Jesus, the Kingdom of God, and Ancient Netherworlds

Jesus, the Kingdom of God, and Ancient Netherworlds



When Jesus began his public ministry, among the first things he did was was proclaim that the Kingdom of God was at hand. He boldly talked about human accessibility to Heaven and Paradise, eternal happiness. These ideas didn't exist in Abrahamic or Mosaic Judaism. The Hebrews believed that the afterlife consisted of a dark, dreary, and shadowy Sheol below the earth, a kingdom of the dead whether one was good or bad. Jesus, on the other hand, talked of eternal life, where we could be in the light of close proximity to God.

Jesus often spoke of the Kingdom of God in parables. Paul the Apostle was more specific. He spoke of heaven as being paradisiacal, more pleasant than words can describe. He also spoke of us having glorified bodies there. Modern theologians speak of heaven as a place where there is profound Divine love, unlike anyplace else in existence.

These kinds of ideas did not exist in Hebrew Judaism, but began to grow in the postexilic period. They certainly did not exist in the afterlife systems of the ancient pagan world. And that is what this historical essay is about. It is a review of the afterlife systems of numerous of the ancient religious/mythological systems. In short, this describes the ancient netherworlds.

The kingdoms of the dead in Judaism and these four pagan religious/mythological systems of ancient times will be examined.

* The Sheol of Hebrew Judaism
* Netherworld of the Babylonians
* The Egyptian netherworld
* Hades--the netherworld of the Greeks
* Infernus--the Roman netherworld


After discussing these manifestations of the afterlife, the Christian afterlife will be explored. The kingdom of God. Heaven and Paradise. When the comparisons are made, the significance of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is easier the grasp.



The Sheol of Hebrew Judaism


The Sheol, as mentioned above, was the abode of the dead in ancient Judaism. It was centered deep in the earth, and was a place of darkness and silence. The Sheol is described in the Bible between the time of Genesis to the postexilic period. Whether one was good or bad, a king or a pauper, when one died, their spirit was transported to the Sheol. There the spirit was as a shadow, or a shade. There were no lofty emotions or activities in the Sheol--it was a place of oblivion. Sometimes referred as the "nether world" in some translations of the Bible.

The range of translations can be seen in Psalm 6:6. The New American Bible: "For in death there is no remembrance of you. Who praises you in Sheol?" The Douay-Confraternity translated Sheol into "nether world." The Knox Bible of Westminster translated the Sheol in "the tomb." The Latin Vulgate uses "inferno"--the Latin word for Hell.

The souls of the good and the bad went to the Sheol. For instance, in Genesis 37, when Jacob was told that his son Joseph was dead, he said "I will go down mourning to my son in Sheol." Likewise the bad. For instance, in Numbers 16, Korah leads a faction in rebellion against Moses. God opens the ground up, Korah and his whole faction are swallowed up by the earth, and they fall into the Sheol.

In chapter 38 of Isaiah, King Hezekiah says that he worried he would not recover from a life-threatening illness--"In the noontime of life I said, I must depart! To the gates of Sheol I have been consigned for the rest of my years." Hezekiah gave this description of the Hebrew netherworld and its relation to God: "For it is not Sheol that gives you thanks, nor death that praises you; Neither do those who go down into the pit await your kindness." (The Sheol was often described as the "pit" or the "abyss" on the Bible.)

Gehenna is another reference to the Sheol in the Bible. It was a valley to the south of Jerusalem. It served as a garbage dump, and a constant fire was burning there. In early times it was notorious as a worship spot of the pagan god Moloch for the people in the Jerusalem area. They offered their children as human sacrifice to Moloch. The place served as a Tophet.

During the Babylonian exile, the prophets began to speak differently about the netherworld. The Second Temple period, from 500 B.C to 70 A.D., produced writings that were far more hopeful than were the original concepts of the Sheol. Two ideas came into the theology. First, those who were good could possibly look forward to a paradisiacal existence after death (and those were bad would continue onto an unhappy existence in the Sheol). Second, those who were good would raise from the dead from their graves.

In Daniel chapter 12, the prophet reports that in some future time: "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; Some to everlasting life, others to reproach and everlasting disgrace. But those with insight shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, And those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever."

In the 37th chapter of Ezekiel it says: "Thus says the Lord GOD: Look! I am going to open your graves; I will make you come up out of your graves, my people, and bring you back to the land of Israel. You shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and make you come up out of them, my people!. I will put my spirit in you that you may come to life, and I will settle you in your land. Then you shall know that I am the LORD. I have spoken; I will do it—oracle of the LORD." Earlier, in chapter 36, the prophecy of the Lord says: "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep them...I will deliver you from all your impurities. I will summon the grain and make it plentiful; I will not send famine against you."

It is not stated in the Old Testament when these changes to the Jewish afterlife and netherworld will happen. In the Catholic teachings the changes happened between the Crucifixion, Easter, and the Ascension.



Netherworld of the Babylonians



As shall be seen, the netherworld of ancient southern Mesopotamia had many shared characteristics with the Sheol of the early Hebrew Bible. This might be expected in that the time period was the same, and Abraham came originally from lower Mesopotamia.

What do we mean by lower Mesopotamia? In the third millennium B.C., the development of civilization occurred in this area by way of the city-states of Sumer, as in Uruk, Eridu, Babel, and Ur. Around 2250 B.C., Sargon the Great of Akkad conquered all of Sumer, and developed one of the early territorial states in world history. Around 1800 B.C., the region become part of the early Babylonian empire..

Much of the information about the afterlife as believed by people of Babylon can be found in humanity's first great work of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh. This story influenced the thinking in Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and further north in Mesopotamia, in Assyria. Toward the end of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the eponymous character becomes very concerned with the netherworld and seeks to find more and more information about it.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was written in Sumer in perhaps 2300 B.C. Even before that, in perhaps 2600 B.C., a poem was written in Sumer called The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld. This poem also had some description of the Mesopotamian netherworld. Inanna was the goddess of love and sensuality in the pantheon of Sumer. Her counterpart in the Babylonian pantheon was Ishtar. There was a similar poem written in Old Babylonian and with fewer lines called The Descent of the Goddess Ishtar into the Lower World.

Below is the beginning of the latter poem describing Ishtar's travel to Irkalla, the Babylonian netherworld. The god Sin was the Babylonian god of the moon.

To the land of no return, the land of darkness,
Ishtar, the daughter of Sin directed her thought,
Directed her thought, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin,
To the house of shadows, the dwelling, of Irkalla,
To the house without exit for him who enters therein,
To the road, whence there is no turning,
To the house without light for him who enters therein,
The place where dust is their nourishment, clay their food.'
They have no light, in darkness they dwell.
Clothed like birds, with wings as garments,
Over door and bolt, dust has gathered.
Ishtar on arriving at the gate of the land of no return,
To the gatekeeper thus addressed herself:
"Gatekeeper, ho, open thy gate!
Open thy gate that I may enter!


In the Babylonian poem, the netherworld has seven gates. Past the seventh gate can be found Ereshkigal, the Babylonian goddess who rules the netherworld. In European literature, Ereshkigal would be similar to the Queen of Night. Below is more about the Babylonian netherworld from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Upon death, Babylonians believed their spirit became a ghostlike entity, called a Gidim. Only a few mortals escaped this and were promoted to the assembly of gods. The underworld was very unpleasant. In the story, Gilgamesh's dead friend Enkidu’s spirit rises up from the netherworld. "Gilgamesh inquires about the Nether World. Enkidu tells him that it is terrible and that if he tells Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh will sit down and weep. Gilgamesh implores Enkidu to tell him anyway. Enkidu says that vermin eat at his body."

In the underworld there was a pile of crowns. Every dead king of the world, except a few, resided in the underworld. And too, the high priests, acolytes, priests of incantation and of ecstasy, and the servers of the temple were there. All in this miserable existence. One must not cause attention to oneself in the underworld or it will arouse the "Cry of the Dead."

An example in the Babylonian mythology of someone who avoided this awful afterlife by being promoted to the assembly of gods was Gilgamesh himself, who achieved the the status of a minor god. There were not many who reached this level. The vast majority of people were put into the Babylonian underworld when they died. Well, according to the mythology.



The Egyptian Netherworld



In ancient Egyptian mythology, a larger number of people were able to reach a blessed afterlife--though it still consisted of a small minority. Some sources suggest that to reach a blessed afterlife one needed to be well-heeled enough to be able to afford a personalized version of the Egyptian Book of the Dead to help them to pass the various tests required to be happy in the afterlife.

Another important point is that the concept of the netherworld in Egypt changed over time. Ancient Egypt existed for over 3,000 years. An example of what is being said here is that the Egyptian Book of the Dead dated to the period of the New Kingdom--about 1500 B.C. The early dynasties of Egypt extended 1,500 earlier than that.

Duat was the name of the realm of the dead in ancient Egyptian mythology. It was ruled over by the Egyptian god Osiris. Duat was divided into twelve regions, varying from the paradisiacal Field of Rushes to the hellish Lake of Fire. The soul of the deceased person, believed to be contained in the heart, had to pass through the regions and be tested to qualify for residence in the Field of Rushes.

Wikipedia has this to say below about Duat, the ancient Egyptian netherworld--with a reference to a book published by the University of Chicago:

According to an ancient Egyptian burial text, "the underworld consists of twelve regions signifying the twelve hours of [Ra] the sun god's journey through it, battling [the god of chaos] in order to bring order back to the earth in the morning; as his rays illuminated the Duat throughout the journey, they revived the dead who occupied the underworld and let them enjoy life after death in that hour of the night when they were in the presence of the sun god, after which they went back to their sleep waiting for the god's return the following night."

(As background information, the Egyptians believed that Ra the sun god was in the heavens for twelve hours during daylight, and then took to sun to the underworld for twelve hours during the night. Thus, Ra and the sun rose in the east, and set in the west. and traveled across the underworld throughout the night. Then rose again in the east the next morning.)

After succeeding numerous tests and challenges posed by demons and other beings, the soul of the deceased in Duat must must undergo the weighing of the heart before Osiris. The deceased is brought before the ruler of the netherworld by Anubis, the god of death, who has a weighing scale upon which the deceased's heart is on one of the pans. On other pan is the feather of Ma'at, the goddess of order, balance, and harmony. If the heart is heavier than the feather, then the soul is devoured by Ammit, a demon with a huge crocodile head.

This last phenomena amounted to the non-existence of the deceased soul. The being ceased to exist. If, however, the deceased passed the weighing of the heart test, the soul would proceed to the paradisal Field of Rushes. Again, it would seem that a minority of Egyptians found this eternal bliss--there were so many barriers standing in the way.



Hades--the Netherworld of the Greeks



The kingdom of the dead among the ancient Greeks was called Hades--also the name of its ruling god. It was possible to reach a blessed afterlife, but the path was arduous and long. Homer in the Odyssey writes a segment where Ulysses travels to the underworld. There Ulysses meets the spirit of the the deceased Achilles, and exclaims that surely Achilles must be in a state of bliss. But Achilles says not, by replying, "Nay, seek not to speak soothingly to me of death, glorious Odysseus. I should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose livelihood was but small, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have perished."

The entrance to the Greek underworld was said to be a cave leading to the depths of the earth. In front of the cave was Thanatos, the god of death. Also, there were personifications of Grief, Agony, Anxiety, and others. Near the entrance were beasts and monsters, such as Centaurs, Scylla, and Gorgons. The soul the of deceased person was led to a swamp on the River Styx, the river of hatred in the underworld. There countless souls remain as shadows until they are able to make some progress.

In order to cross the River Styx to where they will receive judgment. the souls must rely on the help of Charon the Ferryman and his boat. But Charon insists on payment of a coin. In practice, the Greeks buried their dead with a coin under their tongue--the coin to be used to pay Charon. The souls without the coin would remain on the banks of the River Styx for eternity. Sometimes Charon would accept a Golden Bough for payment. And sometimes Charon would ferry souls across the River Acheron, the river of pain.

Once Charon had crossed the River Styx with the boatload of deceased souls, they were at the Gates of Hades where they would find judgment and then a destination. At the gates was Cerberus, a ferocious three headed dog that prevented the souls from dodging judgment. To quote Wikipedia: "In the Greek underworld, the souls of the dead still existed, but they are insubstantial, and flitted around the underworld with no sense of purpose. The dead within the Homeric underworld lack menos, or strength, and therefore they cannot influence those on earth. They also lack phrenes, or wit, and are heedless of what goes on around them and on the earth above them. Their lives in the underworld were very neutral, so all social statuses and political positions were eliminated and no one was able to use their previous lives to their advantage in the underworld."

The souls of the deceased were examined by the Judges of the underworld, and based on these considerations were sent to one of three destinations. The wicked were sent to Tartarus, the abyss, the deepest and darkest part of the Greek underworld. Tartarus was full of unhappiness and divine punishment. The three harpies called the Furies afflicted panful vengeances on those who engaged in wicked acts.

On the happy side of things, there was Elysium--sometimes called the Elysian Fields. Those who lived distinguished lives went there. It was paradisiacal. No labor. A blessed and happy life. Doing what you enjoy. In the early period of Greek history, only demigods and heroes were. admitted. Later, the gods also chose people who lived particularly virtuous lives to be in Elysium.

The Asphodel Meadows was the place in the Greek netherworld where the vast majority of deceased souls resided. These were ordinary spirits who weren't wicked, but did not achieve greatness. Things in the Asphodel Meadows were not like a paradise, but also were not punitive. Daily existence there was full of apathy and indifference. At worst, the gloom of monotony was ever-present.

There were numerous other features of the Greek netherworld and of some these will be discussed in the next section.



Infernus--the Roman Netherworld



The ancient Romans' afterlife took place in Infernus, which was derived from the Latin word for underground. Infernus had many of the same characteristics as Hades of the Greeks, which is not surprising when one considers that the Greeks had settled colonies in Southern Italy at about the time that Rome and the Latin villages were first developing. (Likewise Babylon's netherworld had many of the same features as nearby Sumer, the city-state system that preceded Babylon.)

The Roman god Pluto governed the Roman netherworld. Dis Pater, another Roman god, also had a key role in Infernus. The Romans had the myth regarding Persephone, but the Roman name for the goddess was Proserpina. A major source of information about the Roman netherworld can be found in Book VI of the Aeneid by Virgil. Some summary information from this work will be given below.

Aeneas was a Trojan hero during The Trojan Wars with Greece, in the ancient days before history was carefully recorded. When the Greeks were able to enter Troy and destroy it, Aeneas was able to escape, gather some men, and set sale westward, landing in Carthage, and then in Italy. This is hundreds of years before Rome is founded. In fact, Aeneas becomes an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid, is about Aeneas's adventures in making his way to Italy. Whereas Homer wrote his epics in Greek. Virgil's is written in Latin.

By the time Aeneas reached Italy, he and his men had been through many many trials and tribulations. His intent was to form a kingdom somewhere in Italy for the Trojans. He sought the help of the gods and of spirits to get a sense of destiny in this endeavor. He wished to go to the underworld to talk to his deceased father for an understanding of things. He was also determined to seek the help of the Sibyl of Apollo at Cumae, near Naples. This set the stage for Aeneas's trip to the Roman underworld.

The Cumaen Sibyl told Aeneas that Apollo prophesied that Aeneas's ambition to form a Trojan kingdom in Italy would succeed, but first they would need to fight a terrible war. The Cumaen Sibyl also said that she would help Aeneas reach the Roman netherworld, but first he would need to fetch a Golden Bough. After some effort, Aeneas achieved the quest of obtaining a Golden Bough. Thus, Aeneas and the Cumaen Sibyl set off for Infernus, the Roman kingdom of the dead

The first set of images of the Roman underworld match those of the Greek underworld. At the entrance are spiritual monsters representing Hunger, War, and Discord. Further down is Charon and the River Styx. Thousands and thousands of shadowy souls are standing aimlessly because they are unable to pay the fare for crossing the River Styx. Aeneas is horrified upon hearing the wailing of thousands of suffering souls. Later, Aeneas and the Sibyl encounter the three-headed guard dog Cerberus, who is pacified by a piece of drugged cake.

Aeneas sees the Fields of Mourning, where heart-broken people who were unsuccessful at love wander. Next is a field of heroes--those who distinguished themselves in battle. Further, Aeneas sees region of Tartarus and Erebus. There, wicked souls are tortured.

Finally, Aeneas reaches the Blessed Groves, where his deceased father wandered. His father assures Aeneas of the importance of his mission of founding of a Trojan kingdom in Italy. He tells his son that his descendants would include Romulus and Remus, who would found Rome. And that his descendants would also include the great Roman leaders Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus.

It can be mentioned parenthetically, that in both Greek and Roman mythology there was a River Lethe in their netherworld. In the River Lethe, souls bathed themselves in order to forget their memories of previous lives.

Summing it up, the Roman netherworld was like the Greek netherworld in that things were mostly grim and disturbing. Some made it to a happy afterlife, but these were mostly of the heroic type.



Jesus and the Kingdom of God



According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "There is a heaven, i.e., God will bestow happiness and the richest gifts on all those who depart this life free from original sin and personal mortal sin, and who are, consequently, in the state of justice and friendship with God...The bliss of heaven is eternal and consists primarily in the possession of God, and heaven presupposes a condition of perfect happiness, in which every wish of the heart finds adequate satisfaction."

When Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, he was describing heaven, or perhaps paradise as he said. on the cross. When Jesus spoke to Pilate, he said his kingdom was not of this world. Heaven as Jesus described it was almost to good to be true. The whole point of describing the netherworlds of the ancient world has been to enable one to see how wonderful the afterlife promised by Jesus was compared in contrast to the afterlife of the other ancient religions or mythologies.

Again from the Catholic Encyclopedia, "In heaven the just will see God by direct intuition, clearly and distinctly. Here on earth we have no immediate perception of God; we see Him but indirectly in the mirror of creation. We get our first and direct knowledge from creatures, and then, by reasoning from these, we ascend to a knowledge of God according to the imperfect likeness which creatures bear to their Creator. But in doing so we proceed to a large extent by way of negation, i.e., by removing from the Divine Being the imperfections proper to creatures. In heaven, however, no creature will stand between God and the soul. He himself will be the immediate object of its vision."

Furthermore, "theologians deem more appropriate that there should be a special and glorious abode [in heaven], in which the blessed have their peculiar home and where they usually abide, even though they be free to go about in this world...At the end of the world, the earth together with the celestial bodies will be gloriously transformed into a part of the dwelling-place of the blessed."

Another key point in the Christian view of the afterlife is the doctrine of the glorified body. As referenced in St. Paul's 1 Corinthians chapter 15, at the end of the world our souls will be reunited with our bodies, but our bodies will be transformed. They will be glorified bodies. Theologians have interpreted scripture to say that our glorified bodies will have four characteristics, as described below.

1) Impassibility – the glorified body will no longer suffer physical pain, sickness, or death 2) Subtlety--meaning that we will have a spiritualized nature in the sense of a spiritual body, as did our Lord Christ’s glorified body which was able to pass through closed doors. 3) Agility – the glorified body will obey the soul with the greatest ease and speed of movement. travel great distances in an instant. 4) Clarity – the glorified body will be free from any deformity and will be filled with beauty and radiance

One modern theological writer quotes Aquinas to describe the promise of a glorified body:

St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Contra Gentiles, IV, 86 summarized: 'thus also will his body be raised to the characteristics of heavenly bodies — it will be lightsome (clarity), incapable of suffering (impassible), without difficulty and labor in movement (agility), and most perfectly perfected by its form (subtlety). For this reason, the Apostle speaks of the bodies of the risen as heavenly, referring not to their nature, but to their glory.'"



SOURCES



Netherworld https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/netherworld

Encyclopedia Britannica--Death--Mesopotamia, Hell

Catholic Encyclopedia--Terrestrial Paradise, Limbo, Purgatory, Hell



Wikipedia Articles--Afterlife, Greek underworld, Empyrean, Paradise, Limbo, Third Heaven, Seven Heavens, Paradiso (Dante), Purgatorio, The Earthly Paradise, Daniel's final vision, Duat, Aeneas, Underworld, Sheol, Dumuzid, The City of God, Golden Legend, Christian angelology, Apocalyptic literature, Uruk,



The New American Bible--Ezekiel Chapter 37; Ezekiel Chapter 36; Ezekiel Chapter 31; Ezekiel Chapter 26; Isaiah Chapter 38; Daniel Chapter 12; Baruch Chapter 4; Psalm 6; Psalm 30; 1 Corinthians Chapter 15;

GLORIFIED BODY https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/glorified-body

Four Properties of a Glorified Resurrected Human Body https://taylormarshall.com/2012/10/do-you-know-four-properties-of.html

The Epic of Gilgamesh Summary and Analysis of Tablet XII https://www.gradesaver.com/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/study-guide/summary-tablet-xii

Descent Of Inanna http://people.uncw.edu/deagona/myth/Descent%20Of%20Inanna.pdf

Gilgames Epic Tablet XII - Sumerian Cosmology https://www.academia.edu/40144373/Gilgames_Epic_Tablet_XII_Sumerian_Cosmology

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH http://www.aina.org/books/eog/eog.htm

The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld: A 5,500-Year-Old Literary Masterpiece https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/descent-inanna-underworld-5500-year-old-literary-masterpiece-007296

DESCENT OF THE GODDESS ISHTAR INTO THE LOWER WORLD https://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/ishtar.htm

Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the nether world: translation https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1814.htm

HOMER, ODYSSEY 11 https://www.theoi.com/Text/HomerOdyssey11.html

Sparknotes--Homer, The Odyssey, Books 10–11 https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey/section6/

Roman Underworld http://www.tribunesandtriumphs.org/roman-gods/roman-underworld.htm

The Aeneid, by Virgil https://www.gutenberg.org/files/228/228-h/228-h.htm

LitCharts--The Aeneid, by Virgil https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-aeneid/book-6

Sparknotes--The Aeneid, by Virgil Book VI https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/aeneid/section6/

CliffNotes--Virgil's Aeneid, Summary and Analysis Book VI https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/a/aeneid/summary-and-analysis/book-vi


Courses on Ancient Egypt at https://www.coursera.org/ 1) Introduction to Ancient Egypt and Its Civilization 2) Wonders of Ancient Egypt --by University of Pennsylvania

More to come.