For as long as I can remember I’ve heard that Gehenna was not only a reference to the Valley of Hinnom, southwest of Jerusalem but that it was also a rubbish heap or garbage dump which was always smoldering with fire and provided the perfect imagery for an eternal punishment. Sharon Baker in her book, Razing Hell, provides this description:
“Well before the time of Jesus, the valley was also used as a refuse heap. The people in the surrounding areas dumped their trash in Gehenna, where it burned day and night. The fire never went out. It smoldered there beneath the surface, incinerating the rotting, smelly garbage. New garbage was piled on top of the old decaying garbage: rotting fish, slimy vegetation, decaying human refuse of every imaginable sort. And as you know from experience, a dump without flies is a dump without garbage. The flies laid eggs on the surface of the dump. So just imagine the hundreds of thousands of squirmy, wormy maggots living there, eating the rotting refuse. All the while, under the surface, the fire still burned, devouring the putrid garbage days and weeks past.
It was a fire that burned forever, where the worm did not die and where people went to throw their trash, grimacing from the stench, gritting their teeth in revulsion, never venturing too close for fear of falling into the abhorrent abyss. In times of war, decaying human flesh mingled with the rotting garbage—imagine the vile vision. When Jesus spoke of Gehenna, his hearers would think of the valley of rotting, worm-infested garbage, where the fire always burned, smoke always lingered, and if the wind blew just right, a smell that sickened the sense wafed in the air.” (pp. 129-30)
I consulted over a dozen study Bibles on Matthew 5:22 and no less than eight of them made a reference to the rubbish heap. Almost every major commentary on Matthew that mentions Gehenna also spoke of the garbage dump. I’ve always thought that this was an established fact.
So imagine my complete shock when I stumbled across this passage from an article by Peter Head:
“Gehenna is presented as diametrically opposed to ‘life’: it is better to enter life than to go to Gehenna. . .It is common practice, both in scholarly and less technical works, to associate the description of Gehenna with the supposedly contemporary garbage dump in the valley of Hinnom. This association often leads scholars to emphasize the destructive aspects of the judgment here depicted: fire burns until the object is completely consumed. Two particular problems may be noted in connection with this approach. First, there is no convincing evidence in the primary sources for the existence of a fiery rubbish dump in this location (in any case, a thorough investigation would be appreciated). Secondly, the significant background to this passage more probably lies in Jesus’ allusion to Isaiah 66:24.” (“The Duration of Divine Judgment in the New Testament” in The Reader Must Understand edited by K. Brower and M. W. Ellion, p. 223, emphasis mine)
What?! Surely he’s wrong. He’s a lone voice contradicting all my study Bibles. How can he be right? But then I realized that in all my reading about this garbage dump no one ever provided any supporting documentation. So I dug a little further and found this from G. R. Beasley-Murray in Jesus and the Kingdom of God:
“Ge-Hinnom (Aramaic Ge-hinnam, hence the Greek Geenna), ‘The Valley of Hinnom,’ lay south of Jerusalem, immediately outside its walls. The notion, still referred to by some commentators, that the city’s rubbish was burned in this valley, has no further basis than a statement by the Jewish scholar Kimchi (sic) made about A.D. 1200; it is not attested in any ancient source.” (p. 376n.92)
And consider this from an article from the journal Bibliotheca Sacra
“The traditional explanation that a burning rubbish heap in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem gave rise to the idea of a fiery Gehenna of judgment is attributed to Rabbi David Kimhi’s commentary on Psalm 27:13 (ca. A.D. 1200). He maintained that in this loathsome valley fires were kept burning perpetually to consume the filth and cadavers thrown into it. However, Strack and Billerbeck state that there is neither archeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources (Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud and Midrasch, 5 vols. [Munich: Beck, 1922-56], 4:2:1030). Also a more recent author holds a similar view (Lloyd R. Bailey, “Gehenna: The Topography of Hell,” Biblical Archeologist 49 [1986]: 189. (p. 328n.17)
I don’t know about you but this is enough to cause me to seriously doubt the garbage dump theory. At the very least one of the many study Bibles or commentaries could say that the theory is seriously doubted. Only one or two commentaries that I consulted even noted that there was any doubt as to the validity of the theory.
The Baker Deep End Blog 
Fascinating! This seems like a perfect example of how things become established as ‘fact’ by mere repetition.
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This is the sort of responsible academic undertaking that should result from our recent concerns about hell. Thanks for sharing this.
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I had actually heard that this claim was sketchily founded. That said, it is well-established that the Valley of Hinnom was a place of child sacrifice to the god Moloch and was cursed by God and a figure of His judgment.
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And therefore…what?
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The issue is, why should we believe, in turn, the three texts cited that *question* the Gehenna/dump theory? Are their assertions about a lack of positive evidence accurate? (One of those texts even points out the absence of a “thorough investigation” of the issue.)
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http://www.afterlife.co.nz/2012/featured-article/tracing-the-road-to-gehenna/ An article looking at Gehenna in the OT and why Jesus might have used this metaphor.
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Good post.
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ok, so what is gehenna? what is the fire and worms about? was it ever a garbage dump or nor?? i don’t get what you’re trying to say here. surely there is a reason why Jesus used it metaphorically?
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I don’t think it was a garage dump read the article: http://www.afterlife.co.nz/2012/featured-article/tracing-the-road-to-gehenna/
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One week ago a Rabbi described gehenna as “a place of cleansing” after death, which sounds more like a purgatory, especially since he followed it with the statement, “There is NO condemnation.”. Other written material for the same seminar says, “Judaism is not primarily about personal salvation, the relationship between the individual and G-d in the inner recesses of the soul. It is about collective redemption . . .” which sounds a bit to me as if I can ride on the collective coattails of devout Jews. This is shocking to me, since I always imagined that the primary difference between Jews and Christians was their rejection of Jesus as Messiah. ???
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How many times have we discovered that what skeptics tried to disprove, turned out to be correct. Jesus said it I believe it. beware!
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Have you Read Joseph Dillow’s take on the matter in his book Final Destiny? He has 4 academic chapters on the subject. This citation should peak one’s curiosity.
“Due to recent excavations since Bailey’s widely cited 1986 article, we now know that there was
a garbage dump on the south-eastern slope of the City of David in the Kidron Valley. Excavations have
revealed bones of sheep, goats, donkeys and fish, ordinary household garbage, pottery shards, coins dated during the time of Pilate (26-36 AD), and urban rubbish collected from the city and dumped over the city
limits where it reached a depth of 10 meters. See Guy Bar-Oz et al., “”Holy Garbage”: A Quantitative
Study of the City-Dump of Early Roman Jerusalem,” Levant 39 (2007): 1-2, 9. See also Ronny Reich
and Eli Shukron, “The Jerusalem City-Dump in the Late Second Temple Period,” Zeitschrift des
Deutschen Palätina-Verein 119, no. 1 (2003): 12-118. For Bailey’s article see Bailey, “The Topography
of Gehenna,” 189. For the “man on the street” in the 1st century, it was is likely that the Valley of
Hinnom included the Kidron as one continuous valley because they both joined at the SE corner of the
city. As Masterman has observed, “names are so frequently transferred from one locality to another in
Palestine that no argument can be based on a name alone” (E.W.G. Masterman, “ZOHELETH, THE
STONE OF,” in ISBE, ed. James Orr (Albany, OR: Ages Software, 1915), s.v. “Zoheleth”.) Some writers equate the two valleys. For example, Bruce Chilton says, “The term Gehenna refers in a literal sense to
the Valley of Hinnom in the Kidron Valley, just across from the temple in Jerusalem.” (See Bruce
Chilton, “RABBINIC LITERATURE: TARGUMIM,” in Dictionary of New Testament background: a
compendium of contemporary biblical scholarship., ed. S. E. Porter, & Evans, C. A. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 907.) The majority of Bible dictionaries, journal articles, and commentaries
this writer has consulted disagree with Bailey, however, and accept the traditional view that Gehenna was a garbage dump on the south east side of Jerusalem. See Walter C. Kaiser et al., Hard Sayings of the
Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 359.; Chad Brand, “Gehenna,” in Hollman
Illustrated Bible Dictionary, ed. Chad Brand, Charles Draper, and Archie England (Nashville: Holman
Matthew 14-28, 117.; France, The Gospel of Matthew, 201. Barbieri, “Matthew,” 13. Larry Crutchfield,
“The Third Jewish Sect: The Essenes,” The Bible and the Space 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1989): 112. Robert
Peterson, “Does the Bible Teach Annihilationism?,” BibSac 156, no. 621 (January 1999): 14. Carson
says, “Late traditions suggest that in the first century it may still have been used as a rubbish pit, complete with smoldering fires,” Carson, “Matthew,” 149.”
-Final Destiny Page 833
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I cannot find in any of the “examples” you put forth, anything more than opinion. Has anyone conducted an actual dig? Perhaps one should read the historical accounts of the first century. I seem to remember Josephus mentioning hundreds of thousands of Jews being thrown into Gehenna, which would have taken place in the destruction of Jerusalem, AD70. The title of this particular history is, “War of the Jews” by Josephus. I will spend time researching this for myself, and I suggest you do so as well!!!!
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