Hades – The patron Greek god of the underworld, for which the Greeks named the underworld.
This word never appears in Scripture.
In Greek mythology, one of the three distinct realms that make up the cosmos is the underworld, which they call Hades, where people go after death. The Greek god Hades’ intention was to inflict misery, which is also a reflection of his personality. The Greek god Hades was considered the enemy to all life and was hated by the gods and by men.
According to Greek mythology, the three brother-gods divided the world between themselves: Zeus received the heavens, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld, but the earth itself was divided between the three.
The earliest idea of afterlife in Greek myth is that, at the moment of death, an individual’s essence (psyche) is separated from the body and is transported to the underworld; an unseen place of darkness.
According to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (700 to 800 BCE), the dead were indiscriminately grouped together into a shadowy post-existence. Later, the Platonic philosophy by Socrates’ student and disciple, Plato (around 387 BCE), introduced elements of post-mortem judgment that had the good and bad people’s souls separated in Hades to different levels, for different degrees of treatment.
See also Abomination, Death, Doctrine, Gehenna, God, Hell, Purgatory, Sheol, Soul