07-15-2020, 12:32 AM
I also thought the question was very good, and enough to interest me in reading Bart Ehrman's Heaven and Hell - A History of the Afterlife. His claim is that it was the ideas of heaven and hell that were invented, and had been altered over the years, beginning with Gilgamesh as a beginning point and ending with Augustine. He covers views of the afterlife in the ancient Near East, Greece and Rome, the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, the New Testament and early Christianity.
There are verses in the Hebrew bible, early tenth century BCE, of the deeply rooted sense of finality in death. (2 Samuel 14:14 and Job 14:11-12, Psalm 104:29 and Genesis 2:7) to name a few. There is no life after death.
He goes on to explain in one of his chapters how the Hebrew Bible is not a monolith but a wide range of views held by different authors over a period of many centuries. How resurrection in Ancient Israel spoke more to the entire nation and not that of the individual. That was to come later where the writings leaned towards the rise of apocalyptic thinking.
There are verses in the Hebrew bible, early tenth century BCE, of the deeply rooted sense of finality in death. (2 Samuel 14:14 and Job 14:11-12, Psalm 104:29 and Genesis 2:7) to name a few. There is no life after death.
He goes on to explain in one of his chapters how the Hebrew Bible is not a monolith but a wide range of views held by different authors over a period of many centuries. How resurrection in Ancient Israel spoke more to the entire nation and not that of the individual. That was to come later where the writings leaned towards the rise of apocalyptic thinking.