|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Image:Hortus Deliciarum - Hell.jpg Medieval illustration of Hell in the Hortus deliciarum manuscript of Herrad of Landsberg (about 1180) Hell, according to many religious beliefs, is an afterlife of suffering where the wicked or unrighteous dead are punished. Hells are almost always depicted as underground. In Christianity and Islam, hell is fiery. Hells from other traditions, however, are sometimes cold and gloomy. In Islam, hell has different parts. The devil, or shaytan is created from fire, but sill they go the hell of fire since the fire of the hell is 70 times hotter than the fire of this world. Some hells are described in graphic and gruesome detail (for example, Hindu Naraka). Religions with a linear divine history often depict hell as endless (for example, see Hell in Christian beliefs). Religions with a cyclic history often depict hell as an intermediary period between incarnations (for example, see Chinese Di Yu). Punishment in hell typically corresponds to sins committed in life. Sometimes these distinctions are specific, with damned souls suffering for each wrong committed (see for example Plato's myth of Er), and sometimes they are general, with sinners being relegated to one or more chamber of hell or level of suffering (for example, Augustine of Hippo asserting that unbaptized infants suffer less in hell than unbaptized adults). In Islam and Christianity, however, faith and repentance play a larger role than actions in determining a soul's afterlife destiny.
In contrast to hells, other general types of afterlives are abodes of the dead and paradises. Abodes of the dead are neutral places for all the dead (for example, see sheol), rather than prisons of punishment for sinners. A paradise is a happy afterlife for some or all the dead (for example, see heaven). Modern understandings of hell often depict it abstractly, as a state of loss rather than as fiery torture literally under the ground. Pope Benedict XVI affirmed in a Lenten homily on March 26, 2007 that the Roman Catholic Church and its loyal members retain belief in a literal Hell, a place that "really exists and is eternal".
EtymologyThe word "Hell" derives from the Old English "hel" - a black and fiery place of eternal torment for the damned. The Old English word is cognate with Old Norse "hel", meaning both a place (a realm essentially the opposite of Valhöll) and the giantess who presides there. The common Indo-European root, "*kel-", means "to cover, conceal" - compare with hall, hole, hollow, and helmet.[1] Religious accountsHell appears in several mythologies and religions . It is commonly inhabited by demons and the souls of dead people. Hell is often depicted in art and literature, perhaps most famously in Dante's Divine Comedy. Norse mythologyThe giantess Hel rules a dark, horrible underworld for those who die inglorious deaths, such as sickness, old age or drowning. Her realm is also called Hel, and this word is the source of the English word "hell." Hel isn't hot like most concepts of Hell, but is very very cold. JudaismJudaism does not have a specific doctrine about the afterlife, but it does have a tradition of describing Gehenna. Gehenna is not hell, but rather a sort of Purgatory where one is judged based on his or her life's deeds. The Kabbalah describes it as a "waiting room" (commonly translated as an "entry way") for all souls (not just the wicked). The overwhelming majority of rabbinic thought maintains that people are not in Gehenna forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be 11 months, however there has been the occasional noted exception. Some consider it a spiritual forge where the soul is purified for its eventual ascent to Olam Habah (heb. עולם הבא; lit. "The world to come", often viewed as analogous to Heaven). This is also mentioned in the Kabbalah, where the soul is described as breaking, like the flame of a candle lighting another: the part of the soul that ascends being pure and the "unfinished" piece being reborn. ChristianityLuke 12:5 records Jesus speaking about God's Judgment: "But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath Power to cast into Hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him." In Paul's letter to the Thessalonian church he describes a separation taking place: "The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels, In flaming fire taking Vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the Presence of the Lord, and from the Glory of his Power" (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9) Most modern Christians see Hell as the eternal punishment for unrepentant sinners, as well as for the Devil and his demons. Virtuous unbelievers (such as pagans or members of divergent Christian denominations - at least those who do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ) are said to deserve Hell on account of original sin according to many conservative denominations. Sometimes exceptions are understood for those who have have extenuating circumstances (youth, mental illness, invincible ignorance, etc.). As opposed to the concept of Purgatory, damnation to Hell is considered final and irreversible. However, the foundation of the Christian faith is that it is the death of Jesus Christ, and acceptance of his love for us, that allows repentant sinners to avoid the torments of Hell and enjoy eternity with God. Various interpretations of the torments of Hell exist, ranging from fiery pits of wailing sinners to lonely isolation from God's presence. However, the descriptions of Hell found in the Bible are quite vague. The books of Matthew, Mark, and Jude tell of a place of fire, while the books of Luke and Revelation report it as an abyss. Also, Revelation 20:10 (NIV) illustrates Hell as a "lake with burning sulfur". Our modern, more graphic, images of Hell have developed from writings that are not found in the Bible. Dante's The Divine Comedy is a classic inspiration for modern images of Hell. Other early Christian writings also illustrate the anguish of Hell. These texts include the Apocalypse of Peter and the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul. Both these pieces of literature tell of the author being taken on a personal tour of Heaven and Hell. These writings tell of what the authors witnessed during their journeys. Most Christians believe that damnation occurs immediately upon death (particular judgment), and others that it occurs after Judgment Day, which is written about in the book of Revelation. Attitudes toward Hell and damnation have changed over the centuries (for example, see Limbo), and most Restorationist groups reject the traditional concept of Hell altogether (see Annihilationism, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Universalists). IslamMuslims believe in jahannam (in Arabic: جهنم) (which is similar to Hebrew ge-hinnom and resembles the versions of hell in Christianity). In the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, there are literal descriptions of the condemned in a fiery Hell, as contrasted to the garden-like Paradise (jannah) enjoyed by righteous believers. In addition, Heaven and Hell are split into many levels depending on the actions taken in life, where punishment is given depending on the level of evil done in life, and good is separated into other levels depending on how well one followed God while alive. There is an equal number of mentions of both hell and paradise in the Qur'an.[citation needed] Names of hell : 1-al-Jahim 2-al-Hutamah 3-Jahannam 4-al-Nar 5-Hawiah 6-Saqor 7-Sijjin 8-al-Wail The Qur'an also says that some of those who are damned to hell are not damned forever, but instead for an indefinite period of time. When Judgement Day comes, the formerly damned will be judged as to whether or not they may enter into Paradise. In any case, there is good reason to believe that punishment in Hell is not meant to actually last eternally, but instead serves as a basis for spiritual rectification.[2] Chinese and Japanese religionsThe structure of Hell is remarkably complex in many Chinese and Japanese religions. The ruler of Hell has to deal with politics, just as human rulers do. Hell is the subject of many folk stories and manga. In many such stories, people in hell are able to die again. The Chinese depiction of Hell doesn't necessarily mean a long time suffering for those who enter Hell, nor does it mean that person is bad. The Chinese view Hell as similar to a present day passport or immigration control station. In a Chinese funeral, they burn many Hell Bank Notes for the dead. With this Hell money, the dead person can bribe the ruler of Hell, and spend the rest of the money either in Hell or in Heaven. TaoismAncient Taoism had no concept of hell, as morality was seen to be a man-made distinction and there was no concept of an immaterial soul. In its home country China, where Taoism adopted tenets of other religions, popular belief endows Taoist Hell with many deities and spirits who punish sin in a variety of horrible ways. HinduismIn Hinduism, there are contradictions as to whether or not there is a hell (referred to as 'Nark' in Hindi). For some it is a metaphor for a conscience. But in Mahabharata there is a mention of the Pandavas and the Kauravas going to hell. Hells are also described in various Puranas and other scriptures. Garuda Purana gives a detailed account on hell, its features and enlists amount of punishment for most of the crimes like modern day penal code. It is believed that people who commit 'paap' (sin) go to hell and have to go through the punishments in accordance to the sins they committed. The god Yama, who is also the god of death, is the king of hell. The detailed accounts of all the sins committed by an individual are supposed to be kept by Chitragupta who is the record keeper in Yama's court. Chitragupta reads out the sins committed and Yama orders the appropriate punishments to be given to the individuals. These punishments include dipping in boiling oil, burning in fire, torture using various weapons etc. in various hells. Individuals who finish their quota of the punishments are reborn according to their karma. All of the created are imperfect and thus have at least one sin to their record, but if one has led a generally pious life, one ascends to Heaven, or Swarga after a brief period of expiation in hell. BuddhismAs diverse as other religions, there are many beliefs about Hell in Buddhism. Most of the schools of thought, Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna would acknowledge several hells[citation needed], which are places of great suffering for those who commit evil actions, such as cold hells and hot hells. Like all the different realms within cyclic existence, an existence in hell is temporary for its inhabitants. Those with sufficiently negative karma are reborn there, where they stay until their specific negative karma has been used up, at which point they are reborn in another realm, such as that of humans, of hungry ghosts, of animals, of asuras, of devas, or of Naraka (Hell) all according to the individual's karma. There are a number of modern Buddhists, especially among Western schools, who believe that hell is but a state of mind. In a sense, a bad day at work could be hell, and a great day at work could be heaven. This has been supported by some modern scholars who advocate the interpretation of such metaphysical portions of the Scriptures symbolically rather than literally. Bahá'í faithThe Bahá'í Faith regards the conventional description of hell (and heaven) as a specific place as symbolic.[3] Instead the Bahá'í writings describe hell as a "spiritual condition" where remoteness from God is defined as hell; conversely heaven is seen as a state of closeness to God.[3] Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, has stated that the nature of the life of the soul in the afterlife is beyond comprehension in the physical plane,[3] but has stated that the soul will retain its consciousness and individuality and remember its physical life; the soul will be able to recognize other souls and communicate with them.[3] Bahá'u'lláh likened death to the process of birth. He explains: "The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother."[4] The analogy to the womb in many ways summarizes the Bahá'í view of earthly existence: just as the womb constitutes an important place for a person's initial physical development, the physical world provides for the development of the individual soul. Accordingly, Bahá'ís view life as a preparatory stage, where one can develop and perfect those qualities which will be needed in the next life.[3] The key to spiritual progress is to follow the path outlined by the current Manifestations of God, which Bahá'ís believe is currently Bahá'u'lláh. Bahá'u'lláh wrote, "Know thou, of a truth, that if the soul of man hath walked in the ways of God, it will, assuredly return and be gathered to the glory of the Beloved,"[5] The Bahá'í teachings state that there exists a hierarchy of souls in the afterlife, where the merits of each soul determines their place in the hierarchy, and that souls lower in the hierarchy cannot completely understand the station of those above.[3] Each soul can continue to progress in the afterlife, but the soul's development is not dependent on its own conscious efforts, but instead on the grace of God, the prayers of others, and good deeds performed by others on Earth in the name of the person.[3] Maya faithIn Maya mythology Xibalbá is the dangerous underworld in nine levels ruled by the demons Vucub Caquix and Hun Came. The road into and out of it is said to be steep, thorny and very forbidding. Metnal is number five, the lowest and most horrible of the nine hells of the underworld. It is ruled by Ah Puch. Ritual healers would intone healing prayers banishing diseases to Metnal. Much of the Popol Vuh describes the adventures of the Maya Hero Twins in their cunning struggle with the evil lords of Xibalbá. Unification ChurchThe Unification Church teaches that hell is the condition of being separated from God's love. Hell can be said to exist in this world as well as in the afterlife. Those in the state of hell can repent and change their condition, both before and after death. The Divine Principle, the main textbook of church teachings, says:
Wiccan beliefsThe Wiccan faith teaches that the soul experiences cycles of reincarnation, with periods of rest in a place known as The Summerland between mortal incarnations. There is no Hell, in conventional terms of a afterlife filled with torment, but a soul may face retribution for bad deeds committed in a past life by suffering through a hellish life in the next. Words translated HellSheolIn the King James Bible, the Old Testament term sheol is translated as hell 31 times.[6] However Sheol was translated as "grave" 31 times.[7] Sheol is also translated as pit three times.[8] GehennaIn the New Testament of the KJV, Gehenna is always translated as Hell[9] HadesThe KJV translates Hades as Hell 10 times,[10] and as grave once.[11] Hades is traditionally the Greek word used to mean sheol. TartarusThe KJV translates tartarus, which appears only in II Pet. 2:4, as Hell. InfernusThe Latin word infernus means "being underneath" and is often translated as "Hell." Hell in mystic accountsThe Rose of the WorldThe account of Christian mystic Daniil Andreev given in his opus magnum Roza Mira significantly departs from the Christian tradition, depicting an entire hierarchy of multiple Sheols different in appearances, purposes and relationships to human cultures and to 'diabolic' worlds co-existing with the visible Universe. Hell in literatureImage:William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - Dante And Virgil In Hell (1850).jpg Dante And Virgil In Hell - William-Adolphe Bouguereau Many of the great epics of European literature include episodes that occur in Hell. In the Roman poet Virgil's Latin epic, the Aeneid, Aeneas descends into Dis (the underworld) to visit his father's spirit. The underworld is only vaguely described, with one unexplored path leading to the punishments of Tartarus, while the other leads through Erebus and the Elysian Fields. In his Divina commedia ('Divine comedy'; set in the year 1300), Dante Alighieri employed the conceit of taking Virgil as his guide through Inferno (and then, in the second cantiche, up the mountain of Purgatorio). Virgil himself is not condemned to Hell in Dante's poem but is rather, as a virtuous pagan, confined to Limbo just at the edge of Hell. The geography of Hell is very elaborately laid out in this work, with nine concentric rings leading deeper into the Earth and deeper into the various punishments of Hell, until, at the center of the world, Dante finds Satan himself trapped in the frozen lake of Cocytus. A small tunnel leads past Satan and out to the other side of the world, at the base of the Mount of Purgatory. The 1976 novel Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is set in Dante's Hell with 20th century protagonists. John Milton's Paradise Lost (1668) opens with the fallen angels, including their leader Satan, waking up in Hell after having been defeated in the war in heaven and the action returns there at several points throughout the poem. The nature of Hell as a place of punishment, as portrayed by Dante, is not explored here; instead, Hell is the abode of the demons, and the passive prison from which they plot their revenge upon Heaven through the corruption of the human race. C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce (1945) borrows its title from William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) and its inspiration from the Divine Comedy as the narrator is likewise guided through Hell and Heaven. Hell is portrayed here as an endless, desolate twilight city upon which night is imperceptibly sinking. The night is actually the Apocalypse, and it heralds the arrival of the demons after their judgement. Before the night comes, anyone can escape Hell if they leave behind their former selves and accept Heaven's offer, and a journey to Heaven reveals that Hell is infinitely small; it is nothing more or less than what happens to a soul that turns away from God and into itself. In the play "Man and Superman", George Bernard Shaw pictures Hell as a place of idle worship of youth and beauty. The idea of hell was highly influential to writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre who authored the play "No Exit" about the idea that, "hell is other people". Although not a religious man, Sartre was fascinated by his interpretation of a hellish state of suffering. 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud alluded to the concept as well in the title and themes of one of his major works, "A Season In Hell". Rimbaud's poetry portrays his own suffering in a poetic form as well as other themes. In The War Hound and the World's Pain by Michael Moorcock the central character, Ulrich von Bek is taken on a visit to Hell by Lucifer who charges von Bek with recovering the Holy Grail (the world's pain of the title) in order to attempt a reconciliation between God and Lucifer. Hell in entertainment and other popular cultureHell is often depicted as a place underground, with fire and molten rock where the devil lives. The devil is popularly depicted as a being or creature who carries a pitchfork (which in turn is actually a trident), has flaming red skin, horns on his head, a black goatee beard, and a long thin tail with a triangle shaped barb on it.
In the expansion pack Hordes of the Underdark for the game Neverwinter Nights, the player gets banished to the eighth level of hell, a frozen wasteland called Cania.
Non-religious contextThe word "Hell" used away from its religious context was long considered to be profanity, particularly in North America. Although its use was commonplace in everyday speech and on television by the 1970s, many people in the US still consider it somewhat rude or inappropriate language, particularly involving children.[12] Many, particularly among religious circles and in certain sensitive environments, still avoid casual usage of the word. In British English and some parts of North America, the word has fallen into common use and is not considered profane; often considered to be a safer and less offensive alternative to swearing.
Euphemistic ways of saying hell"Hell" is sometimes used as a minced oath, as "H-E-double-hockey-sticks", "H-E-double-toothpicks", "heck" or "Sam Hill" ("What in the Sam Hill is going on here?"). Another common euphemism for Hell is "The Other Place" (which is also the formal term used in the UK parliament to refer to the House of Lords by a member of the House of Commons, and vice-versa and was used by Hamlet, both as a silent threat addressed to Claudius and as a hint to Polonius's location). Example: "Gosh darn you to heck and tarnation" in place of "May God damn you to hell and eternal damnation." Cold day in hellAnother example of common use of “hell” in daily language, a “cold day in hell” is a paradox and an idiom for a most unlikely event, since most imagery of hell depicts it as hot and fiery. Therefore, an event that will transpire “on a cold day in hell” will never occur. Similar or related phrases include: “a snowball's chance in hell”, “when the devil goes ice-skating” and “when hell freezes over", which was used as the title for the rock band, The Eagles, first album in 14 years, referring to statements by the band that The Eagle's would reunite when hell freezes over. In Dante's Inferno, the innermost circle of Hell is represented as a frozen lake of blood and guilt. See alsoNotes
| ||||||||||||
