The Word "Hades" in Christian Usage in English
In English usage the word "Hades" first appears around 1600, as a term used to explain the article in the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into hell", where the place of waiting (the place of "the spirits in prison" 1 Peter 3:19) into which Jesus is there affirmed to have gone after the Crucifixion, known as the Harrowing of Hell, needed to be distinguished from what had come to be more usually called "hell", i.e. the place or state of those finally damned.
This development whereby "hell" came to be used to mean only the "hell of the damned" affected also the Latin word "infernum" and the corresponding words in Latin-derived languages, as in the name "Inferno" given to the first part of Dante's Divina Commedia. Greek, on the other hand, has kept the original meaning of "ᾅδης" (Hades) and uses the word "κόλασις" (kolasis – literally, "punishment"; cf. Matthew 25:46, which speaks of "everlasting kolasis") to refer to what nowadays is usually meant by "hell" in English.
Read more about this topic: Hades In Christianity
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