Inventing Hell: Dante, the Bible, and Eternal Torment

Independent scholar Sweeney (The Pope Who Quit) concludes this enjoyable little romp through Dante's epic Inferno by saying, "Dante would be pleased if we still feared his vision of Hell." Sweeney creatively argues that the Inferno is the first place where the rather imprecise vision of hell presented in the Bible is fleshed out. "Cleverly using Virgil and lots of funky myth," he writes, "Dante is the one who made eternal punishment exotic and real, as well as Christian." His approach is thematic and popular rather than scholarly and deconstructive. As points of comparison, he notes how the works of Homer, Plato, the Old Testament, the Qur'an, and even Aristotle and Cicero might have helped inform Dante's fleshed-out, more sinister vision of hell. For example, his comparison of the legendary roots of Holy Saturday to the Hades narratives of Odysseus and Orpheus is engaging and provocative, if a little irreverent.