{"id":3198,"date":"2017-02-02T02:32:38","date_gmt":"2017-02-02T10:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3198"},"modified":"2017-02-02T02:32:38","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T10:32:38","slug":"seeking-the-source-of-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=3198","title":{"rendered":"Seeking the Source of Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Jakob:<\/strong>
\nHello, I am back again. So my fear of hell has came back a little, just a little. So anyway do you know of any good books on the origin of hell and similar Christian mythology?
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nHell’s a little bit specific for a whole book. There is The History of Hell<\/em><\/a> by Alice K. Turner, which is mostly focused on changing visual depictions of it. All I could immediately find besides that were essays by the devout like this one<\/a>, podcasts like this one<\/a>, and of course the mostly neutral fact dump on Wikipedia<\/a>. If anyone has a good read to share, feel free to comment. (Yes, thank you, we know about the Bible.)
\n
\nBooks on Christian mythology<\/a> are plentiful, but mostly focused on the Christ story and its parallels in earlier pagan mythology.
\n
\nI think it might be just as useful for you to read about all the different concepts of the afterlife<\/a> throughout history to see how plain it is that no living person knows what happens, good or bad. That means no one has the authority to threaten you with, or warn you about, any kind of hell – unless you hear it directly from the other side somehow. Listen out if you like, but don’t get your hopes up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Jakob: Hello, I am back again. So my fear of hell has came back a little, just a little. So anyway do you know of any good books on the origin of hell and similar Christian mythology? Answer by SmartLX: Hell’s a little bit specific for a whole book. There is The History … Continue reading “Seeking the Source of Hell”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[560,6],"tags":[89,255,254],"class_list":["post-3198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-2","category-text","tag-afterlife","tag-fear","tag-hell"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-PA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3199,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3198\/revisions\/3199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}