The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife

by Jan N. Bremmer

Belief in the afterlife is still very much alive in Western civilisation, 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, but highly readable book, Jan N. Bremmer - one of the foremost authorities on ancient religion - takes a fresh look at the major developments in the Western imagination of the afterlife, from the ancient Greeks to the modern near-death experience.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion

250 pages, Paperback

First published September 27, 2001

About the author

Prof. em. Dr. Jan Nicolaas Bremmer (Ph.D., Free University Amsterdam, 1979) is Professor emeritus for Religious Studies in the Faculty for Religious Studies and Theology at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, where he twice held the post of Dean of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies.

Reviews

[D. Leek · Rating 3 out of 5]

I swear that I'm trying my hardest to agree with Bremmer whenever I read something of his but I just can't. Don't get me wrong, this book is erudite and wonderfully written and Bremmer clearly knows (in broad strokes, at least,) what he's talking about. Although less in depth than its main competitors in the current market (Bernstein, 1996 and Ehrman, 2022) the breadth of traditions that Bremmer touches upon is impressive, even referring to non-European examples.

Nevertheless, the arguments that Bremmer presents don't always make sense and in some cases are directly contradictory to the evidence. Sometimes even his own! The most egregious example of this comes on page 64 where Bremmer argues that "Jewish ideas do not seem to have been of any influence on Christian eschatological speculation in this point [Purgatory], even though some ideas about an intermediate state could already be found in the Jewish writings between the the destruction of the Temple in 70 and the revolt of Bar Kochba(132-135)". He makes this claim after having referred to 1. Enoch 22 (generally dated to roughly the 3rd century BCE), including one reference that directly contradicts the idea of a lack of Jewish proto-purgatory on page 8.

Furthermore, see the companion works on Afterlife and Ressurection beliefs by J.A. Sigvartsen for a comprehensive overview on the complexity and diversity of Jewish and Early Christian afterlife beliefs (including Purgatory or similar concepts). A book this size was never going to present all the nuances of early Abrahamic eschatological theology, but gross oversimplification is not the way to go.

All in all a great introductory book to the topic but not one that should be read and/or followed uncritically.

[Joey · Rating 4 out of 5]

really slim unfortunately but incredibly dense. my only wish is for a deeper engagement with the various sects outside of the Greek traditions as the area was ripe with various cultural contaminations as Brenner eludes to (such as Jewish tales of tours of the underworld) and it is not for sake of lack of source material.