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The modern image of heaven—clouds, harps, and a perpetual Sunday service—is hardly inspiring. Even hell sounds like an improvement. It may be fiery and dark, but interesting people live there, and at least the demons have some fun.

Such views would have seemed ludicrous to Christians in Dante's day. Dante and his contemporaries had inherited rich images of heaven and hell from the Bible, early Christian writings, and the great imaginations of the Middle Ages. These shifting images reflect both the enormous range of human creativity and our ultimate inability to grasp what only God understands.

The Bible mentions heaven frequently and hell rarely. Both are depicted as places with physical characteristics but also as conditions: heaven is a state of being eternally with God in unending love for him and for our neighbors, while hell is a state of being eternally separated from God and neighbor, owing to a person's refusal to accept love.

The Old Testament focuses on the covenant (contract) between the Lord and the community: the people of Israel. For the Hebrews, salvation involved the whole community, not just the individual. As an extension of this community experience, the Hebrews identified heaven with the City of Jerusalem.

The prophet Zechariah proclaimed that Jerusalem was the center of Israel now and in the future: "This is what the Lord says: 'I will return to Zion and dwell in Jerusalem' " (Zech. 8:3). There the resurrection and judgment will take place, and the Messiah will bring the Kingdom of God to earth with the return of the people of Israel to the Promised Land.

The New Testament epistles and gospels say little about the celestial realm. The Book of Revelation contains the most descriptive treatment of heaven, revealing that the world will be renewed: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. … I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband" (Rev. 21:1-2).

Revelation continues with more lavish imagery:

"The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. [The angel] measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits thick, by man's measurement, which the angel was using. The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysophase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass" (Rev. 21:16-21).

The New Testament gives no such detailed description of hell, though Jesus says that at the final judgment his father will tell the unrighteous, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41). Jesus also describes hell as "the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 25:30) and, quoting Isaiah, as the place where "their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:48).

Revelation adds a few more vivid descriptions of unrepentant sinners' agony. An angel says of those who receive the beast's mark, "the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever," and they have no rest day or night (Rev. 14:11). Later in the book, death and Hades are "thrown into the lake of fire," which is "the second death" (Rev. 20:14).

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