The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife

The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife PDF Author: Jan N. Bremmer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134768222
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Belief in the afterlife is still very much alive in Western civilisation, even though the truth of its existence is no longer universally accepted. Surprisingly, however, heaven, hell and the immortal soul were all ideas which arrived relatively late in the ancient world. Originally Greece and Israel - the cultures that gave us Christianity - had only the vaguest ideas of an afterlife. So where did these concepts come from and why did they develop? In this fascinating, learned, but highly readable book, Jan N. Bremmer - one of the foremost authorities on ancient religion - takes a fresh look at the major developments in the Western imagination of the afterlife, from the ancient Greeks to the modern near-death experience.

The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife

The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife PDF Author: Jan N. Bremmer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134768222
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
Belief in the afterlife is still very much alive in Western civilisation, even though the truth of its existence is no longer universally accepted. Surprisingly, however, heaven, hell and the immortal soul were all ideas which arrived relatively late in the ancient world. Originally Greece and Israel - the cultures that gave us Christianity - had only the vaguest ideas of an afterlife. So where did these concepts come from and why did they develop? In this fascinating, learned, but highly readable book, Jan N. Bremmer - one of the foremost authorities on ancient religion - takes a fresh look at the major developments in the Western imagination of the afterlife, from the ancient Greeks to the modern near-death experience.

The Early Greek Concept of the Soul

The Early Greek Concept of the Soul PDF Author: Jan Bremmer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691219354
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Jan Bremmer presents a provocative picture of the historical development of beliefs regarding the soul in ancient Greece. He argues that before Homer the Greeks distinguished between two types of soul, both identified with the individual: the free soul, which possessed no psychological attributes and was active only outside the body, as in dreams, swoons, and the afterlife; and the body soul, which endowed a person with life and consciousness. Gradually this concept of two kinds of souls was replaced by the idea of a single soul. In exploring Greek ideas of human souls as well as those of plants and animals, Bremmer illuminates an important stage in the genesis of the Greek mind.

Heaven on Earth

Heaven on Earth PDF Author: Joshua Muravchik
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1893554783
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
"The search for the Promised Land took socialists in diverse directions: revolution, communes and kibbutzim, social democracy, communism, fascism, Third Worldism. But none of these paths led to the prophesied utopia. Nowhere did socialists succeed in creating societies of easy abundance or in midwifing the birth of a "New Man," as their theory promised. Some socialist governments abandoned their grandiose goals and satisfied themselves with making slight modifications to capitalism, while others plowed ahead doggedly, often inducing staggering human catastrophes. Then, after two hundred years of wishful thinking and fitful governance, socialism suddenly imploded in the 1990s in a fin du siecle drama of falling walls, collapsing regimes and frantic revisions of doctrine."--BOOK JACKET.

Afterlife of Empire

Afterlife of Empire PDF Author: Jordanna Bailkin
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520289471
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
This book investigates how decolonization transformed British society in the 1950s and 1960s, and examines the relationship between the postwar and the postimperial.

Life Hereafter

Life Hereafter PDF Author: Paul Crittenden
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030542793
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
In this book, Paul Crittenden offers a critical guide to the problematic origins of biblical teaching about the afterlife and the way in which it was subsequently developed by Church authorities and theologians—Origen, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas in particular. In the post–Reformation era the focus falls on the challenges set by modern secularism. The tradition encompasses a body of interconnected themes: an apocalyptic war in which the Kingdom of God triumphs over Satan’s powers of darkness; salvation in Christ; the immortality of the soul; and finally the resurrection of the dead and the last judgment, ratifying an afterlife of eternal bliss for the morally good and punishment in hell for wrongdoers. The critique questions these beliefs on evidential, ethical, and philosophical grounds. The argument overall is that what lies beyond death is beyond knowledge. The one fundamental truth that can be distilled from the once compelling body of Christian eschatological belief—for believers and unbelievers alike—is the importance of living ethically.

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt PDF Author: Toby Wilkinson
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679604294
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 792

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Magisterial . . . [A] rich portrait of ancient Egypt’s complex evolution over the course of three millenniums.”—Los Angeles Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • Publishers Weekly In this landmark volume, one of the world’s most renowned Egyptologists tells the epic story of this great civilization, from its birth as the first nation-state to its absorption into the Roman Empire. Drawing upon forty years of archaeological research, award-winning scholar Toby Wilkinson takes us inside a tribal society with a pre-monetary economy and decadent, divine kings who ruled with all-too-recognizable human emotions. Here are the legendary leaders: Akhenaten, the “heretic king,” who with his wife Nefertiti brought about a revolution with a bold new religion; Tutankhamun, whose dazzling tomb would remain hidden for three millennia; and eleven pharaohs called Ramesses, the last of whom presided over the militarism, lawlessness, and corruption that caused a political and societal decline. Filled with new information and unique interpretations, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt is a riveting and revelatory work of wild drama, bold spectacle, unforgettable characters, and sweeping history. “With a literary flair and a sense for a story well told, Mr. Wilkinson offers a highly readable, factually up-to-date account.”—The Wall Street Journal “[Wilkinson] writes with considerable verve. . . . [He] is nimble at conveying the sumptuous pageantry and cultural sophistication of pharaonic Egypt.”—The New York Times

Afterlife

Afterlife PDF Author: Gary Soto
Publisher: Perfection Learning
ISBN: 9780756950415
Category : Ghost stories
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A senior at East Fresno High School lives on as a ghost after his brutal murder in the restroom of a club where he had gone to dance.

A Great Idea at the Time

A Great Idea at the Time PDF Author: Alex Beam
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458758575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Today the classics of the western canon, written by the proverbial ''dead white men,'' are cannon fodder in the culture wars. But in the 1950s and 1960s, they were a pop culture phenomenon. The Great Books of Western Civilization, fifty-four volumes chosen by intellectuals at the University of Chicago, began as an educational movement, and evolved into a successful marketing idea. Why did a million American households buy books by Hippocrates and Nicomachus from door-to-door salesmen? And how and why did the great books fall out of fashion? In A Great Idea at the Time Alex Beam explores the Great Books mania, in an entertaining and strangely poignant portrait of American popular culture on the threshold of the television age. Populated with memorable characters, A Great Idea at the Time will leave readers asking themselves: Have I read Lucretius's De Rerum Natura lately? If not, why not?

The Afterlife Is Where We Come From

The Afterlife Is Where We Come From PDF Author: Alma Gottlieb
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022633063X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
When a new baby arrives among the Beng people of West Africa, they see it not as being born, but as being reincarnated after a rich life in a previous world. Far from being a tabula rasa, a Beng infant is thought to begin its life filled with spiritual knowledge. How do these beliefs affect the way the Beng rear their children? In this unique and engaging ethnography of babies, Alma Gottlieb explores how religious ideology affects every aspect of Beng childrearing practices—from bathing infants to protecting them from disease to teaching them how to crawl and walk—and how widespread poverty limits these practices. A mother of two, Gottlieb includes moving discussions of how her experiences among the Beng changed the way she saw her own parenting. Throughout the book she also draws telling comparisons between Beng and Euro-American parenting, bringing home just how deeply culture matters to the way we all rear our children. All parents and anyone interested in the place of culture in the lives of infants, and vice versa, will enjoy The Afterlife Is Where We Come From. "This wonderfully reflective text should provide the impetus for formulating research possibilities about infancy and toddlerhood for this century." — Caren J. Frost, Medical Anthropology Quarterly “Alma Gottlieb’s careful and thought-provoking account of infancy sheds spectacular light upon a much neglected topic. . . . [It] makes a strong case for the central place of babies in anthropological accounts of religion. Gottlieb’s remarkably rich account, delivered after a long and reflective period of gestation, deserves a wide audience across a range of disciplines.”—Anthony Simpson, Critique of Anthropology

Posthumous Love

Posthumous Love PDF Author: Ramie Targoff
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022611046X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
For Dante and Petrarch, posthumous love was a powerful conviction. Like many of their contemporaries, both poets envisioned their encounters with their beloved in heaven—Dante with Beatrice, Petrarch with Laura. But as Ramie Targoff reveals in this elegant study, English love poetry of the Renaissance brought a startling reversal of this tradition: human love became definitively mortal. Exploring the boundaries that Renaissance English poets drew between earthly and heavenly existence, Targoff seeks to understand this shift and its consequences for English poetry. Targoff shows that medieval notions of the somewhat flexible boundaries between love in this world and in the next were hardened by Protestant reformers, who envisioned a total break between the two. Tracing the narrative of this rupture, she focuses on central episodes in poetic history in which poets developed rich and compelling compensations for the lack of posthumous love—from Thomas Wyatt’s translations of Petrarch’s love sonnets and the Elizabethan sonnet series of Shakespeare and Spencer to the carpe diem poems of the seventeenth century. Targoff’s centerpiece is Romeo and Juliet, where she considers how Shakespeare’s reworking of the Italian story stripped away any expectation that the doomed teenagers would reunite in heaven. Casting new light on these familiar works of poetry and drama, this book ultimately demonstrates that the negation of posthumous love brought forth a new mode of poetics that derived its emotional and aesthetic power from its insistence upon love’s mortal limits.