“A Christian variation of the Greek hero myth infers that Jesus, like the celebrated figures of Dionysus, Orpheus, Heracles (Hercules), and Aeneas, descended (presumably after the Crucifixion) into these “dark pits,” where he “made his proclamation to the imprisoned spirits” (1 Pet. 3: 19; cf. 1 Pet. 4: 6). After having experienced both earthly life and a postmortem descent to the Underworld, Jesus then ascends to the uppermost realm of the three-tier cosmos.”