The belief in hell actually derives both from Persian influence and Greek, and the Persian influence was earlier. The Persians believed in fire purifying the souls of the dead. It was one of many Persian contributions to Judaism in the post-exilic period, including dualism and belief in Satan as the ruler of the aeon. It is ironic that Greek philosophy is blamed for the hell doctrine and the belief in immortality when the main proof-text the WTS uses, Ecclesiastes 9, is itself influenced by Stoic, Epicurian, and Cynic teaching. Ecclesiates is linguistically post-exilic and its characteristic philosophy, so distinct from that of older OT books, is shared by other post-exilic wisdom books (cf. Sirach 14:16-19, 27:26-27, 41:4; Wisdom 2:4-6). In fact, it was just the kind of Stoic-influenced philosophy espoused in Ecclesiastes that was adopted by the Sadducees who denied the resurrection and aspired to material wealth and pleasure (compare Ecclesiastes 9:9-10 and Sirach 11:19-20 with Luke 12:18-21).
As for pre-exilic OT views on the underworld (Sheol) and the liminal afterlife of the ghosts of the dead, the best book on the subject is the recent publication SHADES OF SHEOL: DEATH AND AFTERLIFE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT by Philip S. Johnston (2002). Suffice to say that the ancient Hebrews did not believe in death as total annihilation. Sheol was variously depicted as the state of death and a place under the ground where the dead reside in some sort of vague existence removed from the blessings of life. Nothing yet about a hell and punishment of the wicked. In Ezekiel 32 and Isaiah 14, the punishment for the proud tyrants is the indignity of death itself and joining the rest of the rephaim in Sheol. Mark Baker's Early History of God also gives a good survey of Israelite practices associated with the dead. These include necromancy (cf. 1 Samuel 28, Isaiah 8:19-20; the word "Sheol" itself comes from a root meaning "inquire"), the feeding of the dead (cf. Numbers 25:2, Psalm 106:28, Isaiah 8:20-21, 57:6-7), praying to the dead, consulting spirits for medical remedies (2 Chronicles 16:12; cf. 2 Kings 1:2), and so forth. These practices, condemned by the prophets, come from Israel's Canaanite heritage (Ugaritic texts show that Canaanites also fed the dead, consulted the dead, and believed in the rephaim afterlife) and show that Israelites in general did believe in an afterlife -- but not one that had any notion of a body/soul dualism (which derives from later Persian and Greek influence).
The notion of immortality, in a post-exilic Jewish context, was tied to the hope of a resurrection (cf. Wisdom 3:4; 2 Maccabees 7:9, 16-17; Daniel 12). Some, such as the writers of 2 Maccabees and the Testament of Job (4:7-11), limited the resurrection as a reward to the righteous. Others viewed the resurrection as twofold; the eschatological belief was that at the time of the end (e.g. Judgment Day), the resurrection would bring "some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting disgrace." (Daniel 12:2). The Testament of Benjamin (second century B.C.) similarly foretold:
"And then you will see Enoch and Seth and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob being raised up at the right hand in great joy. Then shall we be raised, each of us over our tribe, and we shall prostrate ourselves before the heavenly King. Then all shall be changed, some destined for glory, others for dishonor, for the Lord first judges Israel for the wrong she has committed and then he shall do the same for all the nations." (Testament of Benjamin 10:6-11)
This doctrine was elaborated in other pseudepigrapha of the intertestimental period. Righteous and wicked presently resting in Hades will be judged at the end of time and will be given eternal sentences: eternal glory for the righteous and eternal torment to the wicked. 2 Baruch has an extensive discussion on the resurrection and the judgment of the righteous and wicked:
For the earth will surely give back the dead at that time; it receives them now in order to keep them, not changing anything back in their form. But as it has received them so it will give them back. And as I have delivered them to it so it will raise them. For then it will be necessary to show those who live that the dead are living again, and that those who went away have come back. And it will be that when they have recognized each other, those who know each other at this moment, that my judgment will be strong, and those things which have been spoken of before will come. And it will happen after this day which he appointed is over that both the shape of those who are found to be guilty as also the glory of those who have proved righteous will be changed. For the shape of those who now act wickedly will be made more evil than it is now so that they shall suffer torment. As for the glory of those who proved to be righteous on account of my law, those who possessed intelligence in their life, and those who planted the root of wisdom in their heart, their splendor will then be glorified by transformations, and the shape of their face will be changed into the light of their beauty....Both these and those will be changed, these into the splendor of angels and those into startling visions and horrible shapes, and they will waste away even more....Why do we weep for those who go into the realm of death? The lamentations should be kept for the beginning of that coming torment; let the tears be laid down for the coming of that destruction which will then come....The torment of judgment will fall upon those who have not subjected themselves to your power...for at the end of the world, a retribution will be demanded with regard to those who have done wickedly in accordance with their wickedness....(2 Baruch 50:2-52:5, 54:14, 21)
The text goes on to describe the bliss of Paradise for the righteous and the torture of chains and everlasting darkness for the wicked. This is not yet the Christian view of hell but it comes close to the later NT view of the final judgment and resurrection. Matthew 25:46 refers to the wicked going "away to eternal punishment and the virtuous to eternal life," and John 5:27-29 says that "the Son of Man has been appointed supreme judge, for the hour is coming when the dead will leave their graves at the sound of his voice: those who did good will rise again to life and those who did evil to condemnation." Revelation 20:11-15 gives an extended vision of the resurrection of the dead, Hades being emptied of its dead, followed by the judgment of dead, and the punishment of the resurrected wicked in the lake of fire. As for exactly what the punishment will be, there is great diversity in the Jewish apocalyptic writings. 2 Baruch mentions the punishment as grotesque physical form and chains in everlasting darkness. The darkness is the same experienced by the fallen angels bound by chains in Tartarus (cf. 1 Enoch 10; 2 Peter 2:9; Jude 6). The motif of darkness is also mentioned in Matthew 8:12, 22:13; 25:30. The motif of fire, influenced by Persian and then Greek ideas (but also possibly influenced by the mention of fire in Sheol in Deuteronomy 32:22), appears throughout intertestimental literature as well and shows that this was a common idea in Jesus' day as well. It is not a late Christian invention. It first appears in the post-exilic prophecy in Isaiah 66:22-24 referring to situation after the creation of a new heavens and new earth -- re the wicked, "their worm will not die nor their fire put out." This prophecy was very influential in later conceptions of the final judgment; Sirach 7:17 (2nd century B.C.) states that "the punishment for the godless is fire and worms," and Judith 16:17-21 (2nd century B.C.) states: "Woe to the nations who rise against my race! The Lord Almighty will punish them on judgment day. He will send fire and worms on their flesh and they shall weep with pain for evermore." The text in Isaiah is itself quoted in Mark 9:47-50, showing that it directly influenced the conception of Gehenna in the NT.
There was also much diversity in the conception of Hades in intertestamental literature. Sheol, as the abode of the dead, was in OT times, believed to contain both the righteous and the wicked. By the Hellenistic era, many viewed Paradise (a term that comes directly from Persian) as a walled subdivision of Hades, as the abode of the righteous (cf. 4 Ezra 2:19; 8:52). This is probably the sense in Matthew 23:43. 1 Enoch 22 depicts Hades as containing four subdivisions containing both the righteous and the wicked:
They prepared these places in order to put the souls of the children of the people there until the day of their judgment and the appointed time of the great judgment upon them. I saw the spirits of the people that were dead, and their voices were reaching into heaven until this very moment...At that moment, I raised a question regarding the judgment of all, 'For what reason is one separated from the other?' And he replied and said to me, 'These three have been made in order that the spirits of the dead may be separated. And in the manner in wihch the souls of the righteous are separated by this spring of water with light upon it, in like manner the sinners are set apart when they die and are buried in the earth and judgment has not yet been executed upon them in their lifetime, upon this great pain, until the great day of judgment -- and to those who curse there will be plague and pain forever, and the retribution of their spirits. They will bind them forever -- even if from the beginning of the world. (1 Enoch 22:4-5, 8-12)
1 Enoch 102:1-11 presents the sinners as residing in Sheol in a separate region as the righteous. This attests the view of some Jews (especially the Alexandrian Jews) who believed that the righteous and wicked were separated immediately at death (others believed that the separation did not occur until the day of judgment). Luke 16 similarly presents the wicked in the righteous in the same abode, separated by a "great chasm" with the wicked tormented by flames. Others, identifying Paradise with the Garden of Eden, viewed Paradise as a region at the easternmost edge of the world (cf. the beliefs of the Essences cited in Josephus' BH, 2.8.11). And still others began to view Paradise as "third heaven" (2 Enoch 8:1-3; Apocalypse of Moses 37:5, 40:1; 2 Corinthians 12:14). In Christianity, the relocation of Paradise to heaven was itself influenced by the belief of Christ having ascended to heaven and that the later resurrection of the righteous would involve a similar ascension (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). This relocation emptied Hades of an abode of the righteous and thus left the entire underworld as the scene of punishment of the wicked. Gehenna was the term used by Jewish apocalypsists to refer to the region of Hades or Hades itself where the resurrected wicked would be tormented by fire. It is used in this sense by Jesus, who specifies that both "soul and body" and the "body" would go to the "judgment" of Gehenna -- that is, after the resurrection (Matthew 5:29, 10:28, 23:33). This has nothing to do with punishment of a disembodied immortal soul; it is punishment of a resurrected person, of both body and spirit. Other Jewish apocalypses describe the Gehenna that the resurrected wicked will face:
This accursed valley [e.g. Gehenna] is for those accursed forever; here will gather together all those accursed ones, those who speak with their mouths unbecoming words against the Lord and utter hard words concerning his glory. Here shall they be gathered together, and here shall be their judgment, in the last days. There will be upon them the spectacle of the righteous judgment, in the presence of the righteous forever....There was produced from that bronze and fire a smell of sulfur which blended with those waters. This valley of the perversive angels shall continue to burn punitively underneath that ground....The Most High will arise on that day of judgment in order to execute a great judgment upon all the sinners...Woe unto you sinners, when you oppress the righteous ones, in the day of hard anguish, and burn them with fire! You shall be recompensed according to your deeds. On account of the deeds of your wicked ones, in blazing fires worse than fire it shall burn....You yourselves know that they will bring your souls down to Sheol and they shall experience evil and great tribulation--in darkness, nets, and burning flame. Your souls shall enter into the great judgment; it shall be a great judgment in all the generations of the world. (1 Enoch 27:2-3, 100:4-9, 103:7-8)
I will burn with fire those who mocked them and ruled over them in this age...I have prepared them to be food for the fire of Hades, and to be ceaseless soaring in the air of the underworld regions of the uttermost depths, to the contents of a wormy belly....For they shall putrefy in the belly of the crafty worm Azazel, and be bburned by the fire of Azazel's tongue....And behold, in this light a fiery Gehenna was enkindled, and a great crowd in the likeness of men. They were all changing in aspect and shape, running and changing form and prostrating themselves and crying aloud words I did not know. (Apocalypse of Abraham 15:6-7, 31:2-6)
The souls of the wicked are brought down to Sheol by two angels of destruction, Za'api'el and Samki'el....Za'api'el is appointed to bring down the souls of the wicked from the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he, from the judgment of the Sekinah, to Sheol, to punish them with the fire in Gehinnom, with rods of burning coal. (3 Enoch 44:2-3)
The Lord will come with his angels and with the armies of the holy ones of the seventh heaven and with the glory of the seventh heaven, and he will drag Beliar into Gehenna and also his armies, ... the Beloved will cause fire to go forth from him, and it will consume all the godless. (Ascension of Isaiah 4:14, 18)
Gehenna is even mentioned frequently in rabinnical literature in the Mishnah: "The best of the physicians is destined for Gehenna, the most seemly among butchers is a partner of Amalek." (Rabbi Judah, Kiddushin 4:14) A good survey of the rabinnical literature on the fires and judgment of Gehenna appears here. I cite these sources not to suggest they should be considered equivalent to scripture. I cite them to show what the Jewish conception of Hades and Gehenna was in the intertestamental period and how Jesus' listeners would have understood his use of the terms. His talk about Gehenna and "the fires of Hades" drew from popular apocalyptic conception of the last judgment, and the vision of the last judgment in Revelation draws on the same lore as well. And for the Epistle of Jude to quote 1 Enoch 1:9 to refer precisely to this judgment of the wicked (Jude 14-15), the notion of the final judgment in 1 Enoch must not be too "unscriptural" for Jude to accept it.
The popular Christian notion of hell is certainly divergent from that of 1st century Judaism and Christianity, but it seems pretty clear that the NT conception of the judgment of the wicked and Gehenna is consistent with that attested in other Jewish writings of the period. I would also add however that this conception of judgment and punishment was only one thread in primitive Christianity. It is not clear whether the Johannine school and Paulinists accepted the same view of judgment when they described Christ's death as a redemption for "all", which would presumably include the dead waiting their resurrection (cf. John 3:16; Romans 5:18-19; Colossians 1:18, 20; 1 Timothy 2:6, 4:9-11; 1 John 2:2). I think it should not be forgotten that the NT presents various theological and eschatological conceptions. In the 2nd century A.D., some Christians leaned towards the traditional view of hell (e.g. Polycarp and Barnabas) while others leaned more to universal salvation (e.g. Clement of Rome and the Pastor of Hermas). The Pharisee view presented by Q and Mark was not the only voice in early Christianity. But it is a view that is definitely expressed in the Bible.
Leolaia
