'Hell'

The Authorised (King James) Version is the official version of the Holy Scriptures used in the liturgy of our Province and Diocese, although it must be said that the actual text of Scripture used in the Mass lectionary of the 1928 American BCP is the Revised Version, implemented with the 1928 Prayer Book at its revision beginning in 1913. The Revised Version is a slight modernisation of the KJV, which updates some archaic words and phrases. We certainly use the KJV for the Offices and other liturgies of the Church. I think the best modern translation from the Greek is the Revised Standard Version (RSV), not be confused, of course, with the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), an inclusive language innovation.

The Oxford Annotated Edition of the old RSV is still in print and readily available.

The confusion over the word 'hell' arises from the Latin Vulgate Bible of Saint Jerome, which translates the various terms 'sheol,' hades', and 'gehenna' all alike as infernis. From the word infernis the earliest English Bibles translated the word into our language as 'hell,' without making the original differentiations in the original languages of Greek and Hebrew. The best example of this Latinised English is in the BCP version of the Apostles' Creed, which states that Our Lord 'descended into hell,' which, of course, means not that He descended into gehenna, a false idea taught and misconstrued by John Calvin, but that the Lord descended into hades or sheol, the abode of the dead, where he proclaimed the Gospel of His death and resurrection to the righteous saints of the Old Testament who awaited His coming (I Peter 3.18-21, 4.6). The Orthodox Study Bible offers an excellent new translation of the Greek Old Testament Septuagint, which properly translates the Hebrew words as they were transliterated into Greek; it uses the New King James Version for the New Testament. Gehenna, everlasting punishment by fire, or hell-fire, and hades/sheol, the abode of all the dead, the 'place of departed spirits' as described in the rubric of the 1928 BCP for the Apostles' Creed, are different states of being, and should be carefully distinguished. Our Lord Himself describes the state of the departed in Christ as 'Paradise' and the 'Bosom of Abraham' - words and phrases meant to describe the blessedness of the faithful departed in the Intermediate State between death and glorification. Such a condition is diametrically opposite the punishment and desolation of those consigned eternally to the flames of gehenna after death. The Church Expectant is a Christ-transformed and Christ-hallowed hades or sheol, not a gehenna. Even some the greatest medieval schoolmen, such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, failed to make this distinction and perceived fire-purgatory for the saved to be a lesser gehenna or a temporary suffering in gehenna itself. A proper translation of the Scriptures alleviates the difficulty involved in that case...