Odysseus and Jesus Visit Hades and Return by Joseph Francis Alward In Homer's The Odyssey, written about 800 BCE, the hero, Odysseus, has been away from his home and family for twenty years; he's told by a witch, Circe, that he must travel to Hades to learn how to return home, and this is a source of considerable grief to him. Hades is variously known from ancient times as the "world of the dead", the "land of the dead", or, simply, the grave, and is a place from which no mortal man has ever returned; Jesus learned that he, too, would visit Hades. Dennis R. MacDonald, in his book, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, shows that Mark used the broad outline of the story of Odysseus trip to Hades to construct a fictional tale of events in Jesus' life just prior to his trip to Hades.