Something similar is true about the texts whose chief word is "Hell." The word "hell" occurs eighteen times in the Authorized Version. Once it is a translation of a Greek word Tartarus (2 Peter ii. 4) cast down to Hell to be reserved "_unto the Day of Judgment_." That certainly was not everlasting. Five times it is a translation of the word Hades whose meaning we already know, and which certainly did not mean everlasting. The other twelve times it is a translation of the word Gehenna used by our Lord, and no scholar with the least regard for his reputation would dream of stating that our Lord certainly meant it to convey the idea of endlessness. It was the name of a horrible valley outside Jerusalem where things were cast out to be burnt, to keep the city pure. The Jewish prophets took the word as a metaphor to express the fate of wicked men. From it they drew their images used by our Lord of "the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched" (Mark x. 46). To be in danger of Gehenna was to be in danger of a hereafter doom suggested by this dread place. Our Lord simply took up the vague Jewish word and did not define it. What exactly had He in His mind when He used this word? This is a question of terrible importance. He certainly meant something very stern and awful. He seems to indicate also something final and irrevocable. But there is absolutely no reason to believe that He meant to convey the idea in our minds of a vast prison, in which the souls of the lost are pierced through with agony for ever and ever. You ask, How can I know what He meant? How could I know what Shakespeare meant by a certain word? I should read up all the books and letters of Shakespeare's times in which the word occurs, and whatever it commonly meant to the people of Shakespeare's time I should accept as being what Shakespeare meant. That looks sensible, does it not? Well, a very interesting investigation has been made by various scholars. They have examined all the existing Jewish writings where the word Gehenna was used from 300 B. C. to 300 A. D. Then they have examined the Jewish Talmuds which run on to the fourth and fifth century. A modern English scholar, Dr. Dewes, says (_Plea for a New Translation_, p. 23): "Every passage has been carefully examined which is quoted in the works of Lightfoot, Schoetgen, Buxtorf, Castell, Schindler, Glass, Bartoloccius, Ugalino and Nork, and the result of the whole examination is this: _there are only two passages which even a superficial reader could consider to be corroborative of the assertion that the Jews understood Gehenna to be a place of everlasting torment_."