Hell, hellfire, Gehenna, other people - what's all that about?

Interest has been stirred by the move by Bishop Odd Bondevik of Norway who wants to remove the word 'hell' from the new translation of the Bible, not because he doesn't believe in it (as some don't) but because the word has been made banal by overuse (as in 'My hairdo hell, by celebrity weathergirl').  He wants to call it Gehenna. Only that's the name of a local  death metal band.  As you'd expect. So let us offer another couple of interesting and non-banal interpretations of hell.  CS Lewis in The Great Divorce  gives an idea of heaven as infinitely large, solid, real, and colourful, and hell as a dreary city of endless grey suburban streets, but which in reality is infinitesimally small - 'All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world, or one atom of this Real World'.  The notion of hell as ultimate restriction, blindness, refusal to engage with the beautiful 'reality' of goodness and God, is curiously and ironically echoed in Sartre's miserabilist play 'Huis Clos', with the famous 'L'enfer, c'est les autres'.  Confinement, boredom... nice essay here comparing it to Dante's more flamboyant torments. 'Hell is just an extension of the human condition...no need for supernatural demons or punishments'.

Comments

[Alistair]

As for "interesting and non-banal interpretations of Hell", in 1889 the Rev. Joseph Furniss published "The Sight of Hell", (A Catholic book for children), in which he said it was a place with several dungeons, each of which sponsored a different torture – a burning place, a red-hot floor, a boiling kettle, a red-hot coffin and a red-hot oven. It says:

"Little child, if you go to hell there will be a devil at your side to strike you. He will go on striking you every minute for ever and ever without stopping. The first stroke will make your body as bad as the body of Job, covered, from head to foot, with sores and ulcers. The second stroke will make your body twice as bad as the
body of Job. The third stroke will make your body three times as bad as the body of Job. The fourth stroke will make your body four times as bad as the body of
Job. How, then, will your body be after the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred million of years without stopping? Perhaps at this moment, seven o'clock in he evening, a child is just going into hell. To-morrow
evening, at seven o'clock, go and knock at the gates of hell and ask what the child is doing. The devils will go and look. They will come back again and say, the
child is burning. Go in week and ask what the child is doing; you will get the same answer, it is burning; Go in a year and asks the same answer comes - it is burning. Go in a million of years and ask the same question, the answer is just the same - it is burning. So, if you go for ever and ever, you will always get the same answer - it is burning in the fire."

At another point:

“The little child is in the red-hot oven. See how it screams to get out, how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor."

Bishop Odd could rename Hell as "Furniss" - I bet there is no heavy metal band called that (yet?)

[Jess H]

I doubt the authenticity of a great deal of the Bible, so why not change "Hell" as well?