While Hell is referred to as a place of torment, that can mean a lot of things. In my interpretation, “torment” can simply mean the mental anguish of knowing that you could have been with God, but failed due to your own bad behavior.
I’m inclined to go with the idea of Hell being a dark, cave-like place where the condemned simply wander around aimlessly and everyone is completely miserable and lost knowing what could have been.
Interestingly, the idea of Hell being a place of fire and torture doesn’t seem to have appeared until medieval times. And as explained in the thread, the lake of fire is mentioned only in Revelations as being the place where Satan and his minions go after the Last Judgement. The early Christians never believed that man would go there.
Lazarus and the Rich Man provide adequate guidance.
You are correct. OT Hell is Sheol, which is nearly Hades, and simply a holding place for the dead distinguishing between the righteous and the unrighteous dead.
Hades is the word used in the NT as well. Hades or Gehenna is simply translated as Hell. The other word for Hell in the NT occurs in 2 Peter 2:4 and is the word Tartarus.
Look here for more info: http://topicalbible.org/h/hell.htm
While Hell is referred to as a place of torment, that can mean a lot of things. In my interpretation, “torment” can simply mean the mental anguish of knowing that you could have been with God, but failed due to your own bad behavior.