Three times I rushed toward her, desperate to hold her / three times she fluttered through my fingers, sifting away / like a shadow, dissolving like a dream, and each time / the grief cut to the heart, sharper.
Odysseus’ tragic encounter with his dead mother Anticleia is arguably one of the most heart-wrenching descriptions of the afterlife in the history of literature. It is also one of many stunning passages describing the afterlife compiled in Bart D. Ehrman’s latest book, Heaven and Hell. Readers are treated to stories from such works as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Passion of Perpetua. Within this patchwork of pagan and early Christian sources, Ehrman introduces us to his overarching thesis: that the Christian notions of heaven and hell we know today ‘do not represent the earliest Christian views of the afterlife’. Instead, heaven and hell ‘emerged over a long period of time as people struggled with how this world can be fair and how God or the gods can be just’.
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