by Ben Corbitt

“Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife” by Bart D. Ehrman (2020)

What happens to us after we die is one of life’s oldest mysteries, and has spawned countless answers through the ages. In the Western world, we are most familiar with some version of the following: Good people (or believers in Christ) experience eternal bliss in heaven, while wicked people (or non-believers) are doomed to never-ending torment in hell. The ideas are so familiar that many people likely never give much thought to their origin.

In his newest book, New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman casts a scholarly eye toward heaven and hell. Where did these beliefs come from? Are they the undisputed teaching of the Bible? What did Jesus say about the afterlife? Ehrman’s thesis is perhaps less conclusive than we would like, but endlessly fascinating in the details that get us there: Heaven and hell were never handed down on stone tablets, but emerged slowly from an ancient world that held room for many views of the afterlife.

Ehrman begins his study in the pre-Christian world, where many believed in life after death, but didn’t especially look forward to it. There might be a continued existence beyond the grave, but it was a pitiful reflection of the living world, with its vibrant colors and warm sunlight. One version of the ancient Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic casts death as a “dark house,” a place “where those who stay are deprived of light.” The Greek Odyssey (8th c. BCE), traditionally credited to Homer, describes a visit to the underworld Hades. This was a place where souls were reduced to flitting wraiths, vapor-like and pitiful. It was a dreary, colorless realm, and while nearly all were destined to go there, it was far better to stay alive for as long as possible. The dead warrior Achilles, speaking to still-living Odysseus, sums up the situation by lamenting “I’d rather slave on earth … than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”

Centuries later, the Roman poet Virgil (1st c. BCE) takes readers back to Hades in the Aeneid, but the place has seen a massive remodeling. Instead of Homer’s bland kingdom of cold tea and elevator music, Virgil’s Hades has been spruced up with postmortem rewards and punishments. The dead might be allowed to frolic in the “fresh green fields” of Elysium, or be sentenced to Tartarus, with its fearsome “river of fire.” Even in the pagan world, a one-size-fits-all afterlife had fallen out of fashion. Fairness demanded some system of ultimate justice.

As Ehrman shifts to the Jewish scriptures (the Christian Old Testament), readers might expect our modern heaven and hell to leap off the pages. This is not the case. Ehrman points to a variety of afterlife views in the oldest parts of the Bible, including the stark contention that nothing waits for the dead at all. The writer of Psalm 115 laments that “The dead do not praise the LORD, nor do any that go down in silence.” Ehrman contends that for many ancient Jews, death was the final word. In the grave, one could not even hope to praise God.

A more hopeful view develops throughout the Hebrew scriptures, and one of Ehrman’s more intriguing claims is that the political concerns of ancient Israel deserve much of the credit. Ehrman notes that the Jewish prophets were fixated by the idea that Israel – not individual Jews, but the nation itself – would be destroyed (or “killed,” in a sense) by God’s punishing wrath. But intermingled with this idea was a hope that the nation could one day be restored (or “resurrected”) through divine mercy.

Ehrman contends that this view of national death and restoration gradually evolved into a view that individuals would be resurrected for a final Day of Judgment, in which God would reward righteous Jews and destroy the wicked. (Note that in this view, the wicked are not tormented forever. They are simply wiped out.) By the time the book of Daniel is written in the 2nd c. BCE, this idea has found its way into writings that would form part of our Bible.

One of Ehrman’s more surprising claims for many might be that this view, of imminent resurrection and judgment, is the only authentic afterlife teaching we can trace to the historical Jesus. Our Gospels contain clear references to interim states of reward and punishment for the dead, most vividly in the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16. But Ehrman argues that this story is not literal to begin with, and likely not an actual saying of Jesus in any event. For Ehrman, our modern heaven and hell did not develop from the actual words of Christ.

The words of the Apostle Paul get us closer to a modern view. Paul’s letters predate the Gospels, and thus serve as our earliest intact writings from the Christian period. While Paul affirms Christ’s teachings about a future resurrection and Judgment Day, he also offers some innovations. These include an interim state of happiness for dead believers, poetically expressed in 2 Corinthians, where he says to be “away from the body” is to be “at home with the Lord.” As more and more of the earliest Christians died without the awaited return of Christ, a focus away from the future Day of Judgment – and toward what would await believers at the moment of death – was a natural shift.

By this point, we have made progress toward a modern view of the afterlife, but a clear scriptural teaching of heaven and hell remains frustratingly out of reach. Surely Revelation will settle the question, with its shimmering New Jerusalem and its horrifying lake of fire. Ehrman again urges caution, using clues within the text of Revelation itself to argue that the book was written as a political treatise for its own time, using symbolic imagery to illustrate the coming destruction of the Roman Empire, not the fate of all living souls.

Ehrman concludes that it is not in the pages of the Bible that heaven and hell achieve their modern form more or less intact. Instead, this occurs in the crystallization of Church doctrine during the first 400 years after the life of Christ. Here, he again makes an intriguing claim: The development of hell as a place of eternal bodily torment was not a theological necessity derived from scripture, but likely owed much to the horrific tortures served up by the ruling Romans and their client-kings against early Christians. Martyrdom was intended to do more than kill Christians; it was also meant to leave a deep psychological impact on those who witnessed it. That is exactly what it achieved, Ehrman argues, but not in the way intended. For some early Christians, contending for a minority faith meant undergoing horrible agonies in this life. It only made sense for them to expect God to exact equally terrible punishments from their oppressors in the next. (A writing by 3rd c. CE church father Tertullian imagining his future laughter at the fiery torments of God’s foes illustrates this posture perhaps a little too well.)

We know the end of this story, of course. Christianity grows from a fledgling underdog to the dominant religion of the Western world. Heaven and hell are firmly established in Church teaching. But even this does not end the development of the Christian afterlife. Teachings about the fate of dead souls continue to evolve in response to new challenges, most notably with official Church recognition of the middle state of Purgatory in the Middle Ages. Ehrman notes that this was likely a response to a problem that upstart Christianity, with its tight band of dedicated converts, didn’t face: How to deal with throngs of people who were less than saintly in their adherence to a dominant state-sponsored religion. The righteous and the wicked early Christianity could deal with, but the masses of the middling? New problems call for new solutions.

And so it continues for us, Ehrman suggests. Ideas that were once stamped out as heretical, such as universal salvation, have gotten a fresh look in our own times, when ex-evangelical authors can upend Christian orthodoxy with statements like “Love Wins.” The Christian afterlife has always been a work in progress, Ehrman demonstrates, while suggesting that it will continue to be.

Ehrman’s prose is witty, engaging and easy to follow throughout the book. Even while delving into some fairly weedy disputes (e.g., the precise physical nature of resurrected bodies), he is able to continually make relevant and interesting points that aid the overall development of his thesis. Bart Ehrman might not be able to tell us what happens in the next life, but with this insightful book, he has provided one more enjoyable way to use our time in this one.

The opinions expressed in this review are solely those of Ben Corbitt and do not necessarily reflect the views of Saint Matthias, the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, or the Episcopal Church.