The Early History of Heaven

This volume traces the backgrounds, origin, and development of early Jewish and Christian speculation about the heavenly realm - where it is, what it looks like and who its inhabitants are. Edward Wright begins his study with an examination of the beliefs of ancient Israel's neighbours Egypt and Mesopotamia, reconstructing the intellectual context in which the earliest biblical images of heaven arose. An analysis of the Hebrew biblical texts themselves then reveals that the Israelites were deeply influenced by images drawn from the surrounding cultures. Wright goes on to examine Persian and Greco-Roman beliefs, thus setting the stage for his consideration of early Jewish and Christian images, which he shows to have been formed in the struggle to integrate traditional biblical imagery with the newer Hellenistic ideas about the cosmos. In a final chapter Wright offers a brief survey of how later Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions envisioned the heavenly realms.;This book is intended for students and scholars of religious studies, early Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions.

Contents

1. Ancient Egyptian Traditions
2. Ancient Mesopotamian Traditions
3. Israelite Traditions
4. Persian, Greek, and Roman Traditions
5. Early Jewish and Christian Traditions I: The Persistence of Biblical or Ancient Near Eastern Models
   Early Jewish and Christian Traditions II: The Adoption of Hellenistic Models.
6. Early Jewish and Christian Traditions III: Common Themes & Motifs
7. Later Developments in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Images