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Document Type: | Book |
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All Authors / Contributors: |
Bart D Ehrman |
ISBN: | 9781501136733 1501136739 |
OCLC Number: | 1191062380 |
Description: | 352 pages |
Contents: | Guided tours of heaven and hell -- The fear of death -- Life after death before there was life after death -- Will justice be done? : the rise of postmortem rewards and punishments -- Death after death in the Hebrew Bible -- Dead bodies that return to life : the resurrection in ancient Israel -- Why wait for the resurrection? : life after death right after death -- Jesus and the afterlife -- The afterlife after Jesus' life : Paul the Apostle -- Altering the views of Jesus : the later gospels -- The afterlife mysteries of the book of revelation -- Eternal life in the flesh -- Tactile ecstasy and torment in the Christian hereafter -- Who will inherit the blessings? : purgatory, reincarnation, and salvation for all. |
Responsibility: | Bart D. Ehrman. |
Abstract:
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?00From 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.
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