Life After Death
How Western religions came to believe in heaven, resurrection and the soul, traced from ancient roots.
Alan F. Segal, a scholar of religion, traces beliefs about life after death from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt through the Hebrew Bible, Persian and Greek thought, to early Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He shows how ideas of resurrection, the soul and judgement developed as cultures met and borrowed from one another.
Recommended by 1 Person
Stephen Cave
Segal is extremely good at showing us how the history of religion is the history of humans encountering each other and the common sets of problems among different traditions, and how they all intermingle and evolve in trying to find solutions to them. He does that in particular by looking at afterlife beliefs.
Interview · April 2012
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