What is Hades?

(Snippet from Chapter in Book)

The word Hades is often translated as “Hell” in English translations. Using the actual Greek word Hades would be a much better choice, so as to not confuse this word with Gehenna.

Gehenna is almost always translated as “Hell.” Unfortunately, many English translations use the word “Hell” for translating both Hades and Gehenna. This is much like the issue of translating both zoe and psuche as “life.” This oversimplification of the scriptures has masked the important differences intended in the original words. The consequences of this has resulted in several disastrous misunderstandings.

This truly confuses the issue of the after-life, as the words Hades and Gehenna are not equivalent. Neither Jesus nor any New Testament author would have ever thought of equating these two words. On the contrary, they used different words because they represented different things!

Hades is the Greek word that is equivalent to the Hebrew word Sheol, which is used throughout the Hebrew Old Testament. In the Old Testament, Sheol is portayed as the place of the dead and nothing more. In fact, Sheol is sometimes thought of as the “grave.”  It was never portrayed as a place of torment, nor a place of paradise, or depicted as some sort of dichotomous realm.

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...In Acts 2:25-32 Peter explains David’s prophecy that God would not leave Jesus’ psuche in Hades.  In other words, God would raise Jesus from the dead...