AFTERLIFE

I. PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES

Although belief in a continuing or new life after death is widespread among the peoples of the world, profound differences exist among cultural traditions in conceptions of this afterlife; and, even in those societies in which a sharp division between the here and the hereafter is theologically postulated and conventionally accepted, personal variations occur in specific images of the afterlife. Despite the latter, two elements—belief in a final moral judgment of personal conduct in the world and belief in the specific existence of an after-world distinct from this world—define Christian, Christian-influenced, and to a lesser degree Jewish and Islamic conceptions of the afterlife. This article treats within the perspective of the comparative study of religion the differing conceptions found in (1) primitive societies; (2) the Bible; (3) ancient Greece and Rome; (4) ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia; (5) Persia, India, and China; (6) Judaism; (7) Islam; and (8) Christianity.

Generally speaking, primitive peoples do not share the twin assumptions of a final moral judgment of behavior in the world and the specific existence of an afterworld. Accordingly, most anthropologists would not agree with Wilhelm SCHMIDT’s assumption of moral judgment and an associated belief in an afterworld as coextensive with primitive MONOTHEISM. Historically, it appears that as society becomes increasingly secularized and, in the literal sense, civilized, the sphere of moral action contracts and grows more complex; correlatively, the idea that the ultimate loci of the consequences of morality and immorality occur in the afterworld emerges with great clarity.

Continuity of the Self. Primitive societies are, as Robert Redfield and Paul Radin have indicated, moral at their core; persons relate to each other in a moral nexus, not as contracting partners in a legal, technical, commercial, that is, civilized order. This sacred quality of primitive life is evident in the ritually celebrated cycles of birth, death, and rebirth of the person, society, and nature at large. In these primitive rites of passage and ritual dramas, persons may be, for example, conceived as dying to a given status in the world and being reborn into another status, but without destroying the continuity of self. The self is never merely reduced to the status; rather, it is enriched by experiencing the pain of internal growth and diversification. In a sense, the passage of the person through primitive societies can be understood as a progressive spiritualization. In the Winnebago medicine rite described by Radin, the goal is what religious historian Mircea Eliade has called the “perpetual regeneration of the initiate,” the “eternal return” to mythical origins, implying an abolition of time and a “reinstatement of the miraculous moment of creation” (Eliade 1964, pp. 319–320). Historical, progressive, lineal time, central to the modern scientific world view and expressed in the Hebraic and Christian cosmogonies (in the Christian context based on the historicity of Jesus), is not a primitive conception.

The cyclic and sacred character of primitive life is similarly evident in the common belief, as among the Anaguta of Northern Nigeria, that an infant is the reincarnation of an ancestral spirit in the grandparental generation; hence, the person who has literally died to the world, begins a new spiritual existence by being reborn. Thus, primitive society itself emerges as the arena of the original drama of creation and transcendence, of Eliade’s “irruption of the sacred into the world” occurring in “primordial” time (Eliade 1961, p. 72). The passage through life takes on the aspect of a moral drama, culminating, as among the Winnebago people of Wisconsin, in the initiate’s ultimate effort to grasp the meaning of creation and so win eternal life or rebirth. In these rites, the forerunners of the more explicit and historically specific Christian Sacraments, that which Eliade terms a “nostalgia for Paradise” (Eliade 1964, p.508), for the instant of pure being, is evident.

Identity of World and Afterworld. The antinomies life-death, natural-supernatural, sacred-profane, and spirit-flesh that weigh so heavily in civilized Christian thought are, in primitive societies, largely irrelevant. Life moves on all levels simultaneously. Ordinary events are suffused with sacred meaning, and everything has personality; God, spirits, ancestors—dreamt of, seen, or felt—exist. The mode of primitive thinking is existentialist in the most comprehensive sense. Therefore, the split between this world and the afterworld is of little moment. Where conceptions of the afterlife are present, they typically assimilate, as Franz Boas put it, the “social life of the dead [to] the living” (Boas 1940, pp. 606–607). The deceased may maintain an active position in the kinship structure. The afterworld is, with minor exceptions, quite the same as this world; throughout North Asia, as elsewhere, the former is simply a mirror image of the latter. Frequently, the souls of the dead, on their passage to this inverted world, must pass over some obstacle or cross a narrow bridge. But this seems to be related to the psychology of mourning and the consequent need for ritualizing the trauma of separation rather than to a permanent journey to a distinctly conceived afterworld.

Despite the contradictions inherent in certain technical aspects of the primitive view of the afterlife (e.g., the social immediacy of souls versus their indeterminate existence in a double of this world), neither the idea of hell nor of other-worldly reward for moral behavior are important themes in primitive religions. This is true even where, as among the Anaguta, a clear-cut belief in an accessible supreme creator is evident.

II. THE BIBLE

The Israelites believed in a ghostlike afterlife. According to their ideas, all the dead go to SHEOL, the nether world. Kings and slaves, old and young, “all go to one place” [Eccl 6:6; Ps 88(89):49; Jb 3:13–19; 30:23].

Abode of the Dead. The Babylonians refer in their myths, for example, in the GILGAMESH EPIC, to the abode of the dead as a place under the earth or on the other side of the world sea. The dead reach it by descending into the earth or by traveling to the farthest point west. Before entering, they must cross the underground river or the “waters of death.” The Scriptures, too, refer to its locality by the direction in which the dead go, “down to Sheol” (Is 38:18; Ez 31:14; 1 Kgs 2:9). Even the New Testament localizes the abode of the dead in the depths of the earth (Mt 16:18; Lk 16:26; Acts 2:24, 27, 31; Rom 10:7; Rv 1:18; 20:13). According to mythico-dynamic thinking, this realm of death is constantly overflowing its banks. It is present wherever death exercises its sovereignty. Consequently, not only the grave [Ps 39(40):3; 54(55):24; 142(143):7; etc.] and the depths of the earth are linked with it [Ps 62(63):10; 138(139):8; Is 7:11], but also the sea [Ps 68(69):2, 16; Jon 2:4] and the desert (Jer 2:6, 31; Hos 2:5). These “three nonworlds” (Pedersen 1959) are considered manifestations of death and belong to the realm of death. In each diminishing of life, the realm of death disrupts the world of the living. Thus illness [Ps 12(13); 21(22); 29(30); 87(88); etc.], captivity [Ps 141(142); 142(143)], persecution and hostility [Ps 17(18); 143(144)], misfortune, poverty, and hunger are all a foretaste of the descent into Sheol and abandonment by Yahweh. The sinner is already living in Sheol (Ps 9A:16–18).

The texts of the preexilic as well as most of the postexilic books draw a most uninviting picture of Sheol. This realm of death is described as an eternal house (Eccl 12:5) with chambers and rooms (Prv 7:27) and gates [Ps 9A:14; 106(107):18; Jb 38:17; Sir 51:9; Wis 16:13; Is 38:10; Mt 16:18; Rv 1:18], a prison (Eccl 9:10) with bars (Jon 2:7) and bolts and bonds [Ps 115(116):3], the land of oblivion [Ps 87(88):13; 114(115):17], a land whence no one can return (Jb 7:9–10; 10:21; Prv 2:19; Sir 38:21). Sheol is called the “no more” (Is 38:11), destruction [Ps 87(88):12], dust [Ps 21(22):30; 29(30):10; 145(146):4; Is 26:19; Jb 17:16; Dt 12:2]. It is a place of horror [Ps 115(116):3], complete darkness [Jb 10:21–22; 17:13; 18:18; 38:17; Ps 87(88):7; 142(143):3], and remoteness from Yahweh. Even so, Satan does not have any influence in the abode of the dead, but Yahweh controls Sheol through His power [Ps 138(139):8; Jb 26:6; Prv 15:11; Is 7:11; Am 9:2].

State of the Dead. In the Old Testament, death is conceived as the end of the entire living man. Yet this basic conception does not exclude a further existence of the deceased in the realm of the dead, as can be shown by the frequent mention of the dead, of graves, and of funeral customs. For the Israelite, life is life only as it is filled with joy, fortune, wealth, and Yahweh’s presence. These marks of life are not present in the deceased, who are referred to as repa¯îm, the “weak” [Jb 26:5; Ps 87(88):11; Is 14:9] or as those who have descended into the pit [Ps 27(28):1; 29(30):4; Is 38:18; Ez 26:20; 31:14, 16]. In Sheol the dead remain in a state of suspended animation, phantoms of the entire former living man, devoid of all power and vitality (Is 14:10). There is no activity (Eccl 9:10), no pleasure (Sir 14:11–17), no participation in or knowledge of what is happening on earth (Eccl 9:5; Jb 14:12–17; 21:21). In the older books of the Old Testament no doubt exists that the deceased are taken away from the vital union with Yahweh. In the nether world no one praises God any more [Ps 6:6; 29(30):10; 113B (115):17; Sir 17:22–23; Is 38:18b].

However, the older, pessimistic concept of Sheol as the one place for all the dead, irrespective of the moral value of their lives, changes in the later books of the Old Testament. The doctrine of RETRIBUTION gradually leads to a distinction between the lot of the good and that of the wicked [Ez 32:17–32; Is 26:8, 14–21; 66:24; Ps 33(34):22–23; Wis 3:2–10, 19; Prv 14:32]. The just man has hope because he will be rewarded for his work (2 Chr 15:7; Wis 4:7–17, 20). In the writings of the postexilic period, a real change in the attitude toward afterlife is observable in the expectancy of resurrection. Israel’s faith in its election by Yahweh and in His mercy and omnipotence, a faith that was justified by His constant intervention in the history of the nation and

by its experience of the loving union between God and the pious man, developed into a trust in Yahweh that amounted to an undocumented guarantee of resurrection and immortality. This doctrine developed gradually [Jb 14:14–17; Hos 13:14; Is 25:9; 57:1–2; Wis 1:13–16; Ps 36(37):3–7; 64(65):5a], and Isaiah worked out some of its theological reasonings. One finds it in plain words in Dn 12:1–3; Jb 19:25–27; Is 26:19–21; and 2 Mc 7:9–11, 14, 22–23, 34–36. However, even at the time of Christ, the doctrine of individual resurrection, which was explicitly rejected by the SADDUCEES, was not commonly accepted in Israel (Mt 22:23–34 and parallels; Acts 23:6–10). In the New Testament Jesus clearly affirms the resurrection of the dead in opposition to its denial by the Sadducees (Mk 12:24–27; Mt 22:29–32). Jesus refers to himself as “the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25), and Paul understands the future resurrection as a sharing in the victory Christ over death (1 Cor 15:20–28; Col 2:12). In addition to the future resurrection of the body, the New Testament affirms a distinction between the soul and the body (Mt 10:28; 2 Cor 5:8) that implies the continued existence of the human person as a soul in the afterlife. The just ones who die live in Christ (cf. Phil 1:23); they are destined to become like Christ and see him as he is (1 Jn 3:2). After death all human beings are subject to judgment before God (Heb 9:27; 12:23). The afterlife, then, consists of those who share in the blessed life of the heavenly kingdom with Christ (Mt 25: 34) and those who suffer the torments of hell (Mt 25:41). Some, however, will be saved “but only as through fire” (1 Cor 3:15), an image later understood within Catholic tradition as a reference to posthumous purification or PURGATORY.

III. ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME

At the outset, from an extrinsic point of view, Greco-Roman beliefs about life after death did not come from a revealed religion; they were not fixed in sacred books, nor were they dictated, maintained, and controlled as dogmas by a religious authority. They were the product of a slow and steady evolution that corresponded closely, although often with marked lags and uncertainties, to the trends or stages in the development of classical culture in general. Belonging as they did to the domain of tenacious traditions no less than to that of innate anxieties and forebodings, they were in no wise monolithic. New beliefs were super-imposed on old conceptions without adjustment or elimination. Rites that belonged to an outmoded faith continued to be performed, even when no one any longer understood their precise bearing or original signification. Conceptions that were basically divergent were found not only side by side in a given cultural period but also together, apparently without conflict, in the soul of one and the same individual.

In General. The mingling of markedly diversified ethnic elements, especially in the great Hellenistic and Roman centers, created a mixture of opinions and beliefs that would be difficult to reduce to its primary components. In view of the shortcomings of official religion in the sphere of death and the hereafter, religious conceptions were exposed to the strong influences of old wives’ tales, superstitions, and black magic, so that, in the Hellenistic Age and under the early empire, the educated classes abandoned themselves to unbelief, skepticism, or indifference. The masses, who were long isolated from the progress of philosophy and literature, were too deeply engulfed in the precarious conditions of material subsistence to attempt—at least on their own initiative— a separation of religious rites from superstitious practices or of sound religious sentiments from chimerical fictions.

Intrinsically, Greco-Roman views on the life beyond the grave were conditioned by the evolving ideas of ancient man respecting anthropology, the image of the universe, ethics, and human destiny. From the viewpoint of the earliest beliefs on death, the earliest notions on man were neither spiritual nor materialistic in the modern sense of the terms, but simply human, in the sense that man did not originally think of himself as a being composed of two principles. The human being was one entity that death did not split into a lifeless body and a surviving soul. The shade in the lower world or the soul in heaven was most commonly only man in his entirety, viewed from the angle of his corporeal dematerialization. The development of the concept of man gradually arrived at an increasingly sharp dichotomy between body and soul. The explanation for the distinction is not to be sought in the different opinions that were held on the nature of the vital principle (breath, blood, heat, eidolon, spark), but rather, on the one hand, in the practice of incineration, which by destroying the body emphasized the soul, and, on the other, in the influence exercised by dualistic currents in philosophy.

The ancient image of the world passed from Earth as a flat disk floating on the waters of Ocean to a universe of concentric spheres in harmonious movement, circumscribed by the sphere of the fixed stars. Yet it did not detach itself from the idea that the earth, where man reigned as master, formed the center of the universe. Since what survived of man did not attain a dematerialization that escaped the category of place, beyond the grave the soul went to the precise region that the scientific image of the world and the ideas on the survival and nature of the soul suggested it be assigned.

Ethical concepts acquired real influence only when death ceased to be considered a mere passage to another world, where the lot of the dead man was simply a repetition of his social condition on earth. Notions of moral responsibility, of personal conscience, of virtuous conduct, and of sinful life did not appear, however, until the individual became conscious of himself. Then he abandoned the idea that life was lived on earth only, and he submitted to moral demands with their inevitable sanctions, whereby he could hope, in an existence beyond the grave, for the justice and recompense that he in vain had expected on earth.

Human destiny was at first confined within the narrow limits of a terrestrial life, from which man escaped only to the extent that he assured the continuity of his family, tribe, and community. When this changed to emphasize the individual, it opened a concept of survival that, in combining the idea of a reward beyond the grave with the notion of an immortal soul, surpassed in both duration and intensity the possibilities of life on earth. Thus, the true life could begin or re-begin only after death, which, far from diminishing the significance of the human soul, sent it back to its heavenly and divine home.

Early and Classical Greek Beliefs. According to a notion that was held for many centuries, the dead man survived in his tomb, so meticulous care was devoted to funerals, funeral furniture and offerings, and the cult connected, on certain days of the year (e.g., at the Anthesteria at Athens), with tombs. This was the source too, from Mycenaean times, of the family cult and then of the community cult of dead men who were especially significant, namely, the heroes. Subsequently, society, cut off from its ancestral tombs by emigration, was no longer acquainted with either the cult of the dead or that of heroes. Hence arose the general Greek belief—reinforced by the authority of Homer—that the dead were all found together in the subterranean realm of Hades. In the absence of any moral perspective, Hades was not yet a place of retribution, but rather an exact negative replica of life on earth without the positive features of the physical plane—countryside, light, warmth, color, and sound—or the psychological plane—security, freedom, and joy of existence. In this life, by law of repetition, shades continued the shadow of their earthly sojourn. Minoan religion, however, had postulated the existence of Isles of the Blest, located at the end of the world beyond Ocean, to which the gods transported men of divine lineage while they were still alive. This transatlantic eden of living heroes was subsequently changed into the underworld Elysium of the blessed dead—most probably under the influence of the Mysteries of Eleusis. The initiates, in keeping with the law of repetition, continued to celebrate their joyous feasts in their new abode, while the non-initiates had to be satisfied with a shadowy existence in mire. This was not yet a form of punishment but a deprivation of true life.

Orphic Conceptions. From the seventh to the sixth century BC, the Orphics took over certain popular beliefs regarding the hereafter and substituted prescriptions of moral purity for the ritual demands of the Eleusinian Mysteries. They spread the idea that non-initiates would be punished in hell for their unworthy lives. From the sixth century, the Orphics also adopted the doctrine of metempsychosis, the transmigration of the soul. They maintained that the soul, divinely immortal and independent of the entombed body in which it was entombed, was able, by upright conduct in successive incarnations, to free itself finally from all dependence on a carnal body. It could then live its own proper and true life in an Elysium, which Orphic teaching (except in Pindar) has not described in detail.

Pythagorean Conceptions. From the end of the sixth century, Pythagoreanism borrowed from the Orphic Mysteries its views on metempsychosis and the popular notion of recompense after death. It thus contributed in its turn to the belief that in the lower world Elysium was reserved for the pious, whereas Tartarus in Hades was a place of punishment for sinners.

Judgment and Reward or Punishment. In the classical period (fifth and fourth centuries BC) the Orphico-Pythagorean belief in the punishment of Hades spread widely, as is evidenced by literature (Aristophanes, Plato) and art (vase paintings). Most people were hardly reached by the philosophical arguments of Plato, who sought to prove scientifically the immortality of the soul, but they were deeply influenced by the mythico-religious representations of a rewarding hereafter, of which they learned from mythology and the mysteries. Thus most probably around 400 BC, the idea of a iudicium post mortem took shape, as is known through the writings of Plato and the art of fourth-century, southern Italian, funerary vases. After death every soul appeared before a tribunal in Hades, where a college of three heroes (Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus) judged it according to its merits. Pious souls were rewarded with Elysian dwellings, those of less perfect conduct underwent a kind of purgatory, and hardened sinners were condemned for all eternity to the tortures of Tartarus.

Hellenistic Beliefs.  Plato’s affirmation of the divine affinity and immortal nature of the soul ended in the skepticism of the New Academy, whereas EPICURUS, following the atomic theory of Democritus, taught that after death the soul, like the body, dissolved into atoms. The early Stoics recognized in their vital principle, which was related to the fiery ether, a vague form of survival, but it was impersonal and limited in time. With Posidonius and his Platonic leanings, the soul regained true immortality. The mystery religions and the strong Orphico-Pythagorean beliefs in Magna Graecia promised a hereafter to their adherents. This paradise did not so much indicate a low level of morality as it reflected deep longings for felicity unthreatened by trials or death. According to popular belief, which was not influenced by skepticism or by the denials of the educated class, the hereafter was usually located under the earth. This is indicated by metrical epitaphs, curse tablets consigning their victims to the infernal deities, Orphic gold plates found in south Italy, and paintings on funerary vases from the same region. Similarly, the allegorical interpretation of the punishments of Tartarus as worked out by the Pythagoreans had no effect on popular notions of reward or punishment in the next world.

Nevertheless, the progress of Hellenistic civilization brought about marked changes regarding the location of the hereafter. On the one hand, according to new scientific theories on the structure of the earth and the universe, Hades had to be moved either to the dark antipodes of the inhabited earth or to the non-illuminated hemisphere of the world. On the other hand, philosophico-religious teaching on the divine, and therefore heavenly, origin of the soul; astrological cosmology, which turned man’s eyes heavenward; the increasing importance of the symbolism of fire and light; and the astral myths telling of great mortals being changed into stars all exerted an influence on beliefs. Men gradually adopted the revolutionary idea that after death souls were changed into stars or flew off to the starry sky. Under the Roman Empire this lunisolar or astral immortality received support from solar pantheism, but only limited circles were affected. In the leisured class as a whole, skepticism was the rule, whereas the lower strata of the population maintained their previous idea of an underworld Hades.

Early Rome. Primitive Roman beliefs regarding the hereafter were restricted in scope and character. The dead man was placed in a tomb that was built in the form of a house. He led there a weak existence, and the living sustained him by funeral offerings. At the same time he was feared, as evidenced by references to apparitions in dreams, to ghosts, to the role of the ahori, or premature dead, and to necromancy. On certain days of the year, the dead had official access to the world of the living by removing the lapis manalis covering the entrance to the lower world (mundus). In so far as the dead man was a link in the long chain of his gens, or clan, he belonged to the divine ancestral spirits, the Di Parentes. Mixed in the mass of the dead, he formed a part of the Lemures, spirits of the dead who were divided into Lares and Larvae, which were benevolent or malevolent, respectively. Furthermore, these various connections were all brought under the head of Di Manes, to whom specific rites were assigned: the Parentalia, Lemuria, and Larentalia, and later the Rosalia and Dies Violares.

Before the fourth century BC, the Romans did not have an infernal lower world common to all the dead nor any form of punishment beyond the grave. After this time the Etruscans acquainted them with the Greek representation of Hades, but in the form that the terrifying Etruscan demonology had given it. In the third century BC, Magna Graecia invested this Etrusco-Roman world of the dead, Orcus, with all its rich infernal mythology and with all the Orphico-Pythagorean acquisitions to which the Greek genius had given birth. Through the direct contact between the Greco-Oriental and Roman civilizations, all these ideas and beliefs became more and more thoroughly acclimated at Rome. They received a quasi-sacred and definitive expression in the sixth book of Vergil’s Aeneid.

Greco-Roman Beliefs. From the end of the republic, the Greco-Oriental and Roman worlds fused into a great cultural commonwealth in which the active, general circulation of religious ideas caused various forms of syncretistic religion to flourish. Still, old conceptions persisted, whether they took on a new life under their old patrons (the various philosophies), whether they adjusted themselves to the form and organization of religious practices coming from the East (the mystery cults), or whether they simply maintained themselves against the winds and waves of innovation, firmly anchored as they were in the hearts of the masses (popular beliefs).

Philosophy addressed the problem of the hereafter; Neo-Pythagoreanism (first century BC–second century AD) and Neoplatonism (c. 250–c. 500 AD)—despite some Oriental elements—represented currents and ideas of Greek origin. According to the Neo-Pythagoreans, souls, on being freed from the body, escaped into the atmosphere, where they were purified by the winds before they re-entered their original home, the starry spheres. The Neoplatonists taught that the soul, buffeted in some way between the material many and the spiritual One, had to apply itself to the noble task of regaining suprasensible divine life. The syncretistic teachings of Hermetic literature and of Gnosticism (second and third centuries AD) held in common that the soul, having once been cast into matter, could return to its heavenly source only through true knowledge. Besides the old mysteries, whose promise of immortality was reinforced through contact with Orphico-Pythagorean and Neoplatonic elements, various cults, under a flexible form of mystery religion probably borrowed from the Greek mysteries, honored divinities imported from the East (Cybele-Attis, Isis-Osiris, Sabazios, Mithras) and attracted the emotional devotion of the masses, among whom the earlier native stock was being submerged by cosmopolitan elements.

It is desirable, however, to evaluate the expansion of the philosophico-religious doctrines, which appealed strictly to the intellectual aristocracy insofar as they had not limited their hopes to the immortality of fame, and also to appraise the content of the message of salvation afforded by the mystery religions. Several lofty ideas that belonged to philosophy and the mysteries—freedom from death of the body by resurrection, deliverance from the death of the soul by spiritual rebirth and divine illumination, deification, divine filiation—had little or no influence on the common people before Christianity spread among them. Such ideas acquired their real efficacy, expansion, depth, and, in a certain measure, their existence only through the progress of Christianity.

The popular conceptions, vividly revealed by the metrical funeral inscriptions, indicate that common people were practically impervious to the Pythagorean idea that placed Hades in the sublunary region or in the moon itself and that they had no interest in solar pantheism or in Gnostic teachings on the fall and ascent of souls through the planetary spheres. The old believers clung to the cult of the dead at the tomb and to the idea of a lower world in which the shades lived the barest existence in darkness, although they granted that in rare cases the dead, as a reward for a pious life, enjoyed in the Elysian Fields a happy existence of eternal feasting. However, as the gods—and light—had their abode in the heavens, the blessed Hereafter belonged to the celestial heights. There the elect received as their portion the immortal happiness that the philosophico-religious teachings, the mysteries of Gnostic coloring, and imperial apotheosis had offered to a select few. Hell, in the modern sense, remained fixed in the traditional lower world; its punishments, to which Christianity made its contribution (e.g., in the Apocalypse of Peter), attained a diversity and refinement that emanated less from a conscience motivated by the unfulfilled desire for perfect justice than from the lower level of human thinking, over which neither the noblest pagan ideas nor the Christian gospel of salvation had effective control.

IV. ANCIENT EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA

The ancient Egyptians were preoccupied with the afterlife. The practice of mummification extends back at least to the early part of the second millennium BC. At first people believed that continued existence in the next life required the preservation of the earthly body. Eventually, many in ancient Egypt came to believe that all dead continued to live in a realm ruled by Osiris, the god of the dead. The Egyptian Book of Going Forth by Day (or Book of the Dead) might have been composed as early as 1750 BC, though some place it as late as 1200 BC. It testifies to the ancient Egyptian interest in the afterlife and describes how, after death, the soul or heart of the deceased person is weighed on a scale balanced by the “feather of truth” before a tribunal of forty-two judges overseen by Osiris. This postmortem judgment is based on moral behavior during life. After the weighing of the heart, rewards or punishments follow, with complete annihilation sometimes a possibility.

According to ancient Egyptian mythology, Osiris had been drowned in a coffin and later chopped into pieces by his brother, Seth. Isis, the wife of Osiris, miraculously restored him to life, and thus she became the savior-figure of the cult of Isis, which later spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. The Golden Ass or Metamorphoses, written by Apuleius (c. 123–180 AD), and the work Concerning Isis and Osiris by Plutarch (c.46–120 AD) testify to the interest in the cult of Isis. They also reveal the ancient Greek and Roman desire for a savior and a future life, a desire left unsatisfied by the fatalistic view of the Greco-Roman religions, which ascribed immortality to the gods and mortality to humans.

The ancient Mesopotamians, unlike the ancient Egyptians, did not conceive of a moral judgment of the soul after death. Instead, they believed in a netherworld, called Nergal, which was very similar to the early Hebraic concept of Sheol. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, composed between the eighteenth and seventh centuries BC, Gilgamesh conjures up and converses with the shade of his former companion, Enkidu, but this shade is hardly the person he was when alive. Nergal was understood by the ancient Mesopotamians as a gloomy dusty realm of “spirits and defeated gods,” “a land in which there was no return, except perhaps for assassinated or wronged persons who might come back briefly to haunt their malefactors” (Smart 1991, p. 249).

V. PERSIA, INDIA, AND CHINA

Belief in a future life was prominent in the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, which can be traced to the prophetic figure Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek) who lived around the ninth or tenth century BC (though some scholars place him in the seventh century BC). The Zoroastrian scriptures affirm both the judgment of the soul after death and a future resurrection of the body. The particular judgment of individuals is depicted as the crossing of a bridge (the Chinvat Bridge) toward paradise. Those who live wicked lives are tossed off the bridge into hell. The righteous souls, however, enter paradise, whereas other souls go to a state of limbo. In the future age (at the end of ordinary time), the souls of the deceased are reunited with their bodies. They then undergo a final judgment. After a final purification, the souls in limbo (and perhaps some of those in hell) enter into paradise. Some, however, are consigned to hell forever, along with Angra Mainyu, the evil spirit, and other demons.

The clear affirmations of life after death, judgment, heaven and hell, and the future resurrection of the body have led some scholars to wonder whether there might have been a Zoroastrian influence on Jewish eschatology through contacts with the ancient Persians, either during or after the Babylonian exile. Some scholars shy away from such speculation. Others, however, believe that it was not until the ancient Hebrews had contact with Persia “that such ideas as resurrection of the dead at the end of the world, a final judgment, the making of a new earth, and heaven and hell became important in the Hebrew scriptures” (Ellwood and McGraw 1999, p.266).

From a Catholic perspective, it should be noted that PIUS XII, in his encyclical Humani generis (1950), acknowledged a possible influence of non-biblical sources on the authors of the Bible. The pontiff, however, stated that, if such sources were employed, the sacred authors made use of them “under the impulse of divine inspiration which preserved them from all error in selecting and assessing the documents they used” (Denzinger-Hünermann 2005, 3898).

Followers of the main religions originating in India, such as JAINISM, HINDUISM, BUDDHISM, and SIKHISM, all believe in REINCARNATION and the TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS. In their writings the Hindus and Buddhists also speak of numerous hells that some souls pass through on their way to ultimate purification or liberation. Although belief in reincarnation has been linked to some Greek philosophical circles, it is, by and large, a distinctive feature of Indic religious thought. The goal, however, is not to continue living on earth through numerous lives, but to escape the cycle of birth and rebirth (samsara) through liberation (Jainism and Hinduism) or the attainment of an unconditioned state (the Buddhist nirvana). Sikhism, which emerged in the sixteenth century AD, was influenced by Muslim monotheism. In spite of the Muslim influence, followers retained their belief in reincarnation as part of the journey toward eternal life with God.

The religions of India have multiple descriptions of the final state of liberation, and, in Buddhism, the state of nirvana is most often described by negation rather than affirmation (i.e., as a state beyond pain and desire). In Hinduism different schools of thought exist as to whether the individual soul is absorbed into the supreme reality (BRAHMAN) or whether the soul retains its own individuality.

Although popular beliefs in life after death existed in ancient China, classical Confucianism never developed a clearly defined eschatology. CONFUCIUS (c. 551–479 BC) did not deny life after death, but he was reluctant to talk about such matters. Instead, he concentrated his efforts on inculcating righteousness and propriety for the present life. The Chinese religion of Taoism (also called DAOSIM) tends toward a naturalism that is not very concerned with personal survival after death. There is talk of immortality, but it seems more focused on a mystical intuition of the way of things (the Tao) than an affirmation of personal, individual existence after death.

Devotional MAHAYANA Buddhism, more than Confucianism and Taoism, provided the Chinese with the image of a “pure land” beyond this life, which is free of pain and defilement and full of light and glory. Moreover, the understanding of the Buddha as a savior-personality, who could provide entrance into the pure land, became very attractive to many Chinese.

VI. JUDAISM

Although Judaism is less focused on the afterlife than Christianity and Islam, it has traditionally affirmed the reality of a future Messianic Age and the resurrection of the dead. The Jewish sage Moses Ben Maimon or MAIMONIDES (1135–1204 AD) included belief in the resurrection of the dead in his thirteen articles of faith (Fellows 1998, p. 263). Various passages of the Bible can and have been cited in support of the resurrection of the dead (e.g., Ps 16:10–11; Ezek 37:1–14; Dan 12:1–3), but some of the most prominent appear in the Deutero-canonical books of Wisdom (chapters 1–5) and 2 Macc (chapters 7 and 12). Although not accepted as part of the Hebrew Bible by contemporary Jews, Wisdom and 2 Maccabees provide clear evidence of a Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead.

In addition to the BIBLE, rabbinical writings and the TALMUD provide ample evidence of Jewish concepts of JUDGMENT, heaven, and hell. In the Messianic Age, those judged as righteous will enter into heaven (Gan Eden), which is sometimes described as having five chambers “for various classes of the righteous” (Cohn-Sherbok 1987, p. 27). Although some rabbis consigned all Gentiles en masse to hell, the general Jewish consensus is that righteous Gentiles who observe the Noachide Laws (i.e., avoiding idolatry, incest, shedding of blood, profanation of God’s name, injustice, and the dismemberment of living animals) will also gain entry into heaven in the World to Come (Cohn-Sherbok 1987, p.30).

In the Babylonian Talmud, hell is depicted as having seven divisions, each divided into seven more subdivisions, with each of these containing seven rivers of fire and seven rivers of hail. Thousands of crevices, scorpions, and pouches of poison appear in the divisions of hell. Those sent to hell include Jews who disobey the Torah and Gentiles who violate the Noachide Laws.

In modern times, many Jews, including rabbis, have rejected or modified traditional Jewish eschatology. Some contemporary Jews accept the immortality of the soul but raise doubts about the resurrection of the body and the eternity of hell. Others have reinterpreted the Messianic Age in a secular or naturalistic way, viewing it more as a metaphor for a better world in the future. Still others have come to understand “the State of Israel as a substitute for the Messiah himself ” (Cohn-Sherbok 1987, p. 32).

VII. ISLAM

The main focus of Islamic eschatology is on the day of reckoning, or future judgment, and a future resurrection of the body. Many Muslims believe that the day of reckoning will be ushered in by the return of the prophet, Jesus, as a Muslim and the appearance of Al-Mahdı¯, the rightly guided one (viewed by Shi’a Muslims as “the hidden imam”). On the day of reckoning, God (Alla¯h) will judge human beings as worthy of rewards in heaven (paradise) or punishments in hell. Many Muslims also believe that God (Alla¯h) directs angels to keep records of human deeds, and a person’s record of deeds determines his or her fate after death. After death the wicked experience hell in the grave prior to the Day of Judgment and the resurrection of the body. Likewise, after death, the souls of the righteous experience the rewards of paradise, which continue forever after the reunion with their bodies. Following 2:262 and 5:69 of the Qur’a¯n, some Muslims believe that adherents of other religions can escape hell and enter paradise. Others, however, following 4:56, believe that those who deny the Qur’an as God’s revelation will receive severe punishments. Islamic images of paradise and hell are taken from both the Qur’a¯n (the records of MUHAAMMAD’s sayings and deeds). These images are very vivid and sometimes sensual. Although all Muslims believe in judgment, heaven, and hell, not all interpret these images in a literal fashion.  Although the focus is on the future day of reckoning and the resurrection of the dead, Islam also affirms the continued consciousness of those who have died.

VIII. CHRISTIANITY

The scriptural and theological aspects of Christian eschatology are covered in other articles. A few words, however, can be said about the basic Christian understanding of the afterlife.

In Christian eschatology a distinction is made between individual eschatology and general eschatology. In individual eschatology the focus is on the fate of each individual after death. The basic topics are the particular judgment, heaven, hell, and PURGATORY. In general eschatology the focus is on the return of Jesus in glory (the PAROUSIA), the end of the world (as humans know it), the RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, and the final or general judgment.

God judges the souls of all human beings after death individually. Although the New Testament “speaks of judgment primarily in its aspect of the final encounter with Christ in his second coming,” it also “repeatedly affirms that each will be rewarded after death in accordance with his faith and works,” and “each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1997, 1021–1022).

The particular judgment requires the survival of the human person as a SOUL after death. Although the immortality of the individual rational soul was assumed by the Church’s life and practice from the beginning, the   Catholic Church only formally defined this doctrine in 1513 at Lateran V, in opposition to the Neo-Aristotelians of Padua (Denzinger-Hünermann 2005, 1440). At the particular judgment the human soul is judged worthy of eternal life with God in the communion of the saints (heaven) or judged worthy of eternal separation from the blessed vision of God in hell. Some souls are worthy of heaven but require purification from the temporal effects of SIN before experiencing the BEATIFIC VISION. This process of purification is known as purgatory, a doctrine formally defined by the Catholic Church at the Councils of Florence and Trent (cf., Denzinger-Hünermann 2005; 1304–1305, 1820), though it can be traced to the Church’s life and practice from the beginning. The faithful on earth can pray for the souls in purgatory to assist them in their process of purification.

The Catholic Church believes that those in heaven enjoy the blessed vision of God, the beatific vision, which is described in the New Testament as a “face to face” experience of God (1 Cor 13:12) and “seeing God as he is” (1 Jn 3:2). In addition to the beatific vision, they experience communion with all the angels and the just in “the communion of saints” (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 1997, 946–948). The souls in heaven are united with the faithful on earth in “a perennial link of charity,” and by means of “an abundant exchange of all good things,” the saints in heaven can intercede for those on earth (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 1997, 1475). The souls in heaven enjoy the beatific vision prior to the resurrection of the body, a truth clearly taught by Pope BENEDICT XII in 1336 (cf. Denzinger-Hünermann 2005, 1000–1001). The resurrection of the flesh, however, is needed because God created the human person as a unity of soul and body. The resurrected body is a transformed and incorruptible body (cf. 1 Cor 15:36–49), but it retains a true continuity with the earthly body. The life of heaven is variously described as a joyful kingdom and a wedding feast (cf. Mt 25:10, 34), but the exact nature of heaven remains mysterious (cf. 1 Cor 2:9; Is 64:3). Although all in heaven are full of joy, the Church teaches that there will be degrees of glory among the blessed, corresponding to their merits (Denzinger-Hünermann 2005, 1305).

The final consummation of the kingdom after the glorious return of Jesus likewise remains mysterious. After the resurrection of the dead, God’s wisdom and justice throughout history will be revealed in the general or final judgment (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 1997, 1040–1041). The visible cosmos will be transformed, and there will be “the new heaven and the new earth” (Rev 21:1) freed from the limitations of sin and death.

Hell is described as “the state of definitive selfexclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1997, 1033). The New Testament describes hell as a state in which the worm does not die and the fire is not extinguished (Mk 9:48). It is likewise depicted through images of darkness and wailing and gnashing of teeth (Mt 13:42; 24:51). The chief suffering of hell is the pain of loss experienced by “the separation from God, in whom man alone can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1997, 1035). Positive punishments or pains are also experienced in hell, and it is generally acknowledged that these sufferings differ in proportion to the sins of the damned. In spite of some early Christian denials of the eternity of hell, the Catholic Church teaches that the punishments in hell are everlasting (cf. Denzinger-Hünermann 2005, 801; Catechism of the Catholic Church 1997, 393, 1035).

Writen by: I. PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES (Stanley Diamond/Robert L. Fastiggi), II. THE BIBLE (Henry P. Koster/Robert L. Fastiggi), III. ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME (Gabriel M. Sanders/Robert L. Fastiggi), IV. ANCIENT EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA (Robert L. Fastiggi), V. PERSIA, INDIA, AND CHINA (Robert L. Fastiggi), VI. JUDAISM (Robert L. Fastiggi), VII. ISLAM (Robert L. Fastiggi). VIII. CHRISTIANITY (Robert L. Fastiggi) in "The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd edition, Supplement 2010, v.1, Gale Cengate Learning, 2010, USA, excerpts pp.12-23. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.