If the awnser is yes, did this dirrectley lead to Jews and Muslims adopting similar ideas about their own respective purgatories?
If the awnser is yes, did this dirrectley lead to Jews and Muslims adopting similar ideas about their own respective purgatories?
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It is not true that this idea began with Dante.
The idea is found in many Christian writings, including Augustine. It is affirmed very early, and is a reasonable interpretation of what the Bible says (though other interpretations are also reasonable).
Augustine also affirmed that there were levels and degrees of hell, and that not everyone there would be in a state of torment (importantly he believed children who were not baptized would still go to hell, but he assumed that their state would be much different than that of a sinner).
What Dante contributed is not the concept of hell as a place of punishment or of torment–what he contributed is a lot of imagery and structure which caught on with the popular imagination. Even at that, many of the things he discusses predate the Divine Comedy, as he draws from Greek philosophy and mythology, Medieval interpretations of hell, and Scholastic theology.