A Short History of Hell

There is only one positive thing I can say about the Old Testament: a burning hell where people are sentenced to an eternity of suffering is a completely unknown concept in the Old Testament. There is not a shred of evidence that Jehovah ever indicated that people, whether good or bad, would suffer eternally after death. Given the horrible evil deeds that the god of Israel poured out upon the non-Israelites who came in contact with the Jews, it is ludicrous to think that he would not have gleefully prophesied of their future punishment in an eternal, ever-burning lake of fire. No, the concept had not been conceived yet.

The word Hell, when it is used in the Old Testament, is always a translation of the Hebrew word Sheol, and it occurs a total of sixty-four times in the Old Testament. It is rendered "hell" thirty-two times; "grave" twenty-nine times; and "pit" three times.

Sheol was a place located somewhere underground where the dead were buried (Ezekiel 31:15). It was a dreary shadowland, dark, and quiet. The dead began the process of forgetting (Psalms 94:17, 88:12, and Job 10:21). In no place in the Old Testament is it ever seen as a place of eternal torture as it is in the New Testament, especially in the bizarre book of the Revelation.

The word “hell” is very likely originally taken from the Teutonic goddess Hel, the daughter of Loki, whose assignment was to rule the underworld and the kingdom of the ghosts. She was particularly known to be ruthless and vicious in her treatment of the dead who had lived evil lives on the earth. Her counterpart in Hinduism is Kali, another female goddess who is pictured as a Destroyer and ruler of the underworld dead. In spite of Kali’s hideous appearance with a necklace of human skulls, there is an entire sect of Hindus that love and revere her as their mother.

In Greek mythology, which heavily influenced Christianity, the god Cronos and the goddess Rhea had three sons; Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. Zeus was given the heavens to rule; Poseidon was given the oceans; and Hades was given the underworld where the ghosts of the dead lived. Hades was assisted by demons and his ferocious dog Cerberus, and he ruled his kingdom jealously, becoming furious when someone tried to steal away his subjects. From the Iliad, 20:61, it appears that both men and other gods hated Hades, thus he wore a helmet that made him invisible.

The Jews were taken into captivity and deported to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar, and while there they picked up some ideas unknown to Moses and the early prophets. The idea of God represented as light, and evil (or Satan) represented as darkness; the idea of a paradise in the afterlife for the good, and a punishment for the evil are examples of new concepts adopted in the Babylonian captivity.

By the time the New Testament was written, a whole new concept had captivated the culture of the Jews. In the new testament, the word “hell” is translated from the Hebrew word Gehenna, which is an actual, physical, geographical location! Gehenna is the name give to the Valley of Hinnom. This valley plays a significant role in Jewish history. This is the Valley that the wayward Jews set up an altar to the god Moloch (II Kings 23:10, II Chronicles 28:3, and Jeremiah 32:35). Here in this valley, the Jews sacrificed to Moloch doves, lambs, cattle and even their own children. They made turning wheels, similar to a Ferris wheel, and tied their small children on it. As this wheel turned it rotated the children down in the fire and then back out producing a slow horrible, roasting, death in honor of Moloch, and to seek his blessings with crops and good fortune. The terrifying screams of the infants and toddlers was usually drowned out by the slow beating of a huge drum. This heinous practice gave rise to the Old Testament phrase used by later prophets to describe the sin of; “passing their children through the fire.”

King Josiah abolished the practice, and understandably, Gehenna became an abomination to the Jews. It became a garbage dump where all types of corrupt filth was cast, including carcasses of animals and the bodies of crucified criminals considered unworthy of burial. Fires burned continually in Gehenna in an attempt to eradicate the unbearable foul odor that rose from the valley. The valley was filled with writhing maggots feasting on the remains of decomposing flesh and filth (which gave rise to the New Testament phrase, “…their worm dieth not.) Eventually, the Jews adopted this place as hell; the place where the dead are punished for their evil. But even then it was thought that deliverance came after one had suffered sufficiently enough to pay for one’s sins. However, by the time Jesus was born, this valley was considered the final place of abode of the ungodly, and there was no way to pay for your evil and be released – thus eternal punishment, with no possible remedy, was born. The Christian ideas of hell are clearly taken from far earlier heathen cultures.

Having said the aforementioned, here is the question that begs an answer from the Christian Fundamentalist: Did God reveal to the heathen, centuries before Jesus, the concept of a burning hell for sinners that he discretely hid from Moses and all the Old Testament prophets – his alleged “chosen” people?