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Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
Dive deeper! Sign up for the newsletter (and catch up on past newsletters) at this link: https://weirdstuffinthebible.beehiiv.com/
Thanatos: The God of Death
Revelation 20:11-15
Thumbnail: how can death be ‘thrown’ in Revelation 20?
Introduction
I made this podcast to answer all those questions your Sunday School teacher hoped you’d never ask.
But today, I remember being a Sunday School teacher myself, and I remember teaching Revelation chapter 20, and here’s the question I was afraid of being asked.
Revelation 20:14 says
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
Now, here’s what I didn’t want to have to explain: how do you throw death?
If Hades refers to hell, then I can understand Hades being thrown in there, for reasons I’ll get to later.
But how can “Death” be dumped in there, too? What does that even mean?
And as I said, I puzzled over this verse for years.
But in studying the Abyss, as we’ve done the past two weeks, I think I have found an answer to this question.
I find the throwing of death to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to Revelation 20, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
Greek Mythology and the Bible
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about Death with a capital D.
This will be the conclusion of the Underworld Realm series I’ve been doing since mid-Summer. So for a quick recap: back in July, after I concluded my series on the Book of Enoch, I followed that up with a series that started by talking about the Three Realms of God’s Creation: the Heavens, the Earth, and the Underworld. These are all present in the first chapter of Genesis, but a code word is used in that chapter for the Underworld, and it’s the word “Sea.” This becomes very obvious in the book of Revelation, where you constantly read about three locations: the heaven, the earth, and the sea. There are several places in the Bible where the Sea is used as a euphemism for the Underworld.
We talked about the concept of how spiritual beings are allocated to these three realms; there are Heavenly Realm spirits, like the Watchers; there are Earthly Realm spirits, like Satan and the demons; and there are Underworld Realm spirits, like the Antichrist—a chaos dragon—and Apollyon—the principality over the Abyss.
And last week, we also started a discussion about Greek mythology and how it has certain parallels with your Bible. Now, let me be clear about something: I would not say that your Bible is influenced by Greek mythology. What I would say is that the Bible is truth, and Greek mythology is based on truth; in other words, Greek mythology is based on a true story.
Kinda like how when I was a kid, there was this really famous movie called Titanic. It was based on a true story. But it was not an entirely a true story. If you know how Hollywood does things, you know that they will often claim that a film is “based a true story,” but they usually change a lot of historical details to make it more dramatic or cinematic. Now, there was a real Titanic. There was a real iceberg. A lot of elements that were in the movie are historically true. But the story about the romance with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and the Heart of the Ocean diamond was all made up. There characters of Jack and Rose weren’t even real people. So in Titanic, the big-picture stuff was pretty much true, but the character-dynamics and interactions were fictionalized.
With Greek mythology, they have this whole storyline of how the world was created, how there’s a council of gods on Mount Olympus with a dude named Zeus; how they created giants and beings who were half-god, half-human; how there’s an Underworld realm, ruled by a guy named Hades, and how it has a basement called Tartarus.
You know what, there’s a lot of that that correlates to the true story. I would say that Zeus is not God, but the devil. And he didn’t rule from a Mount Olympus but from Mount Hermon. I would say that the beings who descended on Mount Hermon did create hybrid humans with mankind; and that there are actually lowercase-g gods who rule over various parts of the Earth and the Underworld.
But a lot of the character-interactions in Greek mythology are probably not true. Zeus has a bunch of kids who are various gods in their pantheon; I don’t think the devil was actually having kids. Zeus’ kids in Greek mythology might not even be real spiritual beings. Who knows?
Scripture does mention some of these beings in the New Testament—which was written in Greek—however, the people who translated the Bible did not translate the names of these Greek gods consistently. That’s why I said your Bible has been somewhat demythologized. And I’ll probably do a whole episode about that in December if I have time.
Here’s an example I’ve used already: II Peter 2:4 mentions Tartarus, but translates it as hell.
Here’s another: when Paul is bit on the hand by a snake in the last chapter of Acts. Paul is shipwrecked with a bunch of other prisoners and he reaches his hand near some firewood, and a snake jumps out and bites him. But I want you to notice what the bystanders say when they see this:
Acts 28:4
4 When the native people saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.”
When it says “justice has not allowed him to live,” it sounds like they’re saying it’s karma, or like he’s just getting what he deserved. But actually, the word “Justice” right there is Dike (dee-kay), which is the Greek Goddess of Justice.
There’s another couple of Greek Gods I’d like to talk about today, and the first one is probably pretty familiar to you: Hades.
Hades
Let me first remind you of what I was discussing last week: The Abyss has an angel in charge—a principality of the Abyss—with the name Abbadon/Apollyon. The Underworld is a big place. There was Abraham’s Bosom or Paradise. There was Hell. There was the Abyss. These are all different places.
Now, we made some observations from Revelation 9 last week:
1 - The Abyss has a principality in charge. We’re given his name: Apollyon.
2 - Principalities can be known by different names in different languages. We were told that his name in Greek was Apollyon and in Hebrew it was Abaddon.
3 - Locations under a principality’s control can be identified in the Bible by that principality’s name. As we studied Abaddon, we saw that it can refer both to the spiritual entity in charge of the Abyss AND the Abyss itself.
And this matches with Greek mythology, which refers to this Abyss as Tartarus AND as an entity named Tartarus.
And here’s something else: in Greek mythology, the word Hades can refer to the Underworld AND to the principality who is in charge of the Underworld. Your Bible will do the same thing.
Again, your Bible is not based on Greek mythology. Your Bible is truth. Greek mythology is loosely-but-somewhat based on the truth. And if you never realized it before, your Bible will speak of Hades as a real entity.
The word Hades comes up 10 times in your Bible. Usually translated as “hell.” For 5, maybe 6 of those times, that seems appropriate. Peter uses the word in Acts 2:31, where he’s talking about one of the Psalms of David and relating it to Jesus dying on the cross, and
Peter says
he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.
Peter is saying that Jesus went to the Underworld realm when He died, but that God didn’t leave Jesus there, and Jesus’ spirit returned to his body before it decomposed. Now what’s interesting about that quotation in Acts 2:31 is that Peter was quoting
Psalm 16:10, where David wrote
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.
And when Peter quoted it, he switched out Hades for Sheol. So we can understand Hades as a general term for the whole Underworld realm. However, the Bible doesn’t always use the word Hades that way; you have to look at the context of each time this word shows up.
When Jesus tells the story about the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16, which we’ve looked as on the podcast a few times now, Jesus says this about the rich man.
Luke 16:22-23
22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried, 23 and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.
Right here, the ESV actually translates it as “Hades”. Or I might say, it doesn’t translate it. It lets the Greek word stand. But right here, we’re not just talking about the Underworld in general; we’re talking specifically about the fiery place of punishment for sinners in the Underworld; a place we would call in English “hell.”
Then you get to the book of Revelation, and Hades comes up four times; every time it does, I would suggest that it’s talking about a spiritual entity. Because remember: Locations under a principality’s control can be identified in the Bible by that principality’s name. Hades is the being—the principality—who rules the Underworld.
Jesus says in Revelation 1:18
I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.
Thanatos
Let’s unpack that and talk not just about Hades, but also about Death. I just read that verse in the English Standard Version. That’s the version I typically use on this podcast, unless I tell you otherwise. In the original language, the word “death” is Thanatos. This is a word that can simply mean “death,” but it’s also the word for the god of death.
Let me say that again, because this is a massive reframing of what the word “death” can mean in your Bible. Thanatos is the God of Death in Greek mythology.
The ESV at least capitalizes the word “Death” here because it recognizes that this is a personification of death, but I wish for consistency that it would translate it as Thanatos. Why not either say “Thanatos and Hades,” or say “death and hell.” Instead it translates one of the names but doesn’t translate the other, and that inconsistency throws us off.
It says Jesus has their keys. When Jesus descended into the Underworld, He took the keys of Thanatos and Hades. Are these words referring to a place or a person? I would argue that the keys belong to these individuals. They had authority over beings entering or exiting the Underworld before, but now Jesus has taken their authority away from them. Because remember from last week: keys unlock things. Spiritual gates can be opened with keys. I don’t know exactly what these keys are in the spiritual realm, but we see this language used consistently in scripture of creating openings or portals between realms.
Do you think that these evil Underworld spirits wanted to let the Second Person of the Trinity out of the grave once they had Him in their hands? No. I highly doubt it. But Jesus took their keys and let Himself out. So Thanatos and Hades were kind of like the dungeon masters of this realm.
Let me add in something Paul says:
Romans 6:9
We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death [or Thanatos] no longer has dominion over him.
Romans 5:14
14 Yet [Thanatos] reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
Thanatos reigned. You could think of it this way: until Jesus died on the cross, everybody went to the Underworld. Thanatos was a gatekeeper of the Underworld. So Thanatos had a claim on everybody—even if you went to Paradise, everybody was in Death’s domain in the Old Testament—until Jesus saved us from that. We don’t have to go down there now when we die. Jesus took the keys from Thanatos and set those people free. And Jesus set us free, too, because now we never have to go down there. The Gates of Hades will not prevail against us.
And Thanatos and Hades are often mentioned in conjunction, but not always. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible says that in the 120 times that the New Testament uses the word Thanatos, 9 of those times it’s talking about the deity of death. In Revelation 6, we meet the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. We’re told about four horses, and each of these horses is a different color. The text also mentions that there are riders of each of these horses, although we’re only told the name of the last one.
Revelation 6:8 says
8 And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was [Thanatos], and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.
Thanatos rides the fourth horse. It says Hades followed him, but Hades wasn’t the rider.
Thanatos is given authority to kill one-fourth of the earth in the end times. How is he allowed to kill them? It says he’s allowed to use a variety of means: through humans, through mass starvation, and through plagues. I would say “wild beasts of the earth” probably refers to demonic beings rather than simply wild animals.
So just as God hands the earth over to the Underworld spirit of the Antichrist for 7 years—which is the first horseman of Revelation 6—God also hands one-fourth of the world over to Thanatos in that time. Thanatos and Hades.
Who is Thanatos?
Who is Thanatos? We’ll come back to the Bible in a minute, but Thanatos, the God of Death, is a deity who shows up in a variety of religions, both ancient and modern. And remember this observation we already mentioned: Principalities can be known by different names in different languages. Satan shows up under different names in different religions. Zeus to the Greeks, Bel to the Babylonians, Baal to the Canaanites. Thanatos shows up a lot as well. And often mentioned in conjunction with a Hades-like being.
To the Canaanites, he was Mot (M-O-T).
To the Romans: Mors and Pluto, where Mors was the god of death, and Pluto ruled the Underworld. Yes, Pluto—the planet that’s apparently not a planet anymore—was named after the Roman god of the Underworld, the Roman version of Hades.
The Egyptians had Anubis and Osiris as the deities who rule over death and the Underworld.
Norse mythology has Hel (H-E-L). In that Thor: Ragnarok movie I mentioned last week, it had a character called Hela, the Goddess of Death. This is kind of like a merging of these two Underworld spirits.
So these principalities show up in a lot of different religions—which I think lends credibility to the idea that they correspond to actual spiritual entities, not merely figments of someone’s imagination.
And in your Old Testament, this being is Mawet; basically the same as the Canaanite Mot, but spelled slightly different. When the Greek Septuagint translates Mawet into Greek, it translates it as Thanatos.
In Greek mythology, there’s a lot more agreement or concrete information established on Hades than there is Thanatos. Thanatos is more mysterious. He was kind of like what we call the Grim Reaper. The Greek prophet Homer taught that Thanatos was the twin brother of the god Sleep and the son of the god Night. Sophocles taught that Thanatos was the son of the god Tartarus (source: DDD). Now, I’m not near to being sold on the idea that these spiritual beings—even the ones as mighty as principalities—are able to produce offspring, so again, don’t take anything in Greek mythology true at face value. Let’s look again at what Scripture says.
Listen to these words of one of the Sons of Korah in
Psalm 49:13-15
13 This is the path of those who have foolish confidence;
yet after them people approve of their boasts. Selah
14 [key verse] Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol;
death shall be their shepherd,
and the upright shall rule over them in the morning.
Their form shall be consumed in Sheol, with no place to dwell.
15 But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,
for he will receive me. Selah
Death—here it’s Mawet—is the shepherd. Death collects and takes the soul from the Earthly realm to the Underworld. That is just like the Grim Reaper concept we have, right? Someone who shows up to ferry souls into the Underworld. The Bible just said it really happens. We know from Scripture that for believers, angels come to greet you when you die. They take you to heaven. Could it be that for unbelievers, that Thanatos or one of his agents comes to collect the soul? I never really thought about it before but that actually seems pretty logical.
In his book Demons, Dr. Michael Heiser says, “…biblical writers drew on broad Semitic notions that there was a spirit entity who was lord over the realm of the dead. God may sovereignly send someone to the underworld, but certain texts put forth the idea that the dead would be under the authority of its master.” [page 13]
Throwing Death
Let’s jump to the end of the Bible. Jesus is back. Great White Throne Judgment. All the dead in the Underworld are brought up for the final judgment, which is sentencing in the Lake of Fire.
Revelation 20, starting at verse 11
11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. 13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it,
Pause. “The sea gave up the dead who were in it.” What is the sea in Revelation? It’s the Underworld. So from Scripture, when a Christian dies, they go to heaven. we know that when a sinner dies without Christ, they go to a place in the Underworld called hell. But hell is not the permanent destination. It’s really a place you await the final judgment. So that is what it’s talking about here where it says “the sea gave up the dead who were in it.” And think about this: it would include all of the Fallen Watchers that we read about in the Book of Enoch, because they’re chained up down there, waiting until judgment day.
Continuing at verse 13:
And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done.
Isn’t this curious phrasing? “Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them.” You could take this as referring to the individuals or the places; yet death is not really a place, right? Hades could arguably be a place, but that seems to have been covered already where it said that the sea gave up the dead. Death, or Thanatos, isn’t really spoken of as a place.
Although I will say one thing, and you can take this as 100% speculation of Luke. Recall that in Enoch’s tour of the Underworld, he witnessed two compartments in his 22nd chapter: one for sinners, and one for the really bad sinners. Perhaps could the principality of Hades rule one, and the principality of Thanatos rule the other? Just throwing that out there as a possibility. Maybe that’s why it says “Death and Hades” gave up the dead who were in them.
But I do strongly believe that Revelation 20 is speaking of Thanatos and Hades right here as two literal spiritual beings that run the Underworld.
Let me remind you of something we established a few months ago: the devil is never—not once—said to rule over hell or the Underworld in the Bible. I never realized for most of my Christian life. I just assumed he did, because that’s something Christians say all the time. And that’s what happened in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. It just seems like common knowledge. But the Bible never says that. The Bible says Satan is “the ruler of this world.” He’s not the ruler of the Underworld. Those would be Hades and Thanatos. Let me read what happens to them next:
Revelation 20:14
14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
So is this literal or just metaphorical language? A typical commentary will say something like “Death is personified” here [page 1061, Thru the Bible Volume V, J. Vernon McGee]. That this is just a personification of death. That it’s a literary technique, but they don’t even consider the possibility that this is an actual dude.
But think about this: the word for “thrown” here is Ballo (ball-oh), and it’s usually translated as “thrown” or “cast.” It’s used 23 or 24 times in Revelation, oftentimes to throw spirits. In Revelation 12:4, the fallen angels who rebelled with Satan are cast from heaven. Satan himself is cast down in 12:9 and 12:13. The Antichrist and False Prophet are cast into the Lake of Fire in 19:20. Satan is cast into the Abyss in 20:3 and then he himself is cast into the Lake of Fire in 20:10.
So when Revelation says Thanatos and Hades are cast into the Lake of Fire as well—along with all who were not found in the Book of Life—I take it as actual beings named Thanatos and Hades being tossed in there as well.
And this explains how “Death” can be thrown. Many have understood this to mean that the concept of death is being thrown into the Lake of Fire, because after this, nobody ever dies again. Right after this we go into the New Heavens and New Earth; the eternal state. So it’s certainly true that we could say even the concept of death is being destroyed here. But I believe there’s also a God of Death, an Underworld spirit, a principality of Sheol, who is being tossed in there as well.
And before anybody says, “Luke, this is just Revelation, you can’t take it so literally,” I just want to point out how well it jives with Paul’s own words here:
I Corinthians 15:24-26
24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
The last enemy to be destroyed is Thanatos.
It’s not the devil. We think of the devil as God’s ultimate enemy, and in Scripture, he certainly seems to be at the top of the list. But the devil is not the last enemy of God’s to be destroyed. Satan goes into the Lake of Fire in Revelation 20, verse 10; Hades and Thanatos are tossed in in Revelation 20, verse 14.
And guys, this has been fun, but we are out of time.
Next Time
I honestly had more places where we see Death personified in the Bible, I really wanted to get into some of those with you all. But I’ll have to put it in the newsletter.
I tell you what, I’m ready to get OUT of the Underworld. It’s been kind of a dark year on the podcast. And I used to get a lot of emails from people who said they liked listening to the podcast as a family. That really meant a lot to me to hear that. And then we talked about Enoch’s book the first half of the year. And I know a lot of the stuff that the Watchers did was not so family friendly. I mean, they were making families, but it wasn’t so friendly. And then we did the Underworld series, and we talked about hell a lot and now the God of Death. I am probably not the podcast that parents are putting on the radio for their family road trip anymore. But honestly, I want to get back to that!
Next time on this podcast, we will start a new series on the podcast, and it will be above ground. In fact, it’ll be pretty far above the ground. It will be the Tower of Babel series that I’ve been working on in the background all year long, and it will be probably 5 or 6 episodes long.
Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it! And if you’d like some additional references to “Death” as an entity—Thanatos in the New Testament, Mot in the Old Testament—sign yourself up for the newsletter. There’s a link to do that in the show notes. If you find this podcast episode later on, you can still read the newsletter; there’s a full archive at that link to read old releases of the newsletter so you can catch up on anything that you missed.
The Fight We’re In
Let’s wrap up today with some closing thoughts. One thing I didn’t mention about Thanatos, but you might have thought about, is how his is very similar to the name of the bad guy from the Avengers movies. Thanos was named after Thanatos by whoever invented the comic book character. That’s why when Avengers introduces Thanos, it talks about courting death; and his plan is to wipe out half of life in the universe. Thanos was very death-coded; and he was named after this Greek deity known as the God of Death.
So we see a place there where Greek mythology had an influence on popular culture. And Greek mythology was certainly influencing the New Testament culture. But let me say one more time: Greek mythology did not influence the Bible. The Bible is truth; Greek mythology is influenced by truth.
Guess what: I would say a lot of world religions are influenced by the truth. Loosely-but-somewhat based on a true story. Only Christianity leads to heaven; but in a lot of these religions throughout the world who worship gods like Shivu, Brahma, or Krishna in India, or Amaterasu (ah-mah-teh-rah-soo) in Japan, Shango or Oshun in Africa—these could be corresponding to actual beings in the spiritual realm. Territorial spirits who are assigned to these areas. I’ve often heard it said that the “Allah” of the Muslims is the devil. Could be. Could be some other spirit.
One thing that this Underworld series has helped me grasp better is the hierarchy or complexity of the spiritual realm. And this helps me make sense of some of the complexity of these other world religions. For example, the concept that there are Heavenly Realm spirits, Earthly Realm spirits, and Underworld spirits. This is why the Second Commandment in
Exodus 20:4 says
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
If you’ve been following this series, you know well by now that the water under the earth is the Underworld.
Well, when you look around the world, we might know as Christians that all of these false religions are demonic in nature; but they’re not all the same kind of demonic. Different cults and religions have different emphases in their worship.
Some religions are very obsessed with the material world, worshipping things of nature. Perhaps those are influenced by earthly spirits.
Some religions are very transcendent and spiritual and mystical—perhaps those are influenced by heavenly realm spirits.
And some religions are really focused on death, killing, sacrifice, blood—perhaps those are influenced by the Underworld realm spirits.
Mexico is known for having the annual Day of the Dead celebration, and they worship a deity down there called Santa Muerte, or Holy Death. Probably just Thanatos being worshipped under another name.
When we see things like this, it helps us to get a firmer grasp of the battlefield. Of the fight we’re in.
We have a better grasp of the problem, but the solution is still the same. In his book Bloodline Deliverance, Mike Brewer writes, “…in the context of the New Covenant and through the resurrection of Jesus, He has conquered all of these demonic entities and given us the power to conquer them all! Christians are promised deliverance and the overcoming power over all demons, even the false god of Death.” [105-106]
So I know that before today, you may have never realized there was a real Thanatos, or a Grim Reaper, or God of Death. And that might sound a little intimidating, sure.
But if you’re in Christ, you have nothing to fear, because you belong to the God who already defeated him and took his keys. I Corinthians 15 says, “Death is swallowed up in victory…thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (I Corinthians 15:54-57)
Romans 8 says we are more than conquerers, and not even Thanatos can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39).
So the Bible has some quote-unquote “mythological” elements to it. But the Bible is not weird. WE are weird, because we didn’t know about Hades and Thanatos and the fight we’re in. But now we do. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.