A
lake of fire appears, in both
ancient Egyptian and
Christian religion, as a place of
after-death destruction of the wicked. The phrase is used in four verses of the
Book of Revelation. Such a lake also appears in Plato's Phaedo, explicitly identified with Tartarus, where the souls of the wicked are tormented until it is time for them to be reborn, and where some souls are left forever. The image was also used by the
Early Christian Hippolytus of Rome in about the year 200 and has continued to be used by modern Christians. Related is Jewish Gehenna which, among other things, like hell, is a valley near Jerusalem where trash was burned.