Whether we believe in them or not, we are all familiar with the concepts of heaven and hell. There was a time, however, when no one thought they would go to either of these places after they died. So where did these conceptions of the afterlife, in which billions today believe, come from?
From the ancient Near East, Greece and Rome to the time of early Christianity, Bart Ehrman traces how these ideas emerged through a centuries-long struggle to explain the injustice of this world. For if good is to ultimately triumph over evil, then this unjust world cannot be all there is. A fascinating history of how the ideas of the afterlife evolved over time, Heaven and Hell also reveals much about how Christianity came to be what it is today.
