banned for hellfire.
I'm not totally sure where hellfire specifically came from. I mean in that Sheol is mentioned in the Old Testament and described as an afterlife apart from God, but it was most often used in relation to the peace or separation for Earthly concerns that death brought. Granted, there were those that skipped it altogether, but it's been debated if that's death without bureaucracy or transcendence, as the Muslims use with Muhammad. It's described as darkness.
Hades is not homogenous. It's been described as having various terrains, although the myth changes with time and region. Even still, the dominant description is one of mist and gloom. There are areas, such as Elysium, which are referred to as being better or worse, thus the basic concept of Heaven and Hell, but in this case they are both the same realm and neither described in modern ways.
Of course, Christianity also took heavily from Zoroastrianism, which dealt greatly with universal duality and the conflict of good and evil. This explains a great deal of the insistence on having the two sides constantly fight and the need to describe them in such a polarized fashion. Granted, evil had to take a backseat, as Zoroastrianism relies on the idea of each side being equally capable, whereas Judeo-Christian religions need God to be more powerful than all others. It's more political than anything, but has become the established orthodoxy.
