Heaven and Hell

A History of the Afterlife

Bart D. Ehrman

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781501136740
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501136757
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Teologia cristiana

A New York Times bestselling historian of early Christianity takes on two of the most gripping questions of human existence: where did the ideas of heaven and hell come from and why do they endure?

What happens when we die? A recent Pew Research poll showed that 72% of Americans believe in a literal heaven and 58% believe in a literal hell. Most people who hold these beliefs are Christian and assume they are the age-old teachings of the Bible. But eternal rewards and punishments are found nowhere in the Old Testament and are not what Jesus or his disciples taught.

So where did these ideas come from?

In this “eloquent understanding of how death is viewed through many spiritual traditions” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Bart Ehrman recounts the long history of the afterlife, ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh up to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. He discusses ancient guided tours of heaven and hell, in which a living person observes the sublime blessings of heaven for those who are saved and the horrifying torments of hell for those who are damned. Some of these accounts take the form of near death experiences, the oldest on record, with intriguing similarities to those reported today.

One of Ehrman’s startling conclusions is that there never was a single Greek, Jewish, or Christian understanding of the afterlife, but numerous competing views. Moreover, these views did not come from nowhere; they were intimately connected with the social, cultural, and historical worlds out of which they emerged. Only later, in the early Christian centuries, did they develop into notions of eternal bliss or damnation widely accepted today.

In this “elegant history” (The New Yorker), Ehrman helps us reflect on where our ideas of the afterlife come from. With his “richly layered narrative” (The Boston Globe) he assures us that even if there may be something to hope for when we die, there certainly is nothing to fear.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• 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
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright