'Valley of the Rebab'),[1][2] is a historic valley surrounding Jerusalem from the west and southwest[3] that has acquired various theological connotations, including as a place of divine punishment, in Jewish eschatology.

George Adam Smith wrote in 1907 that there are three possible locations considered by historical writers:[11] Child sacrifice at other Tophets contemporary with the Bible accounts (700–600 BCE) of the reigns of Ahaz and Manasseh has been established, such as the bones of children sacrificed at the Tophet to the goddess Tanit in Phoenician Carthage,[16] and also child sacrifice in ancient Syria-Palestine.

[17] Scholars such as Mosca (1975) have concluded that the sacrifice recorded in the Hebrew Bible, such as Jeremiah's comment that the worshippers of Baal had "filled this place with the blood of innocents", is literal.

[22] The site would also have been disrupted by the actions of Josiah "And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech."

A minority of scholars have attempted to argue that the Bible does not portray actual child sacrifice, but only dedication to the god by fire; however, they are judged to have been "convincingly disproved" (Hay, 2011).

[24] The oldest historical reference to “the Valley of the Son of Hinnom” is found in the Book of Joshua (15:8 and 18:16) which describe tribal boundaries.

The ancient Aramaic paraphrase-translations of the Hebrew Bible known as Targums supply the term "Gehinnom" frequently to verses touching upon resurrection, judgment, and the fate of the wicked.

In this the Targums are parallel to the Gospel of Mark addition of "Gehenna" to the quotation of the Isaiah verses describing the corpses "where their worm does not die".

[35] The traditional explanation that a burning rubbish heap in the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem gave rise to the idea of a fiery Gehenna of judgment is attributed to Rabbi David Kimhi's commentary on Psalms 27:13 (c. 1200 CE).

However, Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck state that there is neither archaeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources.

Maimonides declares, in his 13 principles of faith, that the descriptions of Gehinnom as a place of punishment in rabbinic literature, were pedagogically motivated inventions to encourage respect of the Torah commandments by mankind, which had been regarded as immature.

[39] Frequent references to "Gehenna" are also made in the books of Meqabyan, which are considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.

[41] In certain usage, the Christian Bible refers to it as a place where both soul (Greek: ψυχή, psyche) and body could be destroyed (Matthew 10:28) in "unquenchable fire" (Mark 9:43).

Some Christian scholars, however, have suggested that Gehenna may not be synonymous with the lake of fire, but a prophetic metaphor for the horrible fate that awaited the many civilians killed in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

[51] The Quran contains 77 references to the Islamic interpretation of Gehenna (جهنم), but does not mention Sheol / Hades as the "abode of the dead", and instead uses the word "Qabr" (قبر, meaning grave).