Hell: Its Pagan Origin

By Judge Parish B. Ladd, as posted in the Humanitarian Review, January 1907

THE belief in a hell, like all else in Christianity except its bloody persecutions, had its source in paganism. This belief dates far back in the night of savagery. It was held by the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, Hindus, Scandinavians, Etruscans, Phoenicians, Carthagenians, Grecians and Romans. Although the Hebrews did not believe in a future life, they took this belief by inheritance from Babylon, and held it as an heirloom, with no use for it other than to force the worship of Adonai, the principal god of Phoenicia, under the name of Jhvh (Jehovah), who threatened punishment in this life for disobedience.

The hell of the pagans was located somewhere in the earth; the Hades and Tartarus of Greece, in the center of it. With the pagans, it was a tireless, dark abode—a place of punishment for evil deeds, shut out from the light of the sun-god, who, from the remotest antiquity to the present, has held the first place in the world's vast pantheons under the different names of the numerous religious systems. The Christian of today is praying to this divinity, under the proper name of Jehovah, for light and guidance along the pathway of life, and for salvation from the firey Hinnom of the Jews.

With the Egyptians and, if I mistake not, most other pagans, at death the good and evil deeds were supposed to be weighed, and a preponderance one way or the other determined whether the soul was to be sent to hell or to heaven; that is, whether it was to dwell in the light of the sun-god, or be consigned to the dark abode in the hell of earth. By a close observance, one will see that this is just the position of the Christian belief at this time. With the pagans salvation from hell depended on good deeds; in this respect the Christians totally ignore good works and substitute mere belief—a belief in the unbelievable—as a means of salvation. A mere glimpse of of this difference must convince any but a stupid Christian of the superiority of paganism over Christianity, even though both are at variance with all known human experience and an insult to our reasoning faculties.

The conception of a hell necessarily carried with it that of a presiding official, a wicked spirit, the Prince of Darkness, whose business is to torment the damned; his emblem is a serpent of the most deadly kind; an animal, because of its deadly poison, more dreaded than all others. This emblem has come down through all the pagan nations and was the most subtle creature in the Babylonian legends of creation, and from which the Hebrews engrafted this symbol into their religion, and gave it to the Christian Fathers who have used it to terrify the ignorant.

The Hebrews having borrowed this hell from the pagans and not believing in a future life, were at a loss to find a use for it. But the Levite rabbis found use for hell as a means of punishment for refusal to worship Jhvh. Only with the Scandinavians was hell a cold place, filled with icebergs, while with the Christians it is a firey furnace which is never quenched. This cruel device has been the source of an endless amount of mental suffering.

The biblical hell is variously called Sheol, Hades, Gehenna and Tartarus. The term Sheol occurs in the Old Testament 65 times, hell 31 times, grave 31 times, and pit 3 times; all having the one meaning, a dark abode in the earth—often used by the Hebrews to mean grave. In the Septuagint the equivalent for Sheol is Hades, occurring in the New Testament 11 times; in ten of them it is rendered hell. So hell renders Gehenna 12 times.

The Hebrews often used this word to signify the valley of Hinnom, a place desecrated by sacrifices to Moloch, and because used as a depository for garbage and the dead, which were there consumed by fire: hence the firey Hinnom or hell. The word Tophet occurs 9 times in the O.T., and originally meant the grave in Hinnom defiled by idolatries.

The Christians in their zeal for piety and their love of power at an early date adopted and engrafted onto their own system this relic of barbarism, lighted fire therein, using brimstone for fuel, and have kept the fire going since the days of Constantine as a fit place for punishing unbelievers.

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