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In religion and folklore, hell is a location in the afterlife in which evil souls are subjected to punitive suffering, most often through torture, as eternal punishment after death. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as eternal destinations, the biggest examples of which are Christianity and Islam, whereas religions with reincarnation usually depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations, as is the case in the dharmic religions. Religions typically locate hell in another dimension or under Earth's surface. Other afterlife destinations include heaven, paradise, purgatory, limbo, and the underworld.

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). Such places are sometimes equated with the English word ''hell'', though a more correct translation would be "underworld" or "world of the dead". The ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, and Finnic religions include entrances to the underworld from the land of the living.

Overview

Etymology

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. Barnhart, Robert K. (1995) ''The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology'', page 348. HarperCollins The word has cognates in all branches of the Germanic languages, including Old Norse ''hel'' (which refers to both a location and goddess-like being in Norse mythology), Old Frisian ''helle'', Old Saxon ''hellia'', Old High German ''hella'', and Gothic ''halja''. All forms ultimately derive from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic feminine noun *''xaljō'' or *''haljō'' ('concealed place, the underworld'). In turn, the Proto-Germanic form derives from the o-grade form of the Proto-Indo-European root *''kel-'', *''kol''-: 'to cover, conceal, save'.For discussion and analysis, see Orel (2003:156) and Watkins (2000:38). Indo-European cognates include Latin ''cēlāre'' ("to hide", related to the English word ''cellar'') and early Irish ''ceilid'' ("hides"). Upon the Christianization of the Germanic peoples, extensions of the Proto-Germanic *''xaljō'' were reinterpreted to denote the underworld in Christian mythology (see Gehenna).

Related early Germanic terms and concepts include Proto-Germanic *''xalja-rūnō(n)'', a feminine compound noun, and *''xalja-wītjan'', a neutral compound noun. This form is reconstructed from the Latinized Gothic plural noun *''haliurunnae'' (attested by Jordanes; according to philologist Vladimir Orel, meaning 'witches'), Old English ''helle-rúne'' ('sorceress, necromancer', according to Orel), and Old High German ''helli-rūna'' 'magic'. The compound is composed of two elements: *''xaljō'' (*''haljō'') and *''rūnō'', the Proto-Germanic precursor to Modern English ''rune''.See discussion at Orel (2003:155–156 & 310). The second element in the Gothic ''haliurunnae'' may however instead be an agent noun from the verb ''rinnan'' ("to run, go"), which would make its literal meaning "one who travels to the netherworld".

Proto-Germanic *''xalja-wītjan'' (or *''halja-wītjan'') is reconstructed from Old Norse ''hel-víti'' 'hell', Old English ''helle-wíte'' 'hell-torment, hell', Old Saxon ''helli-wīti'' 'hell', and the Middle High German feminine noun ''helle-wīze''. The compound is a compound of *''xaljō'' (discussed above) and *''wītjan'' (reconstructed from forms such as Old English ''witt'' 'right mind, wits', Old Saxon ''gewit'' 'understanding', and Gothic ''un-witi'' 'foolishness, understanding').Orel (2003:156 & 464).

Religion, mythology, and folklore

Hell appears in several mythologies and religions. It is commonly inhabited by demons and the souls of dead people. A fable about hell which recurs in folklore across several cultures is the allegory of the long spoons. Hell is often depicted in art and literature, perhaps most famously in Dante's early-14th century narrative poem '' Divine Comedy''.

Punishment

Punishment in hell typically corresponds to sins committed during life. Sometimes these distinctions are specific, with damned souls suffering for each sin committed (see for example Plato's myth of Er or Dante's '' The Divine Comedy''), but sometimes they are general, with condemned sinners relegated to one or more chamber of hell or to a level of suffering.

In many religious cultures, including Christianity and Islam, hell is often depicted as fiery, painful, and harsh, inflicting suffering on the guilty. Despite these common depictions of hell as a place of fire, some other traditions portray hell as cold. Buddhistand particularly Tibetan Buddhistdescriptions of hell feature an equal number of hot and cold hells. Among Christian descriptions Dante's '' Inferno'' portrays the innermost (9th) circle of hell as a frozen lake of blood and guilt.
But cold also played a part in earlier Christian depictions of hell or purgatory, beginning with the Apocalypse of Paul, originally from the early third century; the " Vision of Dryhthelm" by the Venerable Bede from the seventh century; "St Patrick's Purgatory", "The Vision of Tundale" or " Visio Tnugdali", and the "Vision of the Monk of Eynsham", all from the twelfth century; and the "Vision of Thurkill" from the early thirteenth century.

Polytheism

Africa

The hell of Swahili mythology is called ''kuzimu'', and belief in it developed in the 7th and 8th century under the influence of Muslim merchants at the East African coast. It is imagined as a very cold place. Serer religion rejects the general notion of heaven and hell. Thiaw, Issa Laye, "La religiosité des Seereer, avant et pendant leur islamisation", n''Éthiopiques'', no. 54, volume 7, 2e semestre 1991 In Serer religion, acceptance by the ancestors who have long departed is as close to any heaven as one can get. Rejection and becoming a wandering soul is a sort of hell for one passing over. The souls of the dead must make their way to ''Jaaniw'' (the sacred dwelling place of the soul). Only those who have lived their lives on earth in accordance with Serer doctrines will be able to make this necessary journey and thus be accepted by the ancestors. Those who can't make the journey become lost and wandering souls, but they do not burn in "hell fire".

According to the Yoruba mythology, there is no hellfire. Wicked people (guilty of e.g. theft, witchcraft, murder, or cruelty) are confined to ''Orun Apaadi'' (''heaven'' of potsherds), while the good people continue to live in the ancestral realm, ''Orun Baba Eni'' (''heaven'' of our fathers).

Ancient Egypt

In this ~1275 BC '' Book of the Dead'' scene the dead scribe Hunefer's heart is weighed on the scale of Maat">Hunefer.html" ;"title="Book of the Dead'' scene the dead scribe Hunefer">Book of the Dead'' scene the dead scribe Hunefer's heart is weighed on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth, by the canine-headed Anubis. The ibis-headed Thoth, scribe of the gods, records the result. If his heart is lighter than the feather, Hunefer is allowed to pass into the Aaru, afterlife. If not, he is eaten by the crocodile-headed Ammit.

With the rise of the cult of Osiris during the Middle Kingdom the "democratization of religion" offered to even his humblest followers the prospect of eternal life, with moral fitness becoming the dominant factor in determining a person's suitability. At death a person faced judgment by a tribunal of forty-two divine judges. If they had led a life in conformance with the precepts of the goddess Maat, who represented truth and right living, the person was welcomed into the heavenly reed fields. If found guilty the person was thrown to Ammit, the "devourer of the dead" and would be condemned to the lake of fire. The person taken by the devourer is subject first to terrifying punishment and then annihilated. These depictions of punishment may have influenced medieval perceptions of the inferno in hell via early Christian and Coptic texts. Purification for those considered justified appears in the descriptions of "Flame Island", where humans experience the triumph over evil and rebirth. For the damned complete destruction into a state of non-being awaits but there is no suggestion of eternal torture; the weighing of the heart in Egyptian mythology can lead to annihilation. The Tale of Khaemwese describes the torment of a rich man, who lacked charity, when he dies and compares it to the blessed state of a poor man who has also died.
Divine pardon at judgment always remained a central concern for the ancient Egyptians.

Modern understanding of Egyptian notions of hell relies on six ancient texts:

#''The Book of Two Ways'' (''Book of the Ways of Rosetau'')
# ''The Book of Amduat'' (''Book of the Hidden Room'', ''Book of That Which Is in the Underworld'')
# ''The Book of Gates''
# ''The Book of the Dead'' (''Book of Going Forth by Day'')
# ''The Book of the Earth''
# ''The Book of Caverns''

Asia

The hells of Asia include the Bagobo "Gimokodan" (which is believed to be more of an otherworld, where the Red Region is reserved who those who died in battle, while ordinary people go to the White Region) and in Dharmic religions, "Kalichi" or " Naraka".

According to a few sources, hell is below ground, and described as an uninviting wet or fiery place reserved for sinful people in the Ainu religion, as stated by missionary John Batchelor. However, belief in hell does not appear in oral tradition of the Ainu.Takako Yamada: ''The Worldview of the Ainu. Nature and Cosmos Reading from Language'', p. 25–37, p. 123. Instead, there is belief within the Ainu religion that the soul of the deceased (ramat) would become a kamuy after death. There is also belief that the soul of someone who has been wicked during lifetime, committed suicide, got murdered or died in great agony would become a ghost (tukap) who would haunt the living, to come to fulfillment from which it was excluded during life.Norbert Richard Adami: ''Religion und Schaminismus der Ainu auf Sachalin (Karafuto)'', Bonn 1989, p. 45.

In Taoism, hell is represented by Diyu.

Ancient Mesopotamia

The Sumerian afterlife was a dark, dreary cavern located deep below the ground, where inhabitants were believed to continue "a shadowy version of life on earth". This bleak domain was known as Kur, and was believed to be ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal. All souls went to the same afterlife, and a person's actions during life had no effect on how the person would be treated in the world to come.

The souls in Kur were believed to eat nothing but dry dust and family members of the deceased would ritually pour libations into the dead person's grave through a clay pipe, thereby allowing the dead to drink. Nonetheless, funerary evidence indicates that some people believed that the goddess Inanna, Ereshkigal's younger sister, had the power to award her devotees with special favors in the afterlife. During the Third Dynasty of Ur, it was believed that a person's treatment in the afterlife depended on how he or she was buried; those that had been given sumptuous burials would be treated well, but those who had been given poor burials would fare poorly.

The entrance to Kur was believed to be located in the Zagros mountains in the far east. It had seven gates, through which a soul needed to pass. The god Neti was the gatekeeper. Ereshkigal's ''sukkal'', or messenger, was the god Namtar. '' Galla'' were a class of demons that were believed to reside in the underworld; their primary purpose appears to have been to drag unfortunate mortals back to Kur. They are frequently referenced in magical texts, and some texts describe them as being seven in number. Several extant poems describe the ''galla'' dragging the god Dumuzid into the underworld. The later Mesopotamians knew this underworld by its East Semitic name: Irkalla. During the Akkadian Period, Ereshkigal's role as the ruler of the underworld was assigned to Nergal, the god of death. The Akkadians attempted to harmonize this dual rulership of the underworld by making Nergal Ereshkigal's husband.

Europe

The hells of Europe include Breton mythology's "Anaon", Celtic mythology's "Uffern", Slavic mythology's "Peklo", Norse mythology's Náströnd, the hell of Sami mythology and Finnish " Tuonela" ("manala").

Ancient Greece and Rome

In classic Greek mythology, below heaven, Earth, and Pontus is Tartarus, or ''Tartaros'' (Greek Τάρταρος, deep place). It is either a deep, gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides within Hades (the entire underworld) with Tartarus being the hellish component. In the ''Gorgias'', Plato (c. 400 BC) wrote that souls of the deceased were judged after they paid for crossing the river of the dead and those who received punishment were sent to Tartarus.Plato, ''Gorgias'', 523a-527e. As a place of punishment, it can be considered a hell. The classic Hades, on the other hand, is more similar to Old Testament Sheol. The Romans later adopted these views.

Abrahamic religions

Hell is conceived of in most Abrahamic religions as a place of, or a form of, punishment.

Judaism

Judaism does not have a specific doctrine about the afterlife, but it does have a mystical/Orthodox tradition of describing Gehinnom. Gehinnom is not hell, but originally a grave and in later times a sort of Purgatory where one is judged based on one's life's deeds, or rather, where one becomes fully aware of one's own shortcomings and negative actions during one's life. The Kabbalah explains 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 Gehinnom forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be 12 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.

According to Jewish teachings, hell is not entirely physical; rather, it can be compared to a very intense feeling of shame. People are ashamed of their misdeeds and this constitutes suffering which makes up for the bad deeds. When one has so deviated from the will of God, one is said to be in Gehinnom. This is not meant to refer to some point in the future, but to the very present moment. The gates of teshuva (return) are said to be always open, and so one can align his will with that of God at any moment. Being out of alignment with God's will is itself a punishment according to the Torah.

Many scholars of Jewish mysticism, particularly of the Kabbalah, describe seven "compartments" or "habitations" of hell, just as they describe seven divisions of heaven. These divisions go by many different names, and the most frequently mentioned are as follows:

* Sheol ( Hebrew: שְׁאוֹל – " underworld", "Hades"; "grave")
* Abaddon ( Hebrew: אֲבַדּוֹן – "doom", "perdition")
*Be'er Shachat ( Hebrew: בְּאֵר שַׁחַת, ''Be'er Shachath'' – "pit of corruption")
*Tit ha-Yaven ( Hebrew: טִיט הַיָוֵן – "clinging mud")
*Sha'are Mavet ( Hebrew: שַׁעֲרֵי מָוֶת, ''Sha'arei Maveth'' – "gates of death")
* Tzalmavet ( Hebrew: צַלמָוֶת, ''Tsalmaveth'' – "shadow of death")
*Gehinnom ( Hebrew: גֵיהִנוֹם, ''Gehinnom'' – "valley of Hinnom"; " Tartarus", " Purgatory")

Besides those mentioned above, there also exist additional terms that have been often used to either refer to hell in general or to some region of the underworld:

* Azazel ( Hebrew: עֲזָאזֵל, compd. of ''ez'' עֵז: "goat" + ''azal'' אָזַל: "to go away" – "goat of departure", "scapegoat"; "entire removal", "damnation")
*Dudael ( Hebrew: דּוּדָאֵל – lit. "cauldron of God")
* Tehom ( Hebrew: תְהוֹם – " abyss"; "sea", "deep ocean")
* Tophet ( Hebrew: תֹּפֶת or תוֹפֶת, ''Topheth'' – "fire-place", "place of burning", "place to be spit upon"; "inferno")
* Tzoah Rotachat ( Hebrew: צוֹאָה רוֹתֵחַת, ''Tsoah Rothachath'' – "boiling excrement")
* Mashchit ( Hebrew: מַשְׁחִית, ''Mashchith'' – "destruction", "ruin")
* Dumah ( Hebrew: דוּמָה – "silence")
*Neshiyyah ( Hebrew: נְשִׁיָּה – "oblivion", " Limbo")
*Bor Shaon ( Hebrew: בּוֹר שָׁאוֹן – "cistern of sound")
*Eretz Tachtit ( Hebrew: אֶרֶץ תַּחְתִּית, ''Erets Tachtith'' – "lowest earth").
*Masak Mavdil ( Hebrew: מָסָך מַבְדִּ֔יל, ''Masak Mabdil'' – "dividing curtain")
*Haguel ( Ethiopic: ሀጉለ – "(place of) destruction", "loss", "waste")
*Ikisat ( Ethiopic: አክይስት – "serpents", "dragons"; "place of future punishment")

For more information, see Qliphoth.

Maimonides declares in his 13 principles of faith that the hells of the rabbinic literature were pedagogically motivated inventions to encourage respect of the Torah commandements by mankind, which had been regarded as immature.Maimonides' Introduction to Perek Helek, ed. and transl. by Maimonides Heritage Center, p. 3–4. Instead of being sent to hell, the souls of the wicked would actually get annihilated.Maimonides' Introduction to Perek Helek, ed. and transl. by Maimonides Heritage Center, p. 22-23.

Christianity

The Christian doctrine of hell derives from passages in the New Testament. The word ''hell'' does not appear in the Greek New Testament; instead one of three words is used: the Greek words ''Tartarus'' or ''Hades'', or the Hebrew word ''Gehinnom''.

In the Septuagint and New Testament, the authors used the Greek term Hades for the Hebrew Sheol, but often with Jewish rather than Greek concepts in mind. In the Jewish concept of Sheol, such as expressed in Ecclesiastes, Sheol or Hades is a place where there is no activity. However, since Augustine, some Christians have believed that the souls of those who die either rest peacefully, in the case of Christians, or are afflicted, in the case of the damned, after death until the resurrection.

While these three terms are translated in the KJV as "hell" they have three very different meanings.
* Hades has similarities to the Old Testament term, Sheol as "the place of the dead" or "grave". Thus, it is used in reference to both the righteous and the wicked, since both wind up there eventually.
* Gehenna refers to the "Valley of Hinnom", which was a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem. It was a place where people burned their garbage and thus there was always a fire burning there. Bodies of those deemed to have died in sin without hope of salvation (such as people who committed suicide) were thrown there to be destroyed. Gehenna is used in the New Testament as a metaphor for the final place of punishment for the wicked after the resurrection.
* ''Tartaróō'' (the verb "throw to Tartarus", used of the fall of the Titans in a scholium on Illiad 14.296) occurs only once in the New Testament in II Peter 2:4, where it is parallel to the use of the noun form in 1 Enoch as the place of incarceration of the fallen angels. It mentions nothing about human souls being sent there in the afterlife.

The Roman Catholic Church defines hell as "a state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed". One finds oneself in hell as the result of dying in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love, becoming eternally separated from him by one's own free choice immediately after death. In the Roman Catholic Church, many other Christian churches, such as the Methodists, Baptists and Episcopalians, and some Greek Orthodox churches, Hell is taught as the final destiny of those who have not been found worthy after the general resurrection and last judgment, where they will be eternally punished for sin and permanently separated from God. The nature of this judgment is inconsistent with many Protestant churches teaching the saving comes from accepting Jesus Christ as their savior, while the Greek Orthodox and Catholic Churches teach that the judgment hinges on both faith and works. However, many Liberal Christians throughout Mainline Protestant churches believe in universal reconciliation (see below), even though it contradicts the traditional doctrines that are usually held by the evangelicals within their denominations. Regarding the belief in hell, the interpretation of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus