GEHENNA — not a Greek word at all but a Hebrew place-name in Greek clothes: ge-hinnom, the Valley of Hinnom, the ravine running along Jerusalem's southern and western sides. Its history is the point. Children were burned there to Molech at the high place called TOPHETH (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 19, where Jeremiah is sent to smash a flask over it), which is why Josiah defiled it and why the name became shorthand for the place of final judgement. ⚠ Every English version except ASV and NWT renders it 'hell,' which imports a great deal of later architecture — Greek, Latin and medieval — into a word that names a valley you can walk to. This translation transliterates. Note that the New Testament also uses HADES (the realm of the dead) and TARTARUS (2 Peter 2:4), and they are not synonyms; collapsing all three into 'hell' is the single largest thing English Bibles do to this subject. → first discussed at Matt 18:9