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The Early History of Heaven
When we think of "heaven," we generally conjure up positive, blissful images. Heaven is, after all, where God is and where good people go after death to receive their reward. But how and why did Western cultures come to imagine the heavenly realm in such terms? Why is heaven usually thought to be "up there," far beyond the visible sky? And what is the source of the idea that the post mortem abode of the righteous is in this heavenly realm with God?
Seeking to discover the roots of these familiar notions, this volume traces the backgrounds, origin, and development of early Jewish and Christian speculation about the heavenly realm -- where it is, what it looks like, and who its inhabitants are. Wright begins his study with an examination of the beliefs of ancient Israel's neighbors Egypt and Mesopotamia, reconstructing the intellectual context in which the earliest biblical images of heaven arose. A detailed analysis of the Hebrew biblical texts themselves then reveals that the Israelites were deeply influenced by images drawn from the surrounding cultures. Wright goes on to examine Persian and Greco-Roman beliefs, thus setting the stage for his consideration of early Jewish and Christian images, which he shows to have been formed in the struggle to integrate traditional biblical imagery with the newer Hellenistic ideas about the cosmos. In a final chapter Wright offers a brief survey of how later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic
traditions envisioned the heavenly realms. Accessible to a wide range of readers, this provocative book will interest anyone who is curious about the origins of this extraordinarily pervasive and influential idea.
Seeking to discover the roots of these familiar notions, this volume traces the backgrounds, origin, and development of early Jewish and Christian speculation about the heavenly realm -- where it is, what it looks like, and who its inhabitants are. Wright begins his study with an examination of the beliefs of ancient Israel's neighbors Egypt and Mesopotamia, reconstructing the intellectual context in which the earliest biblical images of heaven arose. A detailed analysis of the Hebrew biblical texts themselves then reveals that the Israelites were deeply influenced by images drawn from the surrounding cultures. Wright goes on to examine Persian and Greco-Roman beliefs, thus setting the stage for his consideration of early Jewish and Christian images, which he shows to have been formed in the struggle to integrate traditional biblical imagery with the newer Hellenistic ideas about the cosmos. In a final chapter Wright offers a brief survey of how later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic
traditions envisioned the heavenly realms. Accessible to a wide range of readers, this provocative book will interest anyone who is curious about the origins of this extraordinarily pervasive and influential idea.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 6, 2017
I just finished this book and really liked it. The modern view of heaven is not how the ancients viewed it... Indeed, the prophets of Israel depicted a heaven much different from modern thinking in that they viewed God residing in a divine council, with other heavenly beings (p. 75).
The ancient Israelites conceived of God as a king ruling over the universe from his heavenly palace. They viewed the temple as a special place that had access to God, where "Yahweh actually dwells in "heaven your dwelling place," and it is from there that the Israelites expect him to hear and respond. The temple is the link between the Israelites on earth and their god Yahweh in heaven" (p. 83).
The author of this book emphasized many times that the ancient Israelites did not hold to a belief in the afterlife, and that this belief came later, after the Exile, perhaps during the Persian period, and that nobody in Israel believed that they would live in heaven in the next life, that was reserved only for the Gods! (p. 85-86)
My contention with this view is only partially formulated. I am still working on this. But from what critical scholars I have read, I am to understand that much of Psalms is old, perhaps as old as the 10th century BC, depending on which one you are referring to. For example, Psalm 49:15 seems to allude to some kind of life after death, perhaps even resurrection, when it states, "God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me." To me, what is the power of the grave? It is death, the disillusion of the physical body. If God will redeem me from this, what could this possibly mean?
The author does admit that the "seeds of belief" in an afterlife exist in Old Testament texts: "Some have suggested further that Isaiah 26:14,19, Numbers 23:20, Ezekiel 37, and Psalms 49 and 73 all suggest, and rather early at that, that the seeds of a belief in a blessed afterlife existed in Israel." (p.86) I would agree. The Book of Mormon (see Alma 11 and 2 Nephi 9) teach this much more clearly than any text in the Old Testament. Indeed, Jacob and Alma and Amulek must have had access to information that was either unavailable or removed from those that put together our Old Testament. But I find it a stretch to teach that an afterlife was not believed in this time period, but I also can see where the author is coming from, having not had access to the writings of Amulek and Jacob.
As to a "heavenly ascent" - something that all Christians I know agree upon, an idea that believers in Jesus will ascend unto heaven, the author basically rejects this as well. He says, "The only biblical texts to suggest a belief in the heavenly ascent of the righteous are Ecclesiastes and Daniel." (p. 87) The author makes the case that both of these texts are of late date and therefore early Israel did not believe in the teaching that followers of God ever ascend into heaven. They simply exist in some form in Sheol, or cease to exist.
The portrayals of heaven found on pages 90-93 were excellent, demonstrating the idea of the raquia, or firmament of heaven, with the windows of heaven and the waters above the firmament, etc. This is how the ancients understood the world in which they lived, and Moses and the authors of other Ancient Near East texts viewed the world in this way. This helps us to understand the Old Testament in a way that frees us from looking at Genesis 1-3 as a science textbook and rather view it as Moses viewed the world in which he lived. We must see it as they did for us to understand what they were saying.
Brigham Young commented on this when he exhorted the Saints: “Do you read the Scriptures, my brethren and sisters, as though you were writing them a thousand, two thousand, or five thousand years ago? Do you read them as though you stood in the place of the men who wrote them? If you do not feel thus, it is your privilege to do so, that you may be as familiar with the spirit and meaning of the written word of God as you are with your daily walk and conversation, or as you are with your workmen or with your households” (Discourses of Brigham Young, 128).
The Hebrew view of the universe was different than how we might think of it today. The most striking feature of this ancient cosmology is the “firmament,” a solid dome which separates “the waters from the waters” (Genesis 1:6). The Hebrew word translated in the Latin Vulgate as firmamentum is raqia’ רקיע whose verb form means “to spread, stamp or beat out.” The material beaten out is not directly specified, but both biblical and extrabiblical evidence suggests that it is metal (see Exodus 39:3 and Jeremiah 10:9 for the use of raquia’). I have heard Biblical scholars refer to this firmament as a clear dome over the earth, with “windows” that allow water through, this being where we receive rain (Malachi 3:10). We also read in the Bible of the waters that are above the heavens (Psalms 148:4).
It makes sense as we look at ancient cosmology to understand that something needs to support the firmament. If it were not so, the watery chaos would collapse on all sides, and the inhabitants of the earth would be destroyed (see Genesis 7:11). It is not surprising then that one finds biblical references to the “pillars” or “foundations” of the heaven and earth. In the book of Job we find that “the pillars of heaven tremble, are astounded at God’s rebuke” (Job 26:11). In 2 Samuel we also find that God’s anger makes “the foundations of the heavens tremble” (2 Samuel 22:8). God’s fury also affects the pillars of the earth: “Who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble?” (Job 9:6); and “the foundations of the world were laid bare at thy rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils” (Psalms 18:15). There seems to be some confusion about where the pillars of heaven are located. Generally, in the Bible and other ancient literatures, distant mountains were the most likely candidates.
The chapter on Persian, Greek, and Roman traditions was excellent reading. The idea that beliefs blended over time as nations conquered each other, with views of heaven changing over time was well written. The author made the point that the idea of a soul returning to heaven after death was common to both Persian and Greek thought (p. 109). Many cultures accepted the view that the deceased go to heaven by the 4th century BC, "A memorial commemorating the Athenians who died in the battle of Potidaia in 432 BCE succinctly depicts the idea of the soul obtaining immortality after the death of the body: 'the ether has received their souls, while the earth has their bodies.' A similar idea appears in the first century CE Jewish funerary inscription from Leontopolis, Egypt. This epitaph for a deceased girl reads, 'this grave hides in its bosom my chaste body, but my soul has flown to the holy ones.' The same theme appears in a version of the Egyptian Book of the Dead dating to the Ptolemaic period (ca 323-30 BCE): 'Heaven hath thy soul, earth hath thy body.' Although the idea of a personal existence beyond the grave was available to the heroes of the early periods in Greek history, after the fifth century BCE the idea of an afterlife in the heavenly realm became prominent in myriad mystery religions... Jews, and eventually Christians, had new ways of imagining the physical and spiritual worlds that conflicted somewhat with the images they inherited from their religiously authoritative ancient writings." (p. 115-116)
The author stresses that views of heaven were shaped over time, with the view that there was no afterlife, or even any idea of existence in a resurrected state in a heavenly realm until after the Exile in 586 BCE for the Jews. The author does state that the Egyptians believed in an afterlife in the heavenly realm prior to this time, but that they appear to be alone in this belief until later in history.
Chapter 5 was a great read for me. I liked how the author explored the view of heaven through the lens of the Enoch texts in the the extra biblical literature. While I do not hold to many of these views, truth exists in all of them.
I really liked that this book was readable, so many books that cover this type of material are so scholarly that they lose a bit of readability for me. This book wasn't like that. It covered the topic without having to show you how smart it was. I appreciated that.
The ancient Israelites conceived of God as a king ruling over the universe from his heavenly palace. They viewed the temple as a special place that had access to God, where "Yahweh actually dwells in "heaven your dwelling place," and it is from there that the Israelites expect him to hear and respond. The temple is the link between the Israelites on earth and their god Yahweh in heaven" (p. 83).
The author of this book emphasized many times that the ancient Israelites did not hold to a belief in the afterlife, and that this belief came later, after the Exile, perhaps during the Persian period, and that nobody in Israel believed that they would live in heaven in the next life, that was reserved only for the Gods! (p. 85-86)
My contention with this view is only partially formulated. I am still working on this. But from what critical scholars I have read, I am to understand that much of Psalms is old, perhaps as old as the 10th century BC, depending on which one you are referring to. For example, Psalm 49:15 seems to allude to some kind of life after death, perhaps even resurrection, when it states, "God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me." To me, what is the power of the grave? It is death, the disillusion of the physical body. If God will redeem me from this, what could this possibly mean?
The author does admit that the "seeds of belief" in an afterlife exist in Old Testament texts: "Some have suggested further that Isaiah 26:14,19, Numbers 23:20, Ezekiel 37, and Psalms 49 and 73 all suggest, and rather early at that, that the seeds of a belief in a blessed afterlife existed in Israel." (p.86) I would agree. The Book of Mormon (see Alma 11 and 2 Nephi 9) teach this much more clearly than any text in the Old Testament. Indeed, Jacob and Alma and Amulek must have had access to information that was either unavailable or removed from those that put together our Old Testament. But I find it a stretch to teach that an afterlife was not believed in this time period, but I also can see where the author is coming from, having not had access to the writings of Amulek and Jacob.
As to a "heavenly ascent" - something that all Christians I know agree upon, an idea that believers in Jesus will ascend unto heaven, the author basically rejects this as well. He says, "The only biblical texts to suggest a belief in the heavenly ascent of the righteous are Ecclesiastes and Daniel." (p. 87) The author makes the case that both of these texts are of late date and therefore early Israel did not believe in the teaching that followers of God ever ascend into heaven. They simply exist in some form in Sheol, or cease to exist.
The portrayals of heaven found on pages 90-93 were excellent, demonstrating the idea of the raquia, or firmament of heaven, with the windows of heaven and the waters above the firmament, etc. This is how the ancients understood the world in which they lived, and Moses and the authors of other Ancient Near East texts viewed the world in this way. This helps us to understand the Old Testament in a way that frees us from looking at Genesis 1-3 as a science textbook and rather view it as Moses viewed the world in which he lived. We must see it as they did for us to understand what they were saying.
Brigham Young commented on this when he exhorted the Saints: “Do you read the Scriptures, my brethren and sisters, as though you were writing them a thousand, two thousand, or five thousand years ago? Do you read them as though you stood in the place of the men who wrote them? If you do not feel thus, it is your privilege to do so, that you may be as familiar with the spirit and meaning of the written word of God as you are with your daily walk and conversation, or as you are with your workmen or with your households” (Discourses of Brigham Young, 128).
The Hebrew view of the universe was different than how we might think of it today. The most striking feature of this ancient cosmology is the “firmament,” a solid dome which separates “the waters from the waters” (Genesis 1:6). The Hebrew word translated in the Latin Vulgate as firmamentum is raqia’ רקיע whose verb form means “to spread, stamp or beat out.” The material beaten out is not directly specified, but both biblical and extrabiblical evidence suggests that it is metal (see Exodus 39:3 and Jeremiah 10:9 for the use of raquia’). I have heard Biblical scholars refer to this firmament as a clear dome over the earth, with “windows” that allow water through, this being where we receive rain (Malachi 3:10). We also read in the Bible of the waters that are above the heavens (Psalms 148:4).
It makes sense as we look at ancient cosmology to understand that something needs to support the firmament. If it were not so, the watery chaos would collapse on all sides, and the inhabitants of the earth would be destroyed (see Genesis 7:11). It is not surprising then that one finds biblical references to the “pillars” or “foundations” of the heaven and earth. In the book of Job we find that “the pillars of heaven tremble, are astounded at God’s rebuke” (Job 26:11). In 2 Samuel we also find that God’s anger makes “the foundations of the heavens tremble” (2 Samuel 22:8). God’s fury also affects the pillars of the earth: “Who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble?” (Job 9:6); and “the foundations of the world were laid bare at thy rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils” (Psalms 18:15). There seems to be some confusion about where the pillars of heaven are located. Generally, in the Bible and other ancient literatures, distant mountains were the most likely candidates.
The chapter on Persian, Greek, and Roman traditions was excellent reading. The idea that beliefs blended over time as nations conquered each other, with views of heaven changing over time was well written. The author made the point that the idea of a soul returning to heaven after death was common to both Persian and Greek thought (p. 109). Many cultures accepted the view that the deceased go to heaven by the 4th century BC, "A memorial commemorating the Athenians who died in the battle of Potidaia in 432 BCE succinctly depicts the idea of the soul obtaining immortality after the death of the body: 'the ether has received their souls, while the earth has their bodies.' A similar idea appears in the first century CE Jewish funerary inscription from Leontopolis, Egypt. This epitaph for a deceased girl reads, 'this grave hides in its bosom my chaste body, but my soul has flown to the holy ones.' The same theme appears in a version of the Egyptian Book of the Dead dating to the Ptolemaic period (ca 323-30 BCE): 'Heaven hath thy soul, earth hath thy body.' Although the idea of a personal existence beyond the grave was available to the heroes of the early periods in Greek history, after the fifth century BCE the idea of an afterlife in the heavenly realm became prominent in myriad mystery religions... Jews, and eventually Christians, had new ways of imagining the physical and spiritual worlds that conflicted somewhat with the images they inherited from their religiously authoritative ancient writings." (p. 115-116)
The author stresses that views of heaven were shaped over time, with the view that there was no afterlife, or even any idea of existence in a resurrected state in a heavenly realm until after the Exile in 586 BCE for the Jews. The author does state that the Egyptians believed in an afterlife in the heavenly realm prior to this time, but that they appear to be alone in this belief until later in history.
Chapter 5 was a great read for me. I liked how the author explored the view of heaven through the lens of the Enoch texts in the the extra biblical literature. While I do not hold to many of these views, truth exists in all of them.
I really liked that this book was readable, so many books that cover this type of material are so scholarly that they lose a bit of readability for me. This book wasn't like that. It covered the topic without having to show you how smart it was. I appreciated that.
April 18, 2010
Wright, J. Edward. The Early History of Heaven. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000
This book presents itself as a history of the Judeo-Christian view of Heaven, that is the space above the sky, whether inhabited by the souls of all the saved or just a mechanism of spheres, supporting the planets. It presents itself as spanning two worlds, "valuable for both the general audience and the specialist" (p. x), with the text aimed to be accessible to all, and the endnotes for a more scholarly sort.
The organization is chronological, beginning with Sumerian and Akkadian conceptions of a tripartite universe and the Egyptian view of the heavens. These provide a basis for the early Israelite universe, which is explained in detail. At this point one of the weaknesses of the book becomes evident, the illustrations. The bulk of the illustrations are drawings from other sources, frequently with partial captions (p. 93 for eg.). There is no unifying style and some of them, though topically accurate, are quite difficult to parse (p. 103).
Following Egypt and Mesopotamia, we enter early Israelite tradition, which is explained quite well. The reconstruction of early Israelite semi-monotheism provides a good introduction to what can be a difficult topic and the structure of the universe, and heaven in particular as a mirror of the earthly Temple is covered.
What follows is a short chapter on Greek, Roman, Persian and Ptolemaic Egyptian traditions, which are covered only in basics. There is an explanation of the various models of the universe, those of Pythagoras, Eudoxus and others, but not explanation of the bizarre elements many of these models possess: Pythagoras' "Counter-earth" or the numerous intervening spheres of later models.
Finally the author's focus is reached, later Jewish and early Christian views of Heaven. He provides some excellent examples from some of the more complex Apocryphal works beginning with those which stuck with a "single heaven" cosmology, and then those later works which adopted the Greco-Roman multiple-Heaven view. The texts are complex, but the explanations are quite well constructed, and make the concepts as clear as possible, given the oddities of some of the texts. It is in these texts that the concepts of human "souls" ascending into heaven post-mortem gains popularity, as well as the entrance requirements for those souls: good works, charity, and the most popular, orthodoxy beliefs that agree with the author.
In conclusion, I'd recommend the book. There are some weaknesses in the "general audience" accessability, including some passages in ancient Greek and some common scholarly techniques for transliteration, which the non-scholarly audience might not follow. That and the, previously mentioned, uneven quality of the illustrations would be the only major problems.
(Original)
July 4, 2010
This is a good book but not a great book. The book spends too much time on intertestamental and early Christian extrabiblical material, that has little bearing on what believers believe today. It also give short schrift to early Jewish materials that have a wealth of information on early belief. Also, the author trends toward 19th Century scholarly opinion on the source of myths - that they explain natural phenomena - and does not give enough thought to the role of altered states of consciousness as the source of visions in literature, rather than scientific speculation.
August 12, 2014
Good, not wonderful. I wish there had been more material on the very early history of ancient Israelite cosmology, but perhaps there just isn't much to say. When you get into the 2nd temple period, there seems to be a much larger amount of material. I learned about many books that I had never heard of before. I was surprised that the Life of Adam and Eve wasn't covered in more detail— it got just passing mention. This was very disappointing to me as I feel this book is more important than some of the others that were covered more deeply.
January 29, 2013
I was actually looking for a book that explained, in detail, the evolution of the Christian idea of heaven. This book certainly touches on that, though it doesn't focus on it. Still, from beginning to end, a fascinating read--and one that makes you think about the roots of contemporary thought about heaven.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews