Heaven and Hell: History of Afterlife (audio)

UNC Chapel Hill Prof. Bart D. Ehrman, with Host Mitch Jeserich (Letters & Politics, 4/9/20, KPFA); Host Terry Gross (Fresh Air, NPR); Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Get off me, Michael (Sakka)

Bart Ehrman, a New York Times best-selling 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 72 percent of Americans believe in a literal heaven, 58 percent in a literal hell.

Lucifer cum Satan = Buddhist Vepacitti

Most people who hold these beliefs are Christians who ASSUME they are age-old teachings of the Bible.

But eternal rewards and eternal punishments are found nowhere in the Old Testament (the pre-Roman Empire version of the Bible) and are not what Jesus or his disciples taught.

Sacred Jewish lit based on older Sumerian texts

So where did the ideas come from? In clear and compelling terms, Prof. Bart Ehrman recounts the long history of the afterlife, ranging from the pre-Jewish Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh up to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers.

• AUDIO: Bart Ehrman Pacifica radio interview, KPFA
• AUDIO: Terry Gross talks to Prof. Bart Ehrman, NPR

We pick and choose what we like about Jesus

Ehrman 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 the 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. What there was were numerous competing views.

• Are we in the "End Times"? Apocalypse is the Greek word for the Latin word "Revelation"

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 the notions of eternal bliss or eternal damnation widely accepted today.

As a historian and professor of religious studies, Ehrman does not [and obviously cannot since he is no mystic with direct experience of the beyond like meditators gain] provide a definitive answer to the question of what happens after death.

In Heaven and Hell, he does the next best thing: By helping us reflect on where our ideas of the afterlife come from, he assures us that even if there may be something to hope for when we die, there is certainly nothing to fear. More + AUDIO

Jesus was nailed to a tree in one story, a cross in another. This tree in Colombia is inspiring the faithful to greater faith and pilgrimages to see it like a visage of the Virgin Mary or Mother Miriam.