After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory

by John Casey

Overview

One of the most profound, deeply affecting questions we face as human beings is the matter of our mortality--and its connection to immortality. Ancient animist ghost cultures, Egyptian mummification, late Jewish hopes of resurrection, Christian eternal salvation, Muslim belief in hell and paradise all spring from a remarkably consistent impulse to tether a triumph over death to our conduct in life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195092950
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	11/02/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	468
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

John Casey is a Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge University. He is the author of Pagan Virtue, Morality and Moral Reasoning and The Language of Criticism.

Table of Contents

PART 1: DARK FUTURES

Prologue: STEPHEN DEDALUS'S HELL
Chapter One: AFTER LIVES
Chapter Two: EGYPT
Chapter Three: MESOPOTAMIA AND ISRAEL
Chapter Four: GREECE AND ROME
Chapter Five: THE CHRISTIAN BEGINNINGS
Chapter Six: DANTE: INFERNO
Chapter Seven: PREDESTINATION: AUGUSTINE TO CALVIN AND BEYOND
Chapter Eight: THE DECLINE OF HELL

Part II: PURGATORY

Chapter Nine: ROME'S HAPPIEST INSPIRATION?
HEAVEN
Chapter Ten: HEAVEN: EGYPT, MESOPOTAMIA, ISRAEL
Chapter Eleven: BODIES FLESHLY AND SPIRITUAL
Chapter Twelve: DANTE: PARADISO
Chapter Thirteen: CELESTIAL PLEASURES: RENAISSANCE AND
REFORMATION HEAVENS
Chapter Fourteen: HEAVENLY SPECULATIONS
Chapter Fifteen: HEAVEN SEEN AND HEARD: SWEDENBORG
Chapter Sixteen: WITH EASY INTERCOURSE PASS TO AND FRO
Chapter Seventeen: SCORING IN HEAVEN
Index

Editorial Reviews

"After Lives is an elegant and informative literary pilgrimage through heaven, hell, and purgatory — a rare achievement in humane erudition, graced by sympathy, curiosity, and candor."
— Carol Zaleski, author of Otherworld Journeys, The Life of the World to Come, The Book of Heaven, and Prayer: A History

"John Casey's After Lives, steeped in classics, philosophy, literature, and religion, discusses a vast variety of ideas about what happens after death. It ranges over heaven, hell, and what may lie between, covering ideas from ancient Egypt to twentieth-century spiritualism. It is vivid, ironic, deep, and accessible."
— Jeffrey Burton Russell, author of A History of Heaven and Paradise Mislaid

"Happily for the scope of his inquiry, the author is immensely well-read and readily shows how powerfully and frequently notions of heaven and hell have inspired and haunted Western writers. This is a smart and comprehensive survey."—Publishers Weekly

""After Lives" offers a humane and often witty engagement with the concepts of heaven and hell in different times and according to different faiths. It is ironic that a book about life after death so enlivens one of the most important conversations we can have in the here and now."—The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher