Erhman describes how the afterlife has been portrayed in some ancient western tales and religions, including Mesopotamian, Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman, and Early Christian. The main theme is about how much variation there is in different systems even within one tradition. The most obvious point is that the ideas of Jesus and Paul were quite different from those espoused by most current forms of Christianity. This should not surprise most sophisticated students of Christianity, but it may come as a shock to those who assume that Christianity today is based on the teachings of Jesus. The book is particularly interesting in giving information about ideas of different societies about what rewards and punishments people get for being good or bad. 

Central questions about different afterlives are whether they are physical places or they are in a different spiritual realm, where they are if they are physical, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, what happens in them, how soon after the person’s death do they get to experience their afterlife, and whether everyone gets to experience an afterlife, or some just stop existing. The answers to these questions may not always be clear, because sometimes religions and stories do not spell out all the details, and sometimes they use language that might be metaphorical rather than literal.  Erhman guides the reader through these questions and interprets the views of different groups. 

The focus of the book is Christianity, which is after all Erhman’s speciality. The first chapter is on Christianity, setting out some stories and puzzles of interpretation, and he sets the stage for the need for a wider investigation going back to Gilgamesh. Erhman has published many books on Jesus, early Christianity, the Bible, and the interpretation of texts relevant to all of these. Much of what he says about Christianity will already be familiar to readers of his other books or his series of lectures in [Great Lectures series]. It’s actually the non-Christian parts of the book that are more novel, and he does a good job at making sense of a number of views of Ancient Greece and Rome. 

Erhman discusses how the afterlife is portrayed in Homer’s Odyssey and other works of ancient Greek and Roman literature with great care. The underworld appears to he a terrible place, and it is terrible for everyone mortal, but he points out that it may be better for those who are partly gods, but not all. Achilles, who is a half god, says that he would rather be a slave on earth than be dead. It is even worse not to be properly buried, because then you end up in a region between life and death, in eternal agony. About 800 years later, Virgil’s hero Aeneas visits the underworld, and there some people are unhappy but some are experiencing better existences. Ehrman points out that it is somewhat ambiguous whether the underworld, Hades, is a fully physical place or whether it is in a different realm. When heroes visit the underworld, they have trouble physically connecting with the dead, as if they are ghosts.

The afterlife described by Plato is rather different and is more pleasant. He makes a distinction between pure and impure souls.  Those whose souls are impure will wander around in desolation, but those whose who are pure enough will be further purified and then will be in a good state. For Plato more than other Greek thinkers, the afterlife experience depends rather directly on how good a person the dead person is. Plato does not say that he has certain knowledge about what will happen, but he does set out his ideas nevertheless, so he has to think it is more than a guess. 

On the other hand, Epicurus, being a thorough going materialist, is skeptical that there is any afterlife, and is very confident there is no reason to fear death. If we lose our functional bodies then we will not be aware of anything. So we will not be in pain of any kind after our death — it would be physically impossible. Either we won’t exist, or our existence will be completely lacking in awareness of anything. We should live for our life on earth, not for what happens after. 

The rest of the book is on the conception of the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible, then with Jesus and Paul, and later early Christians. Erhman emphasizes how there each tradition contains a multiplicity of views. But an important theme that he highlights is that for the Hebrews, the central concern is not with personal survival but with the persistence of the Hebrew people as a nation. That is the reward from God for their readiness to conform to his commands. So the afterlife is not really a consideration. There are some references in parts to a physical resurrection, but Ehrmann argues that these are metaphorical and are promises of the resurrection of the Hebrew nation. It is only later that physical resurrection is meant literally as something that could happen to individual people, and then it is linked to a God’s supernatural opponents coming to earth and causing havoc. The question is who will survive this apocalypse and how. Sometimes the answer is that the chosen people will rise from the dead. This is a feature of the Book of Daniel, and is not widely shared in other parts of the Bible. It is also important to note that even in this book, it is not certain that resurrection guarantees eternal life. Physical bodies may still get old after resurrection and eventually die. It takes some time for a clear idea of immortality for humans to develop in Jewish thought, and there are still questions of whether it is going to be immediately following death or after a period of waiting. 

It is with the coming of Jesus and Paul that Ehrman’s story actually becomes more familiar, since he has covered early Christianity in some detail already. Here he goes into more detail and spells out ideas from the words of Jesus and Paul, who believed not in the resurrection of Christians but Jesus returning to earth. Only when Jesus did not return did the promises change and proliferate with different possibilities. Ehrman methodically explains the wide range of ideas within Christianity. 

Heaven and Hell is intriguing for those interested in the topic even if it gets a little repetitive and has more detail than some will want, at around 350 pages, but it is an extremely useful resource. Presumably some of Ehrman’s claims will be controversial among scholars, but he makes a good case for his interpretation of the evidence. His writing is clear and there are plenty of footnotes. 

© 2020 Christian Perring

Christian Perring teaches in NYC