With the development of human society, there emerged concepts of sin and virtue, evil and good. It was observed that some evildoers were punished for their deeds but some of them were not, specially those who wielded power and enjoyed privileges. As there was no strong authority to punish them, they remained free to commit all sorts of crimes.
This helplessness resulted in the belief that if such people could not be punished in this world, they would be condemned in the next. It satisfied weaker sections of society, that these tyrants and criminals would be damned by the Divine power forever.
How the concept of Hell is formulated and on what stages does it pass through is traced by Alan E. Bernstein in his book, The Formation of Hell: Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early Christian Worlds. According to him, in the Mesopotamian civilization, it was believed that after death there would be no account for sins and all the dead, good or bad, would be treated equally. Neither would they be punished or rewarded for their deeds. It was a general belief that there was a separate world for the dead. Therefore, in ancient mythology, we find that many attempts were made to discover the world of the dead.
In Epic of Gilgamesh it is narrated: “A great expanse of land and sea divides the living from the land of the dead.” In the Babylonian civilization, the dead lived beneath this world where they were ruled by a king. They built forts and walls around them to defend themselves against the living, and did not allow anybody from the outside world to come in.
In the Egyptian civilization, the concept of punishment for evildoers and reward for virtuous people developed. After death, every individual had to pass through a process in which he was judged on the basis of his deeds. Those who were found guilty, their bodies were cut into pieces. They were told: “The fire is against you, the flames are against you, the blazing heat is against you and stabs at you, and hacks you in pieces, and cuts you up in such a way that ye shall never again see those who are living upon earth.”
The Greeks and the Romans also believed that there was a separate world of the dead underneath the earth. The Greeks called it Hades, where spirits of the dead were put in different categories, according to their acts. Those found involved in crimes and sins were condemned forever.
The Jews elaborated the concept of punishment and reward after death, and formulated Gehenna or Hell for sinners. In the Old Testament, there is a full description of it and details of how evildoers would be punished. “The Lord will swallow them up in his wrath; and fire will consume them.” There is warning to malcontents: “For behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up.”
In one of the Psalms it is said: “The Lord rests the righteous and wicked, And his soul hates him that loves violence. On the wicked he would rain coal fire and brimstone; A scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. For the lord is righteous, he loves righteous deeds; The upright shall behold his face.”
In Christianity, the references of Hell are few and they are not elaborated, but later on, some of the Christian Fathers developed the idea of Hell with gruesome detail. Father Pietro Pinamonti warned: “Every damned person will be like a heated oven, blazing hot on the outside and inside his chest; the filthy blood will boil in his veins, as will the brain in his skull, heart in his chest, and the guts in his wretched body.”
In Islam, the same model of Hell is adopted and Gehenna of the Hebrews became Jahannum of Arabic. It is believed that there would be a Day of Judgment, when all the dead would rise from their graves and, after accounting their good and evil deeds, would be either punished or rewarded.
In every period of history there were thinkers and intellectuals who challenged the concept of Hell. For example, in the Roman period, Plutark, a historian, raised the question that why sinners and the wicked are not punished in this world; and why the delay in punishment? He argued that they should be punished in this world so that everybody can see it.
John Goudsblom in Fire and Civilization writes: “The image of hell-fire, as developed by successive generations of theologians, poets and painters,...were puzzled by the question of what constituted the social and psychological soil on which these images could thrive. In order to understand the civilizing campaigns, they need also to be seen in the wider context of a military-agrarian society with a steadily growing urban population. The people who feared fire in Hell also had some knowledge in war and fire in cities.”
