Origins of hell?

[Rdougall]

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?

[Silver]

I started reading works by Robert Green Ingersoll way way back when I was a youngster in college. This particular one helped me understand what you're asking:

https://infidels.org/library/historical/...oll-devil/

[Belacqua]

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.

[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.

[GrandizerII]

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.

[Belacqua]

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.

It's always been sort of astonishing to me that the Greeks imagined the afterlife -- for everybody -- as being so horrible. The scene where Odysseus does his katabasis is like a horror movie. 

If we assume that most of religion, especially life-after-death scenarios, is based on wishful thinking, it's a very strange thing.

[WinterHold]

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.

It's always been sort of astonishing to me that the Greeks imagined the afterlife -- for everybody -- as being so horrible. The scene where Odysseus does his katabasis is like a horror movie. 

If we assume that most of religion, especially life-after-death scenarios, is based on wishful thinking, it's a very strange thing.

All religions came from the same source, but each got twisted and corrupted by the actions of:

1-Priests
2-Kings
3-Religious clergy

Everywhere you go it's the same scenario. The only remaining message that kept the Monotheistic constraint is Islam; and it too is taking heavy strikes from the Sunni/Shiite clergies to eliminate the Monotheistic constraint from it, and make it a carbon-copy of Catholicism or other multi-God faiths.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's hard to believe that your faith is sincere and strong when you say ridiculous things like that. I think that you may want to have a little discussion about islams faithfulness to the source material, with some jews.

[Brian37]

The concepts of punishment reward in the afterlife are not unique to the Abrahamic monotheisms. 

Even in the superstitions of Buddhism and Hinduism, "reincarnation" is the concept of reward becoming a higher form of life, if you do well in your prior life. But if you do bad in this life, you come back as a lower life form. 

Evil spirits and underworld concepts existed in polytheism too. 

They are all man made mythologies humans made up to explain why good and bad happen to humans.

[The Grand Nudger]

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.

It's always been sort of astonishing to me that the Greeks imagined the afterlife -- for everybody -- as being so horrible. The scene where Odysseus does his katabasis is like a horror movie. 

If we assume that most of religion, especially life-after-death scenarios, is based on wishful thinking, it's a very strange thing.

Perhaps..so long as we come at it from a distinctly christian perspective.  When we realize that the greeks followed a life affirming rather than life denying religion, it becomes clearer why they imagined afterlives that way.  Because life was better.  In the afterlife, good deeds could be rewarded and bad deeds punished, making this life the determinitive one, not the next. There were exceptions to general bleakness with respect to this life, the important one, ofc, people very loved by some god or another might find a favor in the afterlife.  Paradise even, for heroes. This is how we often imagine Odysseus, failing to remember that he was being punished by the gods. We read him as a hero in a story about how the gods read him for filth.

The wish, in each case, is simply that life isn't over. To see our loved ones again, to feel that those who we failed to hold accountable (or get revenge against) would be dealt with, and the comforting idea that good people dealt shitty hands in life would someday be repaid. None of this is true, and the difference between it being a quaint superstition and a contemptable lie lies in who's telling it, and for what.