Where did the Christian and Muslim hell come from?

I was talking with my Jewish friend yesterday, and I asked her where non-Jews go in the Jewish religion when they die, and if they go to hell, and she told me that they don't believe in hell.

And apparently they do not even believe in heaven, or at least in the Christian sense. Jews don't even know what happens to them in the afterlife...

So, where did the Christian and Muslim hell come from? Was it just made up from the burning garbage dump next to Jerusalem (Gehenna) where the pagans sacrificed babies and animals due to a misinterpretation/mistranslation and used to scare people into believing?

[edit on 10/17/2007 by Kacen]

Originally posted by Kacen
So, where did the Christian and Muslim hell come from? Was it just made up from the burning garbage dump next to Jerusalem (Gehenna) where the pagans sacrificed babies and animals due to a misinterpretation/mistranslation and used to scare people into believing?

Either that or they were on some powerful mushrooms

I feel that those concepts were created to get the best out of the person you can. If a person feels that nothing comes after besides damnation or heaven, then they are probably easier to control. To me hell is an invented concept. Just a way to get people to do your bidding. Do this or go to hell. Who wants to know that they're getting their's next lifetime?

Funny how thou shalt not kill is ok in times of war or against people that aren't considered fit to live...

I honestly couldn't tell you.

Maybe it is simple terms to explain something they can't understand unless they actually went to hell, assuming such a place exists as described.

I prefer the Jewish way when it comes to that.

probably came from mythology and pagan stories of an underworld and god of the dead?

Originally posted by runetang
I prefer the Jewish way when it comes to that.

Same.

I wish that belief held for all Abrahamic faiths. *sigh...*

[edit on 10/17/2007 by Kacen]

Judaism doesn't have a specific doctrine about the afterlife as such but rather a tradition of Gehenna, which is more of a Purgatory than the Hell of Christian and Islam, in which the majority stay for a period of no longer than 12 months and those that are deemed to wicked to enter paradise is destroyed. It is rather apparent however that the gehenna as in the dump outside the walls of Jerusalem being a smelly burning mess would be a perfect description of such a place torment.

The Christian teachings and ideas of hell are based on what Christ had to say about it, and according to his teachings it is a place of eternal torment. As to what Islam believes I don't really know.

I think that a basic idea of the common conception of the devil - satan - The B man - whatever!

Sorry brain wonders!! Anyhow the Etruscans, the peep's before the Romans, had a devil type concept going on in their own pagan kinda way!!

The hell concept could have come from there as well!!

Just had a butchers on WIKI and it seems a lot of their stuff came from the greeks!!

Deeper and deeper in to the badger burrow we go!!

Badgers rock!!

MonKey

The word hell comes from the Norse goddess and place where unhonored souls go Hel.

reply to post by Kacen


The Bible

Hell

reply to post by Shar


Think she meant the origin of the word. And it should be noted that Judism had no concept of a "Hell".