Heaven and Hell
A History of the Afterlife
Heaven and Hell
A History of the Afterlife
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Hardcover
£20.00
Publisher: Oneworld
ISBN: 9781786077202
Number of Pages: 352
Published: 02/04/2020
Width: 15.3 cm
Height: 23.4 cm
Whether we believe in them or not, we are all familiar with the concepts of heaven and hell. There was a time, however, when no one thought they would go to either of these places after they died. In fact, Jesus didn’t believe a dead person’s soul was bound for heaven or hell, and these ideas are nowhere to be found in the Old Testament. So, where did they come from? From the Epic of Gilgamesh to the writings of Augustine, Bart Ehrman provides a fascinating and thought-provoking history of the afterlife. He traces how beliefs changed over time and reveals the social, cultural and historical roots of competing views held by Greeks, Jews and Christians. Ultimately, he shows that many of our ideas about heaven and hell emerged long after Jesus’s time, through the struggle to explain the injustices of our world
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter One: Guided Tours of Heaven and Hell
Chapter Two: The Fear of Death
Chapter Three: Life After Death Before There Was Life After Death
Chapter Four: Will Justice Be Done? The Rise of Postmortem Rewards and Punishments
Chapter Five: Death After Death in the Hebrew Bible
Chapter Six: Dead Bodies That Return to Life: The Resurrection in Ancient Israel
Chapter Seven: Why Wait for the Resurrection? Life After Death Right After Death
Chapter Eight: Jesus and the Afterlife
Chapter Nine: The Afterlife After Jesus’s Life: Paul the Apostle
Chapter Ten: Altering the Views of Jesus: The Later Gospels
Chapter Eleven: The Afterlife Mysteries of the Book of Revelation
Chapter Twelve: Eternal Life in the Flesh
Chapter Thirteen: Tactile Ecstasy and Torment in the Christian Hereafter
Chapter Fourteen: Who Will Inherit the Blessings? Purgatory, Reincarnation, and Salvation for All
Afterword
Notes
Index
