Origins of hell?

[Rev. Rye]

From what I understand, the Christian idea of Hell comes from an actual place near Jerusalem called The Valley of Hinnom, or, in Hebrew, Gehenna. Indeed, verses traditionally translated to use "Hell" tend to use "Gehenna" in the original Greek.


When I first found out about it, my sources said it was basically used as a garbage dump. One where there's an eternal fire fed by the trash that the inhabitants of Jerusalem discarded. And speaking as someone who's just reading it as a text and not taking its pretexts too seriously (as one should), it's an interesting and powerful reading. That if God rejects you, you may as well be trash. Admittedly, it's much less so if you actually believe it's true, but whatevs. I can remember reading some articles by Fundamentalists that this somehow makes it less scary, but clearly anyone who thinks that hasn't watched Toy Story 3.




Though, apparently, the fire was a later addition, and when the fire came, it wasn't to dispose of trash. It was for the Romans to cremate their dead. And because Judaism has long had a taboo against cremation, this seems to have led to Gehenna becoming a cursed place.