07-06-2022, 02:14 PM
So far as I know, the Sheol of the Old Testament was just a dark shadowy place, very non specific.
The Greek/Roman Hades was rather a more complicated place. It was guarded by a 3-headed dog, and you had to cross the
river Styx to get there, paying a boatman. In 8th century Greece it wasn't much different from Sheol, and everyone, good and bad,
got the same deal,
but by the 1st century BCE it was tricked out with various levels of unhappiness and a place called "Elysium" where people who were good during life could enjoy leisurely pastimes of drinking, eating and hunting. There was no one version of Hell in the Hellenistic world. Literary and philosophical versions congealed into religious "truth" over time.
The "lake of fire" enters biblical hell imagery in the NT, where it is developed in further theological interpretations, not all of which regard the lake of fire as a metaphor.
Dante's multi-leveled and many-roomed hell is a medieval elaboration of Greek/Christian precedents.
Another way to look at this--medieval Christian theology projected earthly hierarchies into the afterlife at every level. If theocracy is a form of government, think of it as goverment regulation, or over-regulation, of the afterlife.
The Greek/Roman Hades was rather a more complicated place. It was guarded by a 3-headed dog, and you had to cross the
river Styx to get there, paying a boatman. In 8th century Greece it wasn't much different from Sheol, and everyone, good and bad,
got the same deal,
but by the 1st century BCE it was tricked out with various levels of unhappiness and a place called "Elysium" where people who were good during life could enjoy leisurely pastimes of drinking, eating and hunting. There was no one version of Hell in the Hellenistic world. Literary and philosophical versions congealed into religious "truth" over time.
The "lake of fire" enters biblical hell imagery in the NT, where it is developed in further theological interpretations, not all of which regard the lake of fire as a metaphor.
Dante's multi-leveled and many-roomed hell is a medieval elaboration of Greek/Christian precedents.
Another way to look at this--medieval Christian theology projected earthly hierarchies into the afterlife at every level. If theocracy is a form of government, think of it as goverment regulation, or over-regulation, of the afterlife.
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)
