[145] However, the best-known Zoroastrian text to describe hell in detail is the Book of Arda Viraf. Finally, Inanna falls naked and powerless before Ereshkigal, who hangs her up like so much meat upon a drying hook. Bart Ehrman, welcome back to FRESH AIR. The geography of hell is very elaborately laid out in this work, with nine concentric rings leading deeper into Earth, and deeper into the various punishments of hell, until, at the center of the world, Dante finds Satan himself trapped in the frozen lake of Cocytus. [144], The sacred Gathas mention a "House of the Lie for those "that are of an evil dominion, of evil deeds, evil words, evil Self, and evil thought, Liars". Besides those mentioned above, there also exist additional terms that have been often used to either refer to hell in general or to some region of the underworld: Maimonides declares in his 13 principles of faith that the hells of the rabbinic literature were pedagogically motivated inventions to encourage respect of the Torah commandments by mankind, which had been regarded as immature. [133] The Bah writings state that the soul is immortal and after death it will continue to progress until it finally attains God's presence.[134]. We know that Jesus overcame the devil and the power of death on the cross (Hebrew 2:14). According to Jewish tradition, Gehenna was a valley outside of the city walls of Jerusalem that doubled as a trash dump, where garbage was continually burned. (Image credit: bastetamon | Shutterstock.com). The seven grounds are: The hellish beings are a type of souls which are residing in these various hells. (2017). [36]:8586 Several extant poems describe the galla dragging the god Dumuzid into the underworld. Hell is therefore believed to be a place of happiness for the souls which delight in evilness.[103]. [17] Serer religion rejects the general notion of heaven and hell. John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) opens with the fallen angels, including their leader Satan, waking up in hell after having been defeated in the war in heaven and the action returns there at several points throughout the poem. The Plurality of Eschatological Representations in the Islamicate World. Some consider it a spiritual forge where the soul is purified for its eventual ascent to Olam Habah (heb. Where did the concept of Christian hell come from? [28], Modern understanding of Egyptian notions of hell relies on six ancient texts:[29]. In later Hindu literature, especially the law books and the Puranas, more realms are mentioned, including a realm similar to hell, called Naraka. However, the official textbook of Catholic Christianity, the "Catechism of the Catholic. 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 stripping him of everything he possesses. Such places are sometimes equated with the English word hell, though a more correct translation would be "underworld" or "world of the dead". Christian-themed 'Hell Houses' Still Going Strong, Hades, Greek God of the Underworld, Had a Pretty Good Gig. Bible Students and Christadelphians also believe in annihilationism. But theologians have pointed out that Pope Francis has stressed the reality of hell several times in recent years. A small tunnel leads past Satan and out to the other side of the world, at the base of the Mount of Purgatory. Narrating Muhammad's Night Journey: Tracing the Development of the Ibn 'Abbas Ascension Discourse. Please do not include any non-text characters, such as emojis or other non-standard content, into your submission. However, many Liberal Christians throughout Mainline Protestant churches believe in universal reconciliation (see below), even though it contradicts the traditional doctrines that are usually held by the evangelicals within their denominations. In the Hebrew text when people died they went to Sheol, the grave[83] and the wicked ultimately went to Gehenna and were consumed by fire. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Indeed, for todays Catholics at least, hell still means the hopeless anguish of Gods absence. [141] For example, Guru Arjan explains that people who are entangled in emotional attachment and doubt are living in hell on this Earth i.e. Robert A. Heinlein offers a yin-yang version of hell where there is still some good within; most evident in his 1984 book Job: A Comedy of Justice. Later it is revealed that this was a test for Yudhishthira and that his brothers and the Kauravas are all in heaven, and live happily in the divine abode of the devas. [18][19], According to the Yoruba mythology, there is no hellfire. [107][108] After the Day of Judgment, it is to be occupied by those who do not believe in God, those who have disobeyed his laws, or rejected his messengers. Where Does The Concept Of Hell Come From? - Ranker - Lists About Heaven And Hell Are 'Not What Jesus Preached,' Religion Scholar Says : NPR Like all realms of rebirth in Buddhism, rebirth in the hell realms is not permanent, though suffering can persist for eons before being reborn again. Being out of alignment with God's will is itself a punishment according to the Torah. [97] This belief is held by some Unitarian-Universalists. [136] The hellish beings possess vaikriya body (protean body which can transform itself and take various forms). Through Christianity's history, the concept of Hell has changed a great deal not only its nature, but who ends up in it, and the criteria for them going there. God and Religious Toleration/Christianity#Is There a Hell? "The world to come", often viewed as analogous to heaven). [5][6], ProtoGermanic *xalja-wtjan (or *halja-wtjan) is reconstructed from Old Norse hel-vti 'hell', Old English helle-wte 'hell-torment, hell', Old Saxon helli-wti 'hell', and the Middle High German feminine noun helle-wze. As with other Jewish writings of the Second Temple period, the New Testament text distinguishes two words, both translated "hell" in older English Bibles: Hades, "the grave", and Gehenna where God "can destroy both body and soul". Each punishment in hell is fitted to the crime. [16], The hell of Swahili mythology is called kuzimu, and belief in it developed in the 7th and 8th century under the influence of Muslim merchants at the East African coast. It is the better part of wisdom, the tradition suggests, for mortals to make the most of earthly life before they are carried off into deaths long exile. Yama as the first born human (together with his twin sister Yam), by virtue of precedence, becomes ruler of men and a judge on their departure. Take the Gospel of Matthew, for example, in which Jesus shares the parable of the sheep and the goats, in which the "King" separates the good and the evil in the last days as a shepherd separates his sheep from the goats. Please fill out the form below, and a member of our online publication team will receive your message. [110] Muslim modernists downplay the vivid descriptions of hell common during Classical period, on one hand reaffirming that the afterlife must not be denied, but simultaneously asserting its exact nature remains unknown. [11] Despite these common depictions of hell as a place of fire, some other traditions portray hell as cold. Lange,C.(2016). Purgatory | Definition & History | Britannica Other religions, which do not conceive of the afterlife as a place of punishment or reward, merely describe an abode of the dead, the grave, a neutral place that is located under the surface of Earth (for example, see Kur, Hades, and Sheol). The underworld is often imagined as a place of punishment rather than merely of darkness and decomposition because of the widespread belief that a moral universe requires judgment and retributioncrime must not pay. These divisions go by many different names, and the most frequently mentioned are as follows:[41]. Omissions? The word hell does not appear in the Greek New Testament; instead one of three words is used: the Greek words Tartarus or Hades, or the Hebrew word Gehinnom. Of the hell realms, the worst is Avci (Sanskrit and Pali for "without waves"). Inanna is also the sister of Ereshkigal, queen of the dead. [123], Although the earliest reports about Muhammad's journey through the heavens, do not locate hell in the heavens,[125] only brief references about visiting hell during the journey appears. Piers Anthony in his series Incarnations of Immortality portrays examples of heaven and hell via Death, Fate, Underworld, Nature, War, Time, Good-God, and Evil-Devil. Various hells are also described in various Puranas and other scriptures. Ethics and Morality Where did the concept of Christian hell come from? The compound is composed of two elements: *xalj (*halj) and *rn, the Proto-Germanic precursor to Modern English rune. Those Adventist doctrines about death and hell reflect an underlying belief in: (a) conditional immortality (or conditionalism), as opposed to the immortality of the soul; and (b) the monistic nature of human beings, in which the soul is not separable from the body, as opposed to bipartite or tripartite conceptions, in which the soul is separable. An uncanny mirroring happens when Odysseus encounters Hercules, yesteryear's great hero, who, in keeping with his half-divine nature, has been split in two after death: the ghost of his mortal . air or atmosphere). News By Laura Geggel ( lifes-little-mysteries ) published 2 October 2016 What's this guy's story? Judaism does not have a specific doctrine about the afterlife, but it does have a mystical/Orthodox tradition of describing Gehinnom. [129], Medieval sources often identified hell with the seven earths mentioned in Quran 65:12, inhabited by devils, harsh angels, scorpions and serpents, who torment the sinners. The tale of how Hell came to exist in modern Christianity is a complex one. Therefore, annihilationism includes the doctrine that "the wicked" are also destroyed rather than tormented forever in traditional "hell" or the lake of fire. A fable about hell which recurs in folklore across several cultures is the allegory of the long spoons. Robert Lebling Legends of the Fire Spirits: Jinn and Genies from Arabia to Zanzibar I.B.Tauris 2010, Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam (2 Vols. Purgatory in world religions Something went wrong. Hell - Wikipedia At death a person faced judgment by a tribunal of forty-two divine judges. To the ancient Hebrews, Satan was an adversary, tempter and an accuser of man, but not pure evil, says Trumbower. The Rigveda mentions three realms, bhr (the earth), svar (the sky) and bhuvas or antarika (the middle area, i.e. The Campaign to Eliminate Hell In its archaic sense, the term hell refers to the underworld, a deep pit or distant land of shadows where the dead are gathered. At the end of their stay, people either ascended to "the world to come" or were destroyed. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Where did Satan come from? | Live Science [143] Typically, Daoist hells are "said to be ten in number" and "are sometimes said to be situated under a high mountain in Sichuan". The Ancient Pagan Origins Behind the Christian Concept of Hell Purgatory - Wikipedia Rejection and becoming a wandering soul is a sort of hell for one passing over. [36]:58 Nonetheless, funerary evidence indicates that some people believed that the goddess Inanna, Ereshkigal's younger sister, had the power to award her devotees with special favors in the afterlife. Narrating Muhammad's Night Journey: Tracing the Development of the Ibn 'Abbas Ascension Discourse. The Gardnerian Wicca and Alexandrian Wicca sects of Wicca include "wiccan laws" that Gerald Gardner wrote, which state that wiccan souls are privileged with reincarnation, but that the souls of wiccans who break the wiccan laws, "even under torture", would be cursed by the goddess, never be reborn on earth, and "remain where they belong, in the Hell of the Christians". Trumbower says that by the first century C.E., the idea of a final judgement where God metes out different rewards and punishments was widespread within Judaism. The process of purgatory is the final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. However, because of the Greek words used in translating from the Hebrew text, the Hebrew ideas have become confused with Greek myths and ideas. Compared to the ancient Egyptians, whose 'Book of the Dead' and 'Book of Gates' present robust visions of what awaits us after death, the people of Palestine hardly gave it a thought. Yet, because Sheol referred . It may cause errors in submitting the form. READ:The Horrors and Hells of Hieronymus Bosch, lingered in an underground twilight existence, READ:Why God Is Sending Christians Straight to Hell. See discussion at Orel (2003:155156 & 310). and transl. Ginza, ed. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. The word is of Teutonic origin, meaning "border" or "anything joined on." The concept of limbo probably developed in Europe in the Middle Ages but was never defined as a church dogma . The hells of Europe include Breton mythology's "Anaon", Celtic mythology's "Uffern", Slavic mythology's "Peklo", Norse mythology's Nstrnd, the hell of Sami mythology and Finnish "Tuonela" ("manala"). [25][26] The Tale of Khaemwese describes the torment of a rich man, who lacked charity, when he dies and compares it to the blessed state of a poor man who has also died. It is commonly inhabited by demons and the souls of dead people. However, most legends agree that once a soul (usually referred to as a 'ghost') has atoned for their deeds and repented, he or she is given the Drink of Forgetfulness by Meng Po and sent back into the world to be reborn, possibly as an animal or a poor or sick person, for further punishment. The Kabbalah explains it as a "waiting room" (commonly translated as an "entry way") for all souls (not just the wicked). According to the Muwatta Hadith, the Bukhari Hadith, the Tirmidhi Hadith, and the Kabir Hadith, Muhammad claimed that the fire of Jahannam is not red, but pitch-black, and is 70 times hotter than ordinary fire, and is much more painful than ordinary fire. Jewish Concepts: Demons and Demonology. It omits the gory details found in earlier attempts to describe the hellish experience, but restates that the chief pain of hell is eternal separation from God. 1. In popular literature, Ksitigarbha travels to the hell realms to teach and relieve beings of their suffering. [35][37]:184 All souls went to the same afterlife,[35] and a person's actions during life had no effect on how the person would be treated in the world to come. Milton portrays hell as the abode of the demons, and the passive prison from which they plot their revenge upon heaven through the corruption of the human race. hell, in many religious traditions, the abode, usually beneath the earth, of the unredeemed dead or the spirits of the damned. [89] The 1993 Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called 'hell'"[90] and "they suffer the punishments of hell, 'eternal fire'". In the tale, the rich man feasts while Lazarus subsists on the scraps that fall from his table, dogs licking his open sores. Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article: Artist: Gustave Dor. Rather than a neutral afterlife, Daniel gives us the first description of what historian Alan Bernstein calls "moral death," where your eternal fate depends on how you lived your life. For discussion and analysis, see Orel (2003:156) and Watkins (2000:38). [91] The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God" (CCC 1035). That later view of Satan, he says, was probably borrowed from Zoroastrianism, the religion of Persia, which ruled over the Jewish people for 200 years from 530 to 330 B.C.E. According to Brahma Kumaris, the Iron Age (Kali Yuga) is regarded as hell. Christians have believed that the souls of those who die either rest peacefully, in the case of Christians, or are afflicted, in the case of the damned, after death until the resurrection.[56]. Get Sojourners delivered straight to your inbox. Gehinnom is not hell, but originally a grave and in later times a sort of Purgatory where one is judged based on one's life's deeds, or rather, where one becomes fully aware of one's own shortcomings and negative actions during one's life. In turn, the Proto-Germanic form derives from the o-grade form of the Proto-Indo-European root *kel-, *kol-: 'to cover, conceal, save'. Perhaps the most fulsome description of hell was offered by the Italian poet Dante at the beginning of the 14th century in the first section of his, Here the souls of the damned are punished with tortures. An impulsive goddess, Inanna, according to some versions of the myth, is said to have threatened, in a fit of pique, to crush the gates of hell and let the dead overrun the earth. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. 2009, p. 238. Miguel Asin Palacios Islam and the Divine Comedy Routledge 2013 ISBN Before the night comes, anyone can escape hell if they leave behind their former selves and accept Heaven's offer, and a journey to heaven reveals that hell is infinitely small; it is nothing more or less than what happens to a soul that turns away from God and into itself. In a cycle of Sumerian and Akkadian poems, the god-king Gilgamesh, despairing over the death of his companion Enkidu, travels to the worlds end, crosses the ocean of death, and endures great trials only to learn that mortality is an incurable condition. The deceased needed both magical and moral power to be acquitted of offenses when appearing before Osiris. If found guilty the person was thrown to Ammit, the "devourer of the dead" and would be condemned to the lake of fire. Medieval theologians continued to stress that the worst of all these torments would be eternal separation from God, the poena damni.Medievalvisions of the afterlifeprovided more explicit details: pits full of dark flames, terrible cries, gagging stench, and rivers of boiling water filled with serpents. The influential wiccan author Raymond Buckland wrote that the wiccan laws are unimportant. and transl. Thanks! All forms ultimately derive from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic feminine noun *xalj or *halj ('concealed place, the underworld'). The Vatican insisted that the pope was misquoted by the journalist. After his karma is used up, he may be reborn in one of the higher worlds as the result of an earlier karma that had not yet ripened. The underworld is only vaguely described, with one unexplored path leading to the punishments of Tartarus, while the other leads through Erebus and the Elysian Fields. Hell in Christianity - Wikipedia In this illuminating lecture, BAR Editor Robert R. Cargill will show you how heaven and hell came to exist so prominently in Jewish and Christian literature. Only those who have lived their lives on earth in accordance with Serer doctrines will be able to make this necessary journey and thus be accepted by the ancestors. Mesopotamian civilizations from the 3rd to the 1st millennium bce produced a rich literature dealing with death and hell, much of it designed to impress upon the hearer the vast gulf separating the living from the dead and the fragility of the cosmic order on which vitality and fertility depend. In rare passages, the Hebrew Bible gives glimpses of Sheol, the Hebrew underworld, as a dull shadowy existence, a neutral storage place for all of the dead, both good and evil. Zoroastrianism has historically suggested several possible fates for the wicked, including annihilation, purgation in molten metal, and eternal punishment, all of which have standing in Zoroaster's writings. The Romans later adopted these views. As symbolic expressions found in various religious traditions, heaven and hell suggest polar components of a religious vision: a state of bliss and/or an abode of deity or sacred reality on the one hand, and a state of spiritual impoverishment and/or an abode of evil or demonic spirits on the other. [128] Muhammad meeting Malik, the Dajjal and hell, was used as a proof for Muhammad's Night Journey. p. 174, A F Klein Religion Of Islam Routledge 2013 ISBN 978-1-136-09954-0 page 92, Colby,F.S.(2008). "The very act of her getting up and pressing and pushing to her rightful healing is an act of resistance.". Ginza, ed. [143] The ten judges are also known as the 10 Kings of Yama. Early depictions of the afterlife in ancient Greece, an underworld realm called Hades, are similar. The Concept of Hell - Bible Study - BibleWise The Christian belief in hell has developed over the centuries, influenced by both Jewish and Greek ideas of the afterlife. Vereinigtes Knigreich:Cambridge University Press. Author of. Seventh-day Adventists believe that death is a state of unconscious sleep until the resurrection. [21], With the rise of the cult of Osiris during the Middle Kingdom the "democratization of religion" offered to even his humblest followers the prospect of eternal life, with moral fitness becoming the dominant factor in determining a person's suitability. [51] Instead of being sent to hell, the souls of the wicked would actually get annihilated. Orcas Invite Christians into a Cosmic Democracy. As this confusion of terms suggests, the idea of hell has a complex history, reflecting changing attitudes toward death and judgment, sin and salvation, and crime and punishment. Repeated conquests, including those by Alexander the Great, resulted in a Jewish diaspora living throughout the . [116] Iblis, the temporary ruler of hell,[117] is thought of residing in the bottom of hell, from where he commands his hosts of infernal demons. However, the official textbook of Catholic Christianity, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, reaffirms the Catholic belief in the eternal nature of hell. When and where did the concept of heaven and hell originate? - Quora The Catholic Caechism states "The souls of sinners descend into hell, where they suffer 'eternal fire'". The apocryphal - or. This ransom secures the fecundity of the earth and the integrity of the grain stores by reinforcing the boundary between hell and earth. [87] Modern proponents of conditional immortality include some in the Anglican church such as N. T. Wright[88] and as denominations the Seventh-day Adventists, Bible Students, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christadelphians, Living Church of God, The Church of God International, and some other Protestant Christians. [80] Regarding the belief in hell, the interpretation of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus is also relevant. USA:State University of New York Press. The hells of Asia include the Bagobo "Gimokodan" (which is believed to be more of an otherworld, where the Red Region is reserved who those who died in battle, while ordinary people go to the White Region)[30] and in Dharmic religions, "Kalichi" or "Naraka". As for the horns and hooves, that imagery was likely borrowed from pagan gods like Moloch and Pan, and medieval authors like Dante gave Satan bat wings in his "Inferno" to contrast with the feathered wings of the angels. Limbo - Wikipedia Don't Tear Down Your Church. Corrections? A soul is born into a Naraka as a direct result of his or her previous karma (actions of body, speech and mind), and resides there for a finite length of time until his karma has achieved its full result. Winter 2011 Religion and Spirituality Hell: Origins of an Idea Richard Burky Jeannette B. Anderson Many religious groups portray God as a being who tortures people eternally for their sins. Presumably it would not have been needed until the first unrighteous person died.