Why was 'Tartarus' used?

[hobie]

The Greek word Tartarus appears only once in the entire New Testament. 
2 Peter 2:4
Young's Literal Translation
4 For if God messengers who sinned did not spare, but with chains of thick gloom, having cast [them] down to Tartarus, did deliver [them] to judgment, having been reserved,

Well, this explains a lot....

"There is one word in the New Testament that comes straight from Greek mythology. Not a metaphor. Not a translation choice. The actual name of the abyss where the Titans were imprisoned.

It was written by a Jewish fisherman from Galilee.

The letter is 2 Peter, composed in Koine Greek for diaspora communities spread across the Roman world in the first century CE. Verse 2:4 is about angels who sinned and what God did with them.

Most translations render the passage simply as "cast them into hell." But the Greek word Peter chose was not Hades. Not Gehenna. Not "the pit." The word came directly from "Tartaros," the deepest region of the underworld in Greek mythology, a place so far below Hades that, in Hesiod's Theogony, a bronze anvil dropped from the surface of the earth would fall for nine days before reaching it.

The verb Peter used, "tartarosas," appears nowhere else in the entire New Testament. Every other writer who needed a word for the realm of the dead reached for Hades or Gehenna. Only this one verse goes to Tartarus.

In Hesiod's account, written roughly seven centuries before this letter, Tartarus is where Zeus imprisoned the Titans after the war for Olympus. Sealed away from the rest of creation. Absolute confinement.
Peter placed fallen angels there.

He was writing for people who had grown up inside Greek cultural memory. He did not need to explain what Tartarus meant to them. He needed only to use the word, and they would already understand the weight of it.

He did not argue against the mythology. He absorbed its cosmological grammar and refilled it. The prison stayed. The inhabitants changed.
Scholars call this kind of move a recontextualization: taking the structural logic of a pre-existing concept and fitting it to new theological meaning. It is one of the more quietly stunning word choices in the entire text.

A fisherman. A word borrowed from Hesiod. One verse that most readers have never noticed, because every translation made it vanish back into "hell."....

[Hanseng]

Hobie, Very interesting. Thanks for posting that.

The word is used 3 times in the Greek OT:

Job 40:20  επελθων δε επ ορος ακροτομον εποιησεν χαρμονην τετραποσιν εν τω ̀ ταρταρὼ

Job 40:20  (LXXE) (40:15) And when he has gone up to a steep mountain, he causes joy to the quadrupeds in  the deep. 

]Job 41:32  (41:24) τον δε ̀ ταρταρον̀  της αβυσσου ωσπερ αιχμαλωτον ελογισατο αβυσσον εις περιπατον

Job 41:32  (LXXE) (41:23) and the lowest part of the deep as a captive: he reckons the deep as [his] range. 

Pr 30:16  αδης και ερως γυναικος και ̀ ταρταρος̀  και γη ουκ εμπιπλαμενη υδατος και υδωρ και πυρ ου μη ειπωσιν αρκει

Pr 30:16  (LXXE) The grave, and the love of a woman, and the earth not filled with water; water also and fire will not say, It is enough.

[Asia Joe]

On 7/28/2026 at 4:30 AM, hobie said:

In Hesiod's account, written roughly seven centuries before this letter, Tartarus is where Zeus imprisoned the Titans after the war for Olympus. Sealed away from the rest of creation. Absolute confinement.
Peter placed fallen angels there.

I have often wondered about this. Where are the evil angels now? Clearly some of them are working among us, but there must be a holding place for those not working in the world. 

Or did God allow all of them to roam and deceive the population? It seems to me, if that were the case, they might be able to overwhelm humanity. 

[hobie]

On 7/27/2026 at 7:11 PM, Hanseng said:

Hobie, Very interesting. Thanks for posting that.

The word is used 3 times in the Greek OT:

Job 40:20  επελθων δε επ ορος ακροτομον εποιησεν χαρμονην τετραποσιν εν τω ̀ ταρταρὼ

Job 40:20  (LXXE) (40:15) And when he has gone up to a steep mountain, he causes joy to the quadrupeds in  the deep. 

]Job 41:32  (41:24) τον δε ̀ ταρταρον̀  της αβυσσου ωσπερ αιχμαλωτον ελογισατο αβυσσον εις περιπατον

Job 41:32  (LXXE) (41:23) and the lowest part of the deep as a captive: he reckons the deep as [his] range. 

Pr 30:16  αδης και ερως γυναικος και ̀ ταρταρος̀  και γη ουκ εμπιπλαμενη υδατος και υδωρ και πυρ ου μη ειπωσιν αρκει

Pr 30:16  (LXXE) The grave, and the love of a woman, and the earth not filled with water; water also and fire will not say, It is enough.

Now a question that poses itself is whether this is place the evil angels feared to be sent to this place of darkness to such a degree that they thus asked to be sent into the swine on the hill..

Matthew 8:31-32
So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.
And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.

Mark 5:12-13
And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.
And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.

[Asia Joe]

I was thinking of that text too. Why did they prefer the swine? What was the alternative? 

[Kevin H]

Normally, in the Bible, Jesus, as well as the disciples, simply cast the demon out. If we find an exception to the norm, it is wise to ask "Why the exception?" instead of turning to the exception and see how we can make this the rule. 

If I recall correctly, there are two exceptions to the norm. The boy with the seizures and the one or two men where the pigs ran into the sea. 

Fundamentalists may not be happy with my comments here, but please take for your consideration. 

With the boy having the seizures; Jesus says that this kind does not come out except for fasting and prayer. While I am not an expert in language, from what I've read and heard in lectures from those who understand the language, the idea of fasting and prayer can be understood as say a doctor or scientist who is prayerfully studying and experimenting and so focused on their research that they often forget to eat and sleep. So could this boy simply have had a physical condition that gave seizures, and while Jesus could do the physical healing, that he was telling his disciples that this is not simply demons, but something that they really need to study to discover the cause and develop a cure?

The second exception is the one or two men where the pigs ran into the sea. Ok, I confess that their breaking the chains is something that may indicate traditional demons. However, a couple of things to keep in mind, with another suggestion if you bear with me. 

This man/These men were pagans. He/They were gentiles. They lived in a Greek City State set up from the conquests of Greece to show people in the rest of the world how wonderful Greek life is to encourage the people living in the area to not only be Greek subjects by conquest, but to change their lives and embrace Greece life and thought in total. (The idea of a city set on a hill, but instead of a Christian faith,  these cities were to draw everyone to Greece.) There were 10 of these cities just east of the Jordan in the hills. It would have been to one of these 10 cities that would have been the "far country" for the Prodigal Son went. 

This man/These men would have known little of the Jews who lived in small Jewish communities across the lake. So first of all, Jesus needed to work with the man/men, and their pagan/gentile/Greek background. This man/These men living in the Greek City State probably were raised from childhood in how special it was to be Greek and how they were to be examples for all the non-Greeks living around them of how wonderful Greek life and thought are. Yet, for some reason, this missionary mindset made them uncomfortable. Also, may I also wonder if he/they may have also suffered from what we call mental illness. 

Jesus did what he did to work with these people who were ignorant of the Bible and ignorant of Judaism. Even if they had traditional demons Jesus still needed to work with how this man/these men are. And if it is just the suffering in them suppose to be showing how wonderful Greek life is, and they just are uncomfortable with this idea, and/or mental illness; Jesus can heal the mind, but they might from time to time start thinking things that could lead back to problems. Seeing the pigs run into the sea and drown is always a reminder that if they start thinking the wrong way that they remember the pigs and they choose against the bad thought they were about to think.  Jesus also needed to learn where these men were coming from, remembering they were getting views about the demonic not from the Bible and/or Judaism, but from a pagan background. Jesus could not make the same assumptions about the cause of this/these men's sufferings as he could in the Jewish communities. Jesus needed to do what was appropriate for their pagan/Greek background.  And this personal care was important as this/these people born and raised to be missionaries of Greek life and thought, ended up becoming the first Christian missionaries to the gentiles. 

[Asia Joe]

On 8/1/2026 at 7:41 PM, hobie said:

Now a question that poses itself is whether this is place the evil angels feared to be sent to this place of darkness to such a degree that they thus asked to be sent into the swine on the hill..

I'm still looking for ideas on this. 

[Kevin H]

On 8/6/2026 at 5:07 PM, Asia Joe said:

I'm still looking for ideas on this. 

This is one of the exceptions to the way Jesus and the disciples normally dealt with demons. We need to ask why is this an exception and not try to use it to explain what normally happened. Jesus was dealing with a pagan gentile. Whether it was actual demon possession or mental illness, or a combination of both (although I believe that with people suffering from mental illness, that God has special angels to keep demons away knowing that they are dealing with enough). Normally, when Jesus and disciples met demon possession, they simply cast the demon out. Here for some reason Jesus needed to find out how this Biblically ignorant, non-Jew, heathen, gentile, pagan understood his situation and to work according to his need. We need to keep this in mind and, sorry hobie and Asia Joe, might mean that the question of "Now a question that poses itself is whether this is place the evil angels feared to be sent to this place of darkness to such a degree that they thus asked to be sent into the swine on the hill.." was just how this one or two Biblically ignorant, non-Jew, heathen, gentile pagan person, individually or as friends, understood reality. 

[Kevin H]

On 8/6/2026 at 5:07 PM, Asia Joe said:

I'm still looking for ideas on this. 

This is one of the exceptions to the way Jesus and the disciples normally dealt with demons. We need to ask why is this an exception and not try to use it to explain what normally happened. Jesus was dealing with a pagan gentile. Whether it was actual demon possession or mental illness, or a combination of both (although I believe that with people suffering from mental illness, that God has special angels to keep demons away knowing that they are dealing with enough). Normally, when Jesus and disciples met demon possession, they simply cast the demon out. Here for some reason Jesus needed to find out how this Biblically ignorant, non-Jew, heathen, gentile, pagan understood his situation and to work according to his need. We need to keep this in mind and, sorry hobie and Asia Joe, might mean that the question of "Now a question that poses itself is whether this is place the evil angels feared to be sent to this place of darkness to such a degree that they thus asked to be sent into the swine on the hill.." was just how this one or two Biblically ignorant, non-Jew, heathen, gentile pagan person, individually or as friends, understood reality. 

[Hanseng]

1 hour ago, Kevin H said:

I'm still looking for ideas on this. 

This word tartarus is used just 4 times in the entire Bible, including  the Greek OT. One Hebrew equivalent, evinced by Proverbs 30:16 is Sheol. Get it? The Hebrew word sheol is used in place of tartarus in Proverbs 30:16; therefore, Sheol is a Greek equivalent of tartarus. Sheol is used more than 60 times in the OT. Sheol is usually translated as hades in the NT. Jesus has the keys to hades (Rev. 1:18).

The Online Bible numerical equivalents of these words are these

tartarus 5020:

Sheol 07585

hades 86

Thayer's lexicon has this to say about hades: 

1) name Hades or Pluto, the god of the lower regions 
2) Orcus, the nether world, the realm of the dead 
3) later use of this word: the grave, death, hell 

In Biblical Greek it is associated with Orcus, the infernal regions, a dark and dismal place in the very depths of the earth, the common receptacle of disembodied spirits. Usually Hades is just the abode of the wicked, Lu 16:23; Re 20:13,14; a very uncomfortable place. TDNT.

[Hanseng]

3 hours ago, Hanseng said:

Sheol is a Greek equivalent of tartarus

Wrong. This should say Sheol is a Hebrew equivalent of the Greek word tartarus

[hobie]

On 8/6/2026 at 5:07 PM, Asia Joe said:

I'm still looking for ideas on this. 

Ellen White discusses the "herd of swine" primarily in The Desire of Ages (pages 337–338) and The Great Controversy in Chapter 31. She explains that Jesus allowed demons to enter the pigs to rebuke Jews raising unclean animals for profit, save the owners from destruction, and show Satan's cruel power. The demons seemed to be clearly afraid of where Christ could send them and thus pleaded to be sent into the swine rather than the alternative.

[Asia Joe]

Yes I remember that.  It's very interesting.