or "spiritual" exegesis, mainly by Alexandrian scholars; it was from them that Philo and later
Book XII 501 tortures, we have been afraid to go to sleep again in case we should be fetched back into the same horrors. And it is of course not to be doubted that the things said about hell are much more vivid than such dreams, and so are experienced much more forcibly. I mean, those who have been detached from the senses of the body, less totally indeed than if they had actually died, but still more profoundly than if they werejust asleep, have described much more vivid sights and experiences than if they had been describing dreams. So there is then most certainly a substantial reality to hell, but l consider it to be of a spiritual, not a bodily nature.
33, 62. Nor should we listen to those who maintain that hell unfolds in this life, and does not exist after death; they will have noticed, l suppose, how the fictions of the poets are interpreted.57 We though ought not to depart from the authority of the divine scriptures, which alone are to be trusted in this matter—though we could show that their wise men too had no doubt at all about the reality of the netherworld,58 which collects the souls of the dead after this life. One may, however, rightly inquire how hell or the underworld can be said to be under the earth, if it is not a bodily place, or how it comes to be called the netherworld if it is not under the earth.59 l make bold to declare, on the other hand, that l do not think, l well and truly know, that the soul is not corporeal; nonetheless, if you deny that it can have a resemblance to the body with all its parts, you can also deny that it is the soul which in dreams sees itself walking or sitting or being carried hither and thither on foot or even in flight, none of which could happen without some likeness of the body. Accordingly, if it bears this likeness, which is not bodily but like a body, even in the nether world, so too it would seem to be in places that are not
57. The Iliad and Odyssey ofHomer and theAeneid of Virgil had long been subjected to figurative or "spiritual" exegesis, mainly by Alexandrian scholars; it was from them that Philo and later on Christian scholars borrowed the technique to apply it to the great biblical epic. 58. We have to remember that the Latin inferi means first and foremost the netherworld, the "lower regions," where all the dead go, and then later takes on the meaning of our English hell, as a place of torment. The word "hell" in fact originally meant only the lower regions, where all the dead go. And indeed in scripture it is from below that for instance the ghost of Samuel is conjured by the witch of Endor (1 Sm 28:8-19); and in the gospels, apart from this story of the rich man and Lazarus, the usual word for what we mean by hell is Gehenna, literally the valley of the sons of Hinnom, where the citizens ofJerusalem burnt their rubbish, it having once been the place, Tophet, where they sacrificed infants by fire to Moloch. On my one and only visit to Jerusalem 1 was being shown around the city by a delightful French Dominican of the priory of Saint Stephen, the Ecole Biblique, and we came to the high point of the city, Herod's palace, from which we looked down to this valley, now a suburb on the south of the city, very popular with artists; and my guide stretched out his hand and said: "Voila la Gdhennc; aujourd'hui la G6henne est devenu un faubourg tres chic." 59. See Revisions 11,24 on this passage and indeed this whole chapter: "1n the twelfth volume 1 think 1 ought simply to have taught about hell that it is under the earth, rather than giving reasons why it should be believed or said to be under the earth, as if it were not so in fact."