Why is Hell always thought of as being hot? Why wasn't it thought of

[raccoon]

as being super cold?

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Dante thought of it that way - the lowest level of hell is ice in "The Inferno"

[Orrex]

2. Because "fire and brimstone" is scarier than "snowflakes and icicles"

How can you preach damnation while evoking a pleasant winter wonderland?!?

[TZ]

8. You might find this interesting

One of my favorite sci fi series, Darkover by Marion Zimmer Bradley, is set on a very cold planet and their Hell is indeed a series of levels each colder than the next.

I wonder if countries/cultures that deal with extreme cold temperatures have some version of cold "hell"...

[PBS Poll-435]

13. ROFL

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

[moriah]

3. I guess it depends on if Hell is endothermic or exothermic.

You've seen that alleged proof about Hell, right?

I personally think that historic and prehistoric depictions of Hell's temperature had a lot to do with what the temperature was in the "dying season" for that particular culture. In many cultures the season where plants died and agriculture ceased was hot -- those cultures seemed to depict Hell as horrible heat. More polar latitudes had their plants and animals dying in cold, so Hell was cold.

Just my opinion.

[meegbear]

4. Since you asked ...

Hell is, or was, the name of the garbage dump in Jerusalem in biblical times. Many persons of the Jewish persuasion believe that at the end times, their body will rise and go to heaven, as opposed to the soul. Many orthodox Jews are not organ donars because they believe their body will need them in the afterlife.

When a person died, if they were not interred for one reason or another, the body would be brought to the dump and be burned, for the obvious sanitation reasons. Since you have no body, when the time comes, you cannot go to heaven and be with God.

This is what "Go to Hell" means - wishing someone to not be with God.

[MorningGlow]

5. You beat me to it, Meegbear!

Good answer. Wasn't the garbage dump called "Sheol" or something close to that, and then it morphed into the word "hell" over time?

Aside: I had a relative from "the old country" (Sicily) who always said, "Go to hell, please." Never forgot her manners! :rofl:

[meegbear]

6. I'm not sure - I've always known it as Hell ...

I'll have to hit the tubes to find out.

[Joe Fields]

12. I love little insights like this. Thanks!

:toast:

[hobbit709]

7. That's what the Vikings believed.

[Westegg]

9. Because cold numbs pain, while heat exacerbates it?

[Westegg]

10. Also because, based on what ancient man could do...

...physically to the bodies of his enemies, he could cause a lot more pain with something hot (fire; red-hot sword) than with something cold.(All they had then was ice, if they were lucky.) If Biblical man had been able to cool gases to their liquid state, and stick their enemies' limbs in them, then shatter them with hammers (as we can do now), then maybe Hell would be minus-300 degrees. Just a thought.

[KamaAina]

11. A Biblical scholar once proved that Heaven is hotter than Hell

The main topographical feature of Hell is, of course, a lake of molten brimstone, which would vaporize if the temperature got too hot. Meanwhile, an obscure scriptural passage points out that Heaven is seven times closer to the Sun than is Earth -- which means it would get 49 times the amount of solar raditation, making it far hotter than Hell!