What do you trust about heaven and hell ? Even if you ’re not spiritual , it ’s hard to escape the pull of these two oppose fates awaiting humankind after decease : eonian paradise and joyousness in the clouds or eternal eternal damnation and desperation in the torrid depth .
The concept of hell is present in many religions ― such as the Mesopotamian faith from the third century B.C.E. , as well as in Roman and Greek mythology ( Hades , anyone?).Islam , BuddhismandHinduismall acknowledge the beingness of a hell , too . But for the determination of this clause , we ’ll reduce on the Judeo - Christian conception of hell . Where did our collective westerly range of a function of hell come from ? And has it always been the same since the very starting time ?
Not at all , says Jeffrey Trumbower , a prof of spiritual studies at St. Michael ’s College in Burlington , Vermont and generator of " delivery for the Dead : The Posthumous Salvation of Non - Christians in Early Christianity . "
" There ’s hardly any conception of the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible , " articulate Trumbower , referring to the books that mostly comprise the Old Testament in Christianity . Compared to the ancient Egyptians , whose ' Book of the Dead ' and ' Book of Gates ' present racy visions of what awaits us after death , the citizenry of Palestine hardly gave it a thinking .
In uncommon passages , the Hebrew Bible generate glimpse ofSheol , the Hebrew Hades , as a muffled wispy beingness , a neutral storage place for all of the dead , both dependable and evilness . In the rule book of 1 Samuel 28:7 - 24 , for representative , a troubled Saul wants to address to the stagnant vaticinator Samuel , so he confer with a witch or mass medium who can muster the dead .
For Trumbower , it ’s striking that Samuel , " a bully seer and certainly a righteous individual , " was not living in some kind of heavenly Eden , but instead grouchily arose " out of the earth " as if he ’d been awoken from a long Napoleon . In the ancient Hebrew imaging , Sheolwas a unmarried dumping land for all the populace ’s dead .
So where do we first get the idea of elysian judgment , of God part the commodity from the evil and doom them to opposing fates ? The earliest biblical mention is in the book of Daniel 12:2 written around 165 B.C.E. , in which the prophet is given a vision of the Day of Judgment .
Rather than a neutral hereafter , Daniel gives us the first verbal description of what historiographer Alan Bernstein calls " moral destruction , " where your eternal lot depends on how you hold up your life . Trumbower says that by the first hundred C.E. , the approximation of a final judgement where God metes out different rewards and penalty was widespread within Judaism .
" When you have the Jesus movement [ Jews who decided to follow Jesus ] , they ’re already steeped in this kind of stuff and nonsense , " says Trumbower .
A New Kind of Hell
In the New Testament , Jesus and his disciples introduce a new term for hell , the Hebrew wordGehenna . harmonize to Jewish tradition , Gehennawas a vale outside of the metropolis wall of Jerusalem that double as a applesauce dump , where food waste was continually burn .
" It was a foul , dank , smelly place , so it became a word used for this hellish fiery pit where citizenry are tormented , " says Trumbower .
But when the New Testament negotiation about hell , it still mostly envisions hell as the place where evildoers are post only after the Day of Judgment , not directly after death . Take the Gospel of Matthew , for example , in which Jesus shares the parable of the sheep and the Capricorn the Goat , in which the " King " separates the goodness and the evil in the last twenty-four hours as a sheepman separates his sheep from the laughingstock .
There is , however , one striking example in the gospels of Hades as the blank space where the bad cat are sent right after they kick the bucket to be tortured for their sins . It ’s the account of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus found in Chapter 16 of the Gospel of Luke .
In the narrative , the rich piece feasts while Lazarus subsists on the scraps that fall from his mesa , dogs licking his open sore . When both men go bad , Lazarus the beggar is " carry to Abraham ’s side " in heaven and the plenteous man is post the paired style .
The first real graphic descriptions of hell and its torments come outside of the New Testament canon in the Christian apocryphal texts of the second century C.E. One of the most colourful sight of hell is recorded in the Apocalypse of Peter , which was wide known in Christian circles at the time , though not believe part of thebiblical canon .
After describing heaven as " transcend smart with light … and the globe itself blossom with unfading flowers and full of spices and plants , fair - blossoming and incorruptible and bearing blessed fruit , " the generator have into the juicy material . Each punishment in blaze is suit to the crime .
Murderers were " vagabond into a certain strait spot , full of evil snakes , and smitten by those wolf " while the souls of the murdered front on with satisfaction . Those who cuss and slandered the righteous were forced to " [ gnaw ] their own lips … and [ have ] a red - hot iron in their eyes . " The rich who refused the orphans and widows were made to wear " tattered and smutty " garments and to take the air endlessly over " pebbles sharper than swords or any spit , red - hot . "
In modern times , many theologiser have downplayed the images of repugnance and stressed that the worst part of hell is not the snakes and the fervency ( which are probable not literal ) but rather , being severalize from God .
And What About Satan?
Satan was n’t always a red demon with horns , cloven animal foot and a pitchfork . When we first meet him in the Old Testament Book of Job , he ’s presenting himself to God along with several " sons of God " and comes up with the idea of testing the faith of Job by strip him of everything he possesses . To the ancient Hebrews , Satan was an opponent , tempter and an accuser of military man , but not pure evil , say Trumbower .
That later view of Satan , he says , was belike take up from Zoroastrianism , the religion of Persia , which ruled over the Jewish masses for 200 year from 530 to 330 B.C.E.
" The Persian faith was dualistic , " says Trumbower , " with an ultimate good and an ultimate evil constantly at war . The Persians also believed in an ' end time ' and a final conflagration . "
By the time of Christ , Jesus ' Jewish follower would have take in this Persian version of Satan as the generator of all evil and the principal opposition of God . As for the horns and hooves , that imagery was likely borrowed from pagan Supreme Being like Moloch and Pan , and medieval writer like Dante gave Satan at-bat wing in his " Inferno " to contrast with the square wings of the angels .
