Well it's interesting hell is never mentioned in the Old Testament, not even Jesus mentions it. Jesus only talked of heaven.
Seems to only have come up after Jesus died.
Seems to only have come up after Jesus died.
Actually, the Old Testament is fuzzy in its view of life after death, with all persons going to a place of concious existence called "Sheol." There is some degree of awareness that both the righteous and the wicked were there, and that there was justice meted out, but that is the extent of it.
Jesus referred to hell as "Gehenna" using a physical place of a garbage dump outside Jerusalem where things continually decomposed, stank, and burned. Kind of a pictorial way of saying that "hell" is the garbage dump of the universe. It is an apt picture, if one considers that death is an eternal dying, in that it is a continual and progressive affirmation of an individual rejecting both God and the image of God within him. A rejection of rationality, life, peace, love, hope, goodness, purity, happiness, security etc, means a progressive and increasing embrace of madness, hatred, rage, lust, fury, spite, evil and murder. It would be a place of ultimate despair and a progressive, ongoing degrading of all that it means to be men and women (in that the core of what it means to be human is tied up with being made in His Image.... and we regject that image). God "gives us over" to our choices, so that as awful and horrible as the punishment is, we return an eternal F*CK YOU to our creator and continually choose misery, pride and spite. All the talk about "flames" is kids' play compared to the true state of being separated from God for eternity and given over to our sin.
they talked about sheol, which could be hell. Jesus went into hell and released the captives. Where did they come from? Musta been a lot of them from OT times.