The Biblical Hades

Having died and returned to life to never die again, Jesus holds the keys to death and Hades (Revelation 1:18).  Other than for the followers of Yahweh and Christ alive at the Second Coming (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), this is in broad generalities what Christians will also undergo: death and then resurrection to eternal life.  Death will have no power over them, including the second death in the lake of fire (Revelation 2:11, 20:15), just as it can no longer claim Jesus, and the unrepentant wicked in contrast forfeit their very existences as they are shut out from eternal life and perish (Ezekiel 18:4).

This is not the only time that Hades is mentioned in Revelation.  Before the judgment before a great throne, the unrighteous dead are resurrected to be condemned and punished according to their deeds.  The sea and Hades give up the dead in them (Revelation 20:13-14) when God beckons.  After being judged as they deserve, the wicked enter the lake of fire, which annihilates them forever (20:15).  What, however, is the Biblical Hades?  Revelation 20 more directly touches upon the final condition of the wicked, that being death with its lack of consciousness that is never again reversed, but some of the dead are described as being handed over from Hades before they go to hell.

There is still a hint in this passage that Hades is simply the collective grounds of Earth, as contrasted with the sea that also holds the remains of dead humans.  Why would Hades and the sea need to be contrasted in this way in reference to bodily resurrection if Hades is anything like the realm of the same name in Greek mythology, ruled over by the pseudo-deity that is also called Hades?  The Biblical Hades is, after all, the Sheol of the Old Testament with a different term attached (Psalm 16:10 and Acts 2:27 confirm this), and Sheol is simply the grave, the planet being littered with them.  When anyone dies, according to the Bible, their body decays in the grave, which is Sheol or Hades, as their soul slips into either nonexistence or a dreamless sleep (Job 3:11-19, Psalm 88:10-12) until they are resurrected (Daniel 12:2) to face eternal life or permanent nonexistence (John 3:16).

In the Biblical Hades, there is no vulture to peck out the liver of special sinners as Zeus inflicted on Prometheus (though this was not in Hades), who stole the fire of the Olympians to give it to humanity.  There is no physical or emotional torment in some dungeon with instruments of pain like those used in violation of Mosaic Law (and the vast majority of torture used across all of human history violates Mosaic Law).  Unlike what those who mistake the parable of Luke 16:19-31 for a description of the Biblical Hades believe (if so, this would contradict many verses before it), the dead are not even perceiving anything according to multiple clear passages throughout the Old Testament such as Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, with the New Testament focusing more on the ultimate fates of eternal life and permanent destruction (Romans 6:23) than it does on the condition of the dead before their resurrection and yet not contradicting anything previously put forth.

Until the resurrection, the body is absorbed by the ground and the mind either ceases to exist or enters a status devoid of perception, though the consistent references to the sleep of the dead literally suggest soul sleep as opposed to soul annihilation.  This is the Biblical Hades, the same as the Sheol that all of the dead temporarily go to.  The Bible does not teach that there are torments that await some people and blissful pleasures that await others before the resurrection of the dead, after which New Jerusalem and the general universe around it become the everlasting abode of the righteous and hell becomes the ultimately brief abode of the wicked.