Quote:
Originally Posted by anticipation
The early Christian heaven seems to have evolved out of the Israelites fear of a Greek or Mesopotamian afterlife. Greeks believed that everyone, regardless of morality or social stature, went to Hades together and spent eternity just sort of wandering around doing chores for Hades, while the Mesopotamians believed that the afterlife was like a "house of dust", where everything was sort of intangible and in darkness. Of course Christians decided that they weren't going to the same place after death as their enemies, or anyone who they deemed of low moral character. Thus the idea of Heaven was created, so that early Christians could rest easy knowing that anyone who disagreed with them was bound for sandy doom while they would be perched up above with their invisible giant in the sky.
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Hm, not sure I believe all this. I don't know mesopotamian faith very well, but as far as I know, the greek also had an equivalent to heaven where the virtous and heroic would spend the afterlife - which was Elysium or the Elysian fields.
The concept of reward or punishment in the afterlife is such a crucial and familiar concept to so many religions. It's obvious these ideas in some overall way help people believe in or behave in line with their respective religions, making them more successful. By successful I mean it helps them gain believers and help believers from losing faith. If you wipe the slate clean and start with a new religion, some kind of reward/punishment in the afterlife idea would be likely to evolve I think as a natural consequence of our psychology.