ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS OF HELL. 491 



As for the two other religions of China, Confucianism tells 

 nothing whatever about punishment after this life, while Taouism 

 has a theory of retribution much like that of Brahmanism. 



The Jews in Old Testament times had no idea of a hell. There 

 is no mention of punishment after death in the teachings of 

 Moses, nor is this doctrine taught by the prophets. The word 

 slieol, which is translated by hell in the King James version' of 

 the Bible, meant simply the abode of the dead, and corresponded 

 to the Greek hades, used in the ISTew Testament and other Greek 

 writings. Gloomy and repulsive ideas were associated with sheol, 

 similar to those we connect with death and the grave, but it was 

 the destination of good and bad alike, and not a place of punish- 

 ment.* The troubles which the wicked and the enemies of the 

 Jews were threatened with by the prophets pertained to this 

 world. They were pain, disease, loss of possessions and kindred, 

 hostility of neighbors, death, and indignities to the dead body. 

 The idea of sheol first became modified after the Persian captivity. 

 The place was divided into two parts, which were separated only 

 by the width of a thread. One of these divisions was for the 

 good, awaiting resurrection, and was called Paradise ; the other, set 

 apart for the wicked, was called Gehenna. This latter designa- 

 tion means " the valley of the son of Hinnom," and was originally 

 the name of a gorge outside of Jerusalem in which the Jews had 

 practiced the fiery worship of Moloch, and where afterward offal 

 from the city and the bodies of criminals were thrown, to be con- 

 sumed by the fires always kept burning there. The idea of Ge- 

 henna as a place of future punishment had appeared in rabbini- 

 cal theology and become quite detailed a century or more before 

 Christ. Hell was represented as having special apartments for 

 different kinds of torment. One place, from its darkness, was 

 called " Night of Horrors." The fire of Gehenna was said to have 

 been kindled on the evening of the first Sabbath, and would never 

 be extinguished, f A Talmudic writer, quoted by Alger, J says : 

 " There are in hell seven abodes, in each abode seven thousand 

 caverns, in each cavern seven thousand clefts, in each cleft seven 

 thousand scorpions; each scorpion has seven limbs, and on each 

 limb are seven thousand barrels of gall. There are also in hell 

 seven rivers of rankest poison, so deadly that if one touches it lie 

 bursts." 



At the coming of Christ, there were three chief sects among 

 the Jews. The Pharisees, who were by far the most numerous, 

 believed that sinners were kept forever in a prison in the under- 

 world ; the Essenes believed that the vicious suffered eternal pun- 



* Schaff-Herzog, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, article Hell. 



% Basnage, History of the Jews, lib. iv, cap. 30. f Future Life, p. 509. 



