Journeys to Heaven and Hell

Journeys to Heaven and Hell PDF Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300265166
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
A New York Times best-selling scholar's illuminating exploration of the earliest Christian narrated journeys to heaven and hell “[An] illuminating deep dive . . . An edifying origin story for contemporary Christian conceptions of the afterlife.”—Publishers Weekly From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged. He examines how fundamental social experiences of the early Christian communities molded the conceptions of the afterlife that eventuated into the accepted doctrines of heaven, hell, and purgatory. Drawing on Greek and Roman epic poetry, early Jewish writings such as the Book of Watchers, and apocryphal Christian stories including the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Apocalypse of Peter, Ehrman demonstrates that ancient tours of the afterlife promoted reflection on matters of ethics, faith, ambition, and life’s meaning, the fruit of which has been codified into Christian belief today.

Journeys to Heaven and Hell

Journeys to Heaven and Hell PDF Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300265166
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Get Book

Book Description
A New York Times best-selling scholar's illuminating exploration of the earliest Christian narrated journeys to heaven and hell “[An] illuminating deep dive . . . An edifying origin story for contemporary Christian conceptions of the afterlife.”—Publishers Weekly From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged. He examines how fundamental social experiences of the early Christian communities molded the conceptions of the afterlife that eventuated into the accepted doctrines of heaven, hell, and purgatory. Drawing on Greek and Roman epic poetry, early Jewish writings such as the Book of Watchers, and apocryphal Christian stories including the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Apocalypse of Peter, Ehrman demonstrates that ancient tours of the afterlife promoted reflection on matters of ethics, faith, ambition, and life’s meaning, the fruit of which has been codified into Christian belief today.

Journeys to Heaven and Hell

Journeys to Heaven and Hell PDF Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300257007
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Get Book

Book Description
A New York Times best-selling scholar's illuminating exploration of the earliest Christian narrated journeys to heaven and hell "[An] illuminating deep dive . . . An edifying origin story for contemporary Christian conceptions of the afterlife."--Publishers Weekly From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged. He examines how fundamental social experiences of the early Christian communities molded the conceptions of the afterlife that eventuated into the accepted doctrines of heaven, hell, and purgatory. Drawing on Greek and Roman epic poetry, early Jewish writings such as the Book of Watchers, and apocryphal Christian stories including the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Apocalypse of Peter, Ehrman demonstrates that ancient tours of the afterlife promoted reflection on matters of ethics, faith, ambition, and life's meaning, the fruit of which has been codified into Christian belief today.

Heaven and Hell

Heaven and Hell PDF Author: Louis Markos
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1620327503
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
For thousands of years, philosophers, theologians, and poets have tried to pierce through the veil of death to gaze with wonder, fear, and awe on the final and eternal state of the soul. Indeed, the four great epic poets of the Western tradition (Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton) structured their epics in part around a descent into the underworld that is both spiritual and physical, both allegorical and geographical. This book not only considers closely these epic journeys to the "other side," but explores the chain of influences that connects the poets to such writers as Plato, Cicero, St. John, St. Paul, Bunyan, Blake, and C. S. Lewis. Written in a narrative, "man of letters" style and complete with an annotated bibliography, a timeline, a who's who, and an extensive glossary of Jewish, Christian, and mythological terms, this user-friendly book will help readers understand how heaven and hell have been depicted for the last 3,000 years.

Heaven and Hell

Heaven and Hell PDF Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501136747
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Over half of Americans believe in a literal heaven, in a literal hell. Most people who hold these beliefs are Christian and assume they are the age-old teachings of the Bible. Ehrman shows that eternal rewards and punishments are found nowhere in the Old Testament, and are not what Jesus or his disciples taught. He recounts the long history of the afterlife, ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh up to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. Ehrman shows that competing views were intimately connected with the social, cultural, and historical worlds out of which they emerged. -- adapted from jacket

Journey to Hell

Journey to Hell PDF Author: John Bunyan
Publisher: Whitaker House
ISBN: 1629110973
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
John Bunyan portrays one man’s lifelong journey to hell and what we can do to avoid the same fate. In this fascinating allegory, the wickedness, depravity, and carnality in the life and death of Mr. Badman are contrasted with biblical standards of living and the path that leads to heaven. On the Day of Judgment, will you inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for you? You can live a successful life now and be ready to enter the eternal City of God. Millions have read The Pilgrim’s Progress and received inspiration for their Christian walk. Now, you can follow another man, Mr. Badman, on his life journey, which leads him ultimately to hell. In this allegory, the wickedness, depravity, and carnality in the life and death of Mr. Badman are contrasted with biblical standards of living and the path that leads to heaven. The wisdom of Mr. Wiseman will strike you as he explains a godly life in all situations, including home, business, and relationships.

After Lives

After Lives PDF Author: John Casey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199975035
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
A fascinating exploration of ideas of life after death ranging from ancient times to the present and from religion and philosophy to literature and science.

Otherworld Journeys

Otherworld Journeys PDF Author: Carol Zaleski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195363523
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Dozens of books, articles, television shows, and films relating "near-death" experiences have appeared in the past decade. People who have survived a close brush with death reveal their extraordinary visions and ecstatic feelings at the moment they died, describing journeys through a tunnel to a realm of light, visual reviews of their past deeds, encounters with a benevolent spirit, and permanent transformation after returning to life. Carol Zaleski's Otherworld Journeys offers the most comprehensive treatment to date of the evidence surrounding near-death experiences. The first to place researchers' findings, first-person accounts, and possible medical or psychological explanations in historical perspective, she discusses how these materials reflect the influence of contemporary culture. She demonstrates that modern near-death reports belong to a vast family of otherworld journey tales, with examples in nearly every religious heritage. She identifies universal as well as culturally specific features by comparing near-death narratives in two distinct periods of Western society: medieval Christendom and twentieth-century secular America. This comparison reveals profound similarities, such as the life-review and the transforming after-effects of the vision, as well as striking contrasts, such as the absence of hell or punishment scenes from modern accounts. Mediating between the "debunkers" and the near-death researchers, Zaleski considers current efforts to explain near-death experience scientifically. She concludes by emphasizing the importance of the otherworld vision for understanding imaginative and religious experience in general.

Tours of Hell

Tours of Hell PDF Author: Martha Himmelfarb
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512802778
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
From the ancient Book of the Dead to Dante's Divine Comedy, the living have attempted to describe the world of the dead. Tours of Hell focuses on one form of that attempt: the tours of hell found in Jewish and Christian apocalypses of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Himmelfarb examines seventeen texts, preserved in five languages and spanning a thousand years of human history. These include Hebrew texts and Christian texts in Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, and Coptic, such as the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Paul family. Muslim texts, medieval visions, and other related literatures are also discussed. Himmelfarb details the common elements of the tour tradition, including such features as a hero or heroine figure, a heavenly revealer, and descriptions of the punishments awaiting those who arrive in hell. She convincingly refutes the accepted nineteenth-century critical view of the earliest of these tours, the Apocalypse of Peter, as a Christian form of an "Orphic-Pythagorean" descent to Hades. She place the work instead on the family tree of the tour apocalypse, a genre she traces back to the third century B.C.E. Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36). Linking the Apocalypse of Peter with later Jewish tours of hell, Himmelfarb reveals significant sin-and-punishment combinations that seem to point to a common source, which she theorizes to be a lost Jewish Tour work of the late Second Temple period. Rich and fascinating texts seldom before brought to light are treated in detail in this pioneering study. A comprehensive work on the apocalyptic tradition, Tours of Hell will be of great interest to scholars and students of religion, history, ancient and medieval literature, and Dante studies.

Hell to Heaven (Journey to Wudang, Book 2)

Hell to Heaven (Journey to Wudang, Book 2) PDF Author: Kylie Chan
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007469357
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
The second book in an addictive urban fantasy series of gods and demons, martial arts and mythology, from the author of White Tiger.

Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante

Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante PDF Author: Eileen Gardiner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780934977142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This essential and widely used collection of visions of heaven and hell, the first in English, presents new translations of two visions and newly edited versions of previously translated ones. Describes the place of these works in medieval literature and provides a helpful resource for studying elements of medieval religion. Includes: St. Peter's Apocalypse, St. Paul's Apocalypse, St. Brendan's Voyage, St. Patrick's Purgatory, and the Visions of Furseus, Drythelm, Wetti, Charles the Fat, Tundale, the Monk of Evesham, and Thurkill. Bibliography, index, glossary, notes, illustrated.