Afterlife Archives - Page 7 of 8 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Does the Afterlife Matter for Other Things?

This past Friday I went up to NYC to meet with my editor, and the marketing team, at my new publisher Simon & Schuster, both to discuss the next book coming out in September AND to talk (with my editor herself) about the possible new book, the one I am tentatively calling The Invention of the Afterlife (dealing with the question of where the widespread views of heaven and hell come from, especially since they are not actually what the Old Testament, Jesus, or the NT writers actually taught). This was kind of a first pitch, to get them interested. They are indeed interested, and so now the next step for me will be to write a prospectus to get them to agree formally and finally. I want to do this now, so I don’t spend months reading about the topic – both ancient writings that deal with the afterlife and modern scholarship on the matter – only to find out that this will *not* be my next book. Just to write the prospectus I [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:32-04:00March 8th, 2017|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Thinking about Hell

When I search my mind for times in my (distant) past that I thought about hell, I conjure up two very different moments. Today when I think about them it is with a good sense of humor. The first is when I must have been maybe eight or nine. I was at some kind of summer camp, and we had a daily camp meeting where we would sing songs and someone would come talk to us. One day there was a local minister who came and told a story about a person who went first to hell and then heaven. When he went to hell he found that there was an enormous table filled with fantastic food – everything that everyone could imagine wanting. But all the people there had three-foot long forks strapped to their arms, and it was impossible for them to pick up the food and bring it to their mouths. And so they were starving in the midst of plenty. He then went to heaven and again, there was the enormous [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:16-04:00March 3rd, 2017|Afterlife, Bart’s Biography, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Views of the Afterlife

If my publisher agrees that my next book can/should be “The Invention of the Afterlife” (or whatever we call it) I will, as you might suspect, be thinking a lot about heaven and hell over the next couple of years. I”ve already been thinking a lot about them over the past six months as I’ve been reading broadly on the topic. I’m NOT, of course, mainly reading about what REALLY happens to us when we die. No one knows that. Or maybe I should rephrase that. There are a lot of people who *think* they know that, but in my opinion no one does. Most of the books I’ve been reading are about what people have *thought* about heaven and hell over the past three thousand years. I’m interested in knowing where current thinking came from – since what is now “common sense” in some circles was never dreamed of for most of human history. There are some people, of course, who argue that their views are not simply common sense – that is, views [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:36:16-04:00March 1st, 2017|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

(Later) Early Christian Understandings of Heaven and Hell

Yesterday I gave Part One of a two-part discussion of the “invention” of heaven and hell, from my book Jesus Interrupted. There I sketched out the apocalyptic vision of what would happen at the end of time as the original view among the followers of Jesus. Here is where I continue that discussion into some reflections of where the Christian teachings of the afterlife, as later formulated, came from. ********************************************** The Transformation of the Apocalyptic Vision What happens when this expected end doesn’t happen? What happens when the apocalyptic scenario that Jesus expected to occur in “this generation” never comes? When Paul’s expectation that he will be alive at the second coming of Christ is radically disconfirmed by his own death? When the resurrection of the dead is delayed, interminably, making a mockery of the widespread belief that it will happen “soon”? One thing that happens, of course, is that some people begin to mock. That is the problem addressed in the final book of the New Testament to be written, 2 Peter, which [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:34:46-04:00October 10th, 2016|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Jesus and Paul on Heaven and Hell

A couple of days ago I indicated on the blog that I am thinking about devoting my next book to the “Invention of the Afterlife” – that is, to the question of where the Christian doctrines of heaven and hell came come. I asked for comments (and I still welcome them) from people about what they would be interested in seeing in a book like that. Many, many thanks to everyone who has (so far!) responded to my request! As some of you know, I have already written a *bit* about the topic in an earlier book, Jesus Interrupted. I thought it might be useful to replay what I said there, just to show where my thinking is at this point (I haven’t developed my thoughts significantly from writing that book, published in 2009) (but I expect they will develop in a big way, once I start working more diligently on the question). Here is the first half of what I said there. The second half will come tomorrow. (For those of you who keep [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:34:46-04:00October 9th, 2016|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

The Invention of the Afterlife: Request for Ideas!

Toward the end of this post I will be asking for your opinions and ideas. So I hope you get that far! Now that I have sent my manuscript on The Triumph of Christianity off to my editor, and before she gets back to me for revisions and edits, I am turning my thoughts to the next book. The reality is that I am not 100% certain what it will be. That still has to be worked out, negotiated, and approved by the publisher. I’m committed to Simon & Schuster for this next book, as well as Triumph (we originally negotiated a two-book deal), so that part is set. But in our contract deal, the next book was more or less called a “player to be named later.” Now it is time to figure out what it will be. I do have a strong preference, and hope to sell the publisher on the idea. So far they are receptive. But we’ll see. I started out with a vague idea, that has now evolved into a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:34:46-04:00October 6th, 2016|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Gerd Luedemann on the Resurrection: A Blast From the Past

Here is an interesting post on the resurrection of Jesus that I made almost exactly four years ago today. It's interesting because (a) I don't remember writing it (and only vaguely remember having read the book) and (b) my own views ended up being very similar indeed (even though I don't at all remember being influenced by the book!). These are views not widely shared by my colleagues in the field of New Testament studies, as will seem obvious (since most of my colleagues are committed Christians who believe in the resurrection!). In any event, here's the post. Happy reading! ****************************************************************************** One of the first books that I have re-read in thinking about how it is the man Jesus came to be thought of as God is Gerd Lüdemann’s, The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry (2004). Lüdemann is an important and interesting scholar. He was professor of New Testament at Göttingen in Germany, and for a number of years split his time between there and Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville. He is [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:34:46-04:00October 4th, 2016|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus|

Speaking in Churches as an Agnostic; and Jewish Beliefs about Afterlife. Readers Mailbag August 13, 2016

I will be dealing with two rather wide-ranging questions in this week’s Readers Mailbag: What is it like for me, a public agnostic/atheist, to give a talk to believers in a church? And what did Jews believe about the afterlife in the time of Jesus? QUESTION: Dr. Ehrman, do churches hire you to lecture on Christianity knowing that you’re an atheist? Do you ever get tempted to say, “Let’s be honest here. I think all of your cherished religious beliefs are baloney, but I’ll humor you for the next couple of hours.” That’s how I feel when I tell someone that they can accept the Theory of Evolution and still believe in God, even though, deep down inside, I know that Evolution and God mix like oil and water, so I simply humor them. RESPONSE: Ah, right, this is a good question. As it turns out, I do get asked to speak in churches on occasion. Sometimes, of course, it is in order to have a debate with a conservative Christian apologist. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:34:13-04:00August 13th, 2016|Afterlife, Early Judaism, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations|

The Fear of Hell, Good Debaters, and the Name of God: Mailbag April 22, 2016

For this week’s readers’ mailbag I have chosen three unusually unrelated questions, one on whether we should be afraid of going to hell, one on how I prepare for public debates, and one on how we got the name Jehovah from the Hebrew name of God, YHWH. This shows just how wide ranging your questions can be on this blog! If you one you would like me to address in the future, let me know. QUESTION: What would you say to someone who is scared of going to hell? RESPONSE: I suppose the first thing I’d say is that I understand the fear very well, from the inside, as I too used to have it. This was especially a problem for me when I first began to realize that I didn’t believe the Christian message any more, the claim that one had to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus to be “saved” and that anyone who didn’t believe would be condemned to the eternal torments of hell. One of my greatest fears [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:33:07-04:00April 22nd, 2016|Afterlife, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Heaven and Hell, Part Two

In my previous post I explained how Jewish thinkers began to develop the idea of an afterlife when they devised the idea of a future resurrection of the dead, an apocalyptic event that explained how God would ultimately make right all that was wrong, rewarding those who had sided with him but punishing those who sided with evil. But how did that idea of a future *bodily* resurrection morph into the Christian teachings of heaven and hell? I try to explain that here in this post, once again as taken from my book Jesus Interrupted. The first two paragraphs are repeated from yesterday’s post, to provide a better context for what I say here. **************************************************************************** Thus, eternal life, for Jesus, Paul, and the earliest Christians, was a life lived in the body, not above in heaven, but down here, where we are now. Paul emphasizes this point strenuously in the book of 1 Corinthians. The fact that Jesus’ body was raised from the dead shows what the future resurrection would involve. It would involve bodies [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00January 6th, 2016|Afterlife, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Heaven and Hell, Part One

As I have been discussing the topic of resurrection in early Christianity, a number of readers have asked about a related issue, namely, where the Christian teaching of heaven and hell came from. For most Christians, the afterlife seems to be the ongoing existence of the soul. But for the earliest Christians, the afterlife involved the resurrection precisely of the *body*. How did that change, and why? I discussed this issue some years back in my book Jesus Interrupted, and what I say about it there seems to be directly on target for what these readers have asked. And so I include it here. This will take two posts, the first one (today) to explain why “resurrection” came to be believed by Jews and eventually by Christians and the next post to explain how that belief in resurrection came to be transformed into the later idea of heaven and hell that may people today continue to subscribe to. ********************************************************************* Heaven and Hell In some parts of Christendom today, especially the parts that I was [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00January 5th, 2016|Afterlife, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

The Resurrection in Paul

I have been discussing an apocalyptic understanding of Jesus’ resurrection. For the earliest followers of Jesus, coming to think that Jesus was raised from the dead provided both a confirmation and an elaboration of their understanding of the end times. Prior to Jesus’ death they had come to think that they were living at the end of the age and that God was soon to bring history to a climactic end through a cataclysmic act of judgment; this final event in history would involve a resurrection of all those who had died to face judgment. When these disciples came to think that Jesus himself had been raised, they naturally concluded that the resurrection had begun. Jesus was the first to rise; he had been exalted to heaven; he himself was to return to earth as the powerful Son of Man to raise all people from the dead. All this would happen very soon. As it turns out there were other apocalyptic lessons that could be drawn from Jesus’ resurrection. One of the most interesting – [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00January 3rd, 2016|Afterlife, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Jesus’ Return to Life as a Resurrection

So far I have talked about the significance of the belief in Jesus’ resurrection for both Christology (the understanding of who Jesus was) and soteriology (the understanding of how salvation works). It also was significant for eschatology (the understanding of what would happen at the end of time). Christologically, the resurrection proved that Jesus really was the favored one of God, appearances notwithstanding. It may have *seemed* like the crucifixion would show that Jesus was not God’s son, and certainly not the messiah; but the resurrection (for those who came to believe in it) showed that in fact he was. He was the son of God in an even more exalted sense than anyone had thought – he actually had been made into a divine being. So too he was the messiah in a more exalted sense than had been expected – he was not a mere human king but the divine King of all. Soteriologically, the resurrection showed that the death of Jesus had not been a mere miscarriage of justice or the unfortunate [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:46-04:00December 29th, 2015|Afterlife, Early Judaism, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

The Resurrection of the Son of God

I’m in the midst of the most entangled thread I have yet produced in my well-over-three-years of doing the blog. It started with orthodox scribes who were altering their texts of Scripture (specifically Luke 22; this was part of a thread I began in April! I’ll get back to it….) and it has now managed by a number of intricate twists, turns, and interweavings to end up at the resurrection of Jesus. I have been arguing that the resurrection radically changed the disciple’ understanding of the belief that he was the messiah – a belief that he himself had, and that they shared. I have argued that given everything we know about Jewish beliefs at the time, almost certainly anyone hearing that a man (such as Jesus) was the messiah would have thought that this meant that he was (or would become) the king of the Jewish people. That’s certainly how the Roman governor Pontius Pilate took it. It was because Jesus made such a claim that Pilate ordered him crucified. The crucifixion proved beyond [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:31:45-04:00December 16th, 2015|Afterlife, Canonical Gospels, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Maintaining Your Moral Compass – Morally Agnostic
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Maintaining Your Moral Compass – Morally Agnostic

Afterlife, Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations

Maintaining Your Moral Compass – Morally Agnostic

Agnostics with a moral compass. In this post I’ll be sticking with my theme of yesterday, related to the lecture I gave at NYU, two nights ago now, about how the Bible deals with the problem of suffering. At the end of the lecture I indicated that I have a view of suffering related to that set out in the book of Ecclesiastes. The author of Ecclesiastes, claiming to be king of Solomon (even though he was living many centuries later) stressed that life is short. It is here for a little while and then gone – and that our view of how to live should be controlled by that uncomfortable but very real fact. For this author there is no obvious justice in the here and now. Righteous people suffer and the wicked often prosper. And the injustice of this life will not be made up in the afterlife since, for this author, there is probably not going to *be* an afterlife. This life is all there is. Which is why, for him, “a [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:20:40-04:00March 9th, 2013|Afterlife, Bart’s Biography, Reflections and Ruminations|

Heaven and Hell: When was Heaven and Hell Invented?
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Heaven and Hell: When was Heaven and Hell Invented?

Afterlife, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions

Heaven and Hell: When was Heaven and Hell Invented?

Heaven and Hell: When was Heaven and Hell Invented? (QUESTION): If I were to ask the average mainstream Sunday morning Christian why they are a Christian I would probably get an answer (other than to meet friends in church) such as this, “To be saved and go to heaven when I die.” When I look at the obituaries in the newspaper, I so often see a statement assuring me that “Mable is with Jesus now,” and was advised by a bumper sticker yesterday, “Heaven or Hell: It’s Your Choice.” If Jesus’ message was as you and others state, “repent now for the Kingdom of God is just around the corner,” affirmed by Paul and the early church...how did we get this fast-track-ticket-to-heaven in contemporary popular Christianity? I cannot find that explicitly in the New Testament (except for some hints in the Gospel of John). How did we get from the Apocalyptic Jesus to the Pearly Gates? RESPONSE: Ah, this is a great question, and as with all great questions, it does not have an easy answer! [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:20:07-04:00January 13th, 2013|Afterlife, Historical Jesus, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Paul and the Resurrection of the “Flesh”?

QUESTIONS: But what is a BODILY resurrection without the flesh? And doesn’t this indicate that the flesh (the corpse) didn’t matter anymore and could be left behind, rotting and decomposing? Isn’t it all about the spirit finally getting this new, better, perfect, divine ‘body’? Addendum: The Greek for ‘spiritual’ (like in spiritual body) is pneumatikos, right? According to Strong’s that means: pertaining to wind or breath, windy, exposed to the wind, blowing. Now those wouldn’t be obvious words to describe something physical or made out of matter, would it? They seems to rather define something ‘intangible’ RESPONSE: OK, I’ve been getting a lot of questions along these lines (some on the blog itself). So I need to try to clarify the whole matter. It’s not easy, for a variety of reasons. But I’ll do my best. First thing to stress: the ancient apocalyptic view of the human that Paul had is not the view of the human that WE have. This is one instance where it becomes crystal clear that we have to try to [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:19:07-04:00October 9th, 2012|Afterlife, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Paul’s View of Resurrection

QUESTIONS: So if, as you say, Paul believed in a 'physical resurrection of the body ( = of the corpse, right?) of Jesus' then why did he never refer to an empty tomb or to the discovery of such an empty tomb by the apostles in his letters although that would have fitted well at occasions? Also, and I know we have discussed these matters briefly here before, why did Paul describe the 'risen Christ' as a light etc in his visions? And not as a humanoid? And if that 'transformed' body was so different from the normal, natural body humans have then why assume the corpse was actually needed in the first place to get 'resurrected' in this new one (and if a corpse is needed then what about corpses that have been totally decomposed?)? Why is it Paul's aim to get away from the physical body that he himself is currently living in (as he mentions in some of his letters)? Why does Paul then contrast the 'natural' body to the 'spiritual' body? [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:19:06-04:00October 6th, 2012|Afterlife, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions|

Possibilities for the Afterlife

IN MY BIBLE INTRODUCTION, I INTRODUCE STUDENTS TO SOME OF THE OPTIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE AFTERLIFE, IN VIEW OF PAUL’S INSISTENCE IN 1 CORINTHIANS THAT THE FUTURE WILL INVOLVE A PHYSICAL RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD FOR ETERNAL LIFE – A VIEW NOT SHARED BY MANY OF HIS READERS, BOTH THEN AND NOW! ******************************************************************************************************************** Some interpreters have thought that Paul and his Corinthian opponents disagreed about the resurrection because they had fundamentally different understandings about the nature of human existence, both now and in the afterlife. Perhaps it would be useful to reflect on different ways that one might conceive of life after death. Annihilation. One possibility is that a person who dies ceases to exist. This appears to have been a popular notion in the Greco-Roman world, as evidenced by a number of inscriptions on tombstones that bemoan the brevity of life which ends in nonexistence. One of the most widely used Latin inscriptions was so popular that it was normally abbreviated (like our own R.I.P. for “Rest in Peace”) as N.F.N.S.N.C.: “I was [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:53-04:00September 15th, 2012|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Paul and His Letters|

Resurrection and Resuscitation

The following is just a small chunk that I've written up for my Bible Introduction on the idea of "resurrection" -- in relationship to other views of afterlife in the Bible. It's short, but it's the last sentence that is very much worth thinking about (most people haven't thought about it; I know I never did, until fairly recently). ************************************************************************************************************** Many readers of the Bible are surprised to learn that the ideas of the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible are not closely related to what most people think today. The idea that after you die, your soul goes either to heaven or hell (or even purgatory) is not rooted in the Jewish Scriptures. The few passages that refer to an afterlife in the Hebrew Bible assume that after death, a person goes to “Sheol.” That is not the Hebrew equivalent of “hell” – a place of punishment for the wicked. It is the place that everyone goes, good or evil. It is sometimes spoken of as a place of rest (remember how Samuel was not [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:18:09-04:00July 25th, 2012|Afterlife, Book Discussions, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament|

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