For some people, hell is a place of eternal punishment. For others, it's merely a stepping stone on the way to redemption.
In this episode, we'll be exploring the idea of hell, its different interpretations, and what happens in each one.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about hell.
[00:00:26] It is, according to some religions, the place where people who have behaved badly in life go when they die.
[00:00:34] For some people, hell is a place of eternal punishment, a place where devils torture you in a myriad of different ways.
[00:00:43] For others, it’s not quite so bad, and it’s merely a stepping stone on the path to redemption.
[00:00:50] So, in this episode we are going to explore the idea of hell, we’ll look at some different interpretations of hell, and what happens in each one, and you might well learn that hell, even theologically speaking, doesn’t look quite like you might have imagined it.
[00:01:07] OK then, what is hell?
[00:01:12] If I asked you, does hell exist, you’ll probably have a strong opinion either way.
[00:01:19] Yes, hell most certainly exists, you know what happens there, and you are going to live your life in a way that ensures you don’t end up there.
[00:01:28] Or absolutely not, what a load of rubbish, absolutely nothing happens to someone who has behaved badly after they die.
[00:01:37] My objective in this episode is certainly not to try to convince you either way, nor are we going to have an intense theological discussion about hell.
[00:01:49] Instead, we are going to explore how ideas of hell have developed over time, and how the idea of hell is addressed in various different religions.
[00:02:00] Now, a quick disclaimer: we are talking about religion here, it’s clearly a complex topic and one that you could never cover adequately and in depth in 20 minutes. So please do not be offended if you feel that something hasn’t been explained in enough detail or with enough nuance. That would take days or weeks, and we only have 20 minutes or so.
[00:02:23] Right, with that disclaimer out of the way, let me ask you a follow-up question. I’ve already asked you whether hell exists. Now, I’d like you to close your eyes and imagine what you see in hell.
[00:02:38] Even if you were in that second category of responses, and you think hell most definitely doesn’t exist, I’d imagine that some images are still coming to mind.
[00:02:49] You might be imagining a fiery underground place, perhaps it is dark and cold, perhaps it’s packed full of people being tormented by demons, perhaps it is silent and you are utterly alone.
[00:03:05] There are a myriad of different interpretations of hell, both in different religions and even within the same religion theologians have proposed a multitude of different ideas about hell. People have been grappling with the concept for thousands of years.
[00:03:22] It is such a large topic that we will have to narrow our focus to the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, but we’ll also have time to look at a few interpretations of hell from other religions.
[00:03:35] So, to kick things off, what is hell?
[00:03:39] It’s a very broad question, but if you looked in a dictionary you would find something like “a place regarded in various religions as a spiritual realm of evil and suffering, often traditionally depicted as a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth where the wicked are punished after death.”
[00:03:58] Or, to put it another way, in plain English, it’s a place where bad people go when they die, a place where they are punished and tortured.
[00:04:09] So, where does this idea come from?
[00:04:11] Well, as long as people have believed in some form of deity, some form of God, there has been in almost all religions a theological explanation about what happens to people after they die.
[00:04:26] Good people are typically rewarded after death, they go to heaven and they are united with God, but what happens to “bad” people?
[00:04:38] Going all the way back to the Ancient Egyptians, there was a concept of judgement in the afterlife. After someone died, their soul had to go through the underworld. Part of this journey involved their heart being weighed by the goddess of truth, balance, order, and justice.
[00:04:58] The dead person’s heart was weighed against a feather. If the heart was lighter than the feather, the soul was considered just and allowed to pass into the afterlife, known as the Field of Reeds.
[00:05:13] However, if their heart was heavier than the feather, this meant that the dead person had led a life filled with sin and injustice, they were a bad person. And this didn’t bode well. The dead person would be gobbled up, devoured, by a goddess called Ammit, who was a mixture between lion, hippopotamus and crocodile.
[00:05:39] If this happened, the dead person would die again, which was understandably not what any Ancient Egyptian wanted.
[00:05:46] So, it’s not hell in the traditional sense, but it is an early example of bad people being punished after death.
[00:05:56] And moving forward to the Ancient Greeks, it’s here where we start to get a more modern view of hell, or at least a view that is more comparable to the views of hell in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
[00:06:11] The Ancient Greeks believed in the Underworld, a dark, gloomy place where people went after death that was overseen by the god Hades.
[00:06:22] And they believed that there was a specific part of the Underworld called Tartarus, a section of the underworld where people who had behaved badly in life were eternally punished.
[00:06:35] If you are familiar with Greek mythology, you might remember the punishment for Sisyphus, the man who was forced to forever roll a large boulder up a hill, or Tantalus, who killed his son and served him as food, and as a result was forced to stand in a pool of water under a fruit tree, but whenever he reached for the fruit the branches moved away.
[00:06:58] This, by the way, is where the word “tantalising” comes from, meaning something you really want but you can’t get.
[00:07:06] Now, let’s move on to talk about some Judeo-Christian interpretations of hell.
[00:07:12] In Judaism, the concept of hell isn’t so clearly defined, or central to the religion as it is in Christianity. The focus in Judaism is generally more on how to live a good and just life in this world, rather than on the nature of the afterlife.
[00:07:33] In the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, there is a place called "Sheol" that is often translated as "Hell," but it’s a little different to the hell that you might be thinking of; it’s more like a shadowy, quiet place of the dead than a place of eternal punishment.
[00:07:53] There is also the idea of something called “Gehinnom” or “Gehenna”, which is a kind of hell, but the punishment you get there is to understand, to come to terms with your moral indiscretions in life.
[00:08:07] What’s more, you don’t stay there forever; it’s more like a place to go to be purified rather than one of eternal damnation.
[00:08:16] Now, let's move on to the Christian tradition of Hell.
[00:08:21] Christianity has a clear, single text, The Bible, so what does The Bible say about hell? Are there precise definitions of what happens, of the different sins and the requisite punishments for them?
[00:08:36] In short, no.
[00:08:38] There are multiple references to hell, but these are open to interpretation.
[00:08:46] As you may know, there are two sections in the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek. The only specific references to “hell” appear in the New Testament, so they are Greek.
[00:09:05] And in The Bible, there are multiple words that are translated as “hell” in English: Hades, Gehenna and Tartarus, all words and concepts that are borrowed from Ancient Greek or Judaism, but–as you’ve heard–have slightly different meanings to the vision of hell that you might have.
[00:09:27] What’s more, there are many references to what happens to bad people in the afterlife, without there being any specific detail provided.
[00:09:37] Now, figuring out exactly what is meant in The Bible, or any religious text for that matter, has kept people busy for thousands of years, and continues to keep people busy to this very day, so this is not going to be any attempt to analyse and finally explain the text of the Bible.
[00:09:56] The main points of debate in the Christian tradition are threefold:
[00:10:02] Firstly, how long does a sinner go to hell? For all of eternity? Until they realise the error of their ways? Until Jesus returns to Earth?
[00:10:13] Secondly, is going to hell reversible? In other words, if you are sent to hell, can you ever get out?
[00:10:22] And thirdly, what actually happens to people in hell? Is it full of constant punishment, what is the nature of this punishment? Is it spiritual, emotional or physical? Is the punishment of hell only that you are not with Jesus, or is there “extra” punishment as well?
[00:10:42] None of this is explicitly specified in the Bible, yet modern beliefs of hell, especially in the popular imagination, have concentrated on a few ideas: constant punishment, often physical, fire and extreme heat.
[00:11:01] So, if this didn’t come directly from the Bible, where did it come from?
[00:11:08] Well, lots of people have explored this concept of hell and divine punishment, but this idea was developed most famously by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in his 14th Century epic poem The Divine Comedy.
[00:11:24] This is a lengthy poem split into three different parts: Hell, or “Inferno”, then Purgatory and Paradise, Purgatorio and Paradiso.
[00:11:36] In this poem, Dante provides an incredibly detailed description of what happens in hell. For Dante, hell is formed of 9 circles, going deeper and deeper below the Earth, with the sins of the souls in each circle getting more and more serious the deeper they go.
[00:11:57] Each sinner is punished in a different way, their punishment fitting the crime that they committed on Earth.
[00:12:04] In the second circle, the lustful are punished by being blown about by violent winds, symbolising their lack of self-control.
[00:12:14] Going further down, the gluttons, the people who were too greedy in life, they are forced to lie in a horrible mixture of freezing rain, black snow, and hail, symbolising their life of selfish overindulgence.
[00:12:31] It’s an absolutely wonderful poem, a story even, and if you have never read it I’d certainly encourage you to do so.
[00:12:40] So, where did he get these ideas from, if they weren’t specified directly in the Bible?
[00:12:47] In his Inferno, Dante was building on pre-existing Christian interpretations of hell, some of which involved “eternal punishment”.
[00:12:57] When he combined these ideas with a variety of other Medieval traditions and texts, as well as his own imagination, he came up with this incredibly vivid idea of hell, described through his own eyes as he journeyed through hell and learned about it from the sinners suffering there.
[00:13:17] And although Dante’s Inferno isn’t a religious text per se, and indeed Dante’s hell is not universally accepted by Christians, the vision of hell that he presented has become the basis for the kind of hell that you or I might think of. Of course, his vision of hell being a place of eternal punishment is not unique.
[00:13:42] The idea of hell being a place of eternal punishment, as well as the idea of hell having multiple levels, was already prominent in Islam.
[00:13:51] Now, like in the Judeo-Christian tradition, there are multiple different interpretations of hell within Islam, but they broadly go something like this.
[00:14:01] There are seven different circles of hell, with sinners of different categories being assigned to different circles. Hell in Islam, called “Jahannam", is filled with burning fire, and, like in Dante’s Inferno, people suffering all manner of terrible punishments.
[00:14:21] Like in the Christian tradition, there is debate among scholars about the nature of hell in Islam: is it somewhere a sinner is condemned for eternity or can they be allowed to leave if they renounce their sins? What happens to non-Muslims? Are they condemned to hell by default, or can a non-Muslim who believes in God be spared from the fiery furnace?
[00:14:46] Hell is a complicated place, full of many, many questions.
[00:14:51] And this brings me on to the penultimate point to touch on today, in this short exploration of hell. I told you that we weren’t going to go into any deep theological discussion, but we do need to mention the so-called “Problem of Hell”, which is an ethical question that unites Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and indeed any religion with a “hell”.
[00:15:17] And it goes something like this: if there is an all-seeing and all-knowing God, a God that has the power to change behaviour, that has the power to do anything, why should Hell exist? And especially, why should a Hell exist where a soul created by God should be subjected to eternal torture?
[00:15:40] It just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that a benevolent, loving God should do, so the theory goes.
[00:15:49] Now, there are plenty of “answers” to the “problem of Hell”, and it is a problem that Christian, Jewish and Islamic scholars have grappled with for centuries, so if this is an area you’d like explore further, there is a lifetime of literature on the subject.
[00:16:07] And the final point to make is that the one way of avoiding this “problem of hell” altogether is simply by not subscribing to the idea of hell. In Buddhism, for example, the idea of hell simply doesn’t exist. Buddhists believe that there is a brief period after death where the soul might suffer temporarily, but only before being reborn, before being reincarnated.
[00:16:34] Similarly, Hinduism has a temporary realm of suffering called “Naraka”, but it’s more like a temporary purgatory, a place where people go to pay for their sins, before being reborn.
[00:16:48] And still on the subject of predominantly Asian religions, Confucianism doesn’t really have a clear answer to what happens after death, so there is no clear concept of hell.
[00:17:02] Now, of course, if we are talking about belief systems overall, or systems of disbelief, you could say, if you do not believe in a God, if you are atheist or if you are agnostic, then you don’t have to worry about the “problem of hell”, because you believe that there is no hell; it simply doesn’t exist.
[00:17:23] Right, the final point to address is that, even though there might be debate in almost every religion with hell about what goes on there, clearly the concept of hell is a useful one when it comes to encouraging good moral behaviour and belief in god.
[00:17:40] After all, if there is even the slightest possibility of being forced to lie in a horrible mixture of freezing rain and black snow all day, or of a devil putting a hot poker up your bottom or being eaten alive by a big ferocious monster, avoiding this fate might just be the sort of thing that encourages you to believe in God and be on your best behaviour.
[00:18:04] So, to wrap things up, and perhaps try to answer the question of the title of the episode, what is hell?
[00:18:12] Who knows, but be good and you’ll never need to find out.
[00:18:18] OK then, that is it for today's little exploration of hell.
[00:18:23] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that it might have shone some light on what many people consider to be a dark and mysterious place.
[00:18:32] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:36] If you believe in Hell, what does it look like for you?
[00:18:40] What are some expressions in your language that use the word “hell”?
[00:18:45] If you are a believer in a religion we didn’t touch on in this episode, what does hell mean to you?
[00:18:51] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:18:55] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:03] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:08] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about hell.
[00:00:26] It is, according to some religions, the place where people who have behaved badly in life go when they die.
[00:00:34] For some people, hell is a place of eternal punishment, a place where devils torture you in a myriad of different ways.
[00:00:43] For others, it’s not quite so bad, and it’s merely a stepping stone on the path to redemption.
[00:00:50] So, in this episode we are going to explore the idea of hell, we’ll look at some different interpretations of hell, and what happens in each one, and you might well learn that hell, even theologically speaking, doesn’t look quite like you might have imagined it.
[00:01:07] OK then, what is hell?
[00:01:12] If I asked you, does hell exist, you’ll probably have a strong opinion either way.
[00:01:19] Yes, hell most certainly exists, you know what happens there, and you are going to live your life in a way that ensures you don’t end up there.
[00:01:28] Or absolutely not, what a load of rubbish, absolutely nothing happens to someone who has behaved badly after they die.
[00:01:37] My objective in this episode is certainly not to try to convince you either way, nor are we going to have an intense theological discussion about hell.
[00:01:49] Instead, we are going to explore how ideas of hell have developed over time, and how the idea of hell is addressed in various different religions.
[00:02:00] Now, a quick disclaimer: we are talking about religion here, it’s clearly a complex topic and one that you could never cover adequately and in depth in 20 minutes. So please do not be offended if you feel that something hasn’t been explained in enough detail or with enough nuance. That would take days or weeks, and we only have 20 minutes or so.
[00:02:23] Right, with that disclaimer out of the way, let me ask you a follow-up question. I’ve already asked you whether hell exists. Now, I’d like you to close your eyes and imagine what you see in hell.
[00:02:38] Even if you were in that second category of responses, and you think hell most definitely doesn’t exist, I’d imagine that some images are still coming to mind.
[00:02:49] You might be imagining a fiery underground place, perhaps it is dark and cold, perhaps it’s packed full of people being tormented by demons, perhaps it is silent and you are utterly alone.
[00:03:05] There are a myriad of different interpretations of hell, both in different religions and even within the same religion theologians have proposed a multitude of different ideas about hell. People have been grappling with the concept for thousands of years.
[00:03:22] It is such a large topic that we will have to narrow our focus to the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, but we’ll also have time to look at a few interpretations of hell from other religions.
[00:03:35] So, to kick things off, what is hell?
[00:03:39] It’s a very broad question, but if you looked in a dictionary you would find something like “a place regarded in various religions as a spiritual realm of evil and suffering, often traditionally depicted as a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth where the wicked are punished after death.”
[00:03:58] Or, to put it another way, in plain English, it’s a place where bad people go when they die, a place where they are punished and tortured.
[00:04:09] So, where does this idea come from?
[00:04:11] Well, as long as people have believed in some form of deity, some form of God, there has been in almost all religions a theological explanation about what happens to people after they die.
[00:04:26] Good people are typically rewarded after death, they go to heaven and they are united with God, but what happens to “bad” people?
[00:04:38] Going all the way back to the Ancient Egyptians, there was a concept of judgement in the afterlife. After someone died, their soul had to go through the underworld. Part of this journey involved their heart being weighed by the goddess of truth, balance, order, and justice.
[00:04:58] The dead person’s heart was weighed against a feather. If the heart was lighter than the feather, the soul was considered just and allowed to pass into the afterlife, known as the Field of Reeds.
[00:05:13] However, if their heart was heavier than the feather, this meant that the dead person had led a life filled with sin and injustice, they were a bad person. And this didn’t bode well. The dead person would be gobbled up, devoured, by a goddess called Ammit, who was a mixture between lion, hippopotamus and crocodile.
[00:05:39] If this happened, the dead person would die again, which was understandably not what any Ancient Egyptian wanted.
[00:05:46] So, it’s not hell in the traditional sense, but it is an early example of bad people being punished after death.
[00:05:56] And moving forward to the Ancient Greeks, it’s here where we start to get a more modern view of hell, or at least a view that is more comparable to the views of hell in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
[00:06:11] The Ancient Greeks believed in the Underworld, a dark, gloomy place where people went after death that was overseen by the god Hades.
[00:06:22] And they believed that there was a specific part of the Underworld called Tartarus, a section of the underworld where people who had behaved badly in life were eternally punished.
[00:06:35] If you are familiar with Greek mythology, you might remember the punishment for Sisyphus, the man who was forced to forever roll a large boulder up a hill, or Tantalus, who killed his son and served him as food, and as a result was forced to stand in a pool of water under a fruit tree, but whenever he reached for the fruit the branches moved away.
[00:06:58] This, by the way, is where the word “tantalising” comes from, meaning something you really want but you can’t get.
[00:07:06] Now, let’s move on to talk about some Judeo-Christian interpretations of hell.
[00:07:12] In Judaism, the concept of hell isn’t so clearly defined, or central to the religion as it is in Christianity. The focus in Judaism is generally more on how to live a good and just life in this world, rather than on the nature of the afterlife.
[00:07:33] In the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, there is a place called "Sheol" that is often translated as "Hell," but it’s a little different to the hell that you might be thinking of; it’s more like a shadowy, quiet place of the dead than a place of eternal punishment.
[00:07:53] There is also the idea of something called “Gehinnom” or “Gehenna”, which is a kind of hell, but the punishment you get there is to understand, to come to terms with your moral indiscretions in life.
[00:08:07] What’s more, you don’t stay there forever; it’s more like a place to go to be purified rather than one of eternal damnation.
[00:08:16] Now, let's move on to the Christian tradition of Hell.
[00:08:21] Christianity has a clear, single text, The Bible, so what does The Bible say about hell? Are there precise definitions of what happens, of the different sins and the requisite punishments for them?
[00:08:36] In short, no.
[00:08:38] There are multiple references to hell, but these are open to interpretation.
[00:08:46] As you may know, there are two sections in the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek. The only specific references to “hell” appear in the New Testament, so they are Greek.
[00:09:05] And in The Bible, there are multiple words that are translated as “hell” in English: Hades, Gehenna and Tartarus, all words and concepts that are borrowed from Ancient Greek or Judaism, but–as you’ve heard–have slightly different meanings to the vision of hell that you might have.
[00:09:27] What’s more, there are many references to what happens to bad people in the afterlife, without there being any specific detail provided.
[00:09:37] Now, figuring out exactly what is meant in The Bible, or any religious text for that matter, has kept people busy for thousands of years, and continues to keep people busy to this very day, so this is not going to be any attempt to analyse and finally explain the text of the Bible.
[00:09:56] The main points of debate in the Christian tradition are threefold:
[00:10:02] Firstly, how long does a sinner go to hell? For all of eternity? Until they realise the error of their ways? Until Jesus returns to Earth?
[00:10:13] Secondly, is going to hell reversible? In other words, if you are sent to hell, can you ever get out?
[00:10:22] And thirdly, what actually happens to people in hell? Is it full of constant punishment, what is the nature of this punishment? Is it spiritual, emotional or physical? Is the punishment of hell only that you are not with Jesus, or is there “extra” punishment as well?
[00:10:42] None of this is explicitly specified in the Bible, yet modern beliefs of hell, especially in the popular imagination, have concentrated on a few ideas: constant punishment, often physical, fire and extreme heat.
[00:11:01] So, if this didn’t come directly from the Bible, where did it come from?
[00:11:08] Well, lots of people have explored this concept of hell and divine punishment, but this idea was developed most famously by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in his 14th Century epic poem The Divine Comedy.
[00:11:24] This is a lengthy poem split into three different parts: Hell, or “Inferno”, then Purgatory and Paradise, Purgatorio and Paradiso.
[00:11:36] In this poem, Dante provides an incredibly detailed description of what happens in hell. For Dante, hell is formed of 9 circles, going deeper and deeper below the Earth, with the sins of the souls in each circle getting more and more serious the deeper they go.
[00:11:57] Each sinner is punished in a different way, their punishment fitting the crime that they committed on Earth.
[00:12:04] In the second circle, the lustful are punished by being blown about by violent winds, symbolising their lack of self-control.
[00:12:14] Going further down, the gluttons, the people who were too greedy in life, they are forced to lie in a horrible mixture of freezing rain, black snow, and hail, symbolising their life of selfish overindulgence.
[00:12:31] It’s an absolutely wonderful poem, a story even, and if you have never read it I’d certainly encourage you to do so.
[00:12:40] So, where did he get these ideas from, if they weren’t specified directly in the Bible?
[00:12:47] In his Inferno, Dante was building on pre-existing Christian interpretations of hell, some of which involved “eternal punishment”.
[00:12:57] When he combined these ideas with a variety of other Medieval traditions and texts, as well as his own imagination, he came up with this incredibly vivid idea of hell, described through his own eyes as he journeyed through hell and learned about it from the sinners suffering there.
[00:13:17] And although Dante’s Inferno isn’t a religious text per se, and indeed Dante’s hell is not universally accepted by Christians, the vision of hell that he presented has become the basis for the kind of hell that you or I might think of. Of course, his vision of hell being a place of eternal punishment is not unique.
[00:13:42] The idea of hell being a place of eternal punishment, as well as the idea of hell having multiple levels, was already prominent in Islam.
[00:13:51] Now, like in the Judeo-Christian tradition, there are multiple different interpretations of hell within Islam, but they broadly go something like this.
[00:14:01] There are seven different circles of hell, with sinners of different categories being assigned to different circles. Hell in Islam, called “Jahannam", is filled with burning fire, and, like in Dante’s Inferno, people suffering all manner of terrible punishments.
[00:14:21] Like in the Christian tradition, there is debate among scholars about the nature of hell in Islam: is it somewhere a sinner is condemned for eternity or can they be allowed to leave if they renounce their sins? What happens to non-Muslims? Are they condemned to hell by default, or can a non-Muslim who believes in God be spared from the fiery furnace?
[00:14:46] Hell is a complicated place, full of many, many questions.
[00:14:51] And this brings me on to the penultimate point to touch on today, in this short exploration of hell. I told you that we weren’t going to go into any deep theological discussion, but we do need to mention the so-called “Problem of Hell”, which is an ethical question that unites Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and indeed any religion with a “hell”.
[00:15:17] And it goes something like this: if there is an all-seeing and all-knowing God, a God that has the power to change behaviour, that has the power to do anything, why should Hell exist? And especially, why should a Hell exist where a soul created by God should be subjected to eternal torture?
[00:15:40] It just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that a benevolent, loving God should do, so the theory goes.
[00:15:49] Now, there are plenty of “answers” to the “problem of Hell”, and it is a problem that Christian, Jewish and Islamic scholars have grappled with for centuries, so if this is an area you’d like explore further, there is a lifetime of literature on the subject.
[00:16:07] And the final point to make is that the one way of avoiding this “problem of hell” altogether is simply by not subscribing to the idea of hell. In Buddhism, for example, the idea of hell simply doesn’t exist. Buddhists believe that there is a brief period after death where the soul might suffer temporarily, but only before being reborn, before being reincarnated.
[00:16:34] Similarly, Hinduism has a temporary realm of suffering called “Naraka”, but it’s more like a temporary purgatory, a place where people go to pay for their sins, before being reborn.
[00:16:48] And still on the subject of predominantly Asian religions, Confucianism doesn’t really have a clear answer to what happens after death, so there is no clear concept of hell.
[00:17:02] Now, of course, if we are talking about belief systems overall, or systems of disbelief, you could say, if you do not believe in a God, if you are atheist or if you are agnostic, then you don’t have to worry about the “problem of hell”, because you believe that there is no hell; it simply doesn’t exist.
[00:17:23] Right, the final point to address is that, even though there might be debate in almost every religion with hell about what goes on there, clearly the concept of hell is a useful one when it comes to encouraging good moral behaviour and belief in god.
[00:17:40] After all, if there is even the slightest possibility of being forced to lie in a horrible mixture of freezing rain and black snow all day, or of a devil putting a hot poker up your bottom or being eaten alive by a big ferocious monster, avoiding this fate might just be the sort of thing that encourages you to believe in God and be on your best behaviour.
[00:18:04] So, to wrap things up, and perhaps try to answer the question of the title of the episode, what is hell?
[00:18:12] Who knows, but be good and you’ll never need to find out.
[00:18:18] OK then, that is it for today's little exploration of hell.
[00:18:23] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that it might have shone some light on what many people consider to be a dark and mysterious place.
[00:18:32] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:36] If you believe in Hell, what does it look like for you?
[00:18:40] What are some expressions in your language that use the word “hell”?
[00:18:45] If you are a believer in a religion we didn’t touch on in this episode, what does hell mean to you?
[00:18:51] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:18:55] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:03] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:08] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about hell.
[00:00:26] It is, according to some religions, the place where people who have behaved badly in life go when they die.
[00:00:34] For some people, hell is a place of eternal punishment, a place where devils torture you in a myriad of different ways.
[00:00:43] For others, it’s not quite so bad, and it’s merely a stepping stone on the path to redemption.
[00:00:50] So, in this episode we are going to explore the idea of hell, we’ll look at some different interpretations of hell, and what happens in each one, and you might well learn that hell, even theologically speaking, doesn’t look quite like you might have imagined it.
[00:01:07] OK then, what is hell?
[00:01:12] If I asked you, does hell exist, you’ll probably have a strong opinion either way.
[00:01:19] Yes, hell most certainly exists, you know what happens there, and you are going to live your life in a way that ensures you don’t end up there.
[00:01:28] Or absolutely not, what a load of rubbish, absolutely nothing happens to someone who has behaved badly after they die.
[00:01:37] My objective in this episode is certainly not to try to convince you either way, nor are we going to have an intense theological discussion about hell.
[00:01:49] Instead, we are going to explore how ideas of hell have developed over time, and how the idea of hell is addressed in various different religions.
[00:02:00] Now, a quick disclaimer: we are talking about religion here, it’s clearly a complex topic and one that you could never cover adequately and in depth in 20 minutes. So please do not be offended if you feel that something hasn’t been explained in enough detail or with enough nuance. That would take days or weeks, and we only have 20 minutes or so.
[00:02:23] Right, with that disclaimer out of the way, let me ask you a follow-up question. I’ve already asked you whether hell exists. Now, I’d like you to close your eyes and imagine what you see in hell.
[00:02:38] Even if you were in that second category of responses, and you think hell most definitely doesn’t exist, I’d imagine that some images are still coming to mind.
[00:02:49] You might be imagining a fiery underground place, perhaps it is dark and cold, perhaps it’s packed full of people being tormented by demons, perhaps it is silent and you are utterly alone.
[00:03:05] There are a myriad of different interpretations of hell, both in different religions and even within the same religion theologians have proposed a multitude of different ideas about hell. People have been grappling with the concept for thousands of years.
[00:03:22] It is such a large topic that we will have to narrow our focus to the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, but we’ll also have time to look at a few interpretations of hell from other religions.
[00:03:35] So, to kick things off, what is hell?
[00:03:39] It’s a very broad question, but if you looked in a dictionary you would find something like “a place regarded in various religions as a spiritual realm of evil and suffering, often traditionally depicted as a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth where the wicked are punished after death.”
[00:03:58] Or, to put it another way, in plain English, it’s a place where bad people go when they die, a place where they are punished and tortured.
[00:04:09] So, where does this idea come from?
[00:04:11] Well, as long as people have believed in some form of deity, some form of God, there has been in almost all religions a theological explanation about what happens to people after they die.
[00:04:26] Good people are typically rewarded after death, they go to heaven and they are united with God, but what happens to “bad” people?
[00:04:38] Going all the way back to the Ancient Egyptians, there was a concept of judgement in the afterlife. After someone died, their soul had to go through the underworld. Part of this journey involved their heart being weighed by the goddess of truth, balance, order, and justice.
[00:04:58] The dead person’s heart was weighed against a feather. If the heart was lighter than the feather, the soul was considered just and allowed to pass into the afterlife, known as the Field of Reeds.
[00:05:13] However, if their heart was heavier than the feather, this meant that the dead person had led a life filled with sin and injustice, they were a bad person. And this didn’t bode well. The dead person would be gobbled up, devoured, by a goddess called Ammit, who was a mixture between lion, hippopotamus and crocodile.
[00:05:39] If this happened, the dead person would die again, which was understandably not what any Ancient Egyptian wanted.
[00:05:46] So, it’s not hell in the traditional sense, but it is an early example of bad people being punished after death.
[00:05:56] And moving forward to the Ancient Greeks, it’s here where we start to get a more modern view of hell, or at least a view that is more comparable to the views of hell in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
[00:06:11] The Ancient Greeks believed in the Underworld, a dark, gloomy place where people went after death that was overseen by the god Hades.
[00:06:22] And they believed that there was a specific part of the Underworld called Tartarus, a section of the underworld where people who had behaved badly in life were eternally punished.
[00:06:35] If you are familiar with Greek mythology, you might remember the punishment for Sisyphus, the man who was forced to forever roll a large boulder up a hill, or Tantalus, who killed his son and served him as food, and as a result was forced to stand in a pool of water under a fruit tree, but whenever he reached for the fruit the branches moved away.
[00:06:58] This, by the way, is where the word “tantalising” comes from, meaning something you really want but you can’t get.
[00:07:06] Now, let’s move on to talk about some Judeo-Christian interpretations of hell.
[00:07:12] In Judaism, the concept of hell isn’t so clearly defined, or central to the religion as it is in Christianity. The focus in Judaism is generally more on how to live a good and just life in this world, rather than on the nature of the afterlife.
[00:07:33] In the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, there is a place called "Sheol" that is often translated as "Hell," but it’s a little different to the hell that you might be thinking of; it’s more like a shadowy, quiet place of the dead than a place of eternal punishment.
[00:07:53] There is also the idea of something called “Gehinnom” or “Gehenna”, which is a kind of hell, but the punishment you get there is to understand, to come to terms with your moral indiscretions in life.
[00:08:07] What’s more, you don’t stay there forever; it’s more like a place to go to be purified rather than one of eternal damnation.
[00:08:16] Now, let's move on to the Christian tradition of Hell.
[00:08:21] Christianity has a clear, single text, The Bible, so what does The Bible say about hell? Are there precise definitions of what happens, of the different sins and the requisite punishments for them?
[00:08:36] In short, no.
[00:08:38] There are multiple references to hell, but these are open to interpretation.
[00:08:46] As you may know, there are two sections in the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament was written in Greek. The only specific references to “hell” appear in the New Testament, so they are Greek.
[00:09:05] And in The Bible, there are multiple words that are translated as “hell” in English: Hades, Gehenna and Tartarus, all words and concepts that are borrowed from Ancient Greek or Judaism, but–as you’ve heard–have slightly different meanings to the vision of hell that you might have.
[00:09:27] What’s more, there are many references to what happens to bad people in the afterlife, without there being any specific detail provided.
[00:09:37] Now, figuring out exactly what is meant in The Bible, or any religious text for that matter, has kept people busy for thousands of years, and continues to keep people busy to this very day, so this is not going to be any attempt to analyse and finally explain the text of the Bible.
[00:09:56] The main points of debate in the Christian tradition are threefold:
[00:10:02] Firstly, how long does a sinner go to hell? For all of eternity? Until they realise the error of their ways? Until Jesus returns to Earth?
[00:10:13] Secondly, is going to hell reversible? In other words, if you are sent to hell, can you ever get out?
[00:10:22] And thirdly, what actually happens to people in hell? Is it full of constant punishment, what is the nature of this punishment? Is it spiritual, emotional or physical? Is the punishment of hell only that you are not with Jesus, or is there “extra” punishment as well?
[00:10:42] None of this is explicitly specified in the Bible, yet modern beliefs of hell, especially in the popular imagination, have concentrated on a few ideas: constant punishment, often physical, fire and extreme heat.
[00:11:01] So, if this didn’t come directly from the Bible, where did it come from?
[00:11:08] Well, lots of people have explored this concept of hell and divine punishment, but this idea was developed most famously by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in his 14th Century epic poem The Divine Comedy.
[00:11:24] This is a lengthy poem split into three different parts: Hell, or “Inferno”, then Purgatory and Paradise, Purgatorio and Paradiso.
[00:11:36] In this poem, Dante provides an incredibly detailed description of what happens in hell. For Dante, hell is formed of 9 circles, going deeper and deeper below the Earth, with the sins of the souls in each circle getting more and more serious the deeper they go.
[00:11:57] Each sinner is punished in a different way, their punishment fitting the crime that they committed on Earth.
[00:12:04] In the second circle, the lustful are punished by being blown about by violent winds, symbolising their lack of self-control.
[00:12:14] Going further down, the gluttons, the people who were too greedy in life, they are forced to lie in a horrible mixture of freezing rain, black snow, and hail, symbolising their life of selfish overindulgence.
[00:12:31] It’s an absolutely wonderful poem, a story even, and if you have never read it I’d certainly encourage you to do so.
[00:12:40] So, where did he get these ideas from, if they weren’t specified directly in the Bible?
[00:12:47] In his Inferno, Dante was building on pre-existing Christian interpretations of hell, some of which involved “eternal punishment”.
[00:12:57] When he combined these ideas with a variety of other Medieval traditions and texts, as well as his own imagination, he came up with this incredibly vivid idea of hell, described through his own eyes as he journeyed through hell and learned about it from the sinners suffering there.
[00:13:17] And although Dante’s Inferno isn’t a religious text per se, and indeed Dante’s hell is not universally accepted by Christians, the vision of hell that he presented has become the basis for the kind of hell that you or I might think of. Of course, his vision of hell being a place of eternal punishment is not unique.
[00:13:42] The idea of hell being a place of eternal punishment, as well as the idea of hell having multiple levels, was already prominent in Islam.
[00:13:51] Now, like in the Judeo-Christian tradition, there are multiple different interpretations of hell within Islam, but they broadly go something like this.
[00:14:01] There are seven different circles of hell, with sinners of different categories being assigned to different circles. Hell in Islam, called “Jahannam", is filled with burning fire, and, like in Dante’s Inferno, people suffering all manner of terrible punishments.
[00:14:21] Like in the Christian tradition, there is debate among scholars about the nature of hell in Islam: is it somewhere a sinner is condemned for eternity or can they be allowed to leave if they renounce their sins? What happens to non-Muslims? Are they condemned to hell by default, or can a non-Muslim who believes in God be spared from the fiery furnace?
[00:14:46] Hell is a complicated place, full of many, many questions.
[00:14:51] And this brings me on to the penultimate point to touch on today, in this short exploration of hell. I told you that we weren’t going to go into any deep theological discussion, but we do need to mention the so-called “Problem of Hell”, which is an ethical question that unites Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and indeed any religion with a “hell”.
[00:15:17] And it goes something like this: if there is an all-seeing and all-knowing God, a God that has the power to change behaviour, that has the power to do anything, why should Hell exist? And especially, why should a Hell exist where a soul created by God should be subjected to eternal torture?
[00:15:40] It just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that a benevolent, loving God should do, so the theory goes.
[00:15:49] Now, there are plenty of “answers” to the “problem of Hell”, and it is a problem that Christian, Jewish and Islamic scholars have grappled with for centuries, so if this is an area you’d like explore further, there is a lifetime of literature on the subject.
[00:16:07] And the final point to make is that the one way of avoiding this “problem of hell” altogether is simply by not subscribing to the idea of hell. In Buddhism, for example, the idea of hell simply doesn’t exist. Buddhists believe that there is a brief period after death where the soul might suffer temporarily, but only before being reborn, before being reincarnated.
[00:16:34] Similarly, Hinduism has a temporary realm of suffering called “Naraka”, but it’s more like a temporary purgatory, a place where people go to pay for their sins, before being reborn.
[00:16:48] And still on the subject of predominantly Asian religions, Confucianism doesn’t really have a clear answer to what happens after death, so there is no clear concept of hell.
[00:17:02] Now, of course, if we are talking about belief systems overall, or systems of disbelief, you could say, if you do not believe in a God, if you are atheist or if you are agnostic, then you don’t have to worry about the “problem of hell”, because you believe that there is no hell; it simply doesn’t exist.
[00:17:23] Right, the final point to address is that, even though there might be debate in almost every religion with hell about what goes on there, clearly the concept of hell is a useful one when it comes to encouraging good moral behaviour and belief in god.
[00:17:40] After all, if there is even the slightest possibility of being forced to lie in a horrible mixture of freezing rain and black snow all day, or of a devil putting a hot poker up your bottom or being eaten alive by a big ferocious monster, avoiding this fate might just be the sort of thing that encourages you to believe in God and be on your best behaviour.
[00:18:04] So, to wrap things up, and perhaps try to answer the question of the title of the episode, what is hell?
[00:18:12] Who knows, but be good and you’ll never need to find out.
[00:18:18] OK then, that is it for today's little exploration of hell.
[00:18:23] I hope it's been an interesting one, and that it might have shone some light on what many people consider to be a dark and mysterious place.
[00:18:32] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:18:36] If you believe in Hell, what does it look like for you?
[00:18:40] What are some expressions in your language that use the word “hell”?
[00:18:45] If you are a believer in a religion we didn’t touch on in this episode, what does hell mean to you?
[00:18:51] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:18:55] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:19:03] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:19:08] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
