6. Akin to the supposed existence of angels, the concept of Heaven and Hell in Christian mythology borrows heavily from Zoroastrian and wider Persian religious traditions
A central component of Christian religious beliefs, the concept of an afterlife divided into heaven and hell forms an important dynamic within the Christian narrative. Appearing in Zoroastrianism, the sayings of Zoroaster provided commentary on the notion of personal judgment in the afterlife. Prescribing a “Path to Judgement”, all souls had to travel across a bridge, with those deemed unworthy falling into the depths beneath. However, in a comparable notion to Christianity, during the end times, with evil finally defeated, all souls would rise equally to be reunited for an indefinite future.
Borrowing heavily from preexisting religious systems, the terminology used to describe these entities within both the Old and New Testaments is broadly appropriated. The first biblical figure to reference notions of resurrection and judgment in the Bible, the prophet Daniel uses the term “paradise”: a conception dating from the Persian religion of Mithraism; concurrently, the earliest surviving examples from the New Testament makes persistent reference to “hades” as the afterlife, in clear reference to the Greek mythological underworld. It has been suggested that these conceptions of were passed into the Judaic tradition during the Babylonian Exile and residence in Zoroastrian Persia.