The development of the belief in Heaven and Hell: What did the Greeks and Romans believe about the afterlife?

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of the night wondering if you made the right choice with your life? Have you ever (the drunk mode counts!) thought about the meaning of life? The ultimate and objective meaning of life!!! I mean, yes, of course, you can find all sorts of subjective meanings in life: good food; a glass of a great vine; a fulfilling job; dedicating yourself to helping others; being married to the right person; becoming a parent, raising your kids… However, all of these are, in the end, temporary. You can have a fulfilling job, but you won’t have it forever; you can dedicate yourself to some charity organization, but that won’t last forever either; you can have a great marriage and raise kids. But even that (as wonderful as it is) will come to a certain endpoint. We all will find ourselves (rich and poor, educated, and uneducated alike) at deathbeds realizing that all of the things mentioned above are temporary and that one can’t find ultimate meaning and purpose in there. But, at the same time, human beings are in a constant search for some ultimate and everlasting meaning. So, it comes as no surprise that people want things to turn out well in the end, both in life and afterward! A couple of years ago, a group of researchers came out with a survey asking Americans about their ultimate beliefs. Roughly seven in ten (72 %) Americans say they believe in heaven – defined as a place “where people (or their souls) who have led good lives are eternally rewarded”. The same survey showed that 58 % of U.S. adults also believe in hell – a place “where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished”. But where did we get this idea of heaven and hell? How did it come about? I teach this to my students every year and they are, more or less, amazed at the conceptual development of the belief in heaven and hell. In what follows, I will briefly sketch this development starting off with the Graeco-Roman world.

The oldest account in the Western tradition that contains a story about the person who went on a guided tour of the afterlife (in Greek: κατάβασις) is Homer’s Odyssey written (probably) in the 8th century BCE. Just to give you a little background: Odysseus is in the midst of the ten-year journey home from the Trojan war. He is told that he needs to visit the famous blind prophet Tiresias who has died. That, of course, means he has to go down to Hades to receive from the prophet the instructions on how to get back home. In addition to receiving these important instructions, Odysseus meats a bunch of people in the Underworld. And from there we can deduce what Homer (and probably a lot of other people from that time period) thought about life after death. What Odysseus finds there is what is called “The Joyless Kingdom of the Dead”. People who dwell there are labeled as shades. The shades really are shades, shadows of life. They are not physical entities; they can feel no physical pain, pleasure, or joy; they have no more substance than a passing dream. They are “powerless” and “witless” – epithets common in the narrative. And, they are not immortal! For Homer, only gods are immortal. So, if you ask Homer, that’s how is going to be after you die. This is true for everybody, whether they are good people or bad people; whether they are rich or poor – everybody will get the same. So, for Homer, the only thing that really matters is this life on Earth – because this is the only life we get! No second chances, no real afterlife! So far as we know, this was a common view in Greece at the time of Homer! Odysseus finds out this terrible news (there is no life after death) in a remarkable encounter in Hades with his dead mother. Out of his desperate grief, he goes up to his mother to hug her. Three times he tried, but his hands just slipped through her. Because she (as a shade in the Joyless kingdom of death) has no substance, no strength, and in fact no memory. Later on, he encounters the greatest Greek warrior of all time: Achilles himself. Odysseus tells him that he now is the lord over the dead in all of his power. So, he has no reason to grieve for having died. But then Achilles comes back with a line that perfectly summarized Homer’s view on the afterlife: By god, I’d rather be a slave on earth for another man – some dirt – poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive, than rule down here over all the breathless dead. The lesson from Homer is pretty clear: you don’t want to die. Stay alive as much as you can because, after this, there is nothing that awaits you.

That itself raises an obvious problem that many thinkers in ancient Greece had: what about justice? Is it really possible that no matter how you live, your destiny is sealed? Is it really the same for a respected and powerful man who worshiped gods and for a street thief and murderer who disobeyed gods? Eventually, people in ancient Greece started believing in a system of justice after death. From that ethical problem, the idea of everlasting awards and punishments emerged. We can already see it in the writings of the Greek poet Hesiod, but it was developed in a more elaborate way by the famous philosopher Plato (c. 428 – 348. BCE). However, for the sake of this text, I’ll move a couple of centuries forward to a well-known Roman writer Virgil (1st century BCE) – approximately 700 years after Homer. Virgil was heavily influenced by Greek thought, especially by ideas put forward by already mentioned Plato. In his Dialogues, Plato talks about the afterlife and how people there are being rewarded or punished depending on how they lived. In Virgil’s great epic Aeneid, which is modeled on Homer, the main protagonist Aeneas also goes to the Underworld to see what the afterlife is like. Virgil’s story is similar to Homer’s in numerous ways:

  1. Aeneas is also (as Odysseus) led by divine advice
  2. He goes down there and meets a bunch of people including a parent
  3. He tries to hug his parent three times but his hands just pass through him

So, this is a very similar account, but with a key difference. In Virgil’s account, there are rewards and punishments. Everybody is not a shade or a shadow in the Underworld! People have some kind of physical existence. Some people are sent to Tartarus which is a place of horrible neverending torments. Other people who are righteous go to a place called Elysium where they are rewarded forever. Here we a clear example of a system of rewards and punishments depending on how one lives one’s life. However, it is extremely important to bear in mind the following fact: In Virgil’s account, Elysium is a place for a highly select group. The inhabitants of this realm of the Underworld are not basically good and well-meaning citizens; they are the crème de la crème among the social and cultural elites. This fact will become an important issue as we proceed to the early Christian belief in the afterlife! Nevertheless, Virgil obviously picked the idea of everlasting rewards and punishments from Plato and other Greek philosophers and it eventually (with a different spin and interpretation) made its way to Christianity. Christianity, of course, did not arise out of Homer, Plato, and Virgil directly. It emerged out of Jewish tradition, culture, and history. In particular, Christianity emerged out of the Hebrew Bible. What does the Hebrew Bible say about the afterlife, and how did the Christian belief in the afterlife develop – that’s a topic for another post!

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