Let's look to archeology/anthropology to see which one came first, we can use the least cucked sources to do this.

I'm betting on paganism because the evolution of religion goes from:

animism (a spirit in everything, and spirits all around us)

to shamanism (specialized human roles in establishing contact with spirits)

to totemism (some spirits are more contacted than others, some spirits are higher and more powerful than others, and humans make covenants or worship with specific spirits)

to polytheism (some spirits are set above the rest for worship, occupying a special role in the universe, etc. they become gods, and the gods are often in conflict with one another)

to monolateralism (basically the covenant of worship with the some of the gods acquires the characteristic that they should be worshipped to the exclusion of other gods, that the worship of other gods must be abandoned)

to monotheism (the outright denial of the existence of other gods, there is one god alone who is responsible for everything, other gods are transformed into servants of the one god, such as angels, or enemies of the god, such as demons, the various spirits are also integrated into this new framework)

then comes the development of a variety of ideologies such as gnosticism (due to the paranoia of the god's enemy, and the insistence of the influence of the enemies of god having more influence on the world than the god themselves, the god becomes more distant, taking a backseat as his enemy comes to the forefront, the true god is behind the enemy, who assumes the role of a more deistic nature)

deism (the enemy of the god is removed from the equation, leaving only a distant god, the god thus becomes less involved in the world, responsible for less phenomena, and requiring less worship, eventually becoming the "first mover" who sets up the universe than does nothing else)

then pantheism (the god becomes synonymous with the universe, everything exists in the mind of god)

and finally atheism (the god is now declared so irrelevant that he may as well not exist, there is also no longer any reason to believe, since all the phenomena that caused belief in gods was now better explained by scientific discovery, and the discoveries of science had also cast a lot of the essential assertions involved in religion to come into serious question, so people stop believing in god entirely)

then comes times of hardship and regime change, in which religion is revived, but in a cynical fashion, where it's value is no longer seen in it's ability to explain anything, in fact, most advocates never mention whether it's true or not, as if they do not believe there's any fact to it, but instead they sell it solely on it's value in being a means of social engineering, the value is in how it modifies the minds and actions of the people who believe in it, it's never mentioned as granting them supernatural favors on earth, nor in the afterlife (such as saving their souls from hell), instead, the value is solely in this earth and comes exclusively from the effects belief has on the people who hold them.

the natural evolution of this is the revision of the religion to best suit it's new purpose, since the sole value is social engineering, the proposals are to rewrite the holy books in order to better reflect the social and political purposes that the text is intended to serve, according to biblical archeology, this had happened many times in the course of the Bible's creation, as different deletions, additions, and alterations were made in order to serve political purposes as regimes changed places.

I would prefer to cite finding of archeology and anthropology over just taking the Bible at it's word, and using it as the only source.

First, I knew that would happen, the visit was no surprise, second, the fact that I got the visit meant that I must be doing something right, third, the purpose of doing this was to cast out fears from you by purposefully taking all the most foolish of risks and showing you how bad it can get at it's worst, so you could be motivated to take lesser risks in service of the cause, I'm being the little girl that muslim groups send out in front of them in order to soak up bullets and step on mines.

Hercules, a demi-god son of God, experienced life as a mortal, and ultimately went to the underworld to save someone who died by conquering death for both them and himself

Wrong, none of that was true.

Hercules was he son of Zeus and a nymph, his divinity was always evident, he became a great hero among his people, renowned for his amazing feats of strength and intelligence, and then married a woman and had children with her.

It was then when Hera, the jealous wife of Zeus, cursed Hercules with madness so that he would slaughter his wife and children in his sleep, thinking that that were enemies on the battlefield.

It was then that Hercules was tasked with performing 10 labors for his mortal enemy, a powerful king, on penalty of death if he should not or should he fail, his enemy, of course, made the labors so difficult and deadly that Hercules was sure to die.

He finds ways of performing them, demonstrating that he had quite a bit of intelligence as opposed to just brute strength alone, the enemy he was performing the tasks for complained that two of the tasks were completed by someone else, the cleaning of the stables by the redirected river, and the collecting of the golden apples by the atlas, the titan who held up the skies, Hercules rebuked that the tasks were indeed done and that he was the catalyst for their completion, so rather than Hercules being executed, he was instead given two new tasks.

The last of these last two tasks was that he should go into the underworld and retrieve the hellhound Cerebus, who guarded it's gates, Hercules succeeds in this by disguising himself as one of the dead, making his way to Hades, and persuading him to allow Hercules to borrow the dog, Hades agrees, and Hercules brings Cerebus to the waiting king, Cerebus then devours the dude, so that he could not find a flaw in how they were accomplished in order to issue more tasks, and the last of the tasks are then completed.

However, completing the tasks brought great fame to Hercules, and his hubris was therefore not sufficiently dispersed, so he was given one more sentence: that he had to live for years dressed in drag and serve as a handmaiden for a queen, which he did, he rather enjoyed is time spent this way, and ended up marrying the queen who he was serving when his time of service was up.

Never did he go to the underworld for the sake of saving a soul, the story of Orpheus is a better example (and probably the reason why Hercules didn't even try to rescue his wife and children from there, knowing how that task would likely turn out of he did), even then, the story of Orpheus also had a lot of differences from being the way you described.

Orpheus was the son of Apollo, thus gifted with musical talent, he was widely loved for his music, he even had a lover who was a nymph that came to listen to his songs.

One day his lover was bitten in the heel by a venomous snake, and she died shortly thereafter, thus Apollo took it upon himself to charm his way into the underworld using his music alone, he put Cerebus to sleep, soothed the torments of the souls of Tartarus, and made his way to Hades, who had his wife Persephone with him in those months (fall/winter).

Hades was moved, but stood firm that he could make an exception for no one, Persephone, on the other hand, was so deeply moved that she persuaded her husband (who had loved nothing more than her) to grant one exception in this case alone (due to how she had used her foresight to see that Orpheus himself had not long to live, according to fate).

The exception was granted, and Orpheus was instructed to make his way to the surface, he was promised that none of the guardians of the underworld would try to stop him, however, he must keep the memory of his lover in his mind at all times, and must never look back, only walk forwards.

So on he went, during the return trip, none of the hazards that he had conquered interfered with him, just as Hades promised, and he played a song about his lover that he had written, describing her as beautiful and full of life, on he went, however, during his journey, he recalled how the Gods were often capricious with mortals, and thought "what if I'd been tricked?", this discomfort, that all his trials would be for nothing kept on building in him, so, just as he was about to leave, he looked back.

Hades had not tried to trick him, he had indeed seen his lover, she had been following him and reconstituting her body as she walked, she had been using his memory of her to do this, and she was almost finished, she was not finished however, and was still very evidently dead, potentially, what Orpheus saw was his lover lacking something like skin, a horrifying sight to behold, and a grim reminder of her death that had purged his memories of her as a vibrant and lively nymph.

At this point, where he was horrified by her visage, and hit with the full reality of her passing, she began to sink back into the underworld, falling apart as the process of her revival was being reversed, until she was once again a ghost, back in the elysian fields, never to return again.

Orpheus then spent his days on the surface writing and singing music that was a sharp turnaround from his usual fare, he had previously been known for songs of joy, hope, and celebration, now his music was the opposite, and just as his songs of joy had brought happiness to others, now his songs od sorrow brought the same feelings in hose who heard it, the people were upset by him, and gathered in order to drive him out from among them, they ended up driving him into the river, where he drowned.

In the underworld, he then became the court musician for Hades and Persephone, reunited with his love, he was now able to play songs of any sort for them, a bittersweet conclusion to the tale.