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2 Peter 2 (NIV)

False Teachers and Their Destruction

 ¹ But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ² Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. ³In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

 ⁴ For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell,^[a] putting them in chains of darkness^[b] to be held for judgment; ⁵ if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; ⁶ if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; ⁷ and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless ⁸ (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— ⁹ if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.

Footnotes:

1. 2 Peter 2:4Greek Tartarus
2. 2 Peter 2:4 Some manuscripts in gloomy dungeons

2 Peter 2 (Young’s Literal Translation)

⁴For if God messengers who sinned did not spare, but with chains of thick gloom, having cast [them] down to Tartarus, did deliver [them] to judgment, having been reserved,

 There are four different words translated as Hell in the bible: Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus (spellings vary). The Hebrew word Sheol appears in the Old Testament over 60 times and is translated as Hell, Grave, and Pit (counts vary in different versions).  In some verses (i.e. Psalm 49:14) bodies are said to be decomposing in Sheol or (i.e. Psalm 141:7) bones are in Sheol. This implies a grave. Other verses imply that Sheol is deep (and therefore a pit).  The Greek word Hades is translated as Hell about 10 times in the New Testament. There is a Greek mythology definition of Hades, but most Christians view Hades and Sheol as the same, pointing to verses like Acts 2:27 in which in Greek the word Hades is used for the quoting of the Hebrew Sheol from Psalm 16:10. Some use examples like this to simply state that Hades and Sheol are one and the same in all situations (claiming both agree with their definition). 

Then there is Gehenna as shown in Mark 9:43-44, Young’s Literal Translation:

⁴³`And if thy hand may cause thee to stumble, cut it off; it is better for thee maimed to enter into the life, than having the two hands, to go away to the gehenna, to the fire — the unquenchable –

 ⁴⁴where there worm is not dying, and the fire is not being quenched.

Gehenna, or the valley of Hinnon, was a deep valley outside of Jerusalem, known as a sight of child sacrifice to Baal and Moleck, and known as a place where fires were constantly burning bodies of animals and executed criminals.

Due to the nature of the definitions of the words, I know Christians who believe (1) Hell is a real place of eternal fire and torture reserved for all non-Christians; (2) Hell is a real place of eternal fire, but non-Christians’ souls are killed in the fire rather than tortured eternally; (3) Hell is the grave and is not eternal; (4) Hell is a metaphor.  There are countless websites promoting various definitions of hell (none of which are supported by any scientific evidence). Rather than get into a discussion on what the bible says on hell, I want to look at the one instance of Tartarus.

2 Peter 2:4 is the only reference to Tartarus in the bible. In Greek mythology, Tartarus is described as a place lower than Hades where most of  the Titans have been imprisoned after Zeus came to power (it is also the name of a god). 2 Peter 2:4 describes Tartarus (tartaroo) as a place where sinful angels have been imprisoned. The use of the word Tartarus in this instance appears to reflect more than a simple equivalence of Hades and Sheol. The writer of 2 Peter definitely knew the difference between Hades and Tartarus. Choosing the word Tartarus implies that there is another place of punishment other than Hades and Hell. It also is evidence of how Greek mythology influenced the writing of the New Testament.

Also in this passage, 2 Peter 2:7 describes Lot as “righteous.”  Lot was a man who offered up his daughters for rape to an unruly mob. After that, he got drunk on at least two occasions and had sex with both his daughters (Genesis 19). That is a man described as “righteous” in the New Testament!

2 Peter 2:5 describes Noah as righteous. He would later get drunk, lie around naked, and curse the descendants of his grandson Canaan  into slavery for something he did not do (it was his father Ham who did the horrible sin of telling his brothers his father was naked – Genesis 9)!

I do not consider these two individuals righteous!

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