Gahanna & Gehenna

I grew up in a suburb of Columbus, OH called Gahanna and it was a nice place. Gahanna, in the local native American language means "three in one", since there are three rivers that converge into one river.
When I got to high school, I would tell people where I live and would sometimes snicker, saying "Like Hell?" Although at first, I had no idea what they were talking about, but they said Gehenna. It's also been weird to tell people I'm going back home to visit my parents and people say, "You're going back to Hell?" since it's actually a pleasant place. In any event, whenever I've told people where I grew up and/or where my parents live, I've said "The city where I grew up rhymes with 'banana'" and then proceed to say "Gahanna."
Since I'm on the topic of Gehenna, I thought I would quote a couple of articles regarding its name:

The Greek noun gehenna, usually translated as hell in the English New Testament, is used in a bewildering variety of ways in ancient sacred literature. In the Bible and related literature, it occurs in three senses: as an ordinary geographical location in Jerusalem; as an extraordinary place of punishment for the wicked, located in the area of Jerusalem; and as an otherworldly place of punishment for the wicked after death. Eventually, the name Gehenna for the geographical valley became a term for the underworld.¹

and

The New Testament renders Gê...Hinnōm by Γεέννα, "Gehenna," a term which has become a name for hell. Both Old and New Testaments use other terminology, such as Hades, Sheol, the Pit, the Grave, and so on. By the time of early Christianity, they seem to have more or less coalesced in meaning, though they will have had slightly different shades of meaning. While Gehenna occurs 10 times in the gospels (Matthew 5:22, 29, 10:28, 18:9, 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5 and also in James 3:6), occurs 11 times (Matthew 11:23, 16:18; Luke 10:15, 16:23; Acts 2:27, 31; I Corinthians 15:55; Revelation 1:18, 6:8, 20:13, 14). This suggests a conception, probably still fairly fluid, which shares elements of contemporary Greek and Roman cosmology, themselves heirs to the Mediterranean koine, together with Jewish elements, which themselves seem to have absorbed earlier Egyptian or even Zoroastrian ideas (such as the Lake of Fire).²

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Notes:
1 - Lloyd R. Bailey, "Gehenna: The Topography of Hell," The Biblical Archaeologist 49, no. 3 (September 1986), 187.
2 - N. Wyatt, "The Concept and Purpose of Hell: Its Nature and Development in West Semitic Thought," Numen 56 (2009), 180.

Starting to Read the NT

After arriving to the great sunny land of California, my benefactor handed me a bunch of literature with information about what proselytizing Christians might say, including many quotations from the NT. After reading some of it, I realized that all the scriptural verses were not in their context. Moreover, how could I discuss, with any knowledge, what the NT or Christianity believed about various matters? So, I set aside that literature and began to read the NT, itself. So far, it's been good - I'm progressing. Although there's a lot in there that, for lack of better phrasing, I just don't believe, nonetheless, I've found reading it interesting on three accounts:
1) Seeing how it/Jesus uses Biblical verses (that is, from the Hebrew Bible) that aren't necessarily the way that we Jews read them. On the other hand, it is also interesting to see how the NT is describing certain Biblical laws being followed in that time.
2) Getting a better sense of the origins of certain ideas that have trickled down to our day in contemporary America, but more interestingly, phrases, as well.
3) Reading about certain social circumstances as well as outlooks that would also be reflected upon rabbinic literature as well as similar statements (or dissimilar, for that matter).
This last one is something that may not appeal to a lot of people, but is the most intellectually fascinating aspect to me. Although I may be reading it on account of needing to know this stuff for professional reasons (whether that would be confronting missionaries, contrasting NT statements to Jewish positions, or even just to discuss with Christian clergy), it's this third reason that really keeps me going, as someone who enjoys reading and studying rabbinic literature.