If you don’t do what mommy tells you, you’ll go to hell.
That doesn’t sound like a threat you’d hear these days, but in the past, you might
be threatened with hell for many types of transgressions, not all of them that serious.
It’s some threat too, as it was basically telling a kid if they didn’t follow certain
rules, they were going to spend eternity being tortured.
There is a thread about this threat on debate.org asking if saying something like that is abusive,
and it seems many people had parents that would say such a thing.
Most people said it was a horrible thing to tell a child, while others said it was only
motivational for kids.
But what exactly is hell anyway?
That’s what we’ll find out today in this episode of The Infographics Show, What is
hell really supposed to be?
If you’ve seen our show on Satan, you’ll know that many religions have (depending on
the interpretation) some kind of dark force working within them.
You could call this a devil, but the Satan we talked about in that show was something
that came from the Old and New Testament.
In Islam, you have the fallen angel “Iblīs.”
In the Quran, you have something called “Jahannam” (a kind of hell), and there are lots of names
for this place, such as “The Abyss,” “The Fire,” and “The Blaze.”
Many Muslim scholars of the Quran say there are seven levels of Hell.
One student of Islam tells us, “Muslims believe that on the Day of Judgement, people
will be held to account.”
We are told there are angels in hell, and they are severe and harsh and do not disobey
Allah when he commands.
The student also said that some people can get out of hell, while others will spend eternity
down there.
In Dante’s Inferno, the Christian hell has nine levels or circles, but we’ll talk about
this story later.
The Buddhist religion has a kind of hell, and that is called Naraka.
Again, there are different levels or circles, with some of them freezing cold and some of
them boiling hot.
Some temples in Burma or Thailand will have pictures or models of such a place, which
look like they were created by a Sadist.
But not all Buddhists believe in this place, and some might say hell is the life you are
living with all its impossible charms and your insatiable needs.
In Buddhism, it is more folkloric, mythical, and not part of what might be called Buddhist
philosophy.
Also, Naraka comes from Hinduism.
It’s said that this place offers something of a break, as eternity might be replaced
with just thousands or millions of years of being tortured and tormented.
Again, many Hindus differ in their beliefs about this.
Anyway, there are lots of different kinds of hells which belong to different religions.
Today, let’s focus on the Christian concept of hell.
First, where does it come from?
What we mean is when is it first mentioned?
Well, you can trace versions of hell back to Egyptian and Greek mythology and many other
ancient mythologies.
These stories of a deathly place down below can’t be discounted when we think about
where the Christian version of hell came from.
You see, the Greeks had a place called Hades, a place of the dead.
The Hebrew scriptures have a place of the dead too, but that is called Sheol.
Scholars tell us that these places were not places of endless torment ruled over by a
red-skinned guy with horns.
They were, however, as you could expect, not a holiday camp.
They were dark and gloomy and not very nice.
There is also the word Tartarus, a Greek word that means a place down below where the dead
are tormented.
You can find this word in ancient Jewish texts and also the New Testament.
In an English standard version of The Bible, there is a part that says, “For if God did
not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains
of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.”
Hell here is translated from Tartarus.
Some writers, though, say this was a place where humans might go too, not just angels
and, in Greek myth, Titans.
Others says that Gehenna, another Greek word, was where wicked humans spent time screaming
in hellish agony.
It’s also described as a refuse dump in The Bible.
Today, it’s a tourist attraction in Israel.
Yet others say that the concept of hell came from Norse mythology or Germanic mythology
and was passed on when those mythologies were replaced by Christianity.
Okay, so what we know is that from ancient times there were places where people went
after they died, and sometimes they were probably solemn places.
There were mentions in old Christian texts and lots of mentions in ancient mythologies.
But nowhere in The Bible is there mention of a modern hell.
Many writers agree that there was no explicit mention of this word hell in the Old or New
Testament, but the King James Versions do have the word hell in them.
You can see it in English in those versions 54 times, but it’s just translated from
those three words we talked about, Hades, Tartarus and Gehenna, and some scholars don’t
think these places are anything like the hell we have been told about in modern times.
Some Christians might disagree, but devout Christians disagree with other devout Christians
about this, not just people who don’t study The Bible or suddenly become devout at their
wedding or when all hell breaks loose in their lives.
In fact, Pope John Paul II said to his audience in 1999, “Images of hell that Sacred Scripture
presents to us must be correctly interpreted.
They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God.
Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate
themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.”
Moving on, we might blame the 14th century writer Dante Alighieri for our modern horror-laden
version of hell.
He wrote the epic poem Divine Comedy, which had a part called Inferno.
In that, he describes the circles of hell.
Some scholars think he got most of this from the Germanic, Greek, and Norse myths we have
talked about, and his description of hell was not taken from The Bible.
Nonetheless, it stuck.
He wrote the lines, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
And he wasn’t kidding because his hell didn’t sound like a place you’d want to spend three
minutes in, never mind eternity.
He talks about eternal pain, people who walked backwards because their faces were twisted
around, “mad brutishness,” and “infinite howling.”
He describes people being constantly chased by wasps and hornets and maggots and worms
feeding on the tears, blood, and pus of the sinners.
And that part is just the vestibule, aka, hell’s lobby.
Then you have all the circles where certain sinners go, such as violent folks or suicides.
Suicides, for instance, are turned into ugly trees and are feasted on for eternity by hungry
birds.
It doesn’t get much better in any circle.
Even astrologers are blinded by their own tears and have their heads twisted around
and other body parts contorted.
If you’re lucky, you might just have your throat bitten into by a wild beast and then
burst into flames.
Keep in mind it’s eternity, so expect re-runs ad infinitum.
Lucifer is down there in the center of hell, described like this: “He had three faces:
one in front bloodred; and then another two that, just above the midpoint of each shoulder,
joined the first; and at the crown, all three were reattached.”
The Inferno certainly didn’t sound like a picnic and made Hades look like Disneyland
on a rainy day.
Anyone in their right mind would beg for a trip to Gehenna after reading that poem.
As you can imagine, this was a strong force later in getting people on track to believe
anything the church told them do to.
Hell was visualized, and it was a nightmarish phantasmagoria for believers.
All that pain for an astrologer just because they told someone they have a Capricorn sun
with Venus in Aquarius in the fifth house!
But Dante was also hard on the church.
He condemned religious corruption and the sale of indulgences, and Popes ended up in
this horrific hell too.
Dante appeals to us to be better people but reasonable too.
His version of hell, however fantastic, can’t be ignored when we consider some of the things
we have been told about hell and what horrors await us down there.
We might these days watch scary movies that depict similar hells -- places where demons
rage and rip naughty humans into pieces; where smoke bellows from every patch of shorn, blackened
land; and where agonizing screams can be heard everywhere and for evermore.
Before movies, it was Dante that partly inspired horror literature.
His ghouls and monstrous-looking creatures were skulking about, always thirsty for blood
and wanton to inflict pain.
It was a good enough reason to scare the hell out of children or religious skeptics.
This terrible depiction worked.
However, it wasn’t really part of the Christian discourse.
It was more a work of fiction taken from some older tales.
So, while there was a fair bit of burning going on in The Bible and some lost souls,
you can’t compare them to something like the biblical Lake of Fire and the utterly
frightening specter of what went down in Dante’s Inferno.
Okay, so Augustine might have said, “Hell, which also is called a lake of fire and brimstone,
will be material fire, and will torment the bodies of the damned”, but that’s a long
way from Dante’s never-ending trip into the God-awful abyss.
As one Christian scholar writes, “The New Testament does not describe the torment of
Gehenna or portray Satan as the lord of Gehenna.
These are later literary accoutrements.”
Accoutrements in this case means bits added on.
In conclusion, hell as this fiery place where we suffer forever was made up much later than
the old religious texts.
It suited some religious people to preach about such a place, but many serious Christian
scholars just disagree.
We also know that many people will also disagree with this, and many others will have their
own idea of what hell is.
What are your thoughts about hell?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video Why Are We Afraid of Friday The 13th.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time!