Wright, J. Edward. The Early History of Heaven. New York: Oxford University Press. 2000
This book presents itself as a history of the Judeo-Christian view of Heaven, that is the space above the sky, whether inhabited by the souls of all the saved or just a mechanism of spheres, supporting the planets. It presents itself as spanning two worlds, "valuable for both the general audience and the specialist" (p. x), with the text aimed to be accessible to all, and the endnotes for a more scholarly sort.
The organization is chronological, beginning with Sumerian and Akkadian conceptions of a tripartite universe and the Egyptian view of the heavens. These provide a basis for the early Israelite universe, which is explained in detail. At this point one of the weaknesses of the book becomes evident, the illustrations. The bulk of the illustrations are drawings from other sources, frequently with partial captions (p. 93 for eg.). There is no unifying style and some of them, though topically accurate, are quite difficult to parse (p. 103).
Following Egypt and Mesopotamia, we enter early Israelite tradition, which is explained quite well. The reconstruction of early Israelite semi-monotheism provides a good introduction to what can be a difficult topic and the structure of the universe, and heaven in particular as a mirror of the earthly Temple is covered.
What follows is a short chapter on Greek, Roman, Persian and Ptolemaic Egyptian traditions, which are covered only in basics. There is an explanation of the various models of the universe, those of Pythagoras, Eudoxus and others, but not explanation of the bizarre elements many of these models possess: Pythagoras' "Counter-earth" or the numerous intervening spheres of later models.
Finally the author's focus is reached, later Jewish and early Christian views of Heaven. He provides some excellent examples from some of the more complex Apocryphal works beginning with those which stuck with a "single heaven" cosmology, and then those later works which adopted the Greco-Roman multiple-Heaven view. The texts are complex, but the explanations are quite well constructed, and make the concepts as clear as possible, given the oddities of some of the texts. It is in these texts that the concepts of human "souls" ascending into heaven post-mortem gains popularity, as well as the entrance requirements for those souls: good works, charity, and the most popular, orthodoxy beliefs that agree with the author.
In conclusion, I'd recommend the book. There are some weaknesses in the "general audience" accessability, including some passages in ancient Greek and some common scholarly techniques for transliteration, which the non-scholarly audience might not follow. That and the, previously mentioned, uneven quality of the illustrations would be the only major problems.
(I learned about the book from Alan Lenzi)
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