Christians love to claim that Hell is real, and not some recent invention, despite the fact that the most well known passage from the Bible does in fact show that neither Jesus himself, nor did the slaves who transcribed the book of John, believe in Hell.
This is oddly something I haven't seen even the most well known scholars write about. Even in Ehrman's Heaven and Hell, which is a book about how Jesus didn't believe in Hell (or Heaven), and how it was a recent invention - Dr. Ehrman doesn't even touch on John 3:16
Explanation for those who care:
So, Judaism back in Jesus' time, along with the early Christians, they didn't have Hell as we know of it today. Skipping over Sheol as that was for everyone regardless of whether they were evil or not - In their theology, if one died and weren't "right" with YHWH/God (God here refers to the Christian's deity), they would go to Gehenna.
Gehenna, is referred to as the "Lake of Fire" in the Apocalypse of John (Or Revelation as some call it). Here's a passage of it from Revelation 20:11-15
and a few other select verses that refer to the same concept, from the other Gospels
Now there's a few things I'd like to draw attention to:
The concept of an "eternal fire"
The complete and eternal destruction of both body and soul
The comparison to destruction of "root" and "branch" (types of wood)
Early Christians and certain Jewish people in that era (as Gehenna has evolved in what exactly it constitutes from then to now, and even between Jewish people of that era, who had a wide variety of views on things, but for simplicity sake, we're gonna focus on Apocalypticism Judaism (200 BCE - 100 CE), which Jesus was a part of) believed that Gehenna was like a literal fire. As in, if you throw wood into a fire, it's destroyed, permanently. You can't reform it, you can't bring it back. It's gone. It ceases to exist, literally. (Yes, it turns to ash and the matter is still there, but I digress, the wood is destroyed)
That's literally what Jesus and others who wrote the Bible thought of Gehenna. When you're tossed into the fire, you're destroyed permanently. You cease to exist. Maybe a few seconds of suffering, but after that? You're gone. Both body, and soul, are destroyed.
So, with that understanding of the theology of the time, let's take a look at John 3:16:
So, you have two options here:
Believe in Jesus, and have eternal life, and don't perish
Don't believe, and perish, without eternal life
Now, under modern Christian theology, you don't believe? You go to Hell and burn eternally.
But... this verse, it says that you only have eternal life, if you believe. It never says a good eternal life, or an eternal life without hell. It just says you only have eternal life if you believe in Jesus. That makes zero sense in modern understandings.
That's because under the author's understanding back then, as you now know, you don't burn eternally. You die and cease to exist if you don't believe in Jesus.
The Greek word used here for "perish" is ἀπόλλυμι (apoollumi), which refers to destroying an inanimate object, to kill, or destroy permanently and completely
Other examples of this word being used in the Greek manuscripts:
The king was furious! He sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city to the ground. Matt 22:7
saying, “What with us, do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God!” Mark 1:24
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed Luke 5:37
Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you whether it is lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” Luke 6:9
There is literally only way to interpret John 3:16, that the only other option if you don't believe, is complete and utter destruction, and not eternal suffering, from an immortal soul.
I'm currently writing a book on the Apocalypse of John actually, and explaining every single verse and what it ACTUALLY meant to Christians of the time, complete with academic citations. Doing research into what the Christian texts actually mean is a huge interest of mine and is a way for me to heal from trauma I had growing up.
It's incredibly interesting how much the religion evolved. Hell, the BIGGEST thing in Christian theology was only made "canon" because pastors and priests made it the fuck up to reconcile textual issues, and Christians of the time noticed that any evidence for it was lacking from the Latin translations, and got so angry at the publishers that they added text in to make it canon.
That concept? The trinity. This one verse is the ONLY verse in the NT that explicitly states that the trinity is a thing, and it was only added later on in later translations.
Incredibly interesting rabbit hole to dive into.
