Does any other religion have a concept of hell, or is it just Christianity?
Asked by
YARNLADY (
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November 25th, 2009
I read somewhere than ‘hell’ is specific to the Christian religion. I don’t know if other religions have anything like that.
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19 Answers
different forms of punishment with different names.
Islam
“Islam teaches that Hell is a real place prepared by God for those who do not believe in Him, rebel against His laws, and reject His messengers. Hell is an actual place, not a mere state of mind or a spiritual entity. The horrors, pain, anguish, and punishment are all real, but different in nature than their earthly counterparts. Hell is the ultimate humiliation and loss, and nothing is worse than it”
From IslamicInformation.net
Budhism
“In Buddhism, [Hell] is just one of the six realms in Samsara [i.e. the worst of three undesirable realms]. Also, there are virtually unlimited number of hells in the Buddhist cosmology as there are infinite number of Buddha worlds.”
From A Basic Buddhism Guide
Judaism
“In the Hebrew Bible, Sheol (Sheʾōl) is a place of darkness, silence, and dust to which the spirit, or vital principle, descends at death. It is likened to a vast house whose entrance is guarded, like family burial sites, by gates and iron bolts; to a prison in which the dead are held captive by strong cords; to an insatiable beast with spreading jaws; and also to a watery abyss. Once in Sheol, the dead are cut off from their living kin and from cultic relationship to God. Yet God retains his sovereignty over Sheol, searching out the evildoers who hide in its depths, preserving or delivering the just from Sheol’s grasp, and, ultimately, as later apocalyptic and rabbinic texts make explicit, restoring the dead to life.”
From Encyclopædia Britannica
~ * ~
And I’m sure there’s more.
No problem :)
I thought this question disappeared…
@sebastian_von_tulu The question went into moderation for correction of the misspelling, and it took me four hours to see it. I was shopping for Thanksgiving food
@YARNLADY Ah, I see. I’m glad because I put a little extra effort into it’s arrangement ;)
@sebastian_von_tulu
to a prison in which the dead are held captive by strong cords; to an insatiable beast with spreading jaws
I think there are Jews who would take issue with that interpretation.
@SeventhSense Ah, forgive my ignorance. What would be a correct interpretation?
Don’t forget the Hades (though that is where everyone goes to).
Or Hel, where everyone goes to who does not die an heroic death.
@sebastian_von_tulu
Well like the preachers who would take a literal reading of the books of the Tanakh (and rename it the Old Testament)
verses like this can be completely misread:
Psalm 18:5–7 “The breakers of death surged round about me; the menacing floods terrified me. The cords of Sheol tightened; the snares of death lay in wait for me. In my distress I called out: LORD! I cried out to my God. From his temple he heard my voice; my cry to him reached his ears.
These are neither literal snares nor cords
Jonah 2:2: ”...Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, And You heard my voice.”
This is not a literally belly nor could Jonah have ben swallowed by a whale and lived in the acids of his stomach and been regurgitated on the shore of a beach.
This is called metaphor.
I always thought sheol was just a grave.
@SeventhSense Thanks for clearing that up. :)
I always thought Jonah and the Whale was a true story like when Saint George slayed the dragon.
@sebastian_von_tulu
like when Saint George slayed the dragon.
Well that’s true…But as per Puff…well… he’s magic.
@mattbrowne Thankyou for the link. I often refer other questions to wikipedia, but forget to look for myself.
God is love and burning people in a literal fire never even came up into his heart.
http://bible.cc/jeremiah/7-31.htm
The God of the Bible does not do that. “The wages sin pays is death”(Romans 6:23),not an immortal soul burning in Hell. “The soul that sins itself will die”(Ez 18:4)
Matthew 5:22 speaks of those liable to “hell fire” or “Gehenna”. To use “hell fire” gives a false idea, for in the original Greek it reads gehenna of fire; gehenna is the Greek for the Hebrew ge′i-Hinnom, meaning “valley of Hinnom”. This valley lay to the west and south of ancient Jerusalem. During the time of the later kings of Judah it was used in the idolatrous worship of Molech, human sacrifices being offered to this god by fire. (Josh. 15:8; 2 Chron. 28:3; 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 32; 32:35) To prevent its use again for such horrible religious purposes faithful King Josiah had it polluted and it came to be the dumping place and incinerator for the refuse of Jerusalem. (2 Ki. 23:10) The dead bodies of animals were thrown in, to be consumed by the fires kept burning there and to which sulphur or brimstone was added to assist the burning. Even bodies of executed criminals thought too vile to have a resurrection were disposed of there. If the bodies did not reach the fires but lodged on a ledge of the deep ravine worms consumed them.
Have you ever noticed how one translation might say hell and at the same verse in another translation might say grave?
Link to several translations of Psalms 16:10 http://bible.cc/psalms/16-10.htm
Link to Acts 2:27 http://bible.cc/acts/2-27.htm Notice that the Greek Hades is the same as the Hebrew Sheol. Translators try to translate Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna as Hell to support that idea. The Douay Rheims actually has Job praying to be protected in Hell. http://bible.cc/job/14-13.htm
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark9:47-48;Jer7:31;2Kings23:10;&version=15;45;9;77;31; /././
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna /././ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/227782/Gehenna
Thank you SeventhSense. When I saw that there was a response, I was expecting to get slammed. Lol. When I said something similar on another web-site, another person told me that I was “damning people to Hell” and in another discussion I was told something like I was predestined for Hell. I asked him if I was already predestined for Hell, what was the point of him even discussing it with me as I could not change my destiny.
@texasescim
Yes this was all part of the sorting of 01.
Sorry you weren’t picked for the draft.~
:)
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