Figure 2.2. The Place of the Dead (Hades, Sheol) When the New Testament talks about Jesus’ descent and all that is accomplished in it, we need to keep this conceptual background in mind. It is to those particular NT texts that we now turn. In sum, these texts teach that when Christ died, he experienced death as all humans do: his body was buried, and his human soul went (“descended”) to the place of the dead. He descended to the righteous compartment of the dead (“paradise,” Lk 23:43), but