A survey of how, over the past 4,000 years, religious leaders, poets, painters, and ordinary people have visualized Hell--its location, architecture, furnishings, purpose, and inhabitants.

Over half of Americans believe in a literal heaven, in a literal hell. Most people who hold these beliefs are Christian and assume they are the age-old teachings of the Bible. Ehrman shows that eternal rewards and punishments are found nowhere in the Old Testament, and are not what Jesus or his disciples taught. He recounts the long history of the afterlife, ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh up to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. Ehrman shows that competing views were intimately connected with the social, cultural, and historical worlds out of which they emerged. -- adapted from jacket

"From the Bible through Dante and up to Treblinka and Guantánamo Bay, here is a rich source for nightmares." --The New York Times Book Review Three thousand years of visions of Hell, from the ancient Near East to modern America A Penguin Classic From the Hebrew Bible's shadowy realm of Sheol to twenty-first-century visions of Hell on earth, The Penguin Book of Hell takes us through three thousand years of eternal damnation. Along the way, you'll take a ferry ride with Aeneas to Hades, across the river Acheron; meet the Devil as imagined by a twelfth-century Irish monk--a monster with a thousand giant hands; wander the nine circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno, in which gluttons, liars, heretics, murderers, and hypocrites are made to endure crime-appropriate torture; and witness the debates that raged in Victorian England when new scientific advances cast doubt on the idea of an eternal hereafter. Drawing upon religious poetry, epics, theological treatises, stories of miracles, and accounts of saints' lives, this fascinating volume of hellscapes illuminates how Hell has long haunted us, in both life and death. For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

What becomes of the wicked? Hell—exile from God, subjection to fire, worms, and darkness—for centuries the idea has shaped the dread of malefactors, the solace of victims, and the deterrence of believers. Although we may associate the notion of hell with Christian beliefs, its gradual emergence depended on conflicting notions that pervaded the Mediterranean world more than a millennium before the birth of Christ. Asking just why and how belief in hell arose, Alan E. Bernstein takes us back to those times and offers us a comparative view of the philosophy, poetry, folklore, myth, and theology of that formative age.Bernstein draws on sources from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, and Israel, as well as early Christian writings through Augustine, in order to reconstruct the story of the prophets, priests, poets, and charismatic leaders who fashioned concepts of hell from an array of perspectives on death and justice. The author traces hell's formation through close readings of works including the epics of Homer and Vergil, the satires of Lucian, the dialogues of Plato and Plutarch, the legends of Enoch, the confessions of the Psalms, the prophecies of Isaiah, Ezechiel, and Daniel, and the parables of Jesus. Reenacting lively debates about the nature of hell among the common people and the elites of diverse religious traditions, he provides new insight into the social implications and the psychological consequences of different visions of the afterlife.This superb account of a central image in Western culture will captivate readers interested in history, mythology, literature, psychology, philosophy, and religion.

This TAN Books edition of “The Dogma of Hell ” by Rev. Fr. F. X. Schouppe, S.J., features the complete original text, along with a supplemental reading section entitled “What Will Hell Be Like?”. We’ve also included unique hand-selected classic artwork for the reader’s enjoyment, exclusive to this eBook edition of “The Dogma of Hell ”. The Dogma of Hell: The Dogma of Hell explores the basic Catholic doctrine on Hell, purposefully awakening in the reader a profound realization of its reality and eternity of horrors. Eminent French theologian Fr F X Schouppe, SJ, author of Purgatory Explained by the Lives and Legends of the Saints, has written here a similar but much smaller book. In short chapters, he has recounted numerous true stories, apparitions of the damned, and complete Catholic teaching on Hell. He clearly shows that for those who are not motivated to do good out of love of God, the fear of Hell is a legitimate and often salutary motive for avoiding sin. Although the subject matter is frightening, the ultimate purpose of this book is not to frighten souls, but to help them avoid damnation by reminding them of the pain and suffering in an eternity spent in the absence of God. What Will Hell Be Like?: Selections from St. Alphonsus' writings. Covers virtually every aspect of Hell. Shows it exists, describes its torments, proves it is eternal, demonstrates it is not unjust and answers a host of questions. Best short antidote for today's irreligion that we know.

Close your eyes and picture -- just for a moment -- hell. Fire? Demons? Eternal torment? Well, yes -- that's the place, in one very hot nutshell. But that's not all there is to the forbidding world beneath us. For a few millennia now, we mortals have imagined and reimagined hell in countless ways: as a realm of damnation, as an inspiration for highest art, as a setting for the lowest of lowbrow comedy. One might conclude that for all our good intentions to enter para- dise, we can't seem to get enough vivid details of its counterpart, hell. Provocative, colorful, and damned entertaining, Go to Hell takes readers on a tour of the underworld that is both darkly comical and seriously informative. From the frozen hell of the Vikings to the sun-drenched Cayman Islands' town of Hell (where tourists line up to have their postcards aptly postmarked), from Dante's circles of hell to Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Hellmouth, Go to Hell embraces our evolving relationship with the sinner's final destination, revealing how we truly think of ourselves in this world. What's down below? Meet HEL, the hideous, half-rotting goddess of the Viking underworld. Beware the Egyptians' AM-MUT, an unsightly mix of lion, crocodile, and hippo parts, and insatiably hungry for wicked souls. Visit JIGOKU, a Buddhist realm of eight fiery hells and eight icy hells: an all-you-can-suffer hot-and-cold buffet. Step into the INFERNO for a tour of Dante's nine circles of the damned...

A book of fantastic stories about the hell on earth that is living.

The idea of punishment after death—whereby the souls of the wicked are consigned to Hell (Gehenna, Gehinnom, or Jahannam)—emerged out of beliefs found across the Mediterranean, from ancient Egypt to Zoroastrian Persia, and became fundamental to the Abrahamic religions. Once Hell achieved doctrinal expression in the New Testament, the Talmud, and the Qur'an, thinkers began to question Hell’s eternity, and to consider possible alternatives—hell’s rivals. Some imagined outright escape, others periodic but temporary relief within the torments. One option, including Purgatory and, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Middle State, was to consider the punishments to be temporary and purifying. Despite these moral and theological hesitations, the idea of Hell has remained a historical and theological force until the present.In Hell and Its Rivals, Alan E. Bernstein examines an array of sources from within and beyond the three Abrahamic faiths—including theology, chronicles, legal charters, edifying tales, and narratives of near-death experiences—to analyze the origins and evolution of belief in Hell. Key social institutions, including slavery, capital punishment, and monarchy, also affected the afterlife beliefs of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Reflection on hell encouraged a stigmatization of "the other" that in turn emphasized the differences between these religions. Yet, despite these rivalries, each community proclaimed eternal punishment and answered related challenges to it in similar terms. For all that divided them, they agreed on the need for—and fact of—Hell.

The Encyclopedia of Hell is a comprehensive survey of the underworld, drawing information from cultures around the globe and eras throughout history. Organized in a simple-to-use alphabetic format, entries cover representations of the dark realm of the dead in mythology, religion, works of art, opera, literature, theater, music, film, and television. Sources include African legends, Native American stories, Asian folktales, and other more obscure references, in addition to familiar infernal chronicles from Western lore. The result is a catalog of underworld data, with entries running the gamut from descriptions of grisly pits of torture to humorous cartoons lampooning the everlasting abyss. Its extensive cross-referencing also supplies links between various concepts and characters from the netherworld and provides further information on particular theories. Peruse these pages and find out for yourself what history's greatest imaginations have envisioned awaiting the wicked on the other side of the grave.

Examines the spiritual and earthly results of conversion to Christianity for African-American antebellum writers. Using autobiographical narratives, Yolanda Pierce argues that for African Americans, accounts of spiritual conversion revealed "personal transformations with far-reaching community effects.