What is the difference between 'Hell', 'Sheol', 'Hades' and 'Gehenna'? In Western imagination, Hell is a place of everlasting torment and suffering for the wicked. Brunlesschi's painting in Florence's Duomo illustrates it well:



The word 'Hell' itself, however, doesn't appear much in the Bible, and where it does, there are seeming differences from this popular narrative.  The terms that are used: 'Sheol', 'Hades' and 'Gehenna' may differ from this notion.

Specifically, in what ways do each of these terms commonly translated as Hell differ from what the 'average person' in modern day America thinks of Hell?  Biblically, what are the differences amongst these terms? How is each term for a 'hell' used, and how do they differ from each other?
Michael A. Knibb says, in 'Life and death in the Old Testament', published in The World of Ancient Israel: Sociological, Anthropological and Political Perspectives, pages 403-5, that at death the individual was placed in the grave, but he was at the same time thought to go down to the realm of the dead, to Sheol, as that realm is most commonly named in the Old Testament. He says the dead were believed to continue in existence in Sheol, albeit in a very weak and reduced state. The Old Testament concept of the realm of the dead as a place of darkness, in which the dead lead a shadowy existence, cut off from men and God, unable to praise God and indeed unable to do anything, seems quite similar to the pagan concept of Hades. The early Christian pseudepigraphal Ascension of Isaiah speaks of Jesus descending to sheol to rescue the righteous dead before reascending to the highest heaven (there were seven heavens).

Alan Millard says in Discoveries from the Time of Jesus, page 38, that a steep-sided valley to the south of Jerusalem, was probably the site of their refuse tip, where they could dump what they did not want, possibly throwing it over the edge of the valley, and set it on fire.  He says even if flames were not always shooting out, the piles of rubbish would always be smoking and smouldering.  Much of what was not burnt, or would not burn, gradually decomposed, as worms and insects gnawed and burrowed, or corrosion and rust ate into it. That valley was named the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, or just the Valley of Hinnom, in Old Testament times. By the first century, its name had been put into Aramaic as  Gehenna and had become a common Jewish word for hell. Uta Ranke-Heinemann says, in Putting Away Childish Things, page 236, Gehinnom (Gehenna) owed its ill repute to the child sacrifices that are supposed to have been offered up in the fire there.  The Jewish Encyclopedia says the valley was deemed to be accursed, and "Gehenna" therefore soon became a figurative equivalent for "hell." We see a New Testament reference to Gehenna in Mark 9:47, although this is commonly (eg KJV) translated as 'hell fire'.

Our word 'hell' is from Norse mythology, where it is the realm of Hel, the goddess of death, but is not a place of punishment. Wikipedia tells us that Achaemenid era (648–330 BCE) Zoroastrianism developed the abstract concepts of heaven and hell, as well as personal and final judgement, all of which are only alluded to in the Gathas. Hell did not properly enter the Jewish faith, but the Zoroastrian concept is believed to have strongly influenced Christianity. In later Christian tradition Satan ruled hell and suffered there himself, but neither point is clear in the New Testament. Uta Ranke-Heinemann says (ibid, page 236) Matthew is the main gospel to makes Jesus use hell as a threat. She cites Georg Baudler, who says (Theologie der Gegenwart) all the divine tribunals and images of Hell that appear in Jesus' parables are later interpolations, and in some cases they actually wreck the structure of the original parable.