'Inventing Hell' by Jon M. Sweeney

Our popular conception of Hell is very medieval rather than biblical: it owes more to Dante than to the Bible, and Dante's Hell owes more to Greek myth than it does to the Bible. In this slim volume, Sweeney takes us through the development of the Medieval Christian view of Hell, which finds its ultimate expression in Dante.

In the Old Testament, there is very little mention of the afterlife. Sheol, the ancient Israelite underworld, is a dark, gloomy, underground place where people go to 'rest with their ancestors' after they die. It's an inevitable, bland destination, not a place of reward or punishment.

The afterlife changes with the influence first of Zoroastrianism, then with Greek myth and philosophy. The Greek god Hades, a colourful character rules a slightly sadistic underworld with ironic punishments. The Elysium Fields, where the chosen of gods go for an afterlife of happiness.

Platonic philosophy teaches the immortality of the soul in more detail than the Bible. There was already monotheism in the Roman Empire by the time Christianity arrived, but Plato's religion was elitist, reserved for the rich higher-ups. Christianity popularized Platonic monotheism; the Gentile converts to Christianity knew little about the Jewish traditions they were supposed to be succeeding, and so turned to what was more familiar to them: Greek Philosophy. Early theologians thought Socrates et al were precursors of Jesus, sent by God to prepare the gentiles for Christianity. Paul, in his letters, and Socrates, in his dialogues, seem to echo each other - Judah had been conquered by the Greeks, who had attempted to Hellenize their culture. The Romans, who had adopted Greek culture as their own, continued to spread its ideas and myths to the Jews. Paul was a well-educated 1st century Jew.

Early and Medieval Christianity expanded on the Jesus myth with a range of apocryphal gospels and 'expanded universe' stories. On Holy Saturday, after his death but before Resurrection, Jesus descended into Hell to rescue the righteous who lived and died before him (they would have been automatically ineligible for salvation) - confronting, overpowering, and therefore enraging Satan in the process, leaving him more resolved to make the sinners suffer, taking his anger out on them. Before Dante, there were a bunch of other 'tours of the afterlife' narratives which are almost short prototypes for the Divine Comedy.

Scholastic theologians, Thomas Aquinas chief among them, spent a long time thinking about angels and demons. Aquinas was a massive influence on Dante; Aristotle was a massive influence on Aquinas. More Greek philosophy, merged with Christianity over a millennium after the crucifixion, re-introduced to Europe by way of Arabic translations of the original Greek re-translated into Latin. Christianity becomes not just Platonic monotheism repackaged, but Aristotelian theology re-interpreted with biblical images.

The Prophet Muhammad turns up in Dante's Inferno. Arabic translations had brought Aristotle back to Europe. By Dante's time, there were at least two (known) Latin translations of the Qur'an. It is not, therefore, impossible that Dante was inspired by the Qur'an's many, many, many descriptions of a fiery tortuous afterlife for sinners.

Inventing Hell's overview of these Hellish sources of inspiration is enjoyable, fast-paced, and actually quite fun. Sweeney's writing style is chatty and easy-reading, and the jokes are not cringeworthy. The book is, however, obviously very simplified for a popular audience, and felt a little too short. It is not a work of scholarship, but as an introduction or a refresher, it is really very good. I would have been quite happy if it was a bit longer, with more details on the sources, the philosophy, the myths, the 'expanded universe' stories, etc. 

The final chapter, in which Sweeney explains why he doesn't like Dante and hopes Hell will become less important to the Christianity of the future, felt like a rushed conclusion. The author is too eager to distance the Bible and Christianity from Hell, minimizing the fact that, despite the manifold extra-biblical influences on the idea of Hell, a punishing afterlife is still part of the New Testament. If you were able to remove the legacy of Dante and the Medieval Hell from Christianity, the fires of torment are still there. Sweeney comes across as in denial about the Bible's contents, wanting to push the aspects of Christianity he dislikes onto Dante.

"Ultimately, I choose not Dante's vengeful, predatory God who is anxious to tally faults, to reward and to punish. Instead I choose the God who creates and sustains us, who is incarnate and wants to be among us, and the God who inspires and comforts us. That God is the real one, the one I have come to know and understand, and that God has nothing to do with the medieval Hell."

This sounds nice, but ignores the vengeful, predatory God of the Old Testament (see Leviticus chapter 26 for one example of many), who obviously doesn't originate with Dante. It ignores Jesus' God, who will throw the goats into the fire, will burn the chaff of humanity in a big bonfire. It ignores the God of the epistles, who will do similar. It ignores the Jesus of Revelation, who will slaughter his way across the Earth, crushing people in 'the great winepress of the wrath of God', etc. Yes, Dante's sadistic afterlife isn't very nice, and the God who oversaw it wouldn't be very nice, but if you could strip Greek myth and philosophy from Medieval Christianity, leaving only the biblical influences, you'd still have a vengeful and capricious God. Sweeney comes across as someone who wants to be Christian because they've always been one, but, now they've matured, they don't want to be associated with all the crueler, sinister aspects of the Christian and Biblical traditions, so shift the blame for that onto something - in this case, Dante and his Greek influences - which they feel they can reject while leaving their faith broadly intact. It's an amusing, but unconvincing, display of mental gymnastics.

In conclusion: this book is good for its quick summary of the evolution of Hell, but unconvincing in the author's goal of distancing Hell from the Bible and Christianity.

Revelation 13: The Beasts

Straight after the vision of the Woman and the Dragon (see previous post), John is stood on the coast, watching a beast with 7 heads and 10 horns rise out of the sea. It is like a leopard with the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion. The dragon (Satan) gives the beast power and authority over the earth.

One of the beast's 7 heads is mortally wounded, but mysteriously heals.

The beast uses its earthy power to spew blasphemies against God and make war on his servants.

John sees a second beast rise from the earth: it is like a horned lamb which speaks like a dragon, and uses the power of the first beast to make the people of earth worship the first beast and blaspheme God. The second beast performs miracles, which convince the people to worship the first beast.

'And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.'

What are we to make of all this?

The Old Testament prophet Daniel has a dream of four beasts rising out of the sea; he is told these beasts represent four kingdoms. A beast like a lion represents the Babylonian Empire. A beast like a bear represents the Persian Empire. A beast like a leopard represents the Greek Empire. The fourth beast, with ten horns, represents the Roman Republic.

Daniel's dream sequence ends with the 'one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven... And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion.' The Messiah descending from Heaven to conquer the world.

The Babylonian Empire (lion) was conquered by the Persians (bear). The Persians were conquered by the Greeks (leopard). And the Greeks were conquered by the Romans (ten horns). The Roman Republic became an empire.

John's Beast from the Sea is a composite of Daniel's four beasts: leopard, bear, lion, ten horns. It represents the new and expanded Roman Empire.

The seven heads represent the emperors who had ruled since the transition from republic to empire: Augustus onwards. Although there is considerable disagreement among scholars as to exactly which emperors they are supposed to represent.

There are some clues that one of emperors is Nero. One of the beast's heads recovers from a mortal wound: there was a popular rumor that Nero had been killed by his own sword. It was a surprise when it turned out false. There is also the numerological evidence: the numbers of the letters in the Hebrew spelling of Nero Caesar add up to 666.

Nero is the emperor most famous for persecuting Christians - he burnt Christians alive as torches to illuminate his garden.

So, the first beast, the Beast of the Sea, is the Roman Empire.

The second beast, the horned lamb performing miracles, is the Roman pagan cult, which treated the emperor as a god. The mark of the beast, without which one cannot buy or sell, could be Roman currency, which was printed with the heads of the emperors. Elaine Pagels, whose book is my main source for the historical context for Revelation, speculates that it could represent some bureaucratic stamps or marks necessary to buy or sell.

I have to go to work now, so am ending this post here!

Revelation 12: The Woman and the Dragon

After seeing God's Heavenly Temple opened for business, John's next vision is a sequence of achronological historical flashbacks, rather than a continuation of the ongoing End of Days vision.

John sees sees a pregnant woman in Heaven, sent down to earth, wearing a crown of 12 stars. In various Jewish prophetic works, the nation of Israel is imagined as a woman, God's bride (or, when Israel has been worshipping other gods, a adulterous whore). Her crown of 12 stars represents the twelve tribes of Israel; she is pregnant with the messiah. This is an allusion to a passage in the Book of Isaiah, Israel struggling to give birth to the messiah: 'Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O Lord.'

Later Christians interpreted the woman as Mary, mother of Jesus, immaculately conceived in Heaven. Later still, some interpreted it as the mother of the future Second Coming of Jesus.

John sees a great red dragon in Heaven, whose tail drags a third of the stars to earth. The great red dragon is Satan; a third of Heaven's angels fell with him.

The dragon stands before the woman, waiting to eat the newborn child, 'who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron'. The child - Jesus - escapes and ascends to God.

'And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.'

Ideas about fallen angels had been developing for a few centuries before Revelation was written; the idea had become popular as a way to absolve God of blame for evil in the world. In the Book of Enoch, a group of angels falls from Heaven because they lust after human women. In the Book of Jubilees, 9 out of 10 angels fall with the Evil One, and vow to obstruct God's will for the rest of time. The the Life of Adam and Eve, Satan, the brightest angel, is cast out of Heaven for refusing to bow down to Adam. Thus to Jews familiar with these then-popular books, fallen angels were associated with lust, pride, and a stubborn will to stop God's good works.

Revelation adds more references to the mix. In many ancient Mesopotamian creation myths, the greatest god in the pantheon defeats the chaos dragon before he can fashion the universe, often from the serpent's corpse. Order from Chaos. The gods did not fashion the universe out of nothing: in the beginning, there was chaos, normally imagined as a vast ocean, ruled by the primordial chaos dragon, who went by many names: Tiamat, Leviathan, Rahab, etc. In ancient Mesopotamia (and many other parts of the world), the Cosmos, created and managed by the gods, was seen as constantly under threat from the forces of Chaos, led by the great dragon of the waters.

There are a few scattered remnants of the ye olde Israelite version of this myth scattered through the Bible. Psalms celebrate God's defeat of the serpent Leviathan, or Rahab. Ezekiel likens the king of Egypt to the old dragon, who God is totes gonna destroy.

In Isaiah's allusion to the ye olde myth, he suggests that God did not properly destroy the chaos dragon in the beginning, but will do so... 'on that day'.

The creation story that now opens the Bible, written during the Babylonian exile, is intended to subvert ye olde combat myth. Reading it closely, we see that God does not create the universe from nothing, as later Jews and Christians tended to assume.

'And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.'

The primordial chaos waters are there in the beginning, but there is no combat. God merely has to speak the light and the earth and the living creatures into existence. So this myth one-ups the combat-based creation myths that preceded and competed with it: God is so powerful, he doesn't even need to fight a chaos serpent before he can get to the business of creating.

And, if there are any great sea dragons that you might think of as primordial chaos serpents, God created them: Genesis specifically mentions that 'God created the great sea-monsters'. None of them existed before God made it so; none of them was an obstacle to his creative power.

The Book of Job alludes to this re-imagined Leviathan, who has gone from primordial chaos serpent to one of God's playthings: in his speech to Job, God implies he could quite easily catch Leviathan with a hook, play with him, and cook him up as a banquet.

The Book of Revelation fuses the fallen angel myths with the chaos dragon combat myth, and ties it to the history of Israel.

After Satan, the dragon, the serpent, is cast out, a voice in Heaven cries out, "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."

The dragon spends his earthly time persecuting the aforementioned woman, Israel, who flees into the wilderness. Being 'in the wilderness' is a recurring motif in Jewish texts: Moses led the Israelites for 40 years in the wilderness, under God's protection. After the Babylonian exile, the Jews were once again 'in the wilderness' - they were no longer in their homeland. A few years before Revelation was written, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, and many Jews were exiled from the Holy Land - once again, they were 'in the wilderness'.

The serpent spews water from his mouth - chaos water from the chaos serpent - hoping to kill her with a flood, but she is saved by the Earth. The dragon is angry, and declares war on the woman's offspring: those who keep God's commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

(To be continued...)