For one thing, there is no single Greek term in the New Testament that quite corresponds—or corresponds at all, really—to the Anglo-Saxon word “hell,” despite the prodigality with which that term has always been employed in traditional English translations of the text; nor anywhere in scripture do we find a discrete concept that quite corresponds to the image of hell—a realm of ingenious tortures presided over by Satan—that took ever more opulent and terrifying mythical shape in later Christian centuries.
