There are 5 Greek words that permeate the New Testament, (particularly Jesus’ teaching) that are in my opinion basically unrecognizable in the English translations.  These 5 words form the very foundation of Jesus’ message of salvation, yet they remain essentially unseen by the English reading Christian.

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The first two words that we will tackle in Parts 1 & 2 are psuche and zoe.  These words are interpreted interchangeably in current English translations, when in actuality Jesus used these words in contrast to each other. Jesus would never have used these two key words interchangeably.

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Furthermore, one of these words (psuche) is translated into 2 significantly different English words (life and soul), without any Biblical reason to do so.  This ambiguous dissection of the word psuche has injected confusion and obscured Jesus original teachings. 

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Psuche and zoe form the very foundation of Jesus’ teaching, but Jesus’ intent with these words is totally invisible in English Bibles.  Even worse, these two words have been inconsistently replaced by two English words (one which never existed in Jesus teaching) that end up actually changing Jesus’ original message.

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In addition, the Greek words Hades and Gehenna are not clearly differentiated in English translations, nor in main stream Christian teachings. These 2 words are directly tied and contrasted to psuche and zoe, but this impossible to see in English Bibles.

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Furthermore, Gehenna is always translated as “Hell” when in reality the concept of “Hell” that most Christians believe is not at all what Jesus was teaching about when he referred to Gehenna, which was actually a physical location just outside of Jerusalem.

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Hades and Gehenna are two completely different events (or venues) that people may face after their earthly death, but their differences are impossible to see in many English Bibles, as they are both translated as “Hell”. The way Jesus and the New Testament writers used these words show that these two words are significantly different. Both words are indeed tied to the existence of mankind after their earthly death, yet their important differences are rarely clarified in main stream Christianity.

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The other word is “appolumi" which means “utterly destroy” or “perish”.  The frequent use of this word throughout the New Testament is also directly connected to all 4 of these other words.  However, the widespread misunderstanding of the other 4 words results in the inevitable twisting of the word “appolumi” to fit the paradigm of the traditional view. Thus although the English word “perish” does indeed appear in the English Bibles, the vast majority of Christian teaching twists this word to make it mean “ruin” as opposed to the original meaning of “destroy”.  We will cover these last 3 words in detail in Part 3...