Before Heaven & Hell

Catalog description

This seminar asks two interrelated questions. First,how might understandings of death inform the way we live? Second, what do various conceptions of an afterlife - for example, notions of judgement, the immortaility of the soul, and resurrection of the body - suggest about what it means to be human? Early Christian sources from the New Testament to Augustine are considered in the context of readings from earlier and surrounding cultures, including the Hebrew Bible and Greco-Roman literature.