Usage of Hades in the New Testament If Hades is the name of a Greek god, why then did it find its way into the Greek translation into the New Testament? Wouldn't the NT writers refrain from associating their beliefs to Greek polytheism? Thanks.
I suppose the authors of the Greek New Testament scriptures could have simply transliterated the Hebrew word שְׁאוֹל into Greek, perhaps as Σεολ. But, even if they had done that, Greeks wouldn't have had the faintest idea what this so-called "Σεολ" was, unless they first spent countless hours studying its equivalent in Hebrew, i.e. שְׁאוֹל (remember, early cultures didn't have the luxuries that we do, including electricity and online lexicons; even the possession of scrolls was a luxury of the wealthy). 

The Greeks already had a name for the underworld, which they called ᾅδης. Recognizing this, the authors of the Septuagint were the first to translate the Hebrew word שְׁאוֹל into Greek by the word ᾅδης circa 250 B.C. Since the authors of the New Testament were familiar with the Septuagint (often quoting from it or its Greek prototype), and the "seventy" (or seventy-two, depending on which tradition you accept) had incorporated ᾅδης into the LXX for their translation of שְׁאוֹל, the authors of the Greek New Testament probably decided it was easier to simply continue using ᾅδης rather than re-invent the wheel. 

As for ᾅδης being the name of a Greek god, I'm sure the authors were aware of that, but I assume they still incorporated it because they believed the Greeks' notions of ᾅδης (as the underworld) weren't irreconcilable with the Jews' notions of שְׁאוֹל.

That brings up another point: we could also ask why the authors chose the word οὐρανός, which we translate into English as "heaven," when it too was the name of a Greek god.