The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife

The afterlife is still very much alive in Western civilization, even though the truth of its existence is no longer universally accepted. Surprisingly, however, heaven, hell and the immortal soul were all ideas which arrived relatively late in the ancient world. Originally Greece and Israel-the cultures that gave us Christianity-had only the vaguest ideas of an afterlife. So where did these concepts come from, and why did they develop? In this fascinating, learned book, Bremmer takes a fresh look at the major developments in the Western imagination of the afterlife.