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Bible Dictionaries
Gulf
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or GULF (χάσμα, from χαίνω, to yawn, gape, open wide, Luke 16:26 only. Chasma (shortened, chasm) is the exact transliteration of the Greek, but this word, in general use, is later than the Authorized Version. Tindale has ‘a great space,’ and the Geneva VS ‘a great gulfe,’ with ‘swallowing pit’ in the margin).—It is interesting to compare with this other representations of the division between the worlds of the unseen. In Plato’s vision in the Republic there is an intermediate space where judges are seated, who divide to the right hand or to the left according as men are found just or unjust. Return to the upper world is possible; but when any incurable or unpunished sinners tried to ascend, ‘the opening, instead of receiving them, gave forth a sound, and then wild men of fiery aspect, who were standing by and knew what the sound meant,’ seized and carried them to be cast into hell (Jowett’s Plato, iii. 512f.). Virgil’s vision is of ‘a cavern, deep and huge, with its vast mouth, craggy, sheltered by its black lake and forest gloom, o’er which no birds might speed along unharmed; such an exhalation, pouring from its black jaws, rose to the vault of heaven; wherefore the Greeks named the spot Avernus.’ The ‘dreadful prison-house’ is guarded by a ‘gate of ponderous size, with pillars of solid adamant; so that no mortal might, nay, nor the dwellers in the sky, are strong enough to throw it down in war’ (aeneid, vi. 236f., 553f.). Coming to Jewish representations, the Book of Enoch speaks of three separations between the spirits of the dead,—‘by a chasm, by water, and by light above it’ (ch. 22). In Rabbinical teaching (cf. Weber, Jüd. Theol.2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] 341) the separation between Paradise and Ge-hinnom is minimized; it is but ‘a wall,’ ‘a palm-breadth,’ a ‘finger-breadth,’ ‘a thread.’ With this representation the ‘great gulf’ of the parable is in striking contrast. It would be obviously wrong to interpret literally, or even to insist upon some spiritual counterpart of the detail of the parable, as it would be wrong to base upon the parable as a whole any doctrine of the future over and above its clear moral lesson and warning. But the solemn words of Jesus as to the possibility and danger of the fixity of character in evil must not be lightly set aside (see Eternal Sin).
Literature.—Bruce, Parabolic Teaching, p. 393; Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 277.
W. H. Dyson.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Gulf'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/g/gulf.html. 1906-1918.
