"One has to obtusely torture the Scripture to even come close to the idea (a task that Vicomte13 has affected rather well)"
Task: go to Judaica Store. Find book on "The Essentials of Judaism", or even "Judaism for Dummies". Open to index.
Find "Gehinnom" or "Gehenna" (both will be there).
Turn to that page.
Read how Jewish Hell is also Purgatory.
No affectation at all.
It's called READING THE WORD.
Jesus used the word "Gehenna". He didn't say "Hades". He didn't say "Sheol". He didn't say "Tartarus". He said Gehenna. He said it many times. That was the word he used.
He didn't qualify it. He didn't define it. He didn't explain it.
He didn't do with it what he did to every Jewish doctrine that he wanted to change or explain better. He just used it. Flat. Just like that. A Jew, talking to Jews, says "Gehenna", like a Catholic, talking to Catholics, says "confirmation". To a non-Catholic, what confirmation actually IS, what is happening spiritually, might be confusing, might require explanation. But to a Catholic? No. Confirmation has a clear meaning, and you can just say "my Confirmation", and everybody knows what it means.
Jesus the Jew used Gehenna when speaking to Jews just as matter-of-factly. They all knew that it meant Jewish Hell, which is a Hell of torment and fire, where the worm never sleeps and the fire is not quenched...and where those who have done evil go, some to be purified in the flame and torment, and some who are irretrievably evil to remain for ever. Jewish Hell: Gehenna, MEANS all that, just like "Confirmation" means the sealing of the soul, and chrismation, and the corrective slap, and a certain coming-of-age, and many other things that need not be explained if you say "Confirmation".
Just because WE are confused about the term "Gehenna" doesn't mean it's confusing. It means we're not Jews. Jesus was a Jew. His audience were Jews. They understood it, and understand it. And if we want to know what Jesus meant, all we have to do is ask the Jews. It's not hard.
It's just hard to swallow, because it means the Protestant traditions are simply wrong, and the Catholic traditions are overwrought, and Protestants and Catholics (and the Orthdox), all three, have a lot of energy and power and pride wrapped up in arguments about authority and meaning.
THIS argument is one that can be solved by consulting a Jewish dictionary. It's not hard. It's not confusing.
Jesus was clear and answered all of these questions with that pithy little word "Gehenna". Why WE have to go into agony and bleed a fountain of electronic ink has to do with pride and stubbornness on our part.
I am perfectly willing to keep on repeating this, because it is so, and it is simple. It is an obtuse torture of the Scripture to do anything BUT read "Gehenna" as a Jew of the First Century (or today) would understand it, and as Jesus, one such Jew, used it when addressing Jewish people.
Gehenna means Hell, which includes Purgatory. That's what the BIBLE says.
All the rest of this wind is Christian tradition (little "T") that seeks to twist the meaning of the Bible into a doctrine that fits the traditions of the different Christian sects. THIS is the sort of thing Jesus warned against when he warned against traditions.
Why?
Because THIS twisting of Jesus' simple word and meaning: Gehenna, is being used to argue that you don't have to DO anything to AVOID Gehenna, but all four Gospels are filled to the brim with Jesus telling everyone who would listen what they needed to specifically DO to avoid getting pitched into it. To say that it doesn't exist, or that a Christian can't end up there, contradicts Jesus, and that is just an extraordinary thing to do if one believes he's God!
The Jews also did not believe in the resurrection of souls either and based their hopes of immortality in their ability to create offspring. Just because they believed something doesn't make it so.
They believed that their messiah would be earthly not spiritual, and certainly Jesus did not teach according to that idea.
As for Gehenna, it is an actual valley and was for future punishment. If it was meant as a purgatory then the Jewish idea was limited to one year. Again, that this was their conception of an afterlife does not make it any more real than an other idea they may have had that was their imagination. A belief in ghosts by the Irish doesn't make them real.
Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
As far as Gehenna goes, I've got no qualms with you calling it Hell and Purgatory. The problem comes in when you postulate that a soul that enters the place can be earned out of it. THAT is the problem! This doctrine is a fabrication of the RCC for its own ulterior motives and has no basis in Scripture. Far from it, if Purgatory, as the RCC teaches it, is true then the atonement of Christ is a mockery, an unnecessary humiliation suffered by the God of the Universe. Purgatory, as postulated by the RCC, makes God both a masochist and a sadist. Purgatory, as postulated by the RCC, means that God is not just or righteous.
Purgatory is a false doctrine, giving false hope to deceived people whose ears have been tickled.
Gehenna
ga-hen'-a (geenna (see Grimm-Thayer, under the word)): Gehenna is a transliteration from the Aramaic form of the Hebrew ge-hinnom, "valley of Hinnom." This latter form, however, is rare in the Old Testament, the prevailing name being "the valley of the son of Hinnom." Septuagint usually translates; where it transliterates the form is different from Gehenna and varies. In the New Testament the correct form is Gee'nna with the accent on the penult, not Ge'enna. There is no reason to assume that Hinnom is other than a plain patronymic, although it has been proposed to find in it the corruption of the name of an idol (EB, II, 2071).
In the New Testament (King James Version margin) Gehenna occurs in Mat_5:22, Mat_5:29-30; Mat_10:28; Mat_18:9; Mat_23:15, Mat_23:33; Mar_9:43, Mar_9:15, Mar_9:47; Luk_12:5; Jam_3:6. In all of these it designates the place of eternal punishment of the wicked, generally in connection with the final judgment. It is associated with fire as the source of torment. Both body and soul are cast into it. This is not to be explained on the principle that the New Testament speaks metaphorically of the state after death in terms of the body; it presupposes the resurrection.
In the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) Gehenna is rendered by "hell" (see ESCHATOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT). That "the valley of Hinnom" became the technical designation for the place of final punishment was due to two causes. In the first place the valley had been the seat of the idolatrous worship of Molech, to whom children were immolated by fire (2Ch_28:3; 2Ch_33:6). Secondly, on account of these practices the place was defiled by King Josiah (2Ki_23:10), and became in consequence associated in prophecy with the judgment to be visited upon the people (Jer_7:32). The fact, also, that the city's offal was collected there may have helped to render the name synonymous with extreme defilement. Topographically the identification of the valley of Hinnom is still uncertain. It has been in turn identified with the depression on the western and southern side of Jerusalem, with the middle valley, and with the valley to the E. Compare EB, II, 2071; DCG, I, 636; RE3, VI.
Geerhardus Vos