After death we go…?
Heaven and Hell
A History of the Afterlife
Bart D Ehrman
Oneworld 2020
Hb, 352pp, £20, ISBN 9781786077202
Many Christians believe that their doctrines sprang fully-formed from the Jewish origins of Christianity. But if this were so, many beliefs would be very different, including those about Heaven and Hell – where we go (if anywhere) after we die.
Bart Ehrman has written many popular books on early Christianity and its variant forms. His latest might puzzle some: why devote the first 80 pages to Greek beliefs? The answer is simple: the greatest influence on culture and philosophy in the Holy Land at the time of Jesus was Greek. Everyone with any education spoke Greek. The books of the New Testament were written in Greek. Jewish and Christian beliefs on the afterlife were inevitably influenced by Greek beliefs.
What will be startling for Christians is that nowhere in the Old Testament can we find the traditional Christian views of the afterlife, writes Ehrman. The OT prophets were more concerned with the ultimate fate of the nation of Israel, not of individual people. Once beliefs about the fate of individuals did begin to develop, there was nothing about dying and going straight to Heaven or Hell, as most Christians today believe; Jewish apocalypticists (including Jesus) believed that “on the Day of Judgment… the righteous would be given eternal life and the wicked would be annihilated forever”.
