The modern English word hell is derived from Old English hel, helle (first attested around 725 AD to refer to a nether world of the dead) reaching into the Anglo-Saxon pagan period.

How did the concept of hell originate?

Our ancestors developed their ideas of Hell by drawing on the pains and the deprivations that they knew on earth. Those imaginings shaped our understanding of life before death, too. They still do. The afterlife is an old room in the house of the human imagination, and the ancients loved to offer the tour.

Is hell in the original Bible?

THE BIBLE GIVES THE LOCATION OF HELL

The Bible is clear — Hell is inside the earth! Ephesians 4:9, says of Jesus: "Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the LOWER PARTS OF THE EARTH." On page 85 of Beyond Death's Door, Dr. Rawlings said, patients who described hell said, ". . .