Realm · Hebrew and Christian cosmology · c. 600 BCE
Gehenna
Also called Ge-Hinnom, The Valley of Hinnom, Topheth
A real valley outside Jerusalem, remembered as the site of child sacrifice and deliberately defiled, whose name became the New Testament's word for final ruin.
Well sourced
Gehenna is the one hell with a street address. The Valley of Hinnom runs along the south-western edge of the old city of Jerusalem, and you can walk it. Its reputation comes from what the Hebrew Bible says happened there: Topheth, in that valley, is where children were burned as offerings to Moloch under Ahaz and Manasseh, and where Josiah's reform deliberately defiled the site so it could never be used for that again.
Jeremiah then does something decisive with it. He predicts the valley will be renamed the Valley of Slaughter and filled with corpses until there is no room left — turning a place of a particular atrocity into an image of national catastrophe. That image is what the New Testament inherits. When the gospels use geenna they are using Jeremiah's picture, not describing a location.
Two things follow that the English word "hell" obscures. Gehenna is never where everyone goes, unlike Sheol — it is always a fate, and a threatened one. And the imagery attached to it is fire, worms and destruction rather than imprisonment: what happens to a body on a rubbish heap, not what happens to a prisoner.
The persistent claim that the valley was Jerusalem's perpetually burning municipal dump is late, thinly sourced, and traceable to a medieval commentator rather than to any ancient description of the site.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
What the name means
Greek *geenna*, from Hebrew *ge ben-hinnom*, the valley of the son of Hinnom, running south of Jerusalem — the only one of these words that is a place on a map before it is anything else. Hinnom himself is a personal name, and BDB (1906) calls its derivation and meaning dubious, rejecting as improbable the derivation from a root meaning to wail that is sometimes offered on the strength of what is said to have been done to children there. The word behind the Christian hell is a valley named after a man nobody can identify.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon · c. 900–100 BCE
- Named there as
- The valley of the son of Hinnom
- Rank
- The Valley Outside the Walls
- Order
- Hebrew and Christian cosmology
- Era
- c. 600 BCE
- Traditions
- Christian, Jewish
Traits
- Domain
- A ravine south-west of Jerusalem; later, the image of final destruction
Stats
Known connections
Opposed by
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Gehenna, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 480 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as The valley of the son of Hinnom, Gehenna
- Rank: given as Topheth; The fire
A ravine outside Jerusalem where children were burned in offering under Ahaz and Manasseh, defiled by Josiah so the practice could not resume, and prophesied by Jeremiah to be renamed the Valley of Slaughter.
Used as the image of final destruction — fire, the undying worm, a body thrown away rather than a soul imprisoned. Always a fate that may be avoided, never a common destination.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Afterwards
What did later readers make of it?
Translated 'hell' in nearly every English version, which merges it with Sheol and Hades and produces a single afterlife the underlying texts do not share. The valley itself is now a park.
Kept in its own section on purpose. Everything above is what the cited texts say; this is what was built on top of them afterwards, and blending the two is how most popular demonology goes wrong.
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Gehenna?
What rank is Gehenna?
How else is Gehenna spelled?
How old is Gehenna?
Nearest in the corpus
If Gehenna is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Tartarus
The Deep Below the Dead · Greek cosmology
The Greek pit below Hades, built to hold defeated gods rather than dead people, and borrowed once by the New Testament to say where the sinning angels went.
Sheol
The Grave · Hebrew cosmology
The Hebrew underworld: a silent, dusty place where everybody goes, righteous and wicked alike, and where nobody praises God. Not hell, and not a punishment.
The books behind Gehenna
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon
Various · c. 900–100 BCE · Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek
Read Hebrew Bible & Deuterocanon in full ↗Cover: Public domain · see en:Aleppo Codex; scanned by · Wikimedia file page
New Testament
Various · c. 50–110 CE · Koine Greek
Read New Testament in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.