A History of Heaven

My CES supervisor, Thomas F. Olmstead, whom I’ve mentioned before as a great source for indicating excellent books on religious studies, has given me permission to post the notes he sent me on another book that he recently read. The name of the book is A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence by Jeffrey Burton Russell, Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of California (Princeton University Press, 1977). If you will indulge me, I will post directly Bro. Olmstead’s excerpts/notes from the text –his own personal notes from his LDS perspective are printed in bold. I add my own minor formatting changes.

Chapter One: Understanding Heaven

The image of heaven as the sky, the starry dome is rooted in both Hebrew and Greek thought. Tent or canopy represents the firmament stretching above the holy place. The connection of heaven with the planetary and stellar spheres and hence with circles derives from Greek and Hellenistic thought, especially Neoplatonism; it appears Jewish thought in the apocrypha (writings sometimes included in the Bible) and pseudepigrapha (writings widely believed to be inspired but never included in the Bible). Our true homeland is heaven, not this precarious and dangerous world. Heaven is the marriage of God with his beloved as community, or his beloved as a personal soul. Other metaphors of heaven are temple, womb, nut, umbilicus, or mandala; related images include book, ladder, bridge, clouds, gates, and court.

The role of space and time in the concept of heaven is related to the presence of bodies there, which requires that it be in some sense a place. Jewish tradition has always held that life in the other world is life in the body. Further, the much ignored fact is that neither the new Testament nor the early Christian writers ever used the term “immortal soul” or immortal spirit.” The early Christians, like the rabbis, understood that union with God was union of the whole human, both soul (Note: LDS=spirit) and body, with him. Christian tradition continued to assume this union until, in the third century c.e. Platonic ideas of the soul’s great superiority to the body promoted the idea of the survival of souls (Note: LDS–spirits) apart from bodies.

Doubting Thomas by Caravaggio

The Resurrected body was viewed as in some way identical with this earthly one. One that eats, excretes, breathes, circulates the blood, and fires neurons. The resurrected Christ ate fish (Lk. 24: 42-43). A body that does not eat or drink could not function. The resurrected body is a different sort of body, a glorified body, but unless it functions as a body it resembles less an earthly body than a Platonic disembodied soul. Will our resurrection body be at our physical or intellectual peak? Will a mother encounter her child as a baby or as a grown person? Beneath these questions lay a consensus that the body in heaven would be at once a physical body and a body freed from its limitations; it would possess the qualities of completion and fulfillment. (pages 15-16)

Chapter Two: Elysium, Jerusalem and Paradise

As Israel was shaken by invasion, deportations, and oppressive rule by other nations, faith in corporate salvation waned, as did belief that goodness would be rewarded on earth. A more otherworldly orientation appears in later biblical books, such as Daniel. This direction is even clearer in the Targumim. The original text of 1 Samuel 2:6 is “The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up”; Targum Jonathan appends: “to eternal life.” It adds to the words “the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places and make your bones strong” (Isaiah 58:11) the phrase “and your body will enjoy everlasting life.” The same direction is found in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, (third century B.C.E.) the Septuagint adds to Job 42:17, “And Job died, old and full of days,” the words “It is written that he will rise again with those whom the Lord raises up.” Jewish funerary inscriptions of the last century B.C.E. indicate that the individual was believed to have personal relationship with the Lord that continued after death. The old Deuteronomic view yielded to belief in personal immortality and reward in heaven. (p.28)

The complications of Greek thought regarding spirit, soul, and body had little resonance in the Hebrew Bible, where no such term as “incorporeal” appears. The words ruah (breath or life) and nephesh (life) have sometimes been translated as “soul” but are best considered terms for the animation principle of the body; they are not separable from it. The fluttering shades of the primordial Sheol were called rephaim. (p.29)
…As the idea of immortality took hold, a tension grew between the faith that the just will live with the Lord in their bodies and the observation that the body is subject to corruption and goes to the grave or pit. The Book of Daniel (165-164 B.C.E.) contains the first clear reference to the resurrection in Jewish thought: at the end of the world “those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2)… (p.29).

Tombs on the Mount of Olives

The place of resurrection will be the Mount of Olives. The literal, metaphorical meaning of the Mount of Olives included all Jerusalem, or the whole land promised to Israel from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, or even the whole earth. The Biblical view is that heaven is the place of God. Humans do not and cannot live there. But the Jews of the last few centuries B.C.E. felt the need to bring the righteous into heaven somehow. Early apocalyptic literature accomplished this by making them angels or priests in the heavenly Temple. In the second century C.E., Mishnah Sandehrin 10:1 (Chalek) condemns anyone maintaining that the resurrection of the dead is not in the Torah, In the fourth century C.E., Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin said that those who deny the resurrection of the dead will not be resurrected (90a-b)… (p.30)

…Jewish images of heaven centered on the Temple, the court (implying both royalty and justice), and the garden. The emphasis upon the Temple was associated politically with the party of the priest; that upon the court with the party of the kings…
The resurrected righteous were usually believed to dwell either in Jerusalem or in paradise. The Jews placed the kingdom of God on earth rather than in the heaven. Paradise, the Garden of Eden, was the shady and fruitful orchard at the beginning of the world. (p.31)

(Note. As to the belief that the Jews place the “kingdom of God on earth rather than in heaven note the following two LDS scripture statements.

“We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory” (Article of Faith # 10).

“And the redemption of the soul is through him that quickeneth all things, in whose bosom it is decreed that the poor and the meek of the earth shall inherit it (the earth). Therefore, it (the earth) must needs be sanctified from all unrighteousness, that it may be prepared for the celestial glory. For after it hath filled the measure of its creation, it shall be crowned with the glory, even with the presence of God the Father… Wherefore, it (the earth) shall be sanctified , yea, notwithstanding it shall die, it shall be quickened again, and shall abide the power by which it is quickened, and the righteous shall inherit it” (D&C 88: 18–19, 26)

Although there is no unanimity in rabbinic teaching about the afterlife, the rabbis generally (Note: After the destruction of the Temple) set aside such apocalyptic dreams. Some rabbis perceived the kingdom of God as present and growing in this world. The terms “new Jerusalem” and “Jerusalem built in heaven” do occur (Targum on Ps. 122:3) On the whole, however, the rabbis held the view that Zion would be reconstructed on earth. The resurrection of the body and the judgment will take place in the geographical Jerusalem at the end of time, and there the Kingdom of the

The Path to Paradise by Ricciardo Meacci

Lord will be established. The already established belief in the resurrection obtained almost universal acceptance when the Sadducees, who had opposed it, were eradicated after the destruction of the Second Temple. Influential rabbis supported the idea of the resurrection; the Babylonian Talmud repeatedly affirmed it; and the Mishnah warned that anyone denying it would suffer eternal punishment in Gehenna. But this Jewish emphasis on the resurrection of the body was radically different from the Greek emphasis on the immortality of the soul. The central difficulty for Christianity was its effort to fuse these two ideas. (p. 39)

I have posted here the first two chapters covered in Bro. Olmstead’s notes–the rest of his material will be posted subsequently. My great thanks to Bro. Thomas F. Olmstead for his excellent research and for providing me with this intriguing material.

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