In today’s episode, I want to investigate how the concept of a fiery hell developed among the Jews.

If you are a conservative, evangelical Christian, then no doubt you will say that God revealed the truth of a fiery hell to his people through the prophets.

This traditional response, however, has at least two hurdles to overcome. One hurdle is the absence of a fiery hell in the Old Testament. Another obstacle is the appearance of the concept during the intertestamental period, a time when, supposedly, God gave no new revelation.

The first hurdle facing the traditional view that hell is a place of fiery torment is its absence in the Old Testament.

If you’ve ever attended an evangelism training session, then no doubt you’ve heard a common motivational pitch that says just as you would warn a family whose house is on fire, so too, you should warn people that unless they repent of their sins and believe in Jesus, they will spend eternity in a fiery hell.

I believe we should warn people about God’s judgment and encourage them to believe in Jesus, but this motivation for evangelism begs the question: if there really is a fiery hell waiting for sinners, why did God wait thousands of years to tell us?

The Hebrew Bible describes only a shadowy place called Sheol, an underworld where the spirits of the dead continue to live. Jews had a loathing for this place of death. Even pious Jews wanted to avoid Sheol because it was believed to be a dark, hopeless, and God-forsaken place.

King Hezekiah prayed for healing because “Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living, he thanks you (Isaiah 38:18-19).”

The Psalmist cries out to God for deliverance and asks,

Do the departed rise up to praise you? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
(Psalm 88:10-12)

Sheol is a place of gloom and darkness, but it is not a place of suffering, nor is it reserved only for the wicked.

The Hebrews were not the only people in the Ancient Near East who believed in a shadowy underworld. The Sumerians and Akkadians believed that the dead went to live in a gloomy pit of darkness.

In contrast, the Egyptians believed that the dead faced judgment that sent the morally upright to a good place, described as the Field of Reeds, while the unrighteous were devoured by a fearsome beast called Ammit.

Interestingly, despite the ancient association of the Hebrews with the Egyptians, the Hebrew Bible does not reflect these ideas. Despite Moses being “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (Acts 7:22),” he did not borrow their ideas about the afterlife but seems to agree with Mesopotamian traditions.

From this survey, it would seem that the traditional view that God will punish sinners in a fiery hell cannot overcome the first hurdle, namely, the Old Testament is silent concerning a fiery hell.

The second hurdle facing the traditional view that hell is a place of fiery torment is the appearance of the idea during the intertestamental period. The reason this is an obstacle is that, supposedly, God did not give new revelation during this time.

The intertestamental period stretched from the last Old Testament prophet to the time of Jesus and his apostles. Christians believe that during this 400-year period, God did not send any prophets to Israel. There were, however, Jewish scribes and sages who produced an impressive amount of literature. Some of these writings, such as 1 QS (Community Rule), Judith, 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and Psalms of Solomon, describe the fate of the wicked as suffering in fire.

In the Community Rule, an important manuscript from Qumran written sometime in the century before Christ, we read:

a multitude of plagues by the hand of all the destroying angels, everlasting damnation by the avenging wrath of the fury of God, eternal torment and endless disgrace together with shameful extinction in the fire of the dark regions
(1 QS 4:12-13).

Another example is from the Psalms of Solomon, which says:

The destruction of the sinner is forever, and he will not be remembered when God looks after the righteous. This is the share of sinners forever (Psalms of Solomon 3:11-12).

And finally, the book of 1 Enoch says that the wicked

shall be cast into the judgement of fire and shall perish in wrath and in grievous judgement for ever… their souls will be made to descend into Sheol, and they shall be wretched in their great tribulation. And into darkness and chains and a burning flame where there is grievous judgement
(1 Enoch 91:9; 103:7).

These texts show that at least 100 years before Jesus, the Jews believed in a fiery hell, a concept that sharply diverges from the Old Testament concept of Sheol. If, as most Protestants believe, God did not give revelation during the intertestamental period, how did the Jews develop the idea of a fiery hell?

The most relevant Old Testament source concerning the fate of the wicked is Daniel 12:2:

And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Daniel’s cryptic reference to a general resurrection and post-mortem judgment is insufficient, however, for the Jews of the intertestamental period to have developed a doctrine of a fiery hell. How then did the doctrine develop? The typical evangelical explanation is that God progressively revealed the idea, but this explanation begs the question: if God was not giving revelation, from where did the Jews of the intertestamental period get their ideas concerning a fiery hell?

Another explanation is that the Jews developed a belief in a fiery hell from God’s warnings in the Old Testament that he would punish sinners with an earthly judgment.

God warned that he was going to judge the earth. Isaiah 66:24 says,

And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.

Malachi 4:1 says,

For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.

It is possible that the Jews of the intertestamental period combined the imagery of Sheol with descriptions of God’s judgment of the earth and extrapolated a fuller doctrine of God’s final judgment, i.e., a fiery hell.

Another plausible explanation for the appearance of this fuller understanding of God’s judgment of sinners is that the intertestamental writers borrowed ideas about the afterlife from neighboring societies.

The Zoroastrians during the Achaemenid Empire, for example, believed that when a person dies, they go to a place of judgment where the righteous are granted a life of goodness, but the wicked fall into a place of eternal punishment, an abyss of darkness, evil, and deceit, called the House of Lies.

About the same time, the Greeks developed similar ideas of an undesirable fate for the wicked. Plato said that after death, the wicked were judged and cast into Tartarus, the lowest realm of Hades, where they suffer for their crimes.

During the time of the Maccabees and Hasmoneans, many Jews resisted Greek influences. They did, however, learn the Greek language and integrated Greek ideas into their own. This adaptation of Hellenism is especially seen in the beliefs of the sect of the Pharisees, whom Josephus says believed that

souls have an immortal vigor in them: and that under the earth there will be rewards, or punishments; according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life: and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison (Josephus, Antiquities, Book XVIII, 1:3).

The development of the doctrine of a fiery hell during the intertestamental period raises a hurdle that those who believe in the traditional view cannot clear. They simply do not have an adequate explanation concerning how the doctrine of a fiery hell developed apart from God’s revelation.

A brief examination of the Old Testament, Ancient Near Eastern stories about the afterlife, the intertestamental literature, and Greek mythology leaves us with more questions than answers.

This survey presents two hurdles that those who believe in a fiery hell cannot clear. First, the Old Testament is silent concerning a fiery fate for sinners, and second, the idea of a fiery hell developed during the intertestamental period, during which God did not give new revelation. As I said, this survey leaves us with more questions than answers.