The first creature that some say existed even before Chaos himself. Achlys: the goddess of the eternal night.The full list of the Primordial Greek Gods: From Gaia came Ourea, the god of the mountains, Pontus, the god of the sea, and Uranus, the god of the heavens. Erebus, the god of darkness, and Nyx, the goddess of the night, were also born from Chaos. Goddess Gaia then followed, t he personification of Earth. Then Tartarus was born, a dark place like the abyss and the original god of the Underworld. We can see that ancient Greeks considered love as one of the most fundamental powers in the world. Out of Chaos came Eros, the god of love and procreation. Chaos was the personification of the absolute nothingness - an immerse, dark void from which all of the existence sprang. Natural forces are personified and the most basic components of the cosmos are Gods.Īccording to Hesiod, in the beginning there was Chaos. The famous work of Hesiod, called Theogony (meaning “birth of the Gods” in Greek), presents a complete cosmogony. When studying the Revelation, or any scriptural passage, make sure you use multiple versions so you may catch these translation differences, like when hell is used instead of Hades.Greek mythology starts at the beginning of the world! The Greek Gods that existed then were the Primordial Gods. However, clearly this is not always the case and the reader should be aware of the subtle differences. In the New Testament the word Hades seems often to be used as synonymous with Hell, a place of eternal torment. Thus we see that the author certainly did not see Hades as the place of torment, but as a personage. This is the second death, the lake of fire" (Revelation 20:13-14). Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. 20.13-14 it is clear that both Death and Hades are personifications: "And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up their dead, and all were judged according to what they had done. Both terms seem to indicate a personification of the two concepts, thus it is quite possible Hades does not represent either a place of the dead or a place of torment. In all four places Hades appears with Death. The word is found in four places in the Revelation: 1.18, 6.8, 20.13, 20.14. However, the question then becomes, is Hades being used by the author to indicate a place of eternal torment, i.e., as a synonym for Gehenna, is it being used in the sense of the place of the dead, i.e., as a synonym for Sheol, or does it designate the Greek god? In the book of Revelation the term Gehenna is never used. It is the word Jesus used most often to describe the place of punishment. Gehenna is the word from which we get the word hell in our Bible. Thus, the dump came to symbolize a place of eternal punishment "where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched" (Mark 9.48). To dispose of the garbage appropriately, the dump was continuously set afire. It was also the site of earlier child sacrifice (cf., 2 Chronicles 28.3, 33.6, Jeremiah 7.31, 32.35). Originally, Gehenna was the garbage dump on the southwest side of Jerusalem. They had their own word for the place of eternal damnation and punishment. So, by the time of Jesus there was a split between the orthodox Jews (Sadducees) who believed scripture taught there was no afterlife and the liberal Jews (Pharisees) who believed in both heaven and hell.īut even with the Pharisees Hades did not equal hell. Thus Hades came to indicate not so much a Greek god, but a place-even in the Israelite mind. Throughout most of the Old Testament times there was no notion of an afterlife death was the end of existence (cf., Psalm 6.5, 49.14, Job 7.9) and euphemistically one went down to Sheol, or to the place of the dead. When the Old Testament was translated into Greek the term Hades was used to translate the Hebrew Sheol. Their concept of heaven was such that only the gods could reside there (with a few apparent exceptions in the literature). In their mythology the dead were escorted to the river Styx and for a price they were sailed across to their eternal home. It was simply a place where mortals went after death. In the ancient Greek mind, the underworld was not a place of torment nor punishment. Originally, Hades was a Greek god of the underworld. Your pastor is correct in his assessment, for indeed Hades and hell are two different concepts-at least, they used to be. When I asked our pastor he said there was a difference between Hades and hell. In that verse he read that Death and Hades were sent to earth. "Last week in a Bible study our pastor read Revelation 6.8.
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