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Afterlife - A History of Life after Death (Hardcover)
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Afterlife - A History of Life after Death (Hardcover)
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The end of life has never meant the extinction of hope. People have
always yearned for, and often been terrified by, continuance beyond
the horizon of mortality. Over many centuries various imaginative
and sometimes macabre ideas have been devised to explain what
happens to human beings after death. As Philip C. Almond reveals in
his new and zestful history of the hereafter, whichever image or
metaphor has been employed by visionaries, writers, philosophers,
or theologians, it has tended to oscillate between two contrary
poles: the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the
soul. This pendulum movement of ideas and language reflects the
contending influence of the Hebrew Bible and of ancient Greek
thought and the often tense encounters, skirmishes, and compromises
between them. Exploring this polarity, and boldly ranging across
time and space, Almond takes his readers on a remarkable journey to
worlds of both torment and delight. He travels to the banks of the
Styx, where Charon the grizzled boatman ferries a departing spirit
across the river only if a coin is first placed for payment on the
tongue of its corpse. He transports us to the legendary Isles of
the Blessed, walks the hallowed ground of the Elysian Fields, and
plumbs the murky depths of Tartarus, primordial dungeon of the
Titans. The pitiable souls of the damned are seen to clog the
soot-filled caverns of Lucifer's domain even as the elect ascend to
Paradise. Including medieval fears for the fate of those consumed
by cannibals, early modern ideas about the Last Day, and modern
scientific explorations of the domains of the dead, this first full
treatment of the afterlife in Western thought evokes many rich
imaginings of Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and Limbo.
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