112 Apokatastasis: Four Meditationsture speaks of a restored creation, of a new Age of the world yet
to dawn, and of a New Jerusalem established upon the earth;
it makes no promises whatsoever about a heaven of redeemed
souls. And, as regards the fate of the derelict, what the actual
text of the New Testament says could scarcely be more evoca-
tively vague. For one thing, there is no single Greek term in
the New Testament that quite corresponds-or corresponds at
all, really-to the Anglo-Saxon word "hell," despite the prodi-
gality with which that term has always been employed intra-
ditional English translations of the text; nor anywhere in scrip-
ture do we find a discrete concept that quite corresponds to
the image of hell- a realm of ingenious tortures presided over
by Satan-that took ever more opulent and terrifying mythi-
cal shape in later Christian centuries. There is frequent men-
tion of the realm of the dead, Hades, which is generally under-
stood as being located under the earth ( or perhaps under the
waters of the seas), and which in Hebrew is called Sheol. This
is where, according to venerable belief, practically all the dead
await the end of time. In Luke, it is there that both the rich
man and Lazarus in Christ's parable are placed, though they
occupy very different regions in its topography. Then there is a
single mention ofTartarus, in verbal form (2 Peter 2:4), a word
borrowed from Greek pagan lore to refer not to a postmortem
destination for souls, but to a place where certain non-human
"spirits" -fallen angels and their demonic offspring the ne-
.filim- are imprisoned till the end of time (for the curious,
the tales of these unfortunate beings are told in such texts as
1 Enoch and the book of Jubilees, intertestamental writings
that many late antique Jews and Christians regarded as scrip-
ture). Finally, there is talk of "the Gehenna," the Greek form
of Ge-Hinnom, "Valley of Hinnom." This is a term that ap-
pears eleven times in the synoptic gospels and then only once