Thanks for the response, and for the Ephesians reference.

This question has fascinated me for some time. There is no mention of this in the Nicene Creed, yet the descent into hell appears in the (I believe later) Apostles' and Athanasian Creeds. I therefore wondered why that is, and how the change came about. I've speculated that the whole story is allegorical, i.e. something akin to Dante's Inferno, Goethe's Faust, even Jung's confrontation with the unconscious. These are all about a psychological/spiritual inner journey, death/rebirth, rather than a literal story about a human being.

The Ephesians passage is very interesting. In my preferred edition (NRSV) it reads as follows: “It is said, 'when he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people'. (When it says, 'He ascended', what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended...”) This means in effect that this is merely speculation on the part of the writer. Personally I see no reason to assume that if someone has journeyed upwards from the Earth, then he must necessarily have also journeyed downwards.

Also, as we know, Paul never met or followed the living Jesus. He is much more interested in a Cosmic Christ figure, and says that his teachings stem from his visions of this figure. All this might be something akin to Jung's confrontation with the unconscious/journey into the underworld, and therefore needs to be interpreted accordingly, again not necessarily literally.