Afterlife

A single word can quietly rewire an entire faith’s imagination of death. We start with Sheol, an ancient Hebrew concept that originally meant the realm of the dead, a shadowy destination shared by everyone rather than a place of reward and punishment. From there, we follow the translation trail that turns Sheol into Hades in Greek and infernum in Latin, and how that collapse of distinct ideas helps “hell” become a catchall in English, creating confusion that still shapes Christian afterlife theology today. 

We also talk through the major ways early Christianity reshapes Sheol: the harrowing of hell, the idea of an intermediate state, and the later distinction between a temporary abode of the dead and Gehenna as final judgment. Along the way, we name how different traditions handle these questions now, including purgatory, the grave as a metaphor, conscious waiting, and soul sleep. If you’ve ever wondered why Christians disagree so strongly about what happens after death, this language history is a big part of the answer. 

Then we widen the lens into comparative religion by bringing in the Tibetan Buddhist Bardo from the Bardo Thodol, often called The Tibetan Book of the Dead. We explore striking parallels with a Christian intermediate state, including transitional “between” space, imagery of reckoning, encounters with light or divine presence, and the role of prayers for the dead. And we get honest about the differences that matter: resurrection versus rebirth, a persistent soul versus no-self, and whether there is meaningful agency after death. 

If this kind of theology, grief support, and spiritual reflection helps you, subscribe, share the show with someone who’s curious, and leave a review so others can find it. What do you think: are Sheol and the Bardo pointing to the same threshold experience, or are they describing fundamentally different realities?

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ELECTRONIC BOOKS:  1000 IMAGES OF JESUS  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SFH4Z6

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Transcript

Welcome And Purpose Of Solace

Candee 0:43

Welcome to Solace, Soul + Grief. I'm glad you're here with me today. My name is Candee Lucas. I'm a Jesuit trained spiritual director and chaplain. When I started this ministry nearly five years ago, my intention was to create a library of experiences, things that would be both helpful and inspirational, and be of some solace to those who are walking this path of grief. Remember, you're always welcome in this circle of healing love and support.

Sheol In The Hebrew Bible

Candee 1:35

Sheol is a Hebrew concept that predates Christianity and plays an interesting role in how Christian afterlife theology developed. In the Old Testament, Sheol simply refers to the realm of the dead, a shadowy underworld where all people go regardless of their moral standing. It wasn't a place of reward or punishment, just a dim, inactive existence cut off from the living and from God. The dead in Sheol are described as weak shades without the memory or praise of God in Psalm 88 and in Isaiah 14. When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in the Septuagint, Sheol was rendered as Hades, the Greek underworld. When the New Testament was later translated into Latin in the Vulgate, both Sheol and Hades were sometimes rendered as infernum or infernus, the lower place, which eventually became hell in English. This chain of translation collapsed several distinct concepts into one word, causing significant theological confusion that persists today. Early Christian theology inherited Sheol but transformed it through several ideas. The harrowing of hell.

How Sheol Became Hades

Candee 3:10

A major Christian tradition holds that between his death and resurrection, Jesus descended into Sheol, Hades, to release the righteous dead, for example, the patriarchs and the prophets who had been waiting there. This is referenced in the Apostles' Creed, --he descended into hell--, and passages like 1 Peter 3:19. Sheol is a waiting place. Some traditions interpreted Sheol as a kind of intermediate state, divided between a place of comfort, Abraham's bosom or paradise, and torment, reflecting the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16 Christianity eventually distinguished Sheol/ Hades, a temporary abode of the dead, from Gehenna, the final place of judgment after resurrection, though these got blurred together in popular usage under the single word hell. Different traditions handle Sheol differently today. Catholics and some Orthodox Christians incorporate it into their theology of purgatory or an intermediate state.

Infernum And The Birth Of Hell

Candee 4:35

Protestants very widely. Some see it as simply the grave, others as a conscious waiting state. A minority view sees it as conditional immortality or a soul sleep and he takes Sheol literally. The dead are simply unconscious until the resurrection. In short, Sheol is the root from which the Christian concept of the afterlife grew, but Christianity dramatically expanded and moralized it, transforming a neutral resting place for the dead into a more complex system involving judgment, intermediate states, and ultimate destinations. How does this further relate to the Bardo in Buddhism? There are some striking parallels and instructive contrasts between Sheol, the Christian intermediate state, and the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the Bardo. Bardo from the Tibetan 'bar' 'do', which means between two, refers to the intermediate state of existence between death and rebirth.

Christian Ideas That Reshaped Sheol

Candee 5:45

It comes primarily from the Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead from the 8th CE, which described in detail what the consciousness experiences after death. There are actually multiple bardos, including the Bardo of waking life and dreaming, but the death bardo is the most discussed. There are surface level parallels with Sheol and the intermediate state. Both are transitional, not final. Sheol, in the Judeo-Christian reinterpretation, and the Bardo are both waiting or passage states, not ultimate destinations. Both involve some sort of judgment or reckoning. In the Bardo, the deceased faces the Lord of Death, Yama, who weighs white and black pebbles representing good and bad deeds, strikingly similar to the judgment imagery in the Egyptian religion and loosely analogous to Christian final judgment. Both traditions describe the intermediate state as involving encounters with light or divine presence. In the Bardo, the deceased is immediately met with the clear light of reality, or dharmada, which mirrors how some Christian mystics describe the soul's encounter with God at death. Both of these concepts have influenced traditions of prayers for the dead. Tibetan monks read the Bardo Thodol, to guide the deceased through the process, much like Catholic prayers and masses said for the souls in purgatory.

How Traditions Read Sheol Today

Candee 7:25

But there are key differences, and here is where the concepts diverge sharply. The purpose of the intermediate state. In Christianity, the intermediate state is essentially a waiting room for resurrection and final judgment. The self persists and will be reunited with the resurrected body. In the Bardo, the goal is either liberation, sometimes called nirvana, escaping the cycle entirely, or rebirth in a new form. There is no resurrection of the same body. Another divergence is the nature of the self. Christianity assumes a persistent soul that remains fundamentally you throughout death, judgment, and eternity.

What The Bardo Means

Candee 8:20

Buddhism, especially in its Tibetan form, teaches anatta, or the concept of no-self. What passes through the Bardo is not a fixed soul, but a stream of consciousness and karma. The self experiencing the Bardo is in some sense already an illusion. Another difference is agency during the transition. The Bardo Thodol emphasizes that the deceased has active opportunities for liberation during the Bardo experience itself, by recognizing the clear light as manifestations of mind rather than fleeing from them in fear. Sheol and the Christian intermediate state offer no such active spiritual opportunity after death. The decisive choices were made during life. And finally, what follows? The Bardo ends in either liberation or rebirth into one of the multiple realms, human, animal, heavenly, hellish, etc., determined by karma. Christian afterlife ends in resurrection and either eternal communion with God or separation from Him.

Where Sheol And Bardo Overlap

Candee 9:35

A linear endpoint rather than a cycle. The Bardo is fundamentally a psychological, phenomenological map. It describes the experience of consciousness as it devolves and reconstitutes, full of visions, lights, and wrathful deities that are understood as projections of the mind itself. The Tibetan tradition is remarkably sophisticated in treating death as something to be navigated through awareness and recognition. The Christian intermediate state, by contrast, is more relational and ontological. It's about the soul's relationship to God and sin and ultimate justice rather than a psychological journey to be navigated skillfully.

The Biggest Differences After Death

Candee 10:45

But they do genuinely converge. Some scholars in contemplative, most notably Carl Jung, and later figures, have argued that both traditions are pointing at the same underlying experience of dying consciousness. The Bardo's clear light, resembling Christian mystical accounts of encountering divine light at death, and both traditions using symbolic figures and landscapes to describe what is ultimately beyond ordinary language. Whether that convergence reflects a shared metaphysical reality or just shared human psychology is one of the most fascinating open questions in comparative religion.

Candee 11:30

That concludes another episode. A new one drops every Friday morning. You can find us on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music. Remember, be gentle to yourselves this week and to others. Travel with God always by your side. Vaya con Dios.