The Bible Nerd

That brief commercial break was brought to you by “Studying Chinese”.  That’s right “Studying Chinese”, if you think you are pretty smart, just study Chinese, and find out just how not smart you really are.  Now, back to our show, that is the Bible, where we are starting a new series of posts called “Bible Urban Legends”.  I kind of waffled on the name of this series, as my other favorite title was, “Top 5 Bible nerd questions”.  Yes, these are the questions that students would ask me every year of my Bible school.  Not the deep Trinity or salvation questions, but those kind of questions that made you want to say, “You know, there really are dumb questions” and blow off all that teacher training you had. All my past Bible nerd students, and you know who you are, these posts are for you, although they may not be nearly as fun now that you aren’t trying to distract the whole class.

Bible Urban Legend #5 is……….After Jesus died on the cross, He went down to Hell and proclaimed His victory, stopped by Abraham’s bosom for the faithful, and then after delivering the faithful to heaven, was resurrected back into His body.  Most questions that I got from students about this really weren’t questions.  They were statements of enlightenment which they hoped would awe the class and myself with their Bible knowledge.  Occasionally, it was phrased as, “I heard that…..”  So, the question remains, is this Bible Urban Legend really true, and if so, where can we find it in Scripture?

People will point to 1 Peter 3:18-4:6 and Ephesians 4:7-10 as evidence of Jesus’ trip to Hell.  Let’s look at the 1 Peter passage first, and see if that is the context of Peter’s teaching.  In chapter 3, Peter is talking to a persecuted church, trying to encourage them that it is worthy to suffer for doing the right thing.  His ultimate example is Jesus, who ” also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.”  He follows this up with 4:6, “For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.”

When I bold it like this, and don’t give context, it would seem to back up our urban legend.  However, these are difficult passages and we must use the clear Scriptures to interpret the unclear.  No matter what we say these passages mean, they shouldn’t contradict what is clearly stated in Hebrews 9:27, “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”  There are no second chances in Hell.  Another way to read the 1 Peter passage, is that it isn’t talking about Jesus going to Hell and preaching to those who died during Noah’s time, but it is talking about how the Spirit of Christ was preaching THROUGH Noah to those who didn’t obey, and so are now “spirits in prison”.  The 4:6 passage then refers to either this, or Peter is talking about the “spiritually dead” instead of “physically dead”.  The point would be that just like in Noah’s day, there is still persecution for those who do right, but those that persecute you will end up just like those who rebelled in Noah’s day, “spirits in prison”.  Note that it never gives us WHEN this occurred other than the “days of Noah” and never says hell but “prison”.

In Ephesians 4, Paul quotes from Psalm 68:18 to talk about how Jesus has given gifts to the church.  In this context, he says in Ephesians 4:9, “In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?”  This passage is even more unclear than the one in 1 Peter.  It isn’t talking about when Jesus died, but instead the focus is on gifts.  What would Jesus going to Hell have to do with giving gifts to the church?  In the Asian cosmology (how they described the world around them), the earth was the lowest part of existence, and there were many levels or layers going up into the “heavens”.  Many scholars believe that “lower parts of the earth” refer to where we live on earth, and has nothing to do with Hell.  In Paul’s day, Asians were stupified by the fact that Jesus was God and would come down from heaven to where man was on earth.  This passage affirms that not only did Jesus come to “lowly” earth, but brought gifts as well.

Notice that parts of “legend” aren’t even in these verses, like the part about taking the good people to heaven that were waiting around.  You have to take other passages and then try to “piece the story together” if you are going to try to get all of this. (Don’t even get me started on the Abraham’s bosom thing!).  So, while I can see how this “Bible Urban Legend” got started, the evidence is not very strong, and is based on some difficult passages to interpret.  What did Jesus do for those three days in the grave?  I want to know as much as the next guy.  Did Jesus kick death in the teeth and shut down the power of Hell?  Of course He did!  But, no one got a second chance, and I can think of a lot better ways for Jesus to have spent that time other than going to Hell.  Hey, you just died on the cross, defeated sin, and now you get to go to Hell…. hmmm…… Coming up next, Bible Urban Legend #4 “There are dinosaurs in the Bible.”  Sweet.