>>>Now, Faustus, ask what thou wilt. >First will

Hell wasn't mentioned in the Bible until it came to the West via Asia. Before then it was just Sheol, which was like Hades and certainly not a place of fire nor torment. Just a place where the dead went to chill.

I guess ideas can be tracked and discounted.

It's hysterical that Faustus learns how much Mephistopheles despairs over hell and STILL sells his soul. What a douche.

FAUSTIAN POWER RANKINGS:
Marlowe > Mann > Goethe > Bulgakov

Not to say Bulgakov's is bad; they're all brilliant.

>>8068456
Why don't we keep that one? It sounds much more pleasant.

>>8068466
You can't control and influence people with a place to chill. Hell and the Devil are boogiemen adults started believing.

>>8068466
It's more pleasant, sure. But it isn't great. It's like sitting in a waiting room for eternity while your Christian friends experience overwhelming love forever.

Sounds like shit

>>8068456

implying the ancient greeks (leaving aside their philosophers) despite their afterlife was a field of asphodels where the shadows of dead hanged around didn't have concepts similar to the paradise and the hell as well; tartar as a very unpleasant place and isles of the blessed as a kind of paradise are already mentioned by hesiod, homer also mentions in odyssey how some of the shadows in hades are specifically tortured for their sins

jews likely had a similar conception of different regions of sheol with vastly different conditions, see the lazarus parable (luke 16:19-31)

>>8068508
I don't even know why you're mentioning Biblical texts after Asian influence of Hell had reached the Middle East, as that doesn't mean anything.

Try again?

>>8068463
Goethe > Pessoa > Marlowe Text A > Pushkin > POWER GAP > Bulgakov > Mann > Marlowe Text B