Hm. Not worth getting into a line-by-line breakdown, but I'd argue anything said about hell in the Gospels (or the NT) could be read purely metaphorically without much strain.

A couple of the examples you've mentioned:

Jesus tells his listeners on one occasion: don't fear men who can throw your body into prison; rather fear God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Seems to me he could just be saying something like: "They can take our lives and destroy our flesh, but we must not betray the Spirit of the movement; the Truth of God's kingdom."

This is a pretty common sentiment among revolutionaries.

And that stuff in Revelation about a lake of burning sulphur, which again seems clearly to be for destruction and/or punishment. And so on.

I think it's a fairly common view that the author of Revelation was writing about recent events in Jerusalem (Roman/Jewish wars) using apocalyptic, highly figurative language. I'm no expert, but this is my understanding.

The Greek for hell used often in the NT is "gehenna" and (from my recall) refers to a garbage dump that was kept outside the walls of the city. Jesus might have been using this as a literal direct comparison to the hell that awaited sinners... but it seems more likely to me he just meant it as symbolic.

Anyway, tough to know what original authors/speakers believed. It is admittedly my pet theory that a lot of western religion is the erection of concrete literal dogmas from what was only intended as metaphors, teaching fables, etc. Low probability I'm right.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego

This was just a joke funny to only former fundamentalists like me. :)