by Andrew Stephens-Rennie
You know, it used to be that being on the outside of town was not such a desirable place to be. That’s where we used to cast lepers. That’s the place where society cast those who were considered to be of little worth, those who were considered ‘impure’. And in old Jerusalem, that place was a burning rubbish dump, a place called Gehenna, not terribly far outside the south wall.
Loosely translated, Gehenna means “suburb.”
Well not quite, but…In Judaism, Gehenna was a real place. It was metaphorically linked to the underworld, and not without reason. A place of loneliness, despair and destruction. A place of punishment where the bodies of the dead were burned. Not a spiritualized place. A real, live, burning garbage heap. And it’s from this real-life place that our more modern understandings of hell are derived. Read the rest of this entry »
