It is interesting that in contemporary English, “hell” seems to be used, in theological discourse, to refer to the place of eternal punishment for the lost after the resurrection, i.e., “Gehenna” (Matt 5:22, 29; 10:28; Mk 9:43; etc.) or “the lake of fire” (Revelation 19:20; 20:10, 14-15; 21:8).
But according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first and oldest meaning was “the abode of the dead; the place of departed spirits; the infernal regions or ‘lower world’ regarded as the place of existence after death; the grave; Hades.” (“Hell,” OED [2nd ed., 1991], vol. 7, p. 117.)
The OED says it is the name for the Norse god of the underworld. The word then entered Anglo-Saxon probably due to Viking influence. The earliest usages of “hell” cited by the OED are from Anglo-Saxon biblical texts: the Vespasian Psalter (c. 825) and Aelfric’s translation of Genesis (c. 1000). John Wyclif (1382) used “hell” in his English translation of the Vulgate in the same places where the underlying Hebrew has “sheol,” e.g., Gen 42:38.
Accordingly, when theologians writing in English commented on the statement in the Apostles' Creed that Jesus descended into “hell,” they understood this (correctly) to mean that after his death and prior to his resurrection his soul descended into the abode of the dead, not the place of final punishment for the lost after the resurrection.
Here are three examples cited by the OED:
Sir Thomas More, The supplication of souls (1529): “Descendit ad inferna: that is to say he descended down beneath into the low places. Instead of which low places the English tongue hath ever used this word hell” (I have modernised the spelling).
Jeremy Taylor, The great exemplar of sanctity and holy life (1649): “Our Lord descended into hell … that is into the state of separation and common receptacle of spirits.”
Isaac Watts, The improvement of the mind, II.v.2 (1748): “I will explain the word hell to signify the state of the dead, or the separate state of souls … and … that the soul of Christ existed three days in the state of separation from his body, or was in the invisible world.”
For more on the descent clause in the Creed, see my paper He Descended Into Hell.
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