(January 28, 2023 at 9:52 pm)Belacqua Wrote:(January 28, 2023 at 9:45 pm)Rdougall Wrote: Hi all,
I introduced myself earlier but I just wanted to ask a question about mythology/philosophy. The short version of what happened is that I have cerebral palsy and I realized I was gay at 19. The Catholic teachings haunted me for a long time but it didn’t make sense to me that a supreme being would punish me for doing something consensual with another person.
I’m trying to leave behind the concept of “hell” and I’m wondering where it came from. I know there’s very little mention of it in the Bible but I want to learn more. Do you guys have any resources?
In Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures, the concept of a post-death underworld was pretty widespread. It's in Gilgamesh and Homer -- all the old texts.
Ideas of what it's like evolved over time. For the Greeks, everybody except for a few special heroes (e.g. Hercules) went there, and it was terrible for everybody. Later on the Romans decided there must be good neighborhoods for the good people (i.e. the Elysium Fields) and bad neighborhoods for bad people.
The Hebrew Bible calls the underworld Sheol, and there are various ideas about how it works. Some people say it's punishment, others that it's like Purgatory -- a period of purification before the soul rejoins God. Some of the Psalms imply that God can pull you out of Sheol if you're good.
Early Christians debated whether hell could be permanent. The Catholic Church eventually decided that punishment is eternal, though there has always been a minority current within Christianity which opposes this. Recently a well-known American theologian has published a book arguing that in the end, even people in hell will be saved.
Hades, in general, was quite a bleak place so wasn't a good place to be. However, Tartarus (the deepest realm in Hades in Greek Mythology) would have been the closest in terms of harshness to the mainstream Christian hell (though there was no eternal fire in Tartarus, if I remember correctly). This is where the infamous Sisyphus was sent to for punishment.
