GEHENNA, a scripture term which has given some
pain to the critics. It occurs in St Matthew, v. 22.
29. 30. x. 28. xviii. 9. xxiii. 15. 33. Mark ix. 43. 45. 47.
Luke xii. 5. James iii. 6.
The authors of the Louvain and Geneva versions re-
tain the word gehenna as it stands in the Greek; the
like does M. Simon: the English translators render it
by hell and hell fire, and so do the translators of Mons
and Father Bohours.
The word is formed from the Hebrew gehinom, i. e.
"valley of Hinnom." In that valley, which was near
Jerusalem, there was a place named Tophet, where some
Jews sacrificed their children to Moloch, by making
them pass through the fire. King Josias, to render this
place for ever abominable, made a clouca or common
fewer thereof, where all the filth and carcasses in the
city were cast.
The Jews observed farther, that there was a continual
fire kept up there, to burn and consume those carcasses;
for which reason, as they had no proper term in their
language to signify hell, they made use of that of gehenna
or gehinom, to denote a fire unextinguishable.