More Abaddon and Abyss, plus Tartarus

Here are some more passages that link abaddon with sheol:

Psalm 88:10-12 says to god: "Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? (Hmm. The writer of the Psalm doesn't know about the judgement day?) Is your love declared in the grave (sheol) your faithfulness in destruction (abaddon)? Are your wonders known in the places of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?" The land of oblivion...That doesn't sound like the christian hell, does it?  If you read the whole of Psalm 88, you see that the author is afraid and feels like he is dead, " in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths." Those who lie in the grave are cut off from god's care and he forgets about them. Where is the concept of eternal life in this passage?  We've covered verses about pits in this series of posts about hell and punishment after death.  Those pits could be referring to abaddon.

Proverbs 15:11 says "Death (sheol) and destruction (abaddon) lie open before the lord, how much more the hearts of men." Proverbs 27:20 says "Death (sheol) and destruction (abaddon) are never satisfied and neither are the eyes of a man."

Going back to the word abyss, I find that, beside the book of Revelation, there are only two other appearances of the word abyss in the New Testament. One is found in Luke 8:31. This is the story of the demon possessed man who has many demons. "The demons begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the abyss." Jesus complies with the demons' request to be sent into some pigs. Then the pigs rush down a steep bank into the lake and are drowned. What happened to the demons then? Did they end up in the abyss anyway? Wasn't that kind of a dirty trick?

The other instance is in Romans 10:6-8, where the author says that righteousness based on faith does not ask who will bring christ down from heaven. Nor does it ask who will bring christ up from the abyss. Faith says that "the word" (christ) is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. In other words, people of faith don't focus on the physical location of jesus's body. They focus on faith and the statement of belief that god raised jesus from the dead. That will save them. From what? Not death. Everybody dies. Also, why would Jesus need to be raised from the abyss? Is that where Jesus went when he died? He wasn't raised directly from the tomb?

Finally, let's look at an interesting passage in 2 Peter 2:24 that says "God did not spare the angels when they sinned but cast them into hell, delivering them in chains to be held in gloomy darkness until their judgement." What makes this so interesting is the word translated into hell, in both the KJV and the NIV,  is actually the greek word Tartarus. This is the only occurrance of the word in the whole bible. At the time 2 Peter was written, Tartarus had been part of Greek mythology for at least seven hundred years. There was a Greek tradition that Tartarus was a "deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the titans" (Wikipedia) Isn't it interesting that the beast of Revelation emerges from the abyss and satan gets chained up in it? Is that the same abyss as Tartarus? Isn't it also interesting that 2 Peter calls this abyss  a holding place, like a prison,  of gloomy darkness? No fire. Judgement comes later.

Apparently some christians have tried to get around this obviously Greek synchretism and have said that the Greeks got  the idea of Tartarus from the Jews and stories of fallen angels being imprisoned. Which more likely came first, the Iliad or the Bible?