Identifying Gehenna: An Answer to a Question on Annihilationism

Could you help me out PC? As a fellow evangelical believer of conditional immortality, I came across a source that said there is no archaelogical nor primary source evidence for Gehenna being used as a trash dump. It's often quoted as such in a similar fashion as you used. Could you verify this or refute it? I feel like I should look up Gehenna as trash dump on snopes.com...

To be honest, I have not yet found any evidence either way. My own book resources do not say that Gehenna was a trash dump, but it doesn’t say that it wasn’t. My NT resources at home are quite good, so I am a little surprised that it doesn’t discuss the matter. I mean, if Gehenna was not a trash dump, it is appears to be common error among scholars, both with those who support and reject annihilationism. Thus I would suspect to see it mentioned even if only to refute it! My feeling is that if it were true then it would be mentioned more often than not.

Now my home resources for 1st century non-Christian sources are sparse. I have found some later Rabbinic writings that do refer to Gehenna as a “trash dump”, but I am uncertain about the dates of the writings, let alone the authenticity of the tradition (Kimchi in Psal. xxvii. 13; R. Isaac Saugari, Sepher Cosri, fol. 57. 2.). Dr. E. Earle Ellis teaches that Gehenna was a “trash dump” but he is also an annihilationist; he may have assumed just as we have.
But even if the idea of Gehenna as a “trash dump” turns out to be false, the annihilationist argument will not really be affected. Gehenna is positively identified as the valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem. The image of Gehenna is positively identified as being drawn from Jeremiah’s vivid account of the horrors of the Babylonian invasion (Jer 7:30-33; 19:6-8).

The valley bore this name at least as early as the writing of Joshua (Josh 15:8; 18:16), though nothing is known of its origin. It was the site of child-sacrifices to Moloch in the days of Ahaz and Manasseh (apparently in 2 Kings 16:3; 21:6). This earned it the name Topheth, a place to be spit on or abhorred. This Topheth may have become a gigantic pyre for burning corpses in the days of Hezekiah after God slew 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in a night and saved Jerusalem (Isa 30:31-33; 37:26). Jeremiah predicted that it would be filled to overflowing with Israelite corpses when God judged them for their sins (Jer 7:31-34; 19:2-13). Josephus indicates that the same valley was heaped with dead bodies of the Jews following the Roman siege of Jerusalem about A.D. 69-70:

“Now the seditious at first gave orders that the dead should be buried out of the public treasury, as not enduring the stench of their dead bodies. But afterwards, when they could not do that, they had them cast down from the walls into the valleys beneath.” (War 5.12.3).

Josiah desecrated the valley as part of his religious reform (2 Kings 23:10). Long before the time of Jesus, the Valley of Hinnom had become crusted over with connotations of whatever is “condemned, useless, corrupt, and forever discarded” (Edward William Fudge, The Fire That Consumes [Houston: Providential Press, 1982], p. 160).

The reference to Josephus is significant for me. I am a Preterist as well as an Annihilationist. I have been rereading various books on the Preterist issue. I am far more convinced now than ever that the Preterist position is far more tenable and faithful to the Scriptural witness. What interests me now is Jesus’ use of the OT Gehenna reference with respect to his generation. Both Jeremiah and Isaiah appear to have used Gehenna with literal intent. Jesus uses the imagery when speaking to his generation. Jesus often uses the Assyrian and Babylonian armies with reference to the up-coming Roman armies which would siege Jerusalem from CE 69-70. Luke is particularly fond of making such analogies. See the Apocalypse of John for other references. And just like the Apocalypse Josephus backs up the imagery. Thus it’s likely that Jesus’ reference to Gehenna was first and foremost a prediction of the Jewish War with Rome.

So the metaphor still holds regardless of whether or not the valley of Hinnom was a literal trash dump during the 1st century or not. In fact, I think that both the image and metaphor is stronger now. Jesus isn’t simply referring to a “trash dump”; he is referring to a very real event from Israel’s history and warning them that it will be repeated. Just as the bodies of Jerusalem’s dead were thrown into the Valley of Hinnom when the Babylonians attacked, so Jesus imagines the dead piling up in the valley of Gehenna during the war against Rome. I think the teaching now has far more historical and religious overtones than as a simple trash dump. Also, this interpretation has far more Scriptural evidence. Instead of having to go look at non-Biblical first century sources, we now have “primary source evidence for Gehenna” from the OT.

So while the “trash dump” idea may or may not be correct (I cannot find it either way), it doesn’t need to be correct for the annihilationist argument. In fact of the matter is that there is a far more important, relevant, Scriptural, meaningful and convincing argument for the annihilationist and preterist position. Again, Scripture interprets Scripture.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to find it.

See also: The Abandonment of Hell