All they knew from the Hebrew scriptures was Sheol, which literally means “grave” and was believed to be the dusty deep place within the earth itself to which every soul traveled after death, accompanying its body. To the nascent Christian church, hell in fact barely existed. Lots of people have theories, some based in fact and some based on fiction. From illustrations in The Far Side comics and TV’s South Park, to centuries-old works like Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno, humanity has always wanted answers about hell. Such places are sometimes equated with the English word ‘hell’, though a more correct translation would be ‘underworld’ or ‘world of the dead’. Other religions, which do not conceive of the afterlife as a place of punishment or reward, merely describe an abode of the dead, the grave, a neutral place that is located under the surface of Earth (for example, see Kur, Hades, and Sheol). Hell is often depicted in art and literature, perhaps most famously in Dante’s Divine Comedy. A fable about Hell which recurs in folklore across several cultures is the allegory of the long spoons. It is commonly inhabited by demons and the souls of dead people. Hell appears in several mythologies and religions. The modern English word hell is derived from Old English hel, helle (first attested around 725 AD to refer to a nether world of the dead) reaching into the Anglo-Saxon pagan period.
Something a little different but perhaps appropriate for the season, coming on the heels of Hallowe’en and at the beginning of November, known to Anglo-Saxons as Blotmonath or ‘the month of blood’ – a post about Hell! In religion and folklore, Hell is an afterlife location in which evil souls are subjected to punitive suffering, often torture as eternal punishment after death.
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