Download Religious Views of Life After Death

Religious Views of Life After Death
Views of life after death associated with the ancient
and modern religious traditions of the world
The Land of No Return
In Greek mythology, Charon, the old ferryman, guides a small
boat that carries souls from this world into the afterlife, into
Hades, the land of no return.
Earliest Evidence of Human Belief
in Survival of Death
Archaeological Evidence
The practice of intentional human burial, which
dates back to at least the Neanderthal period
(300,000 - 30,000 BCE), provides evidence of the
concept of death among early humans.
The practice of ritual burials
among later Neanderthal and
Cro Magnon humans is
suggestive of the concept of
survival of death among
early humans.
Archaeological Evidences of Ritual Burial
1. Unique positioning of the corpse (e.g., fetal position)
2. Painting the corpse or covering it with carved stones or plants.
3. Clothing and decorating corpses with jewelry (e.g., pendants,
bracelets, necklaces, beads).
4. Burying corpses with other “grave goods” (e.g. jewelry, tools)
Belief in survival of death appears to be
a prehistoric belief.
The Afterlife, Desirable?
Many of the earliest literary expressions of
an afterlife do not depict it as a desirable or
pleasant place.
Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2000 BCE): After
death, the human person goes to the
netherworld as an etemmu (ghost or shade).
The “shade” is a ghostly double of the human
person, and the netherworld is a gloomy
subterranean realm.
The idea of the continued
existence of a person as a
ghost in the Netherworld was
common throughout
Mesopotamia by 2000 BCE.
The Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians also
believed that the spirits of the dead could be
agitated by disturbing their graves or the failure to
perform proper funerary or memorial rites.
Agitated spirits of the departed could haunt the
living by inflicting physical and psychological harm
on them.
Portions of the Hebrew Scriptures (circa 800-500 BCE)
The dead go to “sheol,” but some are capable of being raised
as spirits or ghosts. (e.g., I Samuel 28)
The Iliad and the Odyssey (circa 750-650 BCE )
The dead go to Hades (the underworld). “There remains
then even in the house of Hades a spirit and phantom of
the dead, but there is no life within it.” (Iliad 23).
Elitist Conceptions of the Afterlife
Positive conceptions of the afterlife are found in ancient religion,
but their earliest expressions represent a largely elitist view of
the afterlife.
Ancient Egyptian Religion
In the Old Kingdom (3rd millennium BCE), immortality
typically belonged exclusively to the Pharaohs and the
priesthood.
Significance of these Afterlife
Concepts
1. Belief in survival of death did not arise
because people hoped they would survive death.
It wasn’t the product of wishful thinking.
2. Belief in survival of death did not arise as a way for
political systems to control the masses, nor as any kind
of social control mechanism.
2a. If the afterlife is not a place of rewards and
punishments, it can’t be used as an incentive to behave in
some particular way.
2b. If the afterlife isn’t for the masses, it has no relevance to
their lives.
Morally Relevant and Universal
Conceptions of the Afterlife
Everyone survives death but the afterlife
involves punishments and rewards for
deeds done on earth.
Mesopotamia and India
Circa 1400 BCE….
Mesopotamia - the 12th tablet of the Epic of
Gilgamesh.
The quality of life in the Netherworld varies
depending on the quality of one’s earthly life.
India – Rig Veda (of the sacred Vedas)
The virtuous receive a new body after death and
enter “the world of the fathers” (a heavenly realm
of pleasure and joy occupied by one’s ancestors
and the gods), but the wicked are cast into a dark
pit.
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The Afterlife and the Self
Universal and morally relevant
conceptions of the afterlife become
widespread in the first millennium
before the common era, during the socalled axial period.
The Axial Period (800-200 BCE)
Zoroaster (prophet of Zoroastrianism)
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha
Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato
and Aristotle
Completion of the Hebrew Scriptures
(the Old Testament)
Composition of the sacred Hindu texts
of the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita
Two Important Features of the
Axial Period
Ideal Self
Beatific Conception of the Afterlife
Pre-Axial Period
Underdeveloped concept of self
Underdeveloped concept of the afterlife
The Rise of “the Soul”
The Socratic dialogues affirm the existence of the self
as an individual soul, an immaterial, simple substance
that intrinsically has immortality. The soul can enter a
divine world after death, otherwise it might be reborn in
a new body on earth.
The Upanishads in India affirmed the existence of a
true self (atman) that transcends the individual self
of our present experience.
The Persian and Hebrew traditions affirmed the
existence of an individual self that will survive
death, first in the form of a disembodied soul and
subsequently as a physically resurrected person
(soul-body unity).
Zoroastrianism (the
religion of ancient Persia)
affirmed a beatific afterlife
for all worshippers of the
one true God.
The soul (urvan) of the
dead person goes to a
heavenly realm after death.
The soul is rejoined to the
body at some time in the
future when God conquers
all the forces of evil.
The wicked enter a place
of punishment after
death (hell), but exist
there only for a limit
time. All people are
eventually redeemed.
Afterlife
Moral Judgment of the Individual
The Existence of God
Creator, Lawgiver and Judge
By the 2nd century BCE, the doctrines of disembodied
soul-survival and a future bodily resurrection from the
dead are both explicitly acknowledged in Judaism.
These ideas eventually work their way into
Christian and Islamic theology in the
common era.
Hinduism - Reincarnation
The Upanishads (circa 800500 BCE) and the Bhagavad
Gita (500-200 BCE)
explicitly affirm the doctrine
of reincarnation (samsara),
roughly the idea that the soul
is reborn in new bodies until
the cycle of death and rebirth
is broken and the soul is
liberated (moksha).
Buddhism – Rebirth and Bardo
From its inception in the 5th century BCE, Buddhism
affirmed the Hindu doctrine of samsara (rebirth).
Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism does not affirm the
existence of an individual soul (jivatman) or true
unchanging self (atman).
Buddhism has typically understood rebirth to be the
continuation of a changing stream of consciousness or
pattern of dispositional tendencies.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (circa 8th century
CE) affirms the existence of Bardo, a state of
consciousness between physical death and
rebirth.
Afterlife Views at a Glance
Eastern Religions
Western Religions
(Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism)
(Judaism, Christianity, Islam)
Reincarnation
Bodily Resurrection
Eastern and Western
Religions
Disembodied Survival
(Intermediate State)
The Afterlife and God
Ideal conceptions of the self are parts of the larger metaphysical
framework of the religious traditions of the world.
Vision: These metaphysical frameworks invariably teach the
existence of a reality that transcends the physical world and our
present experience (Yahweh, Brahman, Ahura Mazda, Allah).
Purpose: Religion attempts to relate human individuals
to this higher reality, to personalize the transcendent.
Means: The afterlife provides a context in which this divinehuman relation is actualized and developed. Some form of
transcendence is achieved.
TheSoul’s
Land of
No Return
The
Great
Journey
The exploration of the nature of the self and the nature of
ultimate reality.