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Questions/Comments on the Quran / Re: How do you interpret verses on hell
« on: October 06, 2010, 12:06:03 PM »
From what I have found, as many other terms in the Quran.. Jahannam itself is not an arabic word but Hebrew.. And it used to mean the 'Valley of Hinnom' .. The example of this valley has been used to described the painful and distressful state of the unbelievers. It is also know as Gehenna..
I tend to think the Hell is used as a metaphore to describe the state of the unbelievers in the next life.
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The exact location of the Valley of Hinnom is disputed. Older commentaries give the location as below the southern wall of ancient Jerusalem, stretching from the foot of Mount Zion eastward past the Tyropoeon to the Kidron Valley. However the Tyropoeon Valley is usually no longer associated with the Valley of Hinnom because during the period of Ahaz and Manasseh, the Tyropoeon lay within the city walls and child sacrifice would have been practiced outside the walls of the city. Smith (1907),[5] Dalman (1930),[6] Bailey (1986)[7] and Watson (1992)[8] identify the Wadi er-Rababi, which fits the data of Joshua that Hinnom ran East to West and lay outside the city walls. According to Joshua, the valley began in En-rogel. If the modern Bir Ayyub is En-rogel then the Wadi er-Rababi which begins there is Hinnom.[9]
In the King James Version of the Bible, the term appears 13 times in 11 different verses as "valley of Hinnom," "valley of the son of Hinnom" or "valley of the children of Hinnom."
I tend to think the Hell is used as a metaphore to describe the state of the unbelievers in the next life.

