Page:Judaism and Islam, a prize essay - Geiger - 1898.pdf/67

 THE SEVEN HELLS. 49

have a saying i 1 " The world is the sixtieth part of the garden, the garden is the sixtieth part of Eden ; " 2 and in the Quran we find a similar expression, viz., " paradise whose breadth equalleth the heavens and the earth : 3 Generally speaking, fear is stronger than hope, and the dread of a- terrible condemnation appeals far more powerfully than the hope of eternal happiness to a nature which pure religious feeling does not impel to piety of life. This is probably the reason for describing hell in a more detailed and particular manner than Paradise.

Seven hells are pictured as forming different grades of punishment, and these have been developed out of the seven different names mentioned in the Talmud. 4 These names with one exception 5 (Brets tahtith, subterranean realm, which is clearly adopted from the Eoman ideas at the time of their ascendancy) are Biblical. Later on these names came to be construed as seven hells, e. g. in the Midrash on the Psalms at the end of the eleventh Psalm where 6 it is said, " there are seven abodes of the wicked in hell, " after which the above mentioned names are cited with a few variations. It is also said that David by a sevenfold reiterated cry of "my son"^?^) rescued Absalom from the seven habitations of hell ; 7 furthermore hell is said to have seven portals. 8 Muhammad is not

irr p 735

9 Taanifch 10. Pesaohim 94.

?- * .- - *

^ 3 Sura III. 127.

4 n^in ft*n ta^ tfwf ntoi nfla? -i^psi

See Ernbin 19. 1.

6

' 2 Sam, xix. 1-5. (Soto 10.) Q'SH^ v-p*^

^SM ^nns ny$w zohar i.i. iso-

G