ss torment, in the face of this
evidence--and its powerful confirmation by the greatest of all modern
Jewish students of the Talmud, Emanuel Deutsch. "There is no
everlasting damnation in the Talmud" (_Remains_, p. 53), and again,
"There is not a word in the Talmud which supports the damnable dogma of
endless torment" (Conversation with Mr. Cox, _Salvator Mundi_, p. 72).

The American Revised Version has very wisely removed the word Hell
altogether on account of the misleading associations connected with it.
It substitutes the word Gehenna, leaving the reader to ascertain its
meaning. The English Revisers have retained the word Hell and put the
word Gehenna beside it in the margin. I think this was a pity, as it
will be hard for the ordinary reader to dissociate the word Hell from
the theory which has unwarrantably grown on to it. But at any rate I
think we may safely say that no reader who understands the position
will ever again use the texts in which our Lord speaks of Hell to prove
the absolute certainty of the theory of Endless Torment and Endless
Sin. So vanishes another group of the proof texts for this theory.

Section 3

Now take the group of texts with the word "everlasting." It is surely
significant that the Revisers have completely removed this word also in
every case and substituted for it the word "eternal," a less definite
word and which in scholarly usage means rather the opposite of
temporal--that which is above the sphere of time and space--that which
belongs to the other world. At any rate the fact that they have
removed it in every case shows that the word "everlasting" did not seem
to them a correct translation.

There is only space for a brief explanation. The original word is the
adjective _aionos_ (aionios) (Eng. aeonian), coming from the noun
_aion_ (aion) (Eng. aeon), an age, an epoch, a long period of time.
This noun cannot mean eternity for it is repeatedly used by St. Paul in
the plural "aeons" and "aeons of aeons." As we speak of great periods
of time, "the Ice Age," "the Stone Age," etc., so the Bible speaks of
"this age" (aeon), "the coming age" (aeon), and "the end of the age,"
etc. These aeons or ages are thought of in Scripture as vast periods
past, present and future in which the Divine purpose is working itself
out, _e. g._, God's purpose is the purpose of the ages (aeons) (Eph.
iii. 11). Christ's name is above every name not only in this age
(aeon) but in that which