There is no imagery of "hell" in the Bible. The dead are said to go to either hades (sheol) or gehenna. Neither one involved any kind of life afterlife.
Jesus condemned the Pharisees to "gehenna" not "hades". Hades is simply the grave. This is one doctrine that the church really messed up. They translate both words as "hell" and their version of it means eternal torture and suffering in a fire that never stops. Would a loving God even think up such a place? Not according to Jeremiah.
When Israel fell to sacrificing their children in the fire to Molech, God said....
"They have built the high places of Toʹpheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinʹnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, something that I had not commanded and that had never even come into my heart.’" (Jeremiah 7:31)
If God condemned his people for burning their children in a fire, which he said had never even entered his mind, why would he then do that to his own children?
The Valley of Hinnom, (Gehenna) which was the place where this heinous activity took place, was just outside the walls of Jerusalem. God had it turned into a rubbish dump where the city's refuse was thrown into 'Gehenna' for disposal. The carcasses of dead animals and even the bodies of executed criminals were thrown in to the fires. What the flames missed, the maggots finished off. Gehenna was not hell but a symbolic place where those considered unworthy of a resurrection were cast.
To a devout Jew, a burial tomb with the name of the person and his family lineage were inscribed, was synonymous with God remembering a person so as to bring them back to life in the world to come. Those cast into Gehenna has no such tomb and it was believed that God would not remember them. Their death was to be eternal.
If you think about it, everlasting death is the opposite of everlasting life. The ancient Jews had no belief in life after death except by resurrection.
