How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture

by Dan Kimball

The third tier was referred to as sheol and was thought to be the area under the land, an area that held more water. Think about it from their perspective. What happens when you dig down deep enough? What do you find? Water seeps through. You can see why ancient people assumed there was more water present under the ground, why they believed the earth was a land mass above even more water. In the Old Testament we see the word “sheol” used often to refer to the place under the earth where all who died went.9 It wasn’t until later in the Old Testament that the understanding of a future resurrection developed. This idea of a bodily resurrection became even more clear in the New Testament. But the ancient Israelites saw this area under the earth as a third level, a third tier in their understanding of the world around them.