited him to church.”

Meanwhile, God, through Jesus Christ, is saying,

“NO! No no no no no! Please stop saying such things! I didn’t send those storms. I didn’t kill those people. I love them and forgive them as my own children! It was a terrible disaster that happened to those people, and my only involvement is to weep and mourn with them, while calling you to go help them!

“But as long as you think I am punishing them, you will continue to sit and gloat at the disaster that has come upon your enemies. But your enemies are not my enemies, for I have no enemies. I call you to love your enemies, for they are my children too.”

So What Happened in the Flood?

I believe the flood account of Genesis 6–8 was written many thousands of years after it actually happened, and is therefore a human explanation for an actual historical event. I believe it is an inspired and inerrant account of the human explanation for a natural disaster, and as such, it invites us to see how we humans explain natural disasters today.

The flood event of Genesis 6-8 contains all the signs of a human rationalization for a violent natural disaster:

The people committed great sin (Genesis 6:1-4) and became monsters. They were so bad, they did nothing but evil all the time (Genesis 6:5, 11, 13). And so God destroyed them all! Yay! But … it didn’t really work, because we’re still pretty violent. So be careful … If you sin against God, He might destroy you too!

Do you see? A flood did occur. It was a terrible natural disaster unlike anything the world had ever seen. After the fact, the few survivors started to postulate about why such a disaster occurred, and, just like every human before and since that time, they decided that God sent the disaster to punish humans for their sin.

But now, in Jesus, we have learned that this is not what God does. So when we read the flood account of Genesis 6–8, we no longer read it as a warning about what God might do to us if we sin, but rather as a warning about how we will be tempted to think and act when we see bad thing happen to other people.

the flood and total depravityLooking at our face in the mirror of Genesis 6–8, we must ward ourselves against the common human practice of condemning others when bad things happen to them. We must stop saying, “Well, he lost his job and got cancer, so God must be punishing him for some secret sin.” (Remember Job?) Instead, when bad things happen to people, we must, like Jesus, enter into their hellish pain and sorrow, and help them or love them in in any way we can.

When bad things happen to others, we must remind them (and ourselves) that God did send the disaster and is not punishing them for sin. Instead, He is with them in their suffering and grieving for their loss.

So the flood account is a hard text to read. Not because it reveals a God before whom we must cower in fear and trembling, but because it reveals to us the blackness of our own sinful hearts when we prefer to condemn others in God’s name rather than help them through their pain.

The next time something bad happens to a family member, friend, or foe, how will you respond?

This post was part of the September 2018 Synchroblog on the topic of the flood. Here are the other contributors to this month’s topic. Go and read them all!

  • The Flood Story – K. W. Leslie
  • A Flood of Insightful Hope – Jordan Hathcock
  • There will Never Be a World Wide Flood Again but Was There Ever One in the First Place? – Done with Religion
  • The Flood as a Foreshadowing to the Cross of Christ – God is Not like Thanos from the Infinity War – Scott Sloan\
  • The Great Flood: 7 Amazing Lessons Every Christian Needs To Know – Joseph A. Brown
  • Is God like Thanos from the Avengers Infinity War? – Scott and Sadie
  • The Flood is a Remedy for Corruption – Tomasz Leszczynski
  • Did God Really Drown Millions in the Flood? – Mike Edwards

God is Redeeming Scripture, Redeeming Theology, z Bible & Theology Topics: crucifxion of Jesus, flood, Genesis 6-8, Genesis 6:1-4, Genesis 6:11, Genesis 6:13, Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21, inerrancy of Scripture, synchroblog, violence of God

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