Hell

Hell is envisioned in many religions as a state of being in the afterlife, one that is characterized by pain, suffering, deprivation, and separation. In most cultures, it has been imagined to be underground. In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, people who angered the gods and violated the cosmic order were believed to be tortured in darkness by scorching fire, serpents, and devouring demons. In other mythologies, the underworld was considered less negative than neutral. In Greco-Roman religions, for example, Hades was a realm of flitting shades who regretted not being alive but did not otherwise suffer. Still, Plato and other philosophers argued that cosmic justice required a moral basis for the assignment of rewards and punishments in an afterlife, and in later Greco-Roman religion, Hades was partly replaced by Tartarus, in which the wicked suffered fiery pains.

In the early Hebrew view, the shadowy dead dwelt under the earth in Sheol. Israelites faithful to the covenant with God would prosper on earth, while God's enemies would be annihilated. From the sixth century BCE, Hebrew thought moved in the direction of resurrection and judgment at the end of time. The judgment separated the faithful from the sinners, and sinners were punished below in a fiery hell called Gehenna. By the last two centuries BCE in Israel, the moral view had triumphed over the neutral view, and hell became “a divinely sanctioned place of eternal torment for the wicked.” The view that all Jews would be resurrected in Jerusalem at the end of time has prevailed among Talmudic scholars and Orthodox Jews.

Hebrew religion is essentially monotheistic—there is but one God—but in the period 200 BCE to 150 CE, the imagery of hell was influenced by dualistic views deriving in part from Zoroastrianism (Mazdaism) and in part from reactions to the repeated devastation of the Israelite homeland, especially Jerusalem. Zoroastrians believed that there was a dramatic cosmic struggle between an absolute good god and an absolute evil god. Each community and individual had to choose which of these two gods to follow. For the Zoroastrians, the dead had to cross a bridge to get into heaven, and the wicked were thrust from the bridge into a hell of scorching heat, freezing cold, filth, stench, disgusting food, and devouring demons.

By the second century BCE, the Hebrew concept of hell had become eternal: Once one cast one's lot with God's enemies, one became a slave of the darkness. Satan and his demons became prominent in this period, and to the fires and darkness of Gehenna were added numerous specific torments inflicted on the damned by the evil spirits: boiling pitch, lakes of sulfur, piercing irons, grilling, and flesh rending. This satisfies justice: The wicked may prosper in this life, but the faithful prosper eternally with joys forever denied to the wicked.

Christianity, which arose in the midst of a period of persecution of the Israelites, followed the Hebrew Bible closely while also being somewhat influenced by dualism. As heaven is the kingdom of God and his dwelling place, so hell is the kingdom and abode of Satan and his angels. Christians held that at the beginning of the cosmos, the angels were asked to make their eternal choice to be with God or not; those who chose not were hurled out of heaven into hell, where they remained forever, tormented themselves and tormentors of sinners. At the resurrection, the soul (the reunited body and spirit) will be judged. Despite the images of hellfire and brimstone, Christian hell is essentially the agony of eternal separation from the loving joy of God and the community of saints (those who are saved). Since heaven is eternal, so necessarily is hell: There is no way out. The spiritual fire is the realization by the damned that they are forever lost; it is accompanied by the subsidiary but real bodily fire: torture by the Devil and his angels, wailing and gnashing of teeth, the lake of fiery sulfur, the devouring worm or birds of prey. The intensity of the suffering varies according to the gravity of the sins: Dante saw various levels in hell down to the frozen, motionless center where Satan is embedded in eternal and unyielding ice.

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