Lake of fire  The lake of fire appears in both ancient Egyptian and Christian religion as a place of after-death punishment of the wicked. The phrase is used in five verses of the Book of Revelation. In the biblical context, the concept seems analogous to the Jewish Gehenna, or the more common concept of Hell. The image of the lake of fire was taken up by the early Christian Hippolytus of Rome in about the year 230 and has continued to be used by modern Christians. Prior to Christianity, Plato identified the lake 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. Richard H. Wilkinson has written: An image in the Papyrus of Ani (ca. 1250 BC), a version of the Book of the Dead, has been described as follows: The 1995 edition of the "International Standard Bible Encyclopedia" says that the Egyptian lake of fire is too remote to be relevant to the use of "lake of fire" in the Book of Revelation.   has Jesus himself use the image of a punishing unquenchable fire: "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire." (New American Bible, Revised Edition)  The Book of Revelation, written sometime in the last half of the first century AD, has five verses that mention a "lake of fire" (, "limnos tou pyros")  A commonly accepted and traditional interpretation is that the "lake of fire" and the "second death" are symbolic of eternal pain, pain of loss and perhaps pain of the senses, as punishment for wickedness. However, the Greek words translated "torment" or "tormented" in English come from the root , "basanos," with the original meaning of "the testing of gold and silver as media of exchange by the proving stone" and a later connotation of a person, especially a slave, "severely tested by torture" to reveal truth. Jehovah's Witnesses interpret the "lake of fire" and "second death" of the Book of Revelation as referring to a complete and definitive annihilation of those cast into it. Seventh-day Adventists believe in annihilation as well. They too believe that the lake of fire passage is referring to extinction, not to an eternal place of torment as understood in the mainstream Protestant interpretation.