I read recently from a few Christians who have this alarming idea that Jesus was in Hell between his death and resurrection.

Today I decided to do some research of how people come to this conclusion.

I read this site today:- http://www.gotquestions.org/did-Jesus-go-to-hell.html

Seem a lot of this error boils down to mistranslation in this passage here:-

Psalm 16 : 10
American Standard Version
For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; Neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; nor wilt then give thy holy one to see corruption.

Darby Bible Translation
For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol, neither wilt thou allow thy Holy One to see corruption.

English Revised Version
For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption.

Webster’s Bible Translation
For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.

World English Bible
For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, neither will you allow your holy one to see corruption.

Young’s Literal Translation
For Thou dost not leave my soul to Sheol, Nor givest thy saintly one to see corruption.

King James
For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

New International version
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

Its interesting how in this case that the NIV is better than the KJV here!

From the scant bit of Hebrew learning I did, I remember that Nefesh is soul and Sheoul is the word for ‘Hades’

I looked this up n Hebrew wikipedia, which originally just copying שאול shows a listing for Shaul of Tarsius.  A bit more searching found this article http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/ שאול_(מיתולוגיה)  which you can easily read in Google translator or the Chrome browser, bit didn’t tell me anything that useful.    But its fascinating that God’s decision to rename Shaul to Paul considering his transformation from a well educated Jewish Roman tent maker but someone who was a murderer and against the gospel to one who was the most well known missionary and author of the largest amount of the New Testament.

As a kid, I remember reading somewhere that our death and judgement is like going through a large airport security area where you then are evaluated whether you have a passport, ticket, boarding card and luggage are acceptable to the airline and jurisdiction of the country you are travelling to, but with the only requirement is being a follower of Christ and therefore in the big salvation database of every human who ever lived, the Lamb’s book of life.    

Further on, it seems in Revelation, Hell and Hades are described as two different places.

Revelation 20:11–15
11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. 14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

Here its interesting it describes ‘the second death’ here.  Hell isn’t mentioned in Revelation in my NIV, but it does mention the lake of fire.

My conclusion is Jesus didn’t go to hell for the 3 days he was not on earth, but actually visited the inbetween place Shaul or Hades, to set up the process of how people are judged if they are fit for eternal life.   Jesus’s friends didn’t immediately recognise him as he would of had a shave, shower, hair cut and looked much better then when he was arrested I think.

This just makes me more conscious of how I need to live and to repent of the regular bad things I constantly fall into.