HOW DOES DANTE REFLECT THE CHURCH OF HIS DAY?”
“HOW DOES DANTE REFLECT THE CHURCH OF HIS DAY?” The meaning given today to the word hell is that portrayed in Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost, which meaning is completely foreign to the original definition of the word. The idea of a hell of fiery torment, however, dates back long before Dante or Milton. The Grolier Universal Encyclopedia (1971, Vol. 9, p. 205) under Hell says: Hindus and Buddhists regard hell as a place of spiritual cleansing and final restoration. Islamic tradition considers it as a place of everlasting punishment. The idea of suffering after death is found among the pagan religious teachings of ancient peoples in Babylon and Egypt. Babylonian and Assyrian beliefs depicted the nether world . . . as a place full of horrors, . . . presided over by gods and demons of great strength and fierceness. Although ancient Egyptian religious texts do not teach that the burning of any individual victim would go on forever, they do portray the Other World as featur
