The Concept of Hell! part 1

by John Thomas Lowe
(Woodruff, S.C.)

Tom Lowe
2/3/2012
The Concept of Hell! part 1
There is no mention of hell in the Old Testament. The Old Testament talks about Sheol, which is a watery underworld where everyone went, whether they were Jew or Gentile, good or bad. In its archaic sense, the term hell refers to the underworld, a deep pit or distant land of shadows where the dead are gathered. From the underworld come dreams, ghosts, and demons, and in its most terrible precincts sinners pay—some say eternally—the penalty for their crimes.
Hell, in many religious traditions, refers to the domicile, usually beneath the earth, of the unredeemed deceased or the spirits of the damned. From the underworld come dreams, ghosts, and demons, and in its most terrible areas malefactors (reprobates) pay—some say eternally—the penalty (consequences) for their crimes. The underworld is often imagined as a place of punishment rather than merely of darkness and decomposition because of the widespread belief that a moral universe requires judgment and retribution—crime must not pay. More generally (, hell figures in religious *cosmologies ─*Definition of cosmology (Merriam Webster)
1a: a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe
b: a theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe
2: a branch of astronomy that deals with the origin, structure, and space-time relationships of the universe
─ the opposite of heaven, the nadir (the opposite of the cosmos, and the land where God is not.) In world literature the journey to hell is a perpetual motif of hero legends and quest stories, and hell itself is the preeminent symbol of evil, alienation, and despair.
*Definition of nadir (Merriam Webster)
1: the point of the celestial sphere (domain) that is directly opposite the zenith and vertically downward from the observer
2: the lowest point

The Old English hell belongs to a family of Germanic words meaning “to cover” or “to conceal.” Hell is also the name, in Old Norse, of the Scandinavian queen of the underworld. Many English translations of the Bible use hell as an English equivalent of the Hebrew terms Sheʾōl (or Sheol) and Gehinnom, or Gehenna (Hebrew: gê-hinnōm). The term Hell is also used for the Greek Hades and Tartarus, which have markedly different connotations (meanings). This confusion of terms suggests the idea of hell has a complex history, reflecting changing attitudes toward death and judgment, sin and salvation, and crime and punishment.

Mesopotamia
Mesopotamian civilizations from the 3rd to the 1st millennium BCE (BCE is short for Before Common Era.)
Mesopotamia produced a rich literature dealing with death and hell, much of it designed to impress upon the hearer the vast gulf separating the living from the dead and the fragility of the cosmic order on which vitality and fertility depend. In Mesopotamian traditions, hell is described as a distant land of no return, a house of dust where the dead dwell without distinction of rank or merit, and a sealed fortress, typically of seven gates, barred against invasion or escape.
In a cycle of Sumerian and Akkadian poems, the god-king Gilgamesh, despairing over the death of his companion Enkidu, travels to the world’s end, crosses the ocean of death, and endures great trials only to learn that mortality is an incurable condition. Hell, according to the Gilgamesh epic, is a house of darkness where the dead “drink dirt and eat stone.” More details of this grim realm emerge in the poems about the Sumerian shepherd and fertility god Tammuz (Akkadian: Dumuzi) and his consort Inanna (Akkadian: Ishtar), who in her various aspects is the mistress of date clusters and granaries, the patroness of prostitutes and alehouses, a goddess associated with the planet Venus and spring thunderstorms, and a deity of fertility, sexual love, and war. Inanna is also the sister of Ereshkigal, queen of the dead. An impulsive goddess, Inanna, according to some versions of the myth, is said to have threatened, in a fit of pique (temper), to crush the gates of hell and let the dead overrun the earth. In the poem Descent of Inanna, she sets forth to visit Ereshkigal’s kingdom in splendid dress, only to be compelled, at each of the seven gates, to shed a piece of her regalia. Finally, Inanna falls naked and powerless before Ereshkigal, who hangs her up like so much meat upon a drying hook. Drought descends upon the earth as a result, but the gods help revive Inanna, who escapes by offering her husband as a replacement. This ransom secures the fecundity (fertility) of the earth and the integrity of the grain stores by reinforcing the boundary between hell and earth. It is the better part of wisdom, the tradition suggests, for mortals to make the most of earthly life before they are carried off into death’s long exile.
Egypt
The tombs, pyramids, and graveyards of ancient Egypt attest to an extraordinary concern for the state of the dead, who, in sharp contrast to Mesopotamian belief, are described as living on in a multoplicity (array) of forms and locations suitable to their rank and worth—in or near the grave, in the desert regions of the west, in the heavens with the midday sun and *circumpolar stars, or Earu, under the earth, where the sun travels by night.

*Definition of circumpolar (Merriam Webster)
1: continually visible above the horizon a circumpolar star
2: surrounding or found in the vicinity of a terrestrial pole

*Osiri is the Egyptian god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion.
As the mortuary cult of *Osiris developed and the prerogative of surviving death extended from royalty to common people, greater attention focused on the underworld. Texts such as the Book of the Dead, the Book of Amduat, and the Book of Gates exhaustively describe the perilous journey through the 12 zones of the underworld (corresponding to the 12 hours of night) and the harrowing judgment over which Osiris presides.
The deceased needed both magical and moral power to be acquitted of offenses when appearing before Osiris. Elaborate ritual provisions were made, therefore, to translate the deceased from a mortal to an immortal condition; they included mummifying the body, adorning the tomb with prayers and offerings, and equipping the deceased with spells, amulets, and prescribed affirmations of innocence to win safe passage and ensure success at the divine tribunal. Those who succeeded won immortality by identification with Osiris or with the sun. Those who failed were devoured by a crocodile-headed monster, tormented by demons, or worse; yet rarely is there the suggestion of eternal condemnation. The tomb remained a place where the dead could be comforted or appeased by the living, and the mortuary texts were a constant reminder of the need to prepare for the final passage.

Greece and Rome
In Archaic (Ancient) Greece (c. 650–480 BCE), Hades is an underworld god, a *chthonic
Definition of *chthonic
: of or relating to the underworld: infernal chthonic deities; personification of death whose realm, divided from the land of the living by a terrible river, resembles the Mesopotamian land of the dead. The house of Hades is a *labyrinth Maze of dark, cold, and joyless halls, surrounded by locked gates and guarded by the hellhound Cerberus.

*Full Definition of labyrinth
1a: a place constructed of or full of intricate passageways and blind alleys, a complex labyrinth of tunnels and chambers
b: a maze (as in a garden) formed by paths separated by high hedges
2: something extremely complex or tortuous (see tortuous sense 1) in structure, arrangement, or character: intricacy, perplexity’, a labyrinth of swamps and channels guided them through the labyrinths of city life— Paul Blanshard
3: a tortuous anatomical structure especially: the internal ear or its bony or membranous part
(In Greek mythology, Cerberus, often referred to as the hound of Hades, is a multi-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld to prevent the dead from leaving. He was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, and was usually described as having three heads, a serpent for a tail, and snakes protruding from multiple parts of his body. Hell’s queen, Persephone, resides there as a prisoner. This somber picture is confirmed in Homer’s Odyssey.
When Odysseus visits Hades to consult the seer Tiresias in Book 11, he finds its inhabitants sunk into a witless oblivion, incapable of communicating with him until they drink from his libation of ram’s blood. The untimely dead and the improperly buried suffer more than do common sinners, and notorious sinners such as Tantalus and Sisyphus who are tormented for their crimes; nonetheless, the Homeric Hades is, generally speaking, indifferently unpleasant for all.
In the late Archaic period, however, Greek traditions began to envision a greater divergence of paths in the afterlife. The mysteries of *Demeter at Eleusis, among other obscure cults, claimed that adherents would enjoy a heavenly immortality, while those outside the cult would sink into the gloom of Hades.

*Demeter, in Greek religion, daughter of the deities Cronus and Rhea, sister and consort of Zeus (the king of the gods), and goddess of agriculture. Her name indicates that she is a mother.