Ehrman, Bart D. – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Fri, 20 Jan 2023 08:35:49 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png Ehrman, Bart D. – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 Journeys to Heaven and Hell https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/journeys-to-heaven-and-hell/ Tue, 14 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=23542 New York Times bestselling scholar's illuminating exploration of the earliest Christian narrated journeys to heaven and hell]]> A New York Times bestselling scholar’s illuminating exploration of the earliest Christian narrated journeys to heaven and hell
 
“[An] illuminating deep dive . . . An edifying origin story for contemporary Christian conceptions of the afterlife.”-Publishers Weekly
 
From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged. He examines how fundamental social experiences of the early Christian communities molded the conceptions of the afterlife that eventuated into the accepted doctrines of heaven, hell, and purgatory.
 
Drawing on Greek and Roman epic poetry, early Jewish writings such as the Book of Watchers, and apocryphal Christian stories including the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Apocalypse of Peter, Ehrman demonstrates that ancient tours of the afterlife promoted reflection on matters of ethics, faith, ambition, and life’s meaning, the fruit of which has been codified into Christian belief today.

]]> Heaven and Hell https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/heaven-and-hell/ Thu, 07 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=17026 The bestselling historian of early Christianity takes on two of the most gripping questions of human existence - where did the ideas of heaven and hell come from, and why do they endure?

]]> Where did the ideas of heaven and hell come from?

As strange as it may seem to us now, there was a time when no one thought they would go to heaven or hell after they died. In fact, there is no mention of them in the Old Testament, and Jesus did not believe the souls of the departed were bound for either realm.

In this gripping history of the afterlife, Bart Ehrman reveals how the concepts of heaven and hell developed and took hold, and why they endure to this day. He examines the social, cultural and historical roots of competing views held by Greeks, Jews and Christians, and traces how beliefs changed over time. Ultimately, he shows that many of our ideas about heaven and hell emerged long after Jesus’s time, through the struggle to explain the injustices of the world.

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