Publishers Weekly
02/14/2022
This illuminating deep dive by religious studies professor Ehrman (Heaven and Hell) examines the roots of Christian views on the afterlife. Ehrman studies the cultural contexts in which Christian afterlife stories developed and posits that the stories “emphasize what matters in life, providing insight into the purpose, meaning, and goals of human existence so as to encourage certain ways of being and living in the world.” The author looks back at progenitors of the Christian narratives, including Odysseus’s and Aeneas’s descents into Hades and early apocryphal Jewish texts such as the “Book of Watchers” and the Apocalypse of Zephaniah. Ehrman focuses his study on four noncanonical early Christian texts, explicating how the narratives impart Christian ethics and urge non-Christians to convert by threatening such hellish fates as being “confined in a narrow place, ringed by fire, and forced to gnaw their tongues.” By analyzing these narratives in the context of ancient Christians’ world, lived experiences, and culture, Ehrman revives their “priorities, beliefs, practices, and histories,” crafting a broad but detailed account of early Christian notions of heaven, hell, and purgatory. The result is an edifying origin story for contemporary Christian conceptions of the afterlife. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
Named by the New Yorker as a Best Book of 2022
“[An] illuminating deep dive. . . . An edifying origin story for contemporary Christian conceptions of the afterlife.”—Publishers Weekly
“Ehrman shows how Homer’s egalitarian afterlife, where all meet the same fate, gave way to Virgil’s version, where an elect few enjoy eternal rewards while the rest suffer torments. . . . As Ehrman notes, in every era, such tales aimed to teach readers ‘how to live in the here and now.’”—New Yorker
“When the late rapper 2Pac argued in song that we on earth are probably in hell already but don’t know it, and that a crackhead is right now suffering ‘eternal fire,’ he was grappling with weighty biblical and theological issues taken up by Bart D. Ehrman in his brilliant and provocative book Journeys to Heaven and Hell. Ehrman’s work richly informs us about how visions and tours of the afterlife shape our before-death existence—what we should do with our purse, our person, our proselytizing, and how we should view the power and politics of God. This wise and insightful tome by an erstwhile believer, and one of my absolute favorite biblical scholars, stimulates the mind and charges the spirit of a hopeful Black evangelical like me.”—Michael Eric Dyson, author of Entertaining Race: Performing Blackness in America
“Bart D. Ehrman explores the Greco-Roman background of Christian afterlife and provides a much-needed reassessment of its Jewish apocalyptic roots. This is an extremely well-documented and well-written book, a real intellectual pleasure to read.”—Pierluigi Piovanelli, University of Ottawa and École pratique des hautes études
“In a characteristically scholarly yet engaging style, Bart Ehrman shines new light on ancient accounts of visits by the living to the realms of the dead. This is an important contribution to the reevaluation of the rich literary heritage of early Christianity.”—Judith Lieu, University of Cambridge
“In Journeys to Heaven and Hell, Ehrman examines a range of apocryphal texts related to the afterlife, but his examinations of such issues as the ethical problem of wealth, conversion, and universal salvation reveal how much the study of these journeys to other worlds can contribute to the study of a wide range of areas of interest in this world.”—Tony Burke, editor of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures
