Hell

[Wotan]

I have been reading the Odyssey and several times they have mentioned "Hell" once in the contents of sending somebody to Hell and once when they are planning to go to Hades they go on to say that they must go to "Hell".

I was not aware that Hell even existed in these times as it was much before christianity and is not spelt the same as the Norse "Hel" nor would I think that a Nordic term would apear in a Greek epic.

Does anybody know about this? could it just be an incorect translation for Hades that they have ocasional stuffed up or is "Hell" an interchangable word for Hades.

 

[Libros]

Lots of Christian writers were very fond of substituting non-Greek religious terms when translating. Hades is not Hell, it's the universal crossroads every dead person goes to before they're shipped off to their deserved realm. Tartarus is closer to the Judeo-Christian Hell.

Poetic metaphor from the author's standpoint only; all pagans go to Hell, and they're writing about a pagan myth. So they called it Hell in translation.

Check your author and date of translation, that will be a clue.

 

[greekgoddess31]

Unfortunately, Libros is right, translators do not always give the right term, but their closest known word. This is true even when we aren't talking about pagan gods. For instance, I know the French I can speak isn't the same as that which the French speak.

 

[Libros]

Since Greece is predominantly Orthodox today, Greeks still use the terms interchangeably. Because in the Greek myth Persephone was taken against her will, and because the kingdom of Earth that God created is more beautiful than Hell, a modern Greek metaphor of Persephone is that she spends half her time in Hell and half on Earth, until she can't decide which is which. Neither is accurate according to the Greek myth, but that's how the myth was absorbed into a modern context.

 

[Wotan]

ahkay, Its kinda annoying that they keep swapping between Hell and Hades, it's like in 300 where they say "Spartans, tonight we dine in hell" despite the fact hell wasn't even thought of yt.

 

[Libros]

"Hell" rolls off the tongue better and has a more forceful impact than "Hades."

 

[RLynn]

Hades is just a transliteration, not really a translation, of the Greek word ἁδης. I suppose the nearest word in English would be hell, or maybe limbo, but actually it has no English equivalent. This is a serious (although somewhat humorous) problem when translating the Bible since neither ancient Hebrew (Old Testament) nor ancient Greek (New Testament) has a word strictly equivalent to hell, King James Version notwithstanding.

 

[Rhonda Tharp]

Hell = DMV

 

[RLynn]

Hell = DMV

That's not an exaggeration.

 

[LegendofJoe]

Since focusing on what word to use can be problematic, it is better to see what actually happened to you in the Underworld (a word I actually like).
In the Odyssey it is a place where the shades of the dead sort of wander around in a sad state and are empty shells of what they once were. If blood is given to them, they take on some semblance of life.
They were not punished, but they were not happy either. This is also called the Asfodal fields. It has some parallels with the Hebrew Shoah of the Bible.
Some depictions are different however; in the Aeneid, the Underworld has two realms. Tartarus is where the sinful are punished and Elysium is a happy place for the good souls.

 

[RLynn]

I think Sheol was generally translated as Hades in the Septuagint (an early Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures) and in the Greek New Testament. The King James Version almost always translates it as Hell, but modern English versions use the Greek transliteration Hades. I think Tartarus occurs only once in the New Testament (in one of the Epistles of Peter) and is translated as Hell. The word Gehenna is used only in the Synoptic Gospels. In Jesus' time it was a garbage dump outside Jerusalem, and Jesus is quoted in the Synoptics as using the word Gehenna for a place of punishment. It is generally translated as Hell in most English Bibles. Jesus does not refer to Gehenna in the Gospel of John.