HADES AND SHEOL FOR BODIES, DUST AND ASHES, NOT FOR GHOSTS.

I have been requested by one of Doctor Shepard’s friends, and, while I pen this, a member of the flock he undertakes to feed in green pastures and to lead beside still waters, to examine the above for the benefit of the unlearned, that they may know if the Doctor—who has been appointed revising critic, or something like it, to the now-preparing, or to-be-prepared, forthcoming new translation of the Bible Unionists—have the mind of the Spirit, as the result of his etymological divinations over hades, one of the chief of the opprobria of the spiritualism of the Gentiles, familiarly styled theology. So reasonable a request it was impossible to eschew. The Baptist Chronicle containing the article was procured, the criticism read, considered, and rejected as untenable, and at variance with the teaching of the Word.

The Doctor begins by telling us the derivation of the word. It is derived from the Greek alpha, a, which in composition has the force of our un, which gives a negative import to words, and is equivalent to not. Being preceded by the aspirate, which represents our h, the first syllable of the word is spelled and pronounced ha. The second syllable, des, is derived from the infinitive of the verb eido, which is, idein, and found as the last word but one in the Doctor’s quotation from Acts 2: 27, and signifies to see. Hence, when ha is prefixed to idein, it makes haidein, that is, not to see. Out of this negative infinitive, a noun or name has been formed by subscribing the first, or iota under the a, and writing it, pronounced hay; and by changing the ein, into es, pronounced aes, or for the whole word haydays. Now, these transformations do not at all affect the radical meaning of the verb: they only convert a verb into a noun, with the simple difference that, whereas a verb signifies to be, to do, or to suffer, a noun is the name of any thing that exists or of which we have any notion. Hades, therefore, retaining the idea of not seen, or invisibility, becomes a name for the hiddenness of any thing not perceived by our organs of vision: so that the unseen, the invisible, or invisibility, fully express the import of the name.

It may be seen from this, that an elephant may be in Hades as much as a man; for when both are dead and buried, or put out of sight, they are in invisibility, or the unseen, and therefore, in Hades, having entered, eis, that is, into it.

Having told the reader the derivation of this substantive noun, he proceeds to treat it as an adjective, making it express some quality respecting another noun, such as, topos, that is, place, in the sense of region, etc. His words are, "Etymologically, therefore, hades means an invisible place." Now, from what we have seen of its etymology in his analysis and mine, the idea of place or region has no existence in the etymon or root. Hence, his affirmation that "it means an invisible place," is an assertion without proof, and therefore, inadmissible as a critical definition of the term.

But it appears to me, that my friend does not weigh his words in a well-adjusted balance ere they trickle from his pen. He not only casts invisibility (hades) into his crucible, and brings it out, topos aoratos, that is, an invisible place; but he translates place into no place, and then uses place as signifying the same thing as state. Taking his definition of hades for the word itself, he says, "The word, an invisible place, is not expressive of either a place of happiness or misery." This is as near to no place as words can approach, when a place is the subject of criticism in relation to intelligent beings. "Happiness and misery," he says, "depend on the characters of the beings themselves;" who, whether good or bad, all alike inhabit this invisible place, or region. Now, I suspect, if one were to visit the Doctor’s invisible place, and to converse with some of the miserable characters there, we should find that to them it was a miserable place; it certainly would be a miserable place to the good, if what the Doctor says be true: that "it is the region of all the departed, good and bad." The most elegant mansion above ground, filled with all that the pleasure-loving could conceive of and desire, would be hell to good people if they were shut up with and compelled to endure the company or presence of miserable characters such as thieves, adulterers, murderers, drunkards, and vulgar, beastly, and obscene rowdies of all sorts. What then must Dr. Shepard’s invisible place be to the righteous, with all the rapscallion souls of the disembodied wicked there who have been put under ground since Cain sent Abel to the then unpeopled and dismal solitude! The "enmity" which God has put between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman would be as rampant in the Doctor’s under-ground, invisible place, as in all places above the sod. The popes, the priests, and the kings—a formidable host when collected together in the same place with the righteous, which are few, would be as devilish against them as ever. My friend’s soul-receptacle must be a horrible place for both parties—Pandemonium in an uproar—the righteous and the wicked wailing and gnashing their teeth at being shut up together with society so uncongenial to each.

But my friend says that his soul-receptacle (the soul for hades, are his words) is a place neither of happiness nor misery. But happiness is the state of being happy. A happy soul is a soul in happy existence, or a happy thing. Now, a thing occupies space which becomes to it its place, for something must be somewhere or in some place; the place, therefore, of a soul in happiness, or the reverse, must be a place of happiness or the contrary. The Doctor admits that the souls are happy or miserable in themselves as dependent on their characters; it is inevitable, therefore, that if his invisible place contain disembodied ghosts of the two classes, it must be a place of happiness or misery, being the abode of happy and miserable ghosts. But he says it is neither. Then what is it the place of? If souls are neither happy nor miserable, what conceivable condition are they in? I know of no other possible conclusion than that they are in a state of stupor in which they are unconscious of all possible impressions, which excludes dreaming as well as all wide-awake mentality—a stupor of soul which is death itself. A place which, in relation to human beings, is said to be neither a place of happiness nor misery, is either no place at all, or it is a place of the unconscious dead. These are the two horns of the Doctor’s dilemma, by either of which he can be tossed ad astra as his critical or theological sensitiveness may suggest as most agreeable to the inner man.

I have said that he uses state and place as synonymous. This appears, first, by his telling us that Hades means an invisible place, and then translating eis hadou, by "in the invisible state;" and second, by referring to his translation and saying concerning it, "Here hades is regarded as the place of the soul." So little precise is my friend in the use of words.

State has relation to condition, quality, circumstances, etc.; place, to space, local relation. The state of a body without life is a death-state; its quality is that which is peculiar to all animals that have breathed their last—corruptible. Place has regards to the space this corrupting body would occupy. State also applies to the living. A sinner is a man or woman of a certain quality. He is sinful. He is pervaded by the sin-quality which reigns over him, and reduces him to the worst kind of slavery, which is to work all uncleanness with greediness. This being his character, or nature and practice, he lives as a felon under sentence of death; and consequently, in a state of sin and death. A saint is in a different state. A saint is one whose transgressions have been blotted out, and who is therefore no longer under sentence of death, but under a sentence of life eternal; and consequently, in a state of obedience and life. Here are two spiritual or moral states or conditions, with a something between them as a dividing line, or as a gate which must be passed through in leaving the sin-state and entering the holy-state. But does this doctrine concerning state teach anything in regard to place? Man being the subject of both states, we infer that they exist upon earth, because it is his dwelling-place; but what are their geographical boundaries, if any, do not appear. Now hades expresses a quality from which the idea of place cannot be extracted. If I am told that an elephant or a man is in invisibility, eis hadou, and nothing more be said, I cannot tell whether they be living or dead, for they may be invisible in relation to me, but seen of multitudes besides. My friend has therefore no right to add the word place to invisible, nor is it necessary to postfix state thereto, for unseen expresses the condition or circumstance as far as signified by the word.

Having then stripped this word hades of the Gentile mysticism with which it has been invested by Romish and Protestant philosophy, I proceed to notice my friend’s quotation from the Acts. It is perfectly true that hades is not the Greek word for grave, though by implication it is so rendered properly enough. When a dead man is covered up in the ground, he is invisible, or in invisibility. Now, if it is said of one we know to be dead and buried, he is in invisibility, we associate the phrase with the grave; so that the idea of the grave is mingled with the idea of invisibility; and thus, in relation to the dead, the grave implies invisibility, and invisibility implies the grave; the one implies the other, which is what lexicographers mean by a word that has radically or etymologically no relation to a thing, coming to represent that thing "by implication."

My proposition, then, is, that etymologically hades signifies neither place nor grave, but that by implication it does. Dr. Shepard, in effect, denies this. He says, "After a careful examination of all the places where hades occurs in the New Testament, I am satisfied that, in that volume, it never has the signification of grave." This is an unqualified statement. As a critic of the forthcoming translation, such a declaration ought never to have appeared from the Doctor’s pen. Surely he is acquainted with the fact that words have meanings by implication which are not found in their roots; but in the declaration quoted he seems to have no idea of the existence of such an ordinary feature of human speech.

The example he selects from the New Testament to prove that hades does not refer to the grave, is most unfortunate. In the first place, it is not an original New Testament passage, but a Greek version, made about 250 years before Christ, of the original Hebrew, penned by David some 750 years before the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and quoted by Luke from the Septuagint into the Acts. A critic would therefore no more refer to it as a correct expression of the original idea penned by David, than he would refer to the English version as an authority in any question of verbal criticism. The Doctor should have given us a literal translation from David, and not a loose version of a Greek version of the original. In the next place, the quotation is most unfortunate, because it was cited by Peter as a reason why David’s son could not remain in Joseph’s sepulchre, and see corruption like other men, because David had predicted that Messiah’s "flesh should rest in hope." What was the ground of this hope of Christ? The question is answered in the Doctor’s quotation, which with its context would be better rendered: —

"Moreover, my flesh shall dwell in hope,

Seeing that thou wilt not leave my soul in invisibility,

Nor wilt thou permit thine Holy One to see corruption."

Here is a parallelism, or the correspondence of one line with another. The first line contains a declared truth; the second line gives the reason why the thing declared shall be; and the third line, being equivalent to the second in sense, explains the meaning of the terms in which the reason is expressed. There are synonymous parallel lines containing parallel terms, which express the same sense in different but equivalent terms. Thus, "flesh," "soul," and "holy one," are parallel equivalents; that is, flesh is soul, and soul is holy one; therefore holy one is flesh and capable of corruption, as the third parallel line intimates. Jesus, it is admitted, is the subject of the parallelism. When the Spirit by David said, "my flesh," he meant Jesus, who was the Word’s flesh. When God forsook him on the cross, the flesh or body in which God had manifested himself to Israel, was left in the hands of Joseph of Arimathea, who laid it in a tomb, which was afterwards walled up and sealed. Where was God’s flesh then? In invisibility. If it had been left there, what would have been the consequence? It would have seen corruption. The flesh named Jesus, was the soul in invisibility. The Spirit of the Father returned to it, and Jesus left the sepulchre. Before crucifixion he said he had power to take up his life again. These were the words of the Father spoken through him, and found their fulfilment in God raising him from the dead. By not leaving Jesus in invisibility after this manner, the Holy One of God was not permitted to see corruption. The flesh dwelling in hope is a phrase indicating that when the flesh was dying it was approaching the term of its existence, in hope of a resurrection without experiencing the common lot of humanity—destruction, or a return to the dust through corruption. The reason of that hope is in the second parallel. To see corruption in invisibility is evidential of the soul referred to being a corruptible substance. Such is the teaching of the text.

But, to get still more conclusively at the mind of the Spirit, we must consult the very words of David, and not merely a translation, or version, of them made nearly eight centuries after he penned them. What he wrote was this,

Kevohdi wy-yahghel livbi shahmach lahkain

lahvetach yishkohn aph-besahri

lisheohl naphshi lo-thaazohv ki

shachath lirohth chasidekah lo-thithtain

The following is a literal translation:

Therefore my heart was glad, and my mind rejoiced;

My flesh also shall-lay-down-to-rest in-confidence,

That myself thou-wilt-not-allow-to-remain in-a-cave,

Thou-wilt-not-deliver-over thine Holy One to-experience destruction.

In the above, the terms in English consisting of several words are connected by hyphens, to show that they answer to single words in the Hebrew text.

The apostle Peter informs us that "David being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh, he would RAISE UP the Christ to sit upon His throne; foreseeing this, he speaks concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that his soul should not be left in invisibility, nor his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up." In this comment he tells us, in effect, that the Hebrew text was not a prophecy about a disembodied ghost in "the spirit-world," but about the resurrection of the dead body laid in Joseph’s cave, "hewn out of a rock," named Jesus; for he says, it was Jesus that was raised. He also informs us why the dead Jesus was not left to destruction in invisibility; it was that he might at some future time sit upon the throne of his father David, and rule over the house of Jacob during the age. Had he experienced destruction in the cave, the Abrahamic covenant would have remained a dead letter; and there would consequently have been no repentance and remission of sins in the name of Jesus; no obtaining a right to eat of a tree of life in a Paradise of God; no restitution of all things connected with the Hebrew nation; no kingdom of God with its Davidian throne; no blessedness of all nations in Abraham and his seed; no destruction of the last enemy, Death; no establishing of our planet in eternal glory and perfection. "If Christ be not risen, then is our faith vain, and we are yet in our sins; and they also who are fallen asleep in Christ are perished."

The soft place in the Doctor’s etymologism, the quagmire in which all his astuteness is engulfed, is his theology. This is not peculiar to him. It is a weakness he shares with all the critics and translators of the professing world. They are too learned; too learnedly indoctrinated in school-divinity, and too ignorant of Moses and the Prophets to discern "the deep things of God" in simplicity and truth. There is no hope therefore of a respectable critical translation from such hands. Their brains are all addled by apostate theology, which pervades all their thoughts and ratiocinations. The spirit and traditions of old pagan Plato and his papistical disciples so pervert their naturally good perceptions, that, like inebriates in mania potu, they see ghosts and hobgoblins, blue flames, and sky-kingdom glories on the sacred page wherever they see "soul," "heaven," "spirits," hades, sheol, "hell," and so forth. This hallucination comes neither from etymology, syntax, nor Scripture, but from the theology, "the philosophy and vain deceit" with which they are so helplessly and hopelessly spoiled. My amiable friend the Doctor forms no happy exception to this rule. He has theologised into his head a theory about souls capable of some sort of an existence separate from body. He must therefore provide a place or region for them to eat, drink, sleep, and exercise in; because, assuming that his souls have length, breadth and thickness, they will necessarily require space, or elbow-room, to dwell in! The orthodoxy of the N.Y.B. Churches, among whose shepherds he is enrolled, requires that he should hold on to some dogma of the kind; for they would be convulsed out of their propriety if they should find in Dr. Shepard one who denied the existence of an "immortal soul" in sinful flesh! And to have a revising critic, too, who should strip Hades, Sheol, Nephesh, Psyche, and Pneuma of all the mystery thrown around them by theological versionists, and present them to the compositor in their etymological simplicity and truth; to have such a reviser in the company, side by side with Alexander Campbell, craftily (as some sensitive Baptists already intimate) giving a turn to texts to make them breathe out his baptismal regeneration, would certainly set the whole establishment in a blaze! Dr. Shepard’s criticism on hades defines his position in soulology, and quiets all their apprehensions upon that score. "The body for the grave," saith he, and "the soul for hades till the resurrection;" while the Spirit by David and Peter saith, that Hades and Sheol are for both.

But, if what the Doctor styles "soul" have no existence save in the brains of those who are learnedly ignorant of Moses and the prophets, (and in that case their crania will answer for hades,) what becomes of his, and our friend President Campbell’s soul-receptacle? Before his assertion that hades is for incorporeal ghosts can be admitted, he must prove that souls exist in sin-flesh capable of a disembodied occupancy of any place, region, or country, good, bad, or indifferent, after breathing finally stops. He must do this, and prove their existence, too, by plain, direct testimony from the Bible; for they who are taught of God will admit no other proof in the question of immortality than this. Will the Doctor undertake to prove immortal-soulism from Moses and the prophets according to this rule? If he say he cannot from the Old Testament, then I say, if he find it not there, neither can he find it in the New; for the writers of this declare, that they taught no other doctrine than what might be already found in the Old. The Doctor would gain nothing but an unprofitable consumption of time, were he to plunge into metaphysics, which the wisest of the world’s wise men have come to confess cannot untie the knot. Macaulay truly says (Miscell. iii. 322) concerning this matter, "As to the great question—What becomes of man after death? —we do not see that a highly-educated European, left to his unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest light on the state of the soul after animal life is extinct. In truth, all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of revelation, to prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to Franklin, appear to us to have failed deplorably." There is no solving this question but by the law and the testimony. The existence of an incorporeal, immortal, human ghost, has never been demonstrated yet from these. Will Dr. Shepard eternalise his name by the feat? Until he do, his criticism upon Hades can only be regarded as a toy for the amusement of the feeble-minded, whose intellects have become attenuated and impoverished by the pseudo-philosophy of the schools.

The phrase, "my soul," in the English Bible, is a version, not a translation, of the Greek and Hebrew. The Greek sign for soul is psuche, from psuchein, to breathe, to cool, refrigerate; in the passive, to grow cold. Any thing, therefore, that is formed for breathing is a soul, whether it be warm or cold, living or dead. The body Jehovah prepared of Mary’s substance, through which to manifest himself in Israel, was a soul or breathing-frame for that purpose; therefore, he styles it in David "my soul." When he forsook it, it became cold, inanimate, dead; and was laid in a cave or hollow place in a rock. The Greek noun fairly represents the Hebrew nephesh—that is, breath—from the verb nahphash, to breathe, respire. Hence the word is applied to animals of all kinds, including men, because they are capable of breathing; and as they cannot live independently of this process, it stands for life as well as breath or spirit. In the formula al-nephesh maith, "to a dead body," nephesh signifies body; and in Leviticus 22: 4, nephesh alone is used for a dead body. With the yod suffixed, as in the text before us, where it is written naphshi, it is very frequently me, myself. I have so rendered it; though it would have been as well rendered my dead body. The reader can take which he pleases, for both harmonise with the fact.

Lisheohl, some two hundred years ago, was properly enough rendered "hell;" because this, from the German holle, or hihle, signified a hole or hollow place. "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell," when our English version was made, signified, "thou wilt not leave my body in a hole." The King of Egypt’s translators did not translate sheohl, but substituted the word hades, as expressive of the effect of being shut up in a sheohl, which would be to make one invisible. The particle l’—that is, in—they rendered by, eis, in English, into, to indicate that for Messiah to be invisible when dead, he must enter into some place to be in invisibility; so that eis hadou, is literally into invisibility—"thou wilt not leave my soul into invisibility," which, though not elegant English, is good Greek, and doubtless quite intelligible to Ptolemy and his people.

Lisheohl is the Hebrew interpretation, then, of eis hadou. It explains to us in what sense we are to understand the invisibility. I have rendered the phrase in a cave; because sheohl is derived from the verb shahal, that is, to dig, to excavate, to hollow out; hence the noun signifies a cavity, hollow place, a hole, cavern, &c. From the idea of digging comes readily that of searching out, inquiring, &c. The usual derivation of sheohl has been from the notion of asking, searching, or inquiring. Thus Abraham was laid in a cave with Sarah his wife. In process of time one looks in and searches them out, but not finding them, because reduced to powder, he inquires, "Where are they?" The answer to the question is lisheohl, or in demand: a dead body laid in a cave, dissolved, searched for, but not found, is not only in sheohl, but lisheohl techtiyah, in the lowest part of the cave; in the common version rendered the lowest hell.

The formula liroth shachath was rendered by the Seventy, idein diaphthoran, that is, in the English version, to see corruption. In relation to this word shachath, Gesenius says, "The Seventy often render shachath by diaphthoran, as if from shahchath, to corrupt; not, however, in the sense of corruption, putridity, but of destruction. The Greek word is indeed received by Luke in the sense of corruption in Acts 2: 27; but it would be difficult to show that the Hebrew shachath has this sense even in a single passage as derived fro shahchath." The noun shachath signifies a pit, or pit-fall, for the destruction of wild beasts; a cistern having mire at the bottom; a subterranean prison; &c. It signifies these things as means of destruction, being derived from shahchath, to destroy; and in Niphil, to be destroyed by putridity. A body allowed to remain in a pit in which it has been entrapped would in process of time disappear by the corrupting process; which is the destruction indicated by the phrases "going down into the pit;" the pit "shutting her mouth upon" one; the "lowest pit;" a "bringing down to the sides of the pit;" "death feeding upon them," and so forth. Such a pit is styled "a horrible pit;" "the pit of destruction;" "the pit of corruption," &c. Hence, to deliver one over to see the pit is more than remaining three days in a cave; it is to perish in that cave by a resolution into dust, which is to experience destruction. Had the nephesh, or "soul," named Jesus, been allowed of God to remain in Joseph’s cave, it would have perished through corruption. The questions in Psalm 30: 9, in view of such a result, are very appropriate. The Spirit, under such a supposition in relation to Messiah, saith for him, "What profit in my blood, if I go down to the pit? Can the dust praise thee? Can it declare thy truth?" The answer is, that if Christ had gone to dust like other men, his blood would have been no more profitable than Abel’s; and he would have been unable to praise God, or to declare his truth, in going forth with the apostles, cooperating with them, and confirming the Word by signs following. "To see a pit," then, or "to experience destruction," are the correct rendering of the formula of our text, liroth shachath. The reader can take which he pleases; for to deliver over the "soul," or "holy one," named Jesus, to see a pit, would have been for him "to experience destruction."

Because dead bodies shut up in caves, holes, graves, tombs, sepulchres, &c., go to dust, "Hell and Destruction" are associated together. The words are, "sheohl wa-abaddohn are before Jehovah;" and "they are never full." This hell is a something that may be entered by digging. Thus, in Amos 9: 2: "Though they dig into hell—vish-sheohl—thence shall mine hand take them." After they had finished digging, they would be in a cave or hollow, where they might become invisible—aoratos—and be in invisibility—eis hadou—to mortal eyes; still, they were not hidden from the eyes of Jehovah, whose Spirit pervades every atom that exists. Hence, sheohl and hades are for corporeal souls, be they living or be they dead: if dead, and they be left there, destruction follows; but if they be taken thence by resurrection before decomposition, as in the case of Jesus, the words of the psalmist are fulfilled concerning him, "I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for Jehovah sustained me." It is so also in relation to the brethren of Jesus, the difference being in the duration of the sleep, and their sleep being in dust, which his was not. But those who wake not to endless life, dust is their serpent-meat for evermore.

With Pagan mythology, and the Jewish opinions about hades, to which Dr. Shepard refers, we have nothing to do. With "the taught of God" they are of no more value than the opinions of Gentile theologists of the present age. The Jews had made void the word of God by tradition, and fables borrowed from the Greeks, with whose mythology they were perverted long before Jesus brought life and incorruptibility to light in the gospel of the kingdom which he preached. Life manifested through an incorruptible body is the immortality offered in this gospel to those who become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus: and to them only, as a part of the recompense of reward. This great doctrine is fatal to mythological soulology; and consequently, utterly subversive of my friend’s receptacle for the departed spirits of his creed. When he learns the gospel, and becomes obedient to the faith, he will be astonished that he could ever have penned a criticism so unscriptural and vain.

John Thomas, March 1854