Sheol in the context of "Hell"

In poetry and literature, a shade (translating Greek σκιά, Latin umbra) is the spirit or ghost of a dead person, residing in the underworld.

An underworld where the dead live in shadow was common to beliefs in the ancient Near East. In Biblical Hebrew, it was called tsalmaveth (צַלמָוֶת: lit. "death-shadow", "shadow of death") as an alternate term for Sheol. The Witch of Endor in the First Book of Samuel notably conjures the ghost (owb) of Samuel.

In ancient near eastern cosmology, the firmament was a celestial barrier that separated the heavenly waters above from the Earth below. In biblical cosmology, the firmament (Hebrew: רָקִ֫יעַ‎ rāqīaʿ) was the vast solid dome created by God during the Genesis creation narrative to separate the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear.

The concept was adopted into the subsequent Classical and Medieval models of heavenly spheres, but was dropped with advances in astronomy in the 16th and 17th centuries. Today the word is sometimes used as a synonym for the sky or for heaven.

Hades, according to various Christian denominations, is "the place or state of departed spirits", borrowing the name of Hades, the name of the underworld in Greek mythology. It is often associated with the Jewish concept of Sheol. In Christian theology, Hades is seen as an intermediate state between Heaven and Hell in which the dead enter and will remain until the Last Judgment.

In Jewish cosmology, Shamayim (Hebrew: שָׁמַיִם‎ šāmayīm, "heavens") is the dwelling place of God and other heavenly beings according to the Hebrew Bible. It is one of three components of the biblical cosmology. In Judaism specifically, there are two other realms, being Eretz (Earth), home of the living, and Sheol, the realm of the dead—including, according to post-Hebrew Bible literature, the abode of the righteous dead.