For What It's Worth

Key Takeaways:

• Belief in an afterlife is widespread, but its meaning varies significantly across cultures and religions
• Descriptions of the afterlife often reflect a society’s values, ideals, fears, and moral concerns
• When viewed alongside older traditions the Christian myth of heaven and hell may be less unique than commonly assumed
• Afterlife beliefs evolve over time, with the concepts of reward and punishment shifting in response to changing historical, social, and theological influences

In The Emerging Christian Myths 2 we traced how beliefs about heaven emerged gradually within Jewish history rather than appearing fully formed. It explored how exile, foreign influence, and the suffering of the righteous pushed ancient thinkers to imagine justice beyond the grave. By the time Christianity emerged, the idea of resurrection and eternal reward had already been shaped by centuries of crisis, adaptation, and theological reflection.

Heaven, Hell, and the Human Imagination

There are two common but different models of scholarship on the emerging and diverse myths of the Christian heaven: the theocentric model and the anthropocentric model. Both offer very different ways of looking not only at biblical scholarship, but at the world as well.

The theocentric model (Theo = God, centric = centered) emphasizes an individual’s relationship with God and views interpretations of faith as flowing from that relationship. In this approach, the focus rests on a personal connection between the believer and their creator. Its guiding principles are understood as originating from above—truths believed to be given or revealed directly by God.

The anthropocentric model (anthro = human) emphasizes the relationships that connect people—community, family, and friends. In this view, meaning is shaped largely by cultural values and shared experiences. It considers the behaviors and beliefs that grow within particular communities as natural responses to human interaction with the world and with one another. The related field of anthropology studies how societies and cultures develop over time.

From the perspective of the theocentric model, some critics would argue that it can at times overlook certain historical or contextual realities. It may rely on significant leaps of faith that place less emphasis on critical analysis or intellectual inquiry.

The Christian faith community did not emerge in isolation or all at once. Rather, it developed gradually over long periods of time. Its beliefs and decisions were shaped by ongoing interaction with the surrounding world and the people within it. These lived experiences likely played a significant role in its development, alongside the sacred writings understood by believers to be inspired by God.

Faith from Above or Born Below?

What comes first—the chicken or the egg? In a similar way, we might ask: does a tenet of faith create belief, or does belief form first and later become expressed as an official teaching?

Many adherents understand tenets to develop from the top down, believing that careful study of scripture establishes those teachings. At the same time, both the scriptures themselves and the tenets drawn from them take shape within particular historical and cultural contexts, not in isolation.

These tenets, later regarded as scripture, emerged from within particular communities. They were shaped by the circumstances and cultural world in which those communities lived. From this perspective, the anthropological dimension plays a significant role. Exploring the cultures that surrounded early Christian communities can offer valuable insight into how these beliefs developed.

It is often assumed that theology shapes a community’s view of heaven and hell. Yet it may also work the other way around. The way a community comes to understand the afterlife—heaven in particular—can influence and set the boundaries for its theological ideas. As cultures and societies change over time, their understanding of heaven often changes as well.

The early church, for example, endured periods of persecution under Roman rule. These experiences strongly influenced how believers imagined heaven and what they hoped it would offer. Over time, their understanding of heaven continued to develop, often reflecting the circumstances and events unfolding around them.

With this in mind, it is helpful to look more closely at how particular ideas of heaven developed within specific historical settings. One clear example appears in the Hebrew tradition, from which Christianity later emerged, where changing political realities and cultural encounters helped shape new ways of imagining the afterlife.

Heaven: Revelation or Reinvention?

Christianity emerged from within the religious world of ancient Judaism. Its earliest followers understood themselves as participants in Israel’s covenant story. For that reason, Christian ideas about heaven and the afterlife developed out of earlier Hebrew beliefs before taking on new forms.

In early Hebrew thought, the afterlife did not generally include heaven as a destination for human beings. The dead were believed to go to Sheol, a shadowy and undifferentiated realm where all went regardless of status or virtue.

Heaven, by contrast, was understood primarily as the dwelling place of God. In Hebrew thought, “the heavens” (shamayim) referred broadly to the sky or cosmic realm—the sphere of divine authority over creation.

Over time, however, Hebrew texts begin to reflect new ideas. Daniel 12:2–3 introduces themes of resurrection and reward, suggesting a shift in how the destiny of the righteous was imagined.

Certain biblical narratives—such as Enoch (Genesis 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11)—describe individuals taken by God. These stories appear to be exceptional rather than representative of a general doctrine, but they indicate that ideas about divine presence beyond death were evolving.

It is important to note that this understanding of the afterlife was not unique to the Israelites. Assyrian, Babylonian, and later Greek cultures held comparable views about the realm of the dead. These similarities suggest that such ideas may have developed through cultural contact and shared influences.

Ideas about heaven began to take clearer shape after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE, when many Jews were exiled to Babylon. Without a Temple or homeland in which to practice their faith, the experience of exile profoundly affected Israelite religious thought. In this context, reflection on divine justice deepened, and heaven increasingly came to be understood as a possible destination for the righteous.

After Babylon conquered Judah in 586 BCE, it was later overtaken by the Persian Empire in 539 BCE under Cyrus the Great. During this period, the Jewish people came under Persian rule and were exposed to Persian religious ideas.

Some scholars suggest that elements of Persian thought may have influenced emerging Jewish views of the afterlife. In Persian belief, the afterlife involved a process of judgment in which individuals were assessed several days after death. Their fate depended on the balance of good and evil in their lives: if their good deeds outweighed the bad, they were granted entrance into heaven; if not, they were sent to a place of punishment, often described as cold and unpleasant.

For many Jews living in exile, the hope of spending eternity with God in heaven as a reward may have become increasingly meaningful. In this context, some began to reconsider earlier understandings of the afterlife. Questions arose about a view of God in which both the righteous and the wicked were thought to share the same fate after death. They began to reason that God must reward virtue; otherwise, the call to live virtuously would seem to lose its meaning.

This emphasis on divine reward appears to have grown stronger after the Maccabean War (170–160 BCE). During this period, a group of Jewish rebels led by Judas Maccabeus rose up in response to the desecration of the Temple by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus.

Some scholars suggest that the war marked a significant shift in Jewish beliefs about the afterlife. In the struggle against Antiochus, the community confronted a pressing question: what future awaited those who had died for Israel? Were their deaths in vain? What hope or conviction might have inspired them to give their lives?

Read Emerging Christian Myths 4

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