Sheol

Sheol (Biblical Hebrew: שְׁאוֹל, romanized: Šəʾōl; Tiberian Hebrew: Šŏʾōl) in the Hebrew Bible is the underworld, or the unseen world of the dead to which departed spirits go. It was said to be a place of stillness and darkness in the subterranean regions. The state of existence is shadowy and silent, where the inhabitants are in weakened forms having an inactive remnant of humanity. The word 'Sheol' is almost exclusive to the Old Testament, with exception in Elephantine papyri from the Jewish community residing in southern Egypt. Its etymology is contested and considered to be unknown. However, propositions that have scholarly support include potential roots in Hebrew words meaning 'be desolate' or 'desolate place', or a link to Akkadian loanwords from the goddess Shuwala.

Within the Hebrew Bible, there are few—often brief and nondescript—mentions of Sheol, seemingly describing it as a place where both the righteous and the unrighteous dead go, regardless of their moral choices in life. The implications of Sheol within the texts are therefore somewhat unclear; it may be interpreted as either a generic metaphor describing "the grave" into which all humans invariably descend, or an actual state of afterlife within Israelite thought. Though such practices are forbidden, the inhabitants of Sheol can, under some circumstances, be summoned by the living, as when the Witch of Endor calls up the spirit of Samuel for King Saul.

While the Hebrew Bible appears to describe Sheol as the permanent place of the dead, in the Second Temple period (c. 500 BCE – 70 CE), a more diverse set of ideas developed. In some texts, Sheol is considered the home of both the righteous and the wicked, separated into respective compartments; in others, it was considered a place of punishment meant for the wicked dead alone. When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria (c. 200 BCE), the word "Hades" (i.e., the Greek underworld) was substituted for Sheol owing to its similarities to the Underworld of Greek mythology. The gloss of Sheol as "Hades" is reflected in the New Testament, wherein Hades is both the underworld of the dead and the personification of the evil it represents.