Tartarus - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

In classic mythology, below Uranus

Uranus (mythology)

Uranus , was the primal Greek god personifying the sky. His equivalent in Roman mythology was Caelus. In Ancient Greek literature, according to Hesiod in his Theogony, Uranus or Father Sky was the son and husband of Gaia, Mother Earth...

(sky), Gaia

Gaia (mythology)

Gaia was the primordial Earth-goddess in ancient Greek religion. Gaia was the great mother of all: the heavenly gods and Titans were descended from her union with Uranus , the sea-gods from her union with Pontus , the Giants from her mating with Tartarus and mortal creatures were sprung or born...

(earth), and Pontus

Pontus (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Pontus or Pontos was an ancient, pre-Olympian sea-god, one of the protogenoi, the "first-born". Pontus was the son of Gaia and according to the Greek poet Hesiod brought forth without coupling...

(sea) is Tartarus, or Tartaros (Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

: Τάρταρος, from τάρταρον "tartar encrusting the sides of casks"). It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the underworld

Greek underworld

The Greek underworld was made up of various realms believed to lie beneath the earth or at its farthest reaches.This includes:* The great pit of Tartarus, originally the exclusive prison of the old Titan gods, it later came to be the dungeon home of damned souls.* The land of the dead ruled by the...

. In the Gorgias
Gorgias (dialogue)
Gorgias is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato around 380 BC. In this dialogue, Socrates seeks the true definition of rhetoric, attempting to pinpoint the essence of rhetoric and unveil the flaws of the sophistic oratory popular in Athens at this time...

, Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

(c. 400 BC

400 BC

Year 400 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Tribunate of Esquilinus, Capitolinus, Vulso, Medullinus, Saccus and Vulscus...

) wrote that souls were judged after death and those who received punishment were sent to Tartarus.

Like other primal entities (such as the earth and time), Tartarus is also a primordial force or deity.

Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, Tartarus is both a deity and a place in the underworld

Greek underworld

. In ancient Orphic sources and in the mystery schools, Tartarus is also the unbounded first-existing entity from which the Light and the cosmos are born.

In the Greek poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

's Theogony
Theogony
The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogies of the gods of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC...

, c. 700 BC, the deity Tartarus was the third force to manifest in the yawning void of Chaos.

As for the place, Hesiod asserts that a bronze anvil falling from heaven

Heaven

Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...

would fall 9 days before it reached the Earth. The anvil would take nine more days to fall from Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

to Tartarus. In The Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

(c. 700), Zeus

Zeus

In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...

asserts that Tartarus is "as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth." It is one of the primordial objects that sprung from Chaos

Chaos (mythology)

Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth....

, along with Gaia

Gaia (mythology)

(Earth) and Eros (desire).

While, according to Greek mythology

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

, The Realm of Hades is the place of the dead, Tartarus also has a number of inhabitants. When Cronus

Cronus

In Greek mythology, Cronus or Kronos was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans, divine descendants of Gaia, the earth, and Uranus, the sky...

, the ruling Titan

Titan (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age....

, came to power he imprisoned the Cyclopes

Cyclops

A cyclops , in Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, was a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead...

in Tartarus and set the monster Campe

Campe

In Greek mythology, Campe or Kampê is the name of a chthonic female monster .-Mythology:Campe was a dragon with a woman's head and torso and a scorpion-like tail. Nonnus, in Dionysiaca gives the most elaborated description of her...

as guard. Some myths also say he imprisoned the three Hecatonchires

Hekatonkheires

The Hecatonchires, or Hekatonkheires , were figures in an archaic stage of Greek mythology, three giants of incredible strength and ferocity that surpassed that of all Titans whom they helped overthrow. Their name derives from the Greek and , "each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads"...

(giants with fifty heads and one hundred arms). Zeus killed Campe and released the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires to aid in his conflict with the Titan giants. The gods of Olympus eventually defeated the Titans. Many, but not all of the Titans, were cast into Tartarus. Epimetheus

Epimetheus (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Epimetheus was the brother of Prometheus , a pair of Titans who "acted as representatives of mankind" . They were the inseparable sons of Iapetus, who in other contexts was the father of Atlas...

, Metis

Metis (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Metis was of the Titan generation and, like several primordial figures, an Oceanid, in the sense that Metis was born of Oceanus and Tethys, of an earlier age than Zeus and his siblings...

, and Prometheus

Prometheus

In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals...

are some Titans who were not banished to Tartarus. Cronus was imprisoned in Tartarus. Other gods could be sentenced to Tartarus, as well. Apollo is a prime example, although Zeus freed him. In Tartarus, the Hecatonchires guarded prisoners. Later, when Zeus overcame the monster Typhon

Typhon

Typhon , also Typhoeus , Typhaon or Typhos was the last son of Gaia, fathered by Tartarus, and the most deadly monster of Greek mythology. He was known as the "Father of all monsters"; his wife Echidna was likewise the "Mother of All Monsters."Typhon was described in pseudo-Apollodorus,...

, the offspring of Tartarus and Gaia

Gaia (mythology)

, he threw the monster into the same pit.

Originally, Tartarus was used only to confine dangers to the gods of Olympus. In later mythologies, Tartarus became the place where the punishment fits the crime. For example:

King Sisyphus
Sisyphus
In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king punished by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity...

was sent to Tartarus for killing guests and travelers to his castle in violation to his hospitality, seducing his niece, and reporting one of Zeus' sexual conquests by telling the river god Asopus
Asopus
Asopus or Asôpos is the name of four different rivers in Greece and one in Turkey. In Greek mythology, it was the name of the gods of those rivers.-The rivers in Greece:...

of the whereabouts of his daughter Aegina
Aegina (mythology)
Aegina was a figure of Greek mythology, the nymph of the island that bears her name, Aegina, lying in the Saronic Gulf between Attica and the Peloponnesos. The archaic Temple of Aphaea, the "Invisible Goddess", on the island was later subsumed by the cult of Athena...

. Zeus had taken her away but regardless of the impropriety of Zeus' frequent conquests, Sisyphus overstepped his bounds by considering himself a peer of the gods who could rightfully report their indiscretions. When Zeus ordered Thanatos
Thanatos
In Greek mythology, Thanatos was the daemon personification of death. He was a minor figure in Greek mythology, often referred to but rarely appearing in person...

to chain Sisyphus in Tartarus upon his death, Sisyphus tricked Thanatos by asking him how the chains worked and ended up chaining Thanatos which caused no one to die. This caused Ares to free Thanatos and turn Sisyphus over to him. Sometime later, Sisyphus had Persephone
Persephone
In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....

send him back to the surface to scold his wife for not burying him properly. Sisyphus was dragged back to Tartarus by Hermes when he refused to go back to the Underworld. In Tartarus, Sisyphus would be forced to roll a large boulder up a mountainside which when he reached the crest, rolled away from Sisyphus and rolled back down repeatedly. This represented the punishment of Sisyphus claiming that his cleverness surpassed Zeus causing the god to make the boulder roll away from Sisyphus binding Sisyphus to an eternity of frustration.

King Tantalus
Tantalus
Tantalus was the ruler of an ancient western Anatolian city called either after his name, as "Tantalís", "the city of Tantalus", or as "Sipylus", in reference to Mount Sipylus, at the foot of which his city was located and whose ruins were reported to be still visible in the beginning of the...

was also in Tartarus after he cut up his son Pelops
Pelops
In Greek mythology, Pelops , was king of Pisa in the Peloponnesus. He was the founder of the House of Atreus through his son of that name....

, boiled him, and served him as food when he was invited to dine with the gods. He also stole the ambrosia
Ambrosia
In ancient Greek mythology, ambrosia is sometimes the food or drink of the Greek gods , often depicted as conferring ageless immortality upon whoever consumes it...

from the Gods and told his people its secrets. Another story mentioned that he held onto a golden dog forged by Hephaestus and stolen by Tantalus' friend Pandareus. Tantalus held onto the golden dog for safekeeping and later denied Pandareus that he had it. Tantalus's punishment for his actions (now a proverbial term for temptation without satisfaction) was to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from his grasp. Whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any. Over his head towers a threatening stone like that of Sisyphus.

Ixion
Ixion
In Greek mythology, Ixion was king of the Lapiths, the most ancient tribe of Thessaly, and a son of Ares, or Leonteus, or Antion and Perimele, or the notorious evildoer Phlegyas, whose name connotes "fiery". Peirithoös was his son...

was the king of the Lapiths, the most ancient tribe of Thessaly. Ixion got mad at his father-in-law and ended up pushing him onto a bed of coal and woods, committing the first kin-related murder. The princes of other lands ordered that Ixion be denied of any sin cleansing. Zeus took pity on Ixion and invited him to a meal on Olympus. But when Ixion saw Hera
Hera
Hera was the wife and one of three sisters of Zeus in the Olympian pantheon of Greek mythology and religion. Her chief function was as the goddess of women and marriage. Her counterpart in the religion of ancient Rome was Juno. The cow and the peacock were sacred to her...

, he fell in love with her and did some under-the-table caressing until Zeus signaled him to stop. After finding a place for Ixion to sleep, Zeus created a cloud-clone of Hera named Nephele
Nephele
In Greek mythology, Nephele was a cloud nymph who figured prominently in the story of Phrixus and Helle.Greek myth also has it that Nephele is the cloud whom Zeus created in the image of Hera to trick Ixion to test his integrity after displaying his lust for Hera during a feast as a guest of Zeus...

to test him. Ixion made love to her, which resulted in the birth of Centaurus
Centaurus (Greek mythology)
Centaurus is the father of the race of mythological beasts known as the centaurs or Ixionidae. The centaurs are half man, half horse; having the torso of a man extending where the neck of a horse should be. They were said in Greek mythology to be wild, savage, and lustful...

who mated with some Magnesian mares on Mount Pelion thus engendered the race of Centaurs (who are called the Ixionidae from their descent). Zeus drove Ixion from Mount Olympus and then struck him with a thunderbolt. He was punished by being tied to a winged flaming wheel that was always spinning: first in the sky and then in Tartarus. Only when Orpheus came down to the Underworld to rescue Eurydice did it stop spinning because of the music Orpheus was playing. Ixion being strapped to the flaming wheel represented his burning lust.

In some versions, the Danaides
Daughters of Danaus
In Greek mythology, the Daughters of Danaus or Danaids were the fifty daughters of Danaus. They were to marry the fifty sons of Danaus's twin brother Aegyptus, a mythical king of Egypt...

murdered their husbands and were punished in Tartarus by being forced to carry water in a jug to fill a bath which will thereby wash off their sins, but the jugs were actually sieves so the water always leaked out.

The giant Tityos
Tityos
Tityos was a giant from Greek mythology.-Story:Tityos was the son of Elara; his father was Zeus. Zeus hid Elara from his wife, Hera, by placing her deep beneath the earth. Tityos grew so large that he split his mother's womb, and was carried to term by Gaia, the Earth. Once grown, Tityos...

was slain by Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

and Artemis
Artemis
Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...

after attempting to rape Leto
Leto
In Greek mythology, Leto is a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe. The island of Kos is claimed as her birthplace. In the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins, Apollo and Artemis, the Letoides, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eyes of Zeus...

on Hera's behalf. As punishment, Zeus has Tityos stretched out in Tartarus and tortured by two vulture
Vulture
Vulture is the name given to two groups of convergently evolved scavenging birds, the New World Vultures including the well-known Californian and Andean Condors, and the Old World Vultures including the birds which are seen scavenging on carcasses of dead animals on African plains...

s who fed on his liver. This punishment is extremely similar to that of the Titan
Titan (mythology)
In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age....

Prometheus
Prometheus
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals...

.

King Salmoneus
Salmoneus
In Greek mythology, Salmoneus was the son of Aeolus and Enarete, the brother of Athamas, Sisyphus, Cretheus, Perieres, Deionus, Canace, Alcyone, and Perimede. Salmoneus was the father of Tyro by his first wife Alcidice, the second one being Sidero....

was also mentioned to have been imprisoned in Tartarus after passing himself off as Zeus causing the real Zeus to smite him with a thunderbolt.

According to Plato

Plato

(c. 427 BC), Rhadamanthus

Rhadamanthus

In Greek mythology, Rhadamanthus was a wise king, the son of Zeus and Europa. Later accounts even make him out to be one of the judges of the dead. His brothers were Sarpedon and Minos . Rhadamanthus was raised by Asterion. He had two sons, Gortys and Erythrus. Other sources In Greek mythology,...

, Aeacus

Aeacus

Aeacus was a mythological king of the island of Aegina in the Saronic Gulf.He was son of Zeus and Aegina, a daughter of the river-god Asopus. He was born on the island of Oenone or Oenopia, to which Aegina had been carried by Zeus to secure her from the anger of her parents, and whence this...

and Minos

Minos

In Greek mythology, Minos was a king of Crete, son of Zeus and Europa. Every year he made King Aegeus pick seven men and seven women to go to Daedalus' creation, the labyrinth, to be eaten by The Minotaur. After his death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades. The Minoan civilization of Crete...

were the judges of the dead and chose who went to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus judged Asian souls; Aeacus judged European souls and Minos was the deciding vote and judge of the Greek.

Plato also proposes the concept that sinners were cast under the ground to be punished in accordance with their sins in the Myth of Er

Myth of Er

The Myth of Er is an eschatological legend that concludes Plato's The Republic . The story includes an account of the cosmos and the afterlife that for many centuries greatly influenced religious, philosophical and scientific thought....

. Cronus, the ruler of the Titans, was thrown down into the pits of Tartarus by his children.

There were a number of entrances to Tartarus in Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

. One was in Aornum

Aornum

Aornum was an oracle in Ancient Greece, located in Thesprotia in a cave called Charonium which gave forth poisonous vapours. The name of the cave, "Charon's Cave", reflects the belief that it was an entrance for Hades, the Greek underworld. In a version of the myth, Orpheus travels to Aornum to...

Roman mythology

In Roman mythology, Tartarus is the place where sinners are sent. Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

describes it in the Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

as a gigantic place, surrounded by the flaming river Phlegethon

Phlegethon

In Greek mythology, the river Phlegethon or Pyriphlegethon was one of the five rivers in the infernal regions of the underworld, along with the rivers Styx, Lethe, Cocytus, and Acheron...

and triple walls to prevent sinners from escaping from it. It is guarded by a hydra

Lernaean Hydra

In Greek mythology, the Lernaean Hydra was an ancient nameless serpent-like chthonic water beast, with reptilian traits, that possessed many heads — the poets mention more heads than the vase-painters could paint, and for each head cut off it grew two more — and poisonous breath so virulent even...

with fifty black gaping jaws, which sits at a screeching gate protected by columns of solid adamant

Adamant

Adamant and similar words are used to refer to any especially hard substance, whether composed of diamond, some other gemstone, or some type of metal. Both adamant and diamond derive from the Greek word αδαμας , meaning "untameable"...

ine, a substance akin to diamond - so hard that nothing will cut through it. Inside, there is a castle with wide walls, and a tall iron turret. Tisiphone

Tisiphone

Tisiphone is the name of two figures in Greek mythology.-Erinyes:Tisiphone was one of the Erinyes or Furies, and sister of Alecto and Megaera. She was the one who punished crimes of murder: parricide, fratricide and homicide...

, one of the Erinyes

Erinyes

In Greek mythology the Erinyes from Greek ἐρίνειν " pursue, persecute"--sometimes referred to as "infernal goddesses" -- were female chthonic deities of vengeance. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as "those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath"...

who represents revenge, stands guard sleepless at the top of this turret lashing a whip. There is a pit inside which is said to extend down into the earth twice as far as the distance from the lands of the living to Olympus

Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece, located on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, about 100 kilometres away from Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks. The highest peak Mytikas, meaning "nose", rises to 2,917 metres...

. At the bottom of this pit lie the Titans

Titan (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age....

, the twin sons of Aloeus

Aloeus

Aloeus can indicate one of two characters in Greek mythology:*Aloeus, the son of Poseidon and Canace, husband first of Iphimedeia and later of Eriboea , and father of Salmoneus , and the eponym of Otus and Ephialtes, collectively known as the Aloadae. These giants made war on the gods and...

, and many other sinners. Still more sinners are contained inside Tartarus, with punishments similar to those of Greek myth.

New Testament

Tartarus is only known in Hellenistic Jewish literature from the Greek text of 1 Enoch 20:2 where Uriel

Uriel

Uriel is one of the archangels of post-Exilic Rabbinic tradition, and also of certain Christian traditions...

is the jailer of 200 angels that sinned.

In the New Testament the noun Tartarus does not occur but tartaroo (ταρταρόω, "throw to Tartarus") a shortened form of the classical Greek verb kata-tartaroo ("throw down to Tartarus") does appear in 2 Peter 2:4. Liddell Scott provides other uses for the shortened form of this verb including Acusilaus

Acusilaus

Acusilaus of Argos, son of Cabas or Scabras, was a Greek logographer and mythographer who lived in the latter half of the 6th century BC but whose work survives only in fragments and summaries of individual points....

(5th century BC), Joannes Laurentius Lydus

Joannes Laurentius Lydus

John the Lydian or John Lydus was a 6th century Byzantine administrator and writer on antiquarian subjects. His works are of interest for specific data about classical events.- Life and career :...

(4th century AD) and the Scholiast on Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...

, Eumenides

Eumenides

Eumenides may refer to:* Another name for the Erinyes, Greek deities of vengeance* The Eumenides, the third part of Aeschylus' Greek tragedy, the Oresteia...

who cites Pindar

Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...

relating how the earth tried to tartaro "cast down" Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

after he overcame the Python. In classical texts the longer form kata-tartaroo is often related to the throwing of the Titans

Titan (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia and Uranus, that ruled during the legendary Golden Age....

down to Tartarus.

The ESV

English Standard Version

The English Standard Version is an English translation of the Christian Bible. It is a revision of the 1971 edition of the Revised Standard Version...

is one of several English versions which gives the Greek reading Tartarus as a footnote:

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [1] and committed them to chains [2] of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;"

Footnotes [1] 2:4 Greek Tartarus

Adam Clarke

Adam Clarke was a British Methodist theologian and Biblical scholar, born in the townland of Moybeg Kirley near Tobermore in Ireland...

reasoned that Peter's use of language relating to the Titans was an indication that the ancient Greeks had heard of a Biblical punishment of fallen angels. Some Evangelical Christian commentaries distinguish Tartarus as a place for wicked angels and Gehenna as a place for wicked humans on the basis of this verse. Other Evangelical commentaries, in reconciling that some fallen angels are chained in Tartarus, yet some not, attempt to distinguish between one type of fallen angels and another.

Biblical Pseudepigrapha

The Book of Enoch

Book of Enoch

The Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish religious work, traditionally ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. It is not part of the biblical canon as used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel...

, dated to 400-200 BC, states that God placed the archangel Uriel

Uriel

Uriel is one of the archangels of post-Exilic Rabbinic tradition, and also of certain Christian traditions...

"in charge of the world and of Tartarus" (20:2). In 1 Enoch, Tartarus is generally understood to be the place where the fallen Watchers are imprisoned.

Greek mythology

Roman mythology

New Testament

Biblical Pseudepigrapha

See also