Did you know that, not only members of Christendom’s churches, but many non-Christians as well, have been taught to believe in a hell of torment? It is revealing to read from a variety of sources what is said about the torments of those confined in hell.

A non-Christian “holy book” of the seventh century C.E. says the following:

“Hell!​—they will burn therein,—​an evil bed (indeed, to lie on)!​—Yea, such!​—Then shall they taste it,—​a boiling fluid, and a fluid dark, murky, intensely cold! . . . (They will be) in the midst of a fierce Blast of Fire and in Boiling Water, and in the shades of Black Smoke: Nothing (will there be) to refresh, nor to please.”

Buddhism, which got started in about the sixth century B.C.E. provides this description of one of the “hells” about which it teaches:

“Here there is no interval of cessation either of the flames or of the pain of the beings.”

A Roman Catholic Catechism of Christian Doctrine (published in 1949) states:

“They are deprived of the vision of God and suffer dreadful torments, especially that of fire, for all eternity. . . . The privation of the beatific vision is called the pain of loss; the torment inflicted by created means on the soul, and on the body after its resurrection, is called the pain of sense.”

Also among the Protestant clergy in some places there are those who paint vivid verbal pictures of the horrors of hell. Even their church members at times claim to have had visions of its torments. One man described what he envisioned as follows: ‘As far as my eyes could reach there were only burning fire and human beings to be seen. What pain and suffering! Some people screamed, others wailed and begged for water, water! Some rent their hair, others gnashed their teeth; still others bit themselves in the arms and hands.’

The claim is often made that the threatened punishments of hell are a strong force in moving people to do what is right. But do the facts of history bear this out? Have not some of the greatest cruelties been perpetrated by believers in the doctrine of hellfire? Are not the horrible inquisitions and blood-spilling crusades of Christendom examples of this?

So it should come as no surprise that a growing number of people do not really believe in the existence of a hell of torment nor do they view its punishments as a deterrent to wrongdoing. Though not having actually disproved this teaching, they are simply not inclined to believe what does not appeal to them as reasonable and true. Still they may be members of a church that teaches this doctrine and, by supporting it, share responsibility for propagating the teaching of hellfire.

But just what does the Bible say about torment after death? If you have read earlier chapters of this book, you know that many common beliefs about the dead are false. You know, according to the Bible, that no soul or spirit separates from the body at death and continues conscious existence. Hence, there is no Scriptural foundation for the doctrine of eternal torment after death, for nothing survives that can be subjected to literal torment.

If you have read earlier chapters of this book, you know that many common beliefs about the dead are false. You know, according to the Bible, that no soul or spirit separates from the body at death and continues conscious existence. Hence, there is no Scriptural foundation for the doctrine of eternal torment after death, for nothing survives that can be subjected to literal torment. What, then, is the place that various Bible translations refer to as “hell”?

“SHEOL” IDENTIFIED

In the Catholic Douay Version, the first mention of “hell” is found at Genesis 37:35, which quotes the patriarch Jacob as saying respecting Joseph, whom he believed to be dead: “I will go down to my son into hell, mourning.” Clearly Jacob was not expressing the idea of joining his son in a place of torment. Even the footnote on this verse in the Douay Version (published by the Douay Bible House, New York, 1941) does not put such an interpretation on the text. It says:

“Into hell. That is, into limbo, the place where the souls of the just were received before the death of our Redeemer. . . . [It] certainly meant the place of rest where he believed his soul to be.”

However, nowhere does the Bible itself refer to such a place as “limbo.” Nor does it support the idea of a special resting-place for the soul as something distinctly separate from the body. As acknowledged in the glossary of a modern Catholic translation, The New American Bible (published by P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York, 1970): “There is no opposition or difference between soul and body; they are merely different ways of describing the one, concrete reality.”