Pleading for Hell

If the ideal of justice includes effective punishment of offenders, an extension into afterlife must be postulated. This still involves all the questionable aspects and paradoxes of punishment that make rational and enlightened argumentation difficult. A historical survey of ancient tentatives at hell lore shows diverse starting points and interests. There is just a germ of such speculations in Sumerian. When hell fire first appears in Egypt, it goes together with the fear of magic from the dead; in Zoroastrianism and Judaism it is partisan interest which makes the adherents of the wrong religion destined for hell. In Greece we find various ethical and poetical motifs interfering, from the powerful yet enigmatic images in the Odyssey to a general proclamation of punishments in the Hymn to Demeter. The most graphic and horrible descriptions of something like hell are finally found in Plato, whose sources — besides Homer — can be postulated but not identified

Afterlife · Art · Biblical studies · Epistemology · Hebrew Bible · Hymn · Literature · MAGIC (telescope · Pleading · Political science · Proclamation · Punishment (psychology · Sumerian · Theology · Zoroastrianism · Classical Antiquity Studies · Law · Philosophy

• Descents to the Underworld from Gilgamesh to Christian Late Antiquity

  Open Access•Jan N Bremmer•Studia Religiologica•2017

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• Creation of the Sacred

  Walter Burkert•Creation of the Sacred•1998

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• The Homeric hymn to Demeter

  N J Richardson•The Homeric hymn to Demeter•1974

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• La naissance du Purgatoire

  Jacques Le Goff•La Naissance du purgatoire•1991

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• Psyche. Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen

  Wm A Hammond, Wm Hammond et al.•The Philosophical Review•1892

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• The Greeks and the Irrational

  Eric R Dodds•Greeks and the Irrational•1951

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