NOTES

Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from the Bible are from The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books: New Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); and all quotations from the Qur’an are from Tarif Khalidi’s verse translation: T. Khalidi, The Qur’an (London: Penguin Books, 2008).

INTRODUCTION

A cover story: L. Miller, “Why We Need Heaven,” Newsweek, August 12, 2002.

“An act against all”: Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, September 12, 1960. Quoted in R. V. Friedenberg, Notable Speeches in Contemporary Presidential Campaigns (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), p. 61.

Nearly 80 percent: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 2008, p. 10.

Freedom of religious expression: Note, though, that these rights were not universal; Quakers, in particular, were often persecuted for their beliefs. See C. G. Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For an excellent analysis of the founders and religion, see J. Meacham, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of a Nation (New York: Random House, 2006).

According to a 2007 poll: Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation, pp. 5 and 174. See also their follow-up study, which found 65 percent believe many religions can lead to eternal life: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Many Americans Say Other Faiths Can Lead to Eternal Life,” 2008, http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=380.

“The way our fathers took a medicine”: Letter to Louis de Kergorlay, Yonkers, June 29, 1831, in A. de Tocqueville, The Tocqueville Reader: A Life in Letters and Politics, ed. O. Zunz and A S. Kahan (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 44–45.

“We’re no longer living”: L. Miller, “Religion: The Age of Divine Disunity—Faith Now Springs from a Hodgepodge of Beliefs,” Wall Street Journal, February 10, 1999.

A third of people say: European Commission, Special Eurobarometer 225: Social Values, Science and Technology, Brussels, Belgium, 2005, p. 9.

We retain our religiosity: Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Religious Landscape Survey, p. 162.

In sixty years: A. L. Winseman, “Eternal Destinations: Americans Believe in Heaven, Hell,” Gallup, Inc., May 25, 2004, http://www.gallup.com/poll/11770/Eternal-Destinations-Americans-Believe-Heaven-Hell.aspx.

Losing adherents: Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Religious Landscape Survey, p. 26.

So when 81 percent: Gallup, Inc., “Gallup/Nathan Cummings Foundation and Fetzer Institute Poll,” Gallup, Inc., May 10–13, 2007, and May 1997, http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/Religion.aspx.

The most successful denominations: “World Christian Database,” Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2005, http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org.

Living the right kind of life: A turn of phrase I take to include both doing good works and submitting to God’s mysterious will.

Heaven changed during the Civil War: P. S. Paludan, “Religion and the American Civil War,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. R. M. Miller, H. S. Stout, and C. R. Wilson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 30.

“Walk off”: A. G. Lotz, Heaven: My Father’s House (Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, 2001), p. 47.

Orthodox apologists: The word orthodox means “right belief,” and I’ve used it throughout to refer to conservative, traditionally observant religious groups; note, however, that many progressives also describe their religious beliefs as orthodox.

“Not just words”: L. Miller and R. Wolffe, “I Am a Big Believer in Not Just Words, But Deeds and Works,” Newsweek, July 21, 2008.

The town of Ripley: K. P. Griffler, Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), pp. 61–62.

“A yellow Cadillac convertible”: W. C. Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: W. Morrow, 1991), p. 126.

“A whole series of symbols”: See Reinhart’s introduction to L. Bakhtiar, Encyclopedia of Islamic Law: A Compendium of the Views of the Major Schools (Chicago: ABC International Group, 1996).

81 percent of Americans: Gallup, Inc., Gallup-Nathan Cummings Foundation and Fetzer Institute Poll.

“Heaven is AWOL”: D. Van Biema, “Does Heaven Exist?” Time, March 24, 1997.

“Tinky Winky”: J. Falwell, “Tinky Winky Comes Out of the Closet,” NLJ Online, February, 1999, http://web.archive.org/web/19990423025753/; http://www.liberty.edu/chancellor/nlj/feb99/politics2.htm.

“Entering the happiest life”: B. Woodward, “In Hijacker’s Bags, a Call to Planning, Prayer and Death,” Washington Post, September 28, 2001.

By journalists like Paul: Barrett ended up writing a book about the Muslim experience in the United States. P. Barrett, American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

“Boughton says he has more ideas”: M. Robinson, Gilead (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), p. 147. Thanks to Peter Hawkins, at Yale University, for reminding me of this beautiful passage.

“People have been told so often”: J. Meacham and L. Miller, “Everything Old Is New Again,” Newsweek, May 5, 2008.

“Unhappy America”: Economist, July 24, 2008.

U.S. Census Bureau, “Interim Projections of the Population by Selected Age Groups for the United States and States: April 1, 2000, to July 1, 2030,” April 21, 2005, http://www.census.gov/population/projections/SummaryTabB1.pdf.

A 2003 Pew poll: Pew Research Center for People and the Press, 2004 Political Landscape, November 5, 2003, http://people-press.org/report/196.

“Flying spaghetti monster”: S. Harris and A. Sullivan, “Is Religion ‘Built Upon Lies’?” BeliefNet, January 23, 2007, http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Secular-Philosophies/Is-Religion-Built-Upon-Lies.aspx. The Flying Spaghetti Monster was conceived in 2005 by Bobby Henderson, then an unemployed slot-machine engineer, as a parody of the arguments made by proponents of Intelligent Design; see B. Henderson, “Open Letter to Kansas School Board,” Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, January 2005, http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/.

“Suspension of disbelief”: S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1898), p. 145.

This feeling of reverence: Not everyone thinks of God in this way, of course. The theologian N. T. Wright notes that to some believers, my description of God as a “feeling of reverence” seems to miss the point. “If I said ‘this feeling of warmth and snug comfort is what I have always called my wife,’ I think my wife might hit me,” he adds (e-mail, April 21, 2009).

CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS HEAVEN?

A spiritual memoir: J. Martin, My Life with the Saints (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2006).

“If you have to explain it”: D. Goodyear, “Quiet Depravity,” New Yorker, October 24, 2005.

Saints populate heaven: For a broader discussion of the role of the saints in Catholic theology, see P. R. L. Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

“I believe in hell”: E. Schillebeeckx, For the Sake of the Gospel (New York: Crossroad, 1990), p. 111.

God sent them to earth: Abraham’s visitation is described in Genesis (22:11); Moses’s in Exodus (3:2); and Mary’s in Luke (1:26–38).

“For beauty is nothing”: “Elegy 1,” trans. Stephen Mitchell, quoted in W. H Gass, Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), pp. 65–66.

Pearl gates: Revelation 21:18–21. Note that some scholars advocate an earlier date, between the mid-50s and early 70s CE, for Revelation’s authorship. See G. Desrosiers, An Introduction to Revelation (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000), p. 50.

“I will give you the keys”: Matthew 16:19.

“Eat pâté de foie gras”: C. Arnold-Baker, The Companion to British History (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 1148.

“You’ll behold the Union Depot”: “Life’s Railway to Heaven,” copyrighted 1890 by M. E. Abbey and Charles D. Tillman, quoted in N. Cohen and D. Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. 612.

A 2002 Newsweek poll: L. Miller, “Why We Need Heaven,” Newsweek, August 12, 2002.

“First-century conceptuality of heaven”: E-mail from N. T. Wright, April 21, 2009.

Different word for each heavenly concept: I am especially indebted to Alan Segal for his translations and interpretations of the Hebrew Bible.

“The gray rain-curtain of this world”: The words are adapted from Tolkien’s original text, in which the narrator describes Frodo’s experience of leaving Middle Earth for the “undying land” beyond the sea. See J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings (New York: Random House, 1983), p. 339.

“Let the little children”: Matthew 19:14.

“They lived in great joy”: C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; a Story for Children (New York: Macmillan, 1950), p. 169.

“All their life in this world”: C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 228.

31 percent of people: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation, Washington, DC, 2008.

The Dead Sea Scrolls: The majority scholarly view is that the Essenes, or a group very much like the Essenes, wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. See, for example, J. H. Charlesworth, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New Haven, CT: Anchor Bible Series, 1995); and J. Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002). A minority view, that the Essenes did not write the scrolls—or perhaps never existed—is represented by R. Elior, Memory and Oblivion: The Secret of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute and ha-Kibutz ha-Meuchad, 2009).

Showed Jesus ascending: R. Deshman, “Another Look at the Disappearing Christ: Corporeal and Spiritual Vision in Early Medieval Images,” The Art Bulletin 79, no. 3 (1997): 518–46.

They had a deity called Ba’al: For a complete description of Canaanite afterlife beliefs, see A. F. Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004), pp. 104–109; see also A. R. W. Green, The Storm-God in the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003), p. 222.

Osiris, who lived among the stars: Alan Segal writes, “Osiris lives in the heavens and underworld. Both at once and I don’t know how. The constellation Orion is called the house of Osiris in Egyptian. In Winter Orion is high in the sky but in the summer part of it sets.” (By e-mail, August 6, 2009.) Osiris was believed to have the power to grant both earthly fertility and eternal life. See D. H. Kelley and E. F. Milone, Exploring Ancient Skies: An Encyclopedic Survey of Archaeoastronomy (New York: Springer, 2005), p. 261; see also B. Mosjov, Osiris: Death and Afterlife of a God (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005).

“Possessor of heaven”: Genesis 14:18–22, in The Holy Bible (King James Version) (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

“At the blast of your nostrils”: Exodus 15:1–20.

“Corn from heaven”: Exodus 16; Numbers 11:7–9; Psalms 78:24.

The predominant view of cosmology: E. Grant, Physical Science in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 71–72.

Rabbi Ishmael: Segal, Life After Death, p. 513.

Ascends through seven spheres: Ibid., pp. 654–55. See also F. S. Colby, Narrating Muhammad’s Night Journey: Tracing the Development of the Ibn ‘Abbâs Ascension Discourse (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), pp. 1–2.

In Christian cosmology: R. Hughes, Heaven and Hell in Western Art (London: Wei denfeld & Nicolson, 1968), pp. 112–14. This model is cast by some scholars as a Dantean innovation; see A. Cornish, “Angels: Number and Hierarchy,” in R. H. Lansing, ed., The Dante Encylopedia (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 42–43. For a more complete discussion of the adaptation of Aristotelian cosmology by Christian theologians, and particularly the installation of the immobile Empyrean sphere beyond Aristotle’s primum mobile, see E. Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 371–421.

“Light that flowed”: Canto 30:62–63 in Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, verse translation by Robert and Jean Hollander, introduction and notes by Robert Hollander (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 735.

Around the year 200 BCE: The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. B. McGinn, J. J. Collins, and S. J. Stein (New York: Continuum, 1998). See also Frontline, “Apocalypse!” first broadcast November 22, 1998, by PBS. Written, produced, and directed by W. Cran and W. Loeterman; and associated primary-source materials: L. M. White, “Apocalyptic Literature in Judaism and Early Christianity,” PBS, 1998, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/primary/white.html.

Post–9/11 jihadis: R. Paz, “Hotwiring the Apocalypse: Apocalyptic Elements of Global Jihadi Doctrines,” in M. Sharpe (ed.), Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Suicide Bombers—the Psychological, Religious and Other Imperatives (Cambridge: IOS Press, 2008,) pp. 108–109.

Fundamentalist Christians: L. Miller, “Is Obama the Antichrist?” Newsweek, November 15, 2008.

“God himself will be with them”: Revelation 21:3–4.

Minority view: Some scholars strongly disagree with Slonim’s suggestion that few Lubavitchers hold the Rebbe to have been the Messiah. For a full account of the opposing view, see D. Berger, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001).

“Knowledge of God”: See also Isaiah 11:9.

19 percent of Americans: Miller, “Why We Need Heaven.”

Christianity was brand-new: According to an early tradition, Christians—forewarned by Christ—fled Jerusalem around 66 CE, probably to Pella in the Transjordan Valley, and thus weren’t present for the destruction of the city. Still, modern scholars say there’s little historical evidence to support the story, and that Christians likely remained in and around Jerusalem until its destruction. See L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), pp. 229–31.

13 percent: Miller, “Why We Need Heaven.”

A world of farmers: Segal, Life After Death, p. 105.

Garden walls: Hughes, Heaven and Hell, p. 47.

“Every tree”: Genesis 2:9–19.

Monks drew maps: A. Scafi, Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

“I believe that in the earthly paradise”: As quoted in J. Delumeau, History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition, trans. Matthew O’Connell (New York: Continuum, 1995), p. 54.

“‘Heaven’––is what I cannot Reach!”: E. Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, ed. R. W. Franklin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 137.

An appropriation by Christian painters: R. M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 112.

Eden became a popular subject: C. McDannell and B. Lang, Heaven: A History (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), pp. 111–12.

The Blessed Virgin: The central figure in La Primavera is more generally assumed to be Venus, surrounded by Cupid, Mercury, and the Graces. For an overview of the consensus position—and of the case for a Marian reading—see K. A. Lindskoog, “Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’ and Dante’s ‘Purgatory,’” in Dante’s Divine Comedy: Purgatory (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), ix–xiv.

Gozzoli’s fifteenth-century fresco: See the analysis in A. E. McGrath, A Brief History of Heaven (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), p. 58.

“A most pleasant garden”: L. de Medici and L. Cavalli, Opere: A Cura di Luigi Cavalli (Naples: F. Rossi, 1970), p. 368, translated in E. B. MacDougall, Medieval Gardens (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1986), p. 238. Quoted in McGrath, A Brief History of Heaven, p. 58.

A safe and fertile place: Segal, Life After Death.

“There flowers of gold shine”: From “Olympian 2,” in A. Pindar, The Complete Odes, trans. A. Verity, with an introduction and notes by S. Instone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 9.

The idea of heaven as a paradise garden: For more on the imagery of the Islamic paradise, see S. Blair and J. Bloom, eds., Images of Paradise in Islamic Art (Hanover, NH: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 1991). Though images of the Prophet are forbidden in most Muslim traditions, the wealthy and powerful have, throughout history, built opulent gardens as reflections of Paradise. See D. F. Ruggles, Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

They will inhabit…pomegranates: See suras 2 (“The Cow”), verse 24; 76 (“Man”), verses 3–10; 47 (“Muhammad”); and 55 (“The All-Merciful”).

In a pomegranate garden: C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 294.

Blood and…fertility: F. J. Simoons, Plants of Life, Plants of Death (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), p. 279.

In the Muslim paradise, according to the Qur’an: The imagery described in this paragraph can be found in suras 56 (“The Event”); 76 (“Man”); 55 (“The All-Merciful”); and 15 (“Al-Hijr”).

“I have sometimes suggested”: T. Carnes and A. Karpathakis, eds., New York Glory: Religions in the City (New York: New York University Press, 2001), p. xiii.

Jerusalem was the center: See M. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea: The Origins of the Jewish Revolt Against Rome, A.D. 66–70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

To slay his beloved son: Genesis 22:1–14.

“The holy city Jerusalem”: Revelation 21:10.

Jeweled walls: Revelation 4:6.

A mosaic from 440 CE: Thanks to Ena Heller, of the Museum of Biblical Art, for showing me this beautiful mosaic.

“A challenge and an invitation”: A. Pilla, “Building the City of God,” EcoCity Cleveland, November, 1993, from http://www.ecocitycleveland.org/smartgrowth/cornfields/city_of_god.html.

“I dream of someday”: M. Brown, “About the Author,” LatterDayLogic.com, 2007, from http://www.latterdaylogic.com/about/.

Gingerich is an astrophysicist: See also his book, O. Gingerich, God’s Universe (Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006).

CHAPTER TWO: THE MIRACLE

Jews who invented our idea of heaven: Here there is no scholarly consensus. Most scholars agree that Daniel 12:2–3 gave resurrection and eternal life to some people, some of the time. They disagree vehemently, however, on what the verse actually means. In the resurrection, will humans be humans or something more like angels? And do the seeds of modern-day heaven, cozy and populated as it is with our friends and relatives, lie in the ancient idea of resurrection? For a range of views, see N. Gillman, The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1997); J. J. Collins, Daniel: With an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1984); and A. F. Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004).

The Jewish patriarch Abraham: For the stories of Sarah’s burial and of Abraham’s death, see Genesis 23:2–20 and 25:8–10.

Not the dwelling of humans: I am indebted to Alan Segal for his readings and interpretations of the Hebrew Bible here.

Full of allusions: Noah’s flood, Genesis 6:9–8:22; the story of Lot, Genesis 19:24; Hagar and Ishmael, Genesis 21:17; Abraham and Isaac, Genesis 22:11.

Jacob lays his head down: Genesis 28:11–17.

Babel: Genesis 11:4–9.

When Jacob dies: See Genesis 49:29–30 and 50:2–13.

Buried in caves: Thanks to Rachel Hallote, director of the Jewish Studies Program at SUNY-Purchase, and Jodi Magness, Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at UNC-Chapel Hill, for their help explaining ancient Israelite burial customs. See also E. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs About the Dead (Sheffield, UK: JSOT Press, 1992).

Those caves are full of bones: In 2007, the Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and his coauthor Charles Pellegrino published a book in which they claimed to have found a tomb near Jerusalem containing the bones of members of Jesus’s family and perhaps even of Jesus himself. The book, and a television program linked to its publication, caused a massive and not entirely favorable stir. S. Jacobovici and C. Pellegrino, The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History (New York: HarperOne, 2007).

“So take the past”: From Darwish’s 1988 poem “Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words,” quoted in Z. Lockman and J. Beinin, Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation (Boston: South End Press, 1989), pp. 26–27.

“This is my covenant”: Genesis 17:4–8.

“Take away our disgrace”: Isaiah 4:1.

Went to Sheol: Scholars are still debating the precise role played by Sheol in early Judaism. Some, like Jon Levenson at Harvard University, believe that Sheol was a destination for people who died in dishonor or were in some other way unfulfilled. Alan Segal argues that everyone went to Sheol, and not just those who displeased God.

“As the cloud fades”: Job 7:9–10.

The Hebrews lived in multigenerational: Descriptions in this paragraph come largely from R. S. Hallote, Death, Burial, and Afterlife in the Biblical World: How the Israelites and Their Neighbors Treated the Dead (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001).

And indeed many other scholars: See, for example, Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices. Also note R. Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988); and R. E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible? (New York: Summit Books, 1987).

“No one shall be found”: Deuteronomy 18:10–11.

“Stoned with stones”: Leviticus 20:27.

The story of King Saul: Samuel 28:3–19.

The Bible says: Out of slavery, Exodus 12:41; forty years in the desert, Exodus 16:35; Ten Commandments, Deuteronomy 5:1–22; Moses died, Deuteronomy 34:1–5; back to Canaan, Joshua 1–13; King David, 1 Chronicles 11:4–7; Abraham and Isaac, 2 Chronicles 3:1.

Drove many of the people: B. Porten, “Exile, Babylonian,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), vol. 6, pp. 608–11.

The great Persian Empire: G. R. Garthwaite, The Persians (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004).

Nile River island: A. Schalit and L. Matassa, “Elephantine,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Berenbaum and Skolnik, vol. 6, pp. 311–14. Thanks also to Jamsheed Choksy, Professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington, for his help on the Exile.

Began to create a religion: R. Drews, “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to the Beginnings of Modern Civilization,” Vanderbilt University, April 20, 2009, http://site mason.vanderbilt.edu/classics/drews/COURSEBOOK, chap. 4.

Coincided with…a new religion: Segal, Life After Death. See also R. Stark, Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief (New York: HarperOne, 2007), pp. 188–191; and P. Clark, Zoroastrianism: An Introduction to an Ancient Faith (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1999). Some scholars put less weight on Zoroastrian influences, noting the paucity of contemporary documentary evidence pertaining to Zoroastrian beliefs and practices at the time of the Exile. See N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).

Zoroastrian scripture: Segal, Life After Death, pp. 189.

“I form light”: Isaiah 45:7.

There are not two Gods: Segal, Life After Death, pp. 198–200. See also L. A. Hoffman, The Journey Home: Discovering the Deep Spiritual Wisdom of the Jewish Tradition (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), p. 143. Note, however, that this view is not universally accepted; Choksy, in particular, argues that Jews and Zoroastrians would have seen one another as monotheistic.

Jerusalem wasn’t much of a place: Thanks to Hanan Eshel, former head of the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, for his help via phone and e-mail reconstructing the mood and geography of Jerusalem in the centuries following the Exile and leading up to the Maccabean Revolt.

Beginning to change: V. Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959).

Jacob was mummified: Genesis 50:2–3.

Torah metes out punishment: Deuteronomy 18:10–12; see also Leviticus 20:27.

“Enoch walked with God”: Genesis 5:17–24.

Genesis…written and finalized: T. L. Brodie, Genesis as Dialogue: A Literary, Historical, and Theological Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 80–85. See also R. E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?

“Enoch” himself: Note that the first book of Enoch was considered scriptural by the authors of the New Testament—it’s quoted as true scripture in Jude 14—and remains canonical for Ethiopian Christians. For more detail, see D. C. Olson, “1 Enoch,” in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, ed. J. D. G. Dunn and J. W. Rogerson (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 904–41.

Elijah, the prophet…“taken up”: 1 Kings 17–21 and 2 Kings 2:11.

Some Jews, some of the time: I am indebted to Mark Smith, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, for his insights about Enoch and Elijah. See also M. Smith, The Memoirs of God: History, Memory and the Experience of the Divine in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004); and A. Amanat and M. T. Bernhardsson, Imagining the End: Visions of Apocalypse from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), pp. 72–78.

Influence…of the Greeks: Segal, Life After Death.

Jerusalem had been gobbled up: A. Schalit, E. E. Halevy, J. Dan, and A. Saenz-Badillos, “Alexander the Great,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), vol. 1, pp. 625–27.

In the third century BCE: Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization. See also J. H. Hayes and S. Mandell, The Jewish People in Classical Antiquity (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), pp. 5–6.

Alexander’s own favorite sculptor: “Lysippos,” in The Grove Encyclopedia of Classical Art and Architecture (e-reference ed.), ed. G. Campbell (Oxford University Press, 2007), www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t231.e058.

The Greeks believed in the soul: J. N. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press, 1983), pp. 16–17.

“Departs to the invisible world”: Plato, Phaedo (Stillwell, KS: Digireads.com, 2006), p. 58.

Plato believed: Note that it’s unclear whether Plato intended his discussion of the Demiurge to be taken literally; generations of Plato’s followers and critics have argued the case one way and the other. See R. D. Mohr, God and Forms in Plato: The Platonic Cosmology (Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2005).

Believed in reincarnation: Segal, Life After Death, pp. 232–34. See also M. R. Taylor, “Dealing with Death: Western Philosophical Perspectives,” in Handbook of Death and Dying, ed. C. D. Bryant, 1:24–33 (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003).

Tensions began to emerge: Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization. See also J. J. Collins, Daniel: With an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1984).

The same question: E. J. Bickerman and Jewish Theological Seminary of America, The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).

Jerusalem’s high priest: U. Rappaport, “Jason,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Berenbaum and Skolnik, vol. 11, p. 90.

Goings-on at the gymnasium: 2 Maccabees 4:12 and 1 Maccabees 1:15.

The story of the Jewish revolt: Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization.

Menelaus paid the king: 2 Maccabees 4:32.

According to the books of the Maccabees: See especially 1 Maccabees 1:41–60 and 2 Maccabees 5:27, 8:16, and 8:7.

A man whom I will call Daniel: Like many of the Bible’s books, the book of Daniel is believed to have many authors, and to have been assembled over a period of many years; nonetheless, the apocalyptic verses referenced here can be confidently dated to the time of the Maccabean revolt. For a more complete discussion, see Collins, Daniel.

“Many of those who sleep”: Daniel 12:2–3.

CHAPTER THREE: THE KINGDOM IS NEAR

“Has already been taken up”: M. Shriver, What’s Heaven? (New York: Golden Books, 1999), p. 19.

61 percent of Americans: Time/CNN poll conducted March 11–12, 1997, by Yankelovich Partners, Inc. See D. Van Biema, “Does Heaven Exist?” Time, March 24, 1997.

“The new heaven”: See Revelation 21:1.

In the Gospel of Matthew: The farmer, the mustard seed, the fishing net, and the pearls can be found in Matthew 13:24–46; the king’s accounts in Matthew 18:23–35; the king’s banquet in Matthew 22:1–14; the landowner in Matthew 20:1–16; the ten virgins in Matthew 25:1–13; the camel and the needle in Matthew 19:23–24; the warning against earthly wealth in Matthew 6:19–21; the command to become as children in Matthew 18:3; and the warning against ostentatious piety in Matthew 6:1.

“The time is fulfilled”: Mark 1:14–15.

He was posing a question: N. T. Wright, e-mail dated April 21.

“A final cosmic catastrophe”: A. Schweitzer and W. Lowrie, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God: The Secret of Jesus’ Messiahship and Passion (London: A. & C. Black, 1925).

Apocalyptic literature or scripture: A great compendium of apocalyptic movements, from ancient times to the present day, is this one: The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. B. McGinn, J. J. Collins, and S. J. Stein (New York: Continuum, 1998).

Store cans of food: L. J. Arrington and D. Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-Day Saints, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p. 277.

A renewed planet: M. J. Penton, Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), pp. 179–81.

Simply boilerplate: L. Miller and A. Murr, “Jesus and Witches,” Newsweek, October 28, 2008, http://www.newsweek.com/id/166215.

Apocalyptic expectation: See, for instance, J.-P. Filiu, L’apocalypse dans l’Islam (Paris: Fayard, 2008).

“The Hour is coming”: Sura 20 (“Ta’ Ha’”): 15.

The destruction of Israel: The necessity of the destruction of Israel, though preached by many Twelvers, isn’t inherent to the idea of Mahdism; the scriptural justification for the position could as easily be taken to refer to the overthrow of Arab regimes or the implementation of a new world order. For more detail, see T. R. Furnish, Holiest Wars: Islamic Mahdis, Their Jihads, and Osama bin Laden (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005). Says Jamsheed Choksy, professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington: “If Ahmadinejad et al. really were expecting the Mahdi to reappear during their lifetimes, or if they intended to trigger apocalyptic events, then their beliefs would require them to engage in preparing themselves through words and actions—including helping fellow Muslims, being honest, and purifying themselves. I don’t see them doing any of that.” (By e-mail, August 20, 2009.)

“The real savior”: Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, September 19, 2006, available at “Transcript of Ahmadinejad’s U.N. Speech,” NPR.org, September 19, 2006, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6107339.

Israel is similarly important: P. S. Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 185–93.

Hagee…McCain: N. Guttman, “McCain Battles for Credibility with Jews,” The Jewish Chronicle (Washington, DC), March 14, 2008. In 2006, Hagee told Reuters that “our support for Israel has absolutely nothing to do with an end times prophetic scenario.”

Claim their view as his own: For an excellent analysis of the ways different American interest groups claim Jesus as their own, see S. Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).

“Ruling of God in our hearts”: H. Pope, “The Kingdom of God,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. C. G. Herbermann, E. A. Pace, C. B. Pallen, T. J. Shahan, and J. J. Wynne (New York: The Encyclopedia Press, 1913), vol. 8, pp. 646–47.

No preoccupation with the hereafter: J. D. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994). See also J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991).

“Your Kingdom come”: Matthew 6:9–13.

watered-down apocalypticism: See E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, 1993); E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985); and P. Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988).

Influenced by the Essenes: J. E. Taylor, The Immerser: John the Baptist Within Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 15–48.

Awareness…of the imminent end: See, for example, Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.

“You are the Messiah”: Mark 8:27–30. See also Matthew 16:17–28.

Centuries of speculation: R. Bultmann, “The Message of Jesus and the Problem of Mythology,” in The Historical Jesus in Recent Research, ed. J. D. G. Dunn and S. McKnight (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005), pp. 531–42. For an opposing view, see Wright, Victory of God. 60 “For you yourselves know”: 1 Thessalonians 5:2–4.

“Into the invisible place”: Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” trans. A. Roberts and W. Rambaut, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, ed. A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, and A. C. Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885), p. 560.

“This fire”: “Ita plane quamuis salui per ignem, gravior tamen erit ile ignis, quam quidquid potest homo pati in hac vita” (Enarrationes in Psalmos 38.3 CCL, 38.384). Translation from J. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 69.

“A never-ending present”: Augustine, Confessions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), book 11, chapter 13, quoted in J. S. Feinberg, No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), p. 381.

The traditional Christian view: Sparkling walls and gates of pearl are in Revelation 21:19–21; the tree of life is in Revelation 22:2; the light of God is in Revelation 22:5.

“And let everyone who hears”: Revelation 22:17.

A third of America’s white evangelicals: The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “Many Americans Uneasy with Mix of Religion and Politics,” www.pewforum.org/docs/?DocID-153.

Reign…for a thousand years: According to premillennialists, at least, who—like Lotz—believe the Second Coming will usher in a thousand years of peace. Some other Christians, called postmillennialists, believe that we are already experiencing the rule of Christ; others still view the language describing Christ’s thousand-year reign as symbolic rather than literal.

As old as the Puritans: Increase Mather, for example, expected the world’s destruction by fire—and the survival of the righteous, who would “be caught up into the Air” beforehand. See Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More, p. 76.

“Then we who are alive”: 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

“Spiritual body”: 1 Corinthians 15:44.

Whether here or in the hereafter: See L. M. White, From Jesus to Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004).

American slaves: For the definitive account of nineteenth-century slave religion, see A. J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

“And you’ll see de stars”: Ibid., p. 263.

“In the life to come”: E. Burke, Pleasure and Pain: Reminiscences of Georgia in the 1840s (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1978), quoted in Raboteau, Slave Religion, pp. 291–92.

Isaiah promised: Isaiah 11:1.

Daniel and Enoch promised: Daniel 12:3; see also H. T. Andrews, The Apocryphal Books of the Old and New Testament (London: T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1908), p. 79.

“Neither apostolic nor prophetic”: M. Luther, “Preface to the Revelation of St. John,” in Luther’s Works, vol. 35, ed. E. T. Bachmann (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1960), pp. 398–99.

Luther’s New Testament: In both the first printing of Luther’s New Testament, from September 1522, and the second, from December 1522, Revelation is listed separately from the approved Lutheran canon. Thanks to the librarians at the American Bible Society for showing me this book.

Crucial to our story: For a discussion of Revelation’s broader impact, see J. Kirsch, A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006).

All the images of heaven: Angels singing are in Revelation 4:8, although see also Isaiah 6:3; God’s throne is in Revelation 4:1–11; singing saints are in Revelation 7:9–13; gold streets, jeweled walls, and pearl gates are in Revelation 21:18–21; garden and rivers are in Revelation 22:1–2.

The narrative thread: Introductions are made in Revelation 1; steeds and warriors are unleashed in 19:11–17; dragons and beasts appear in chapters 12 and 13; the sun blackens in 6:12–13; and the new Jerusalem descends in 21:1–2. Note that the image of stars falling is also found in the Qur’an; see sura 81 (“Rolling Up”).

Horror-movie images: The sharp sword is from Revelation 19:13–15; the slain lamb is from 1:12 (and see also 5:5–10); the trumpets are from 8:2; the bowls are from 16; and the crowned dragon is from 12:3.

Other numbers: Myriads of angels are described in Revelation 5:11; two hundred million troops in 9:16; years of witnessing in 11:3; and the number of the beast in 13:18.

William Miller: M. A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1992), p. 193.

Based on his own calculations: H. Camping, “We Are Almost There!” Family Stations Inc., February 1, 2008, www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/waat/waat.pdf.

I met Leonard Thompson: L. L. Thompson, The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Also see his translation: L. L. Thompson, “Apocalypse of John: A Poem of Terrible Beauty” (Menasha, WI: Moulting Mantis Library, 2003).

The author of Revelation: For a more detailed discussion of Revelation and its provenance, see A. Y. Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of the Apocalypse (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984). Thanks to Adela Collins, Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School, for her thoughts on the identity of the author of Revelation and the social circumstances that produced the book.

This ritual made the emperor equivalent: S. J. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). I am indebted to Steve Friesen, Louise Farmer Boyer Chair in Biblical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, for his insights.

Capitulation to Rome: On the question of sacrificial meat, Paul takes a more conciliatory position: “Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the grounds of conscience…. If I partake with thankfulness, why should I be denounced because of that for which I give thanks?” (1 Corinthians 10:18–33).

“Those who worship the beast”: Revelation 14:9–10.

“Light into the world”: John 12:46.

Origen…denied a physical resurrection: As Caroline Walker Bynum notes, there’s room for disagreement about the specifics of Origen’s theory of resurrection, not least because his primary treatise on the subject has been lost. Bynum suggests that Origen believed that in heaven we will possess a spiritual body, and that the specific flesh we inhabit in this life will be discarded. C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 63–66. For an alternative reading, see N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 519–21.

“The Kingdom…does not come”: After Luke 17:20–21. Origen, Origen on Prayer (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2001), p. 42.

Heard these words: Matthew 19:21 and 6:34.

Anthony went out into the desert: Athanasius, “Life of Anthony,” in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903), vol. 4, pp. 188–221. See also P. R. L. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 213–40. 73 G. Frank, The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Georgia Frank, Professor of Religion at Colgate University, spoke to me eloquently about the connection of the desert landscape to heaven.

“All my senses are overwhelmed”: M. Gruber, Journey Back to Eden: My Life and Times Among the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), p. 20. See also Frank, The Memory of the Eyes.

“Pray without ceasing: 1 Thessalonians 5:17.

“Neither fat…nor lean”: Athanasius, “Life of Anthony.”

First Christian hermit: Although Saint Paul of Thebes also has a strong claim to the title.

Feats of self-abnegation: J. Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2003); see also H. Thurston, “Simeon Stylites the Elder,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Herbermann et al., vol. 13, p. 795.

Anthony’s compatriot Pachomius: Sozomenus, “The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen, Comprising a History of the Church from AD 323 to AD 425,” in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd series, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace (New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1890), vol. 2, p. 292.

Books of aphorisms: See, for example, T. Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert (New York: New Direction Books, 1960). Also B. Ward, The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (London: Penguin Books, 2003).

“The present age is a storm”: L. Swan, The Forgotten Desert Mothers (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2001), p. 64.

“Let him rest”: D. Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 289. My gratitude to Douglas Burton-Christie, professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University, for his analysis of heaven and the Desert Fathers.

“Jesus knew”: J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), p. 171.

A conscious effort to replicate heaven: R. B. Lockhart, Halfway to Heaven: The Hidden Life of the Sublime Carthusians (New York: Vanguard Press, 1985).

Reformers continued to debate: P. Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), p. 414; see also B. Cottret, Calvin: A Biography (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 79–81.

“Go directly to Christ”: A. C. Cochrane, ed., Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), p. 295.

Founded by Christans seeking a home: M. Holloway, Heavens on Earth: Utopian Communities in America, 1680–1880 (New York: Dover, 1966).

“Now the whole group”: Acts 4:32.

“The true END of Life”: C. Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerium: Directions for a Candidate of the Ministry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), p. 6.

“As a city upon a Hill”: O. Collins, ed. Speeches That Changed the World (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), pp. 63–65.

The Ephrata cloister: For more detail on both the Ephrata cloister and the Oneida community, see R. P. Sutton, Communal Utopias and the American Experience: Religious Communities 1732–2000 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003) and Holloway, Heavens on Earth.

“Peculiar grace”: T. Merton, “Introduction,” in Religion in Wood: Masterpieces of Shaker Furniture, ed. E. D. Andrews and F. Andrews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966), pp. 7–18.

“Not a reading man”: R. W. Emerson, “Concord, October 30, 1840,” in The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834–1872 (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1896), vol. 1, p. 227.

“the perfectibility of human society…”: R. Wuthnow, ed., Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007), pp. 829–30.

“A demonstration plot”: T. E. K’Meyer, Interracialism and Christian Community in the Postwar South: The Story of Koinonia Farm (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000).

“Radical, into the social gospel”: Koinonia Partners, “Con Browne’s Talks in Late February 2006, as Recorded by Ann Karp,” February, 2006, http://www.koinoniapartners.org/History/oralhistory/Con_Browne.html.

“I made it through my trials”: Koinonia Partners, “Koinonia Memories from Ms. Georgia Solomon as Told to Ann Karp,” 2006, www.koinoniapartners.org/History/oralhistory/Georgia_Solomon.html.

CHAPTER FOUR: GREEN, GREEN PASTURES

Muslims in America, most of them immigrants: For further details, see The Pew Research Center, “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream,” May 22, 2007, http://people-press.org/report/?reportid=329; and Y. Y. Haddad and J. I. Smith, Muslim Communities in North America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 275.

“Know that the gardens”: B. Woodward, “In Hijacker’s Bags, a Call to Planning, Prayer and Death,” Washington Post, September 28, 2001.

The company of beautiful maidens: See suras 44 (“Smoke”), 52 (“The Mountain”), 55 (“The All-Merciful”), and 56 (“The Calamity”). For a more complete discussion of the concept’s hadithic and Qur’anic roots, see J. I. Smith and Y. Y. Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 163–68.

“Eyes large and dark”: Sura 56 (“The Calamity”), verse 23.

“White raisin”: A. Stille, “Scholars Are Quietly Offering New Theories of the Koran,” New York Times, March 2, 2002.

During the Iran-Iraq war: L. Miller, “Why We Need Heaven,” Newsweek, August 12, 2002.

Sublime satisfactions: See, for example, M. K. Nydell, Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, 2006), p. 109.

“The clutches of religion”: J. R. Petersen, “Virgins in Paradise: The Strange Erotic Visions of a Suicide Bomber,” Playboy, April 2002.

“All they do is noted”: Sura 54 (“The Moon”), verses 52–53. I’ve quoted here from the Yusuf Ali translation: A. Yusuf Ali, The Qur’an: Translation (New York: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, 2007). Khalidi translates the lines as “All they have done is in ancient Scriptures / And all of it, great or small, is recorded.”

A book, or a scroll: Smith and Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death, p. 76. See also Sura 84 (“The Splitting”).

“They whose scales”: Sura 23 (“The Believers”), verses 102–4.

“Scorching wind”: Sura 56 (“The Calamity”), verses 40–43.

“God is up there”: Associated Press, “Diamonds Can’t Tempt Honest LA Cabbie,” MSNBC, November 18, 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10096893/.

“The sun, entering as a tyrant”: C. M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1888), p. 323.

Parents sometimes buried newborn girls: See, for example, Sura 16 (“The Bee”), verses 58–59: “Yet when one of them is brought tidings of an infant girl, his face turns dark, suppressing his vexation. He keeps out of people’s sight, because of the evil news he was greeted with. Will he retain the infant, in disgrace, or will he bury it in haste in the ground? Wretched indeed is their decision!”

Bedouin religious practices: Some experts warn, however, against judging rural, small-scale religious practices from an urban—and literally “civilized”—perspective. For a more detailed discussion of Bedouin religious practices in this period, see J. Henninger, “Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion,” in Studies on Islam, ed. M. L. Swartz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 3–22.

They did have religious traditions: S. Inayatullah, “Pre-Islamic Thought,” in A History of Muslim Philosophy, ed. M. M. Sharif (Kempten, Pakistan: Philosophical Congress, 1963), vol. 1, pp. 126–35.

“I will cry for you”: M. Abdesselem, Le thème de la mort dans la poésie arabe des origines à la fin du IIIe/IXe siècle (Tunis, Tunisia: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1977), p. 63. Translation courtesy of Ana Rodriguez Navas, Department of Comparative Literature, Prince ton University.

“Why does death persecute us”: Abdesselem, Le thème de la mort, p. 69. Translation courtesy of Ana Rodriguez Navas, Department of Comparative Literature, Prince ton University.

“Suffocating heat”: W. M. Watt, A. J. Wensinck, R. B. Winder, and D. A. King, “Makka,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, ed. P. Bearman, T. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. v. Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009), vol. 6, p. 144. See also F. E. Peters, Mecca: A Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press, 1994).

The great British scholar: See, for instance, W. M. Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953); and W. M. Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956). For more recent biographies, see M. Rodinson, Muhammad (London: Tauris Parke, 2002); and K. Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993).

No record keepers: For a broader discussion of literacy in the pre-Islamic Hijaz, and the resultant historiographical challenges, see C. F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 3–17. For a more general overview of Islamic history, see B. Lewis and B. E. Churchill, Islam: The Religion and the People (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Wharton School Publishing, 2008).

Exists exactly as it is: See Sura 43 (“Ornament”), verses 1–4. The concept of a heavenly original of the Qur’an is also found in the hadiths.

A new generation of scholars: See especially P. Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press, 1987); and P. Crone, From Arabian Tribes to Islamic Empire: Army, State and Society in the Near East c. 600–850 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008).

Also under renovation: F. M. Donner, “The Background to Islam,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. M. I. Maas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 510–34.

Muhammad placed his hands: D. N. Freedman and M. J. McClymond, The Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad as Religious Founders (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), p. 584.

The Qaynuqa: Watt, Muhammad at Medina, p. 194.

Muhammad was born: W. M. Watt, Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 7.

Sensitive, introspective, and spiritual: See, for example, the hagiography of twentieth-century Egyptian politician and author Muhammad Husayn Haykal, who praises the twelve-year-old Muhammad’s “largeness of spirit, intelligence of heart, superior understanding…accurate memory, and other characteristics which the divine providence gave him in preparation for his great mission.” Translated in A. Wessels, A Modern Arabic Biography of Muhammad (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), p. 50.

A formative experience: As Crone notes in Meccan Trade, the Islamic tradition abounds with tales of the young Muhammad meeting representatives of non-Islamic religions and being acknowledged as a future prophet; in some versions of this story, Bahira is a Jewish rabbi.

Kadijah…could afford: Watt, Muhammad at Mecca.

In the year 610: Ibid. Watt notes that some early authorities put the date of Muhammad’s prophethood a few years later, around 613 CE.

“Recite!”: Watt, in Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman, notes that Muhammad originally believed the angelic presence to be God himself. For an account translated directly from the pertinent hadiths, see M. Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (London: Islamic Texts Society, 1983), p. 43.

Physically squeezed him: See, for example, K. Armstrong, Islam: A Short History (New York: Modern Library, 2002), p. 4.

“Recite, in the name of your Lord!”: Sura 96 (“The Blood Clot”).

Islam’s “five pillars”: The five pillars are perhaps most clearly expressed in the “Hadith of the Angel Gabriel.” See V. J. Cornell, Voices of Islam (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007), pp. 7–8.

“Simply not working”: Armstrong, Islam: A Short History, p. 8.

The paradise described in the Qur’an: Green pastures are described in Sura 40 (“The All-Merciful”), verses 60–75; I have followed the translation given in A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (New York: Touchstone, 1996). For rivers of water and milk, see Sura 47 (“Muhammad”), verses 12–15; for pomegranates, see Sura 55 (“The All-Merciful”), verse 68; for “flesh of fowl,” see Sura 56 (“The Calamity”), verse 21; for robes and goblets, see Sura 76 (“Man”); and for heavenly greetings, see Sura 14 (“Ibrahim”), verse 23.

“Do you speak Arabic?”: I am grateful to Jonathan Brockopp for this anecdote.

A day will come: Sura 81 (“Rolling Up”).

Up to their necks in sweat: Smith and Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death, pp. 73–76, See also L. Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

Judgment is handed down: See sura 23 (“The Believers”), verses 102–4, and Sura 84 (“The Splitting”).

A bridge: Smith and Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death, pp. 78–80.

“Garments of fire”: Sura 22 (“The Pilgrimage”), verse 18–20.

“We shall not be resurrected”: Sura 23 (“The Believers”), verse 37.

“If you are in doubt”: Sura 22 (“The Pilgrimage”), verses 4–6.

The great man at the center: P. Barrett, American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), p. 63.

“Produced a culture”: K. Abou El Fadl, “What Became of Tolerance in Islam?” Los Angeles Times, September 14, 2001. See also K. Abou El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (New York: Harper Collins, 2005).

Received death threats: Barrett, American Islam, pp. 92–93.

What the Qur’an means: “Throne,” Surah 11 (“Hud”), verse 7; “jugular vein,” Sura 50 (“Qaf”), verse 16; “light of the heavens,” Sura 24 (“Light”).

Barrett…visits Abou El Fadl: Barrett, American Islam, pp. 67, 93.

“A preacher was saying one day”: G. Morrison, ed., History of Persian Literature from the Beginning of the Islamic Period to the Present Day (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), p. 65.

“Banish…and beat them”: Arberry, The Koran Interpreted, pp. 105–6. For a discussion of Bakhtiar’s translation, and other possible renderings of the verse, see A. Saeed, The Qur’an: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 129–33.

“Abandon them in their sleeping places”: L. Bakhtiar, The Sublime Quran (Chicago: Kazi Publications, 2007), p. 70. See also her introductory essay, pp. xxvii–xxxiv.

Upheld Bakhtiar’s translation: I. Mattson, “RE: Statements Made by ISNA Canada Secretary General Regarding Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar’s Qur’an Translation,” The Islamic Society of North America, October 24, 2007, http://www.isna.net/articles/Press-Releases/PUBLIC-STATEMENT.aspx.

“Lovely eyed ones”: Bakhtiar, The Sublime Quran, Sura 56 (“The Calamity”), verse 23.

CHAPTER FIVE: RESURRECTION

“So I believe in an absurdity”: C. Milosz, To Begin Where I Am (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), p. 320.

Only 26 percent: D. Van Biema, “Does Heaven Exist?” Time, March 24, 1997.

2003 Harris poll: “The Religious and Other Beliefs of Americans 2003,” Harris Interactive, February 26, 2003, http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?pid=359.

Resurrection belief is fading: Cremation Association of North America, “Final 2005 Statistics and Projections to the Year 2025; 2006 Preliminary Data,” 89th Annual Convention of the Cremation Association of North America, San Francisco, August 15–18, 2007. See also S. Prothero, Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001).

Recently changed its position: J. Newton, “Catholic Church (North America),” in The Encyclopedia of Cremation, ed. D. J. Davies and L. H. Mates (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), p. 112. Note, however, that some groups—Orthodox Jews, Eastern Orthodox Christians—do still continue to resist cremation.

“Formed man from the dust”: Genesis 2:7.

“Yes indeed!”: Sura 75 (“Resurrection”), verses 1–5.

“Whole, cognizant, and responsible”: J. I. Smith and Y. Y. Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 64.

“I believe with perfect faith”: J. D. Bleich, ed., With Perfect Faith: The Foundations of Jewish Belief (New York: Ktav, 1982), p. 13; see also pp. 638–56.

A traditional prohibition: A. Steinberg and F. Rosner, Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics: A Compilation of Jewish Medical Law on All Topics of Medical Interest (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2003), p. 1097.

With soil from Israel: See, for example, Holy Land Earth, “Suggested Uses for Holy Land Earth,” Holy Land Earth LLC, 2009, www.holylandearth.com/uses.asp.

Scholars fight bitterly: For a discussion of the academic debate surrounding the date and location of Ezekiel’s composition, see G. W. Bromiley, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1979), pp. 250–62.

Book of Ezekiel: “Can these bones,” Ezekiel 37:3; “a vast multitude,” Ezekiel 37:10; “the whole house of Israel,” Ezekiel 37:11–14.

Levenson is a man on a mission: See also K. Madigan and J. D. Levenson, Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).

Restoration, purification, and renewal: J. D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).

Say the Amidah: L. I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 540–50.

“Immortality of the soul”: M. A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 228–29.

“Entirely foreign…not rooted in Judaism”: Central Conference of American Rabbis, “Pittsburgh Platform: Declaration of Principles,” in Religion and American Cultures, ed. G. Laderman and L. D. León (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003), p. 779.

Reinserted the ancient avowal: B. Harris, “Reform Siddur Revives Resurrection Prayer,” JTA (Jewish Telegraph Agency), November 20, 2007.

The body was a trap: Plato, Phaedo (Stillwell, KS: Digireads.com, 2006), p. 58.

“Under the inspiration of God”: See chapter 6 of Clement of Alexandria’s Exhortation to the Heathen, quoted in B. M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 134.

“Among the pupils of Socrates”: Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 316.

The Pharisees: J. H. Charlesworth and C. D. Elledge, Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2006), pp. 36–41.

“You know neither the scriptures”: Mark 12:18–25.

A priest or a king: 1 Chronicles 17:11–15.

Not from the house of David: While Matthew (in Matthew 1:1–17) goes out of his way to present Jesus as a descendant of David, many scholars believe that the genealogy he offers is aspirational rather than strictly historical. See R. H. Williams, “An Illustration of Historical Inquiry: Histories of Jesus and Matthew 1:1–25,” in Handbook of Early Christianity, ed. A. J. Blasi, P.-A. Turcotte, and J. Duhaime (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002), pp. 105–24.

The task of the Gospel writers: See C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 4–5.

Each of the Gospels: See Matthew 28:9; Mark 16:9–15; Luke 24:15–31; and John 20:27. Note that some scholars believe Mark’s gospel originally ended with Mark 16:8 and that all subsequent verses were added by early Christians seeking to bring the book to a more satisfying conclusion. See chapter 2 (“Desire for an End,” pp. 34–56) in G. Aichele, Jesus Framed (London: Routledge, 1996).

A particularly vigorous defense: 1 Corinthians 15:35–55. See also Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, which begins with the “seed” image and explores its themes throughout.

“Mouths will no longer eat”: Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, pp. 37–42.

Almost single-handedly: I owe a great debt of gratitude to Paula Fredriksen who, in many phone calls and e-mails, was my guide to Augustine and his world. See also P. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New York: Doubleday, 2008); G. Wills, Saint Augustine (New York: Lipper/Viking, 1999); and A. Fitzgerald and J. C. Cavadini, Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999).

The son of a Christian mother: The best biography is still P. R. L. Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); see also P. R. L. Brown, The Body and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).

Among Manicheans: R. M. Hogan, Dissent from the Creed: Heresies Past and Present (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2001), pp. 61–66.

“Flight and escape”: Augustine, “The Magnitude of the Soul,” trans. J. J. McMahon, in The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 4, ed. R. J. Deferrari (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1947), p. 144.

“Squared the circle”: See, especially, P. Frederiksen, “Vile Bodies: Paul and Augustine on the Resurrection of the Flesh,” in Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. M. S. Burrows and P. Rorem (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), pp. 75–87.

“Devoured by beasts”: Book 22, chapter 12, in Augustine, “The City of God Against the Pagans,” in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. P. Schaff (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899), vol. 2, p. 494.

The rationalistic questions: Ibid. People rise aged 30, book 22, chapter 15; marks of martyrdom, book 22, chapter 19; babies rise as adults, book 22, chapter 14; women rise as women, book 22, chapter 17.

Unbaptized babies: Augustine, “On Merit and the Forgiveness of Sins, and the Baptism of Infants,” New Advent, 2008, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15011.htm.

“The body is made incorruptible”: Book 22, chapter 30, in Augustine, City of God, p. 1178.

“We shall be still and see”: Book 22, chapter 30, in Augustine, City of God, trans. H. Bettenson (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 1082.

CHAPTER SIX: SALVATION

Obama…convened a meeting: Associated Press, “Obama Reaches Out to Christian Leaders,” MSNBC, June 11, 2008, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25092483/.

“The only way for me”: A. M. Banks and D. Burke, “Fuller Picture Emerges of Obama’s Evangelical Meeting,” Religion News Service, June 18, 2008, http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=15867.

“I do not believe she went to hell”: L. Miller and R. Wolffe, “Finding His Faith,” Newsweek, July 12, 2008.

“I am a big believer”: L. Miller and R. Wolffe, “I Am a Big Believer in Not Just Words, But Deeds and Works,” Newsweek, July 21, 2008.

“My particular set of beliefs”: Miller and Wolffe, “Finding His Faith.”

Works versus Grace: For a discussion of the grace-versus-works debate in Judaism, see K. L. Yinger, Paul, Judaism, and Judgment According to Deeds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). While Islam is sometimes portrayed as entirely works-focused, many Muslim theologians argue that good deeds and submission to God are themselves contingent upon God’s grace; see, for example, A. Schimmel, “Some Aspects of Mystical Prayer in Islam,” Die Welt des Islams, New Series, vol. 2, no. 2 (1952): 112–25.

Can have devastating consequences: Thanks in particular to Jerry Walls, of Asbury Theological Seminary, for his insights on Salvation theory. See J. L. Walls, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

“About two minutes ago”: For other examples of “pearly gate” jokes, see D. Capps, A Time to Laugh: The Religion of Humor (New York: Continuum, 2005), pp. 30–33.

“Your place is in heaven”: M. Wagner, “Shas Pulls Controversial Election Ad,” The Jerusalem Post, March 12, 2006.

“We have been waiting”: R. Ashmore, “McVeigh Will Meet Unimaginable Mercy,” National Catholic Reporter, May 18, 2001.

“But they will all go to hell”: “Perspectives,” Newsweek, August 24 and 31, 2009.

“This store burns souls”: A. Teibel, “Embracing Secular Culture Can Be Risky in Israel,” Associated Press, October 5, 2008.

According to a 2008 poll: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Beliefs and Practices, Washington, DC, 2008.

“Saving faith”: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “What We Believe,” 2009, http://www.sebts.edu/about/what-we-believe/default.aspx.

Pew promptly polled directly: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Many Americans Say Other Faiths Can Lead to Eternal Life,” December 18, 2008, http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=380.

“Decisions only the Lord will make”: J. Meacham, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Newsweek, August 14, 2006.

Denounced as an apostate: T. Flannery, “Billy Graham’s Apostasy,” WorldNetDaily, August 10, 2006, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51461.

“Do as you will”: Zwingli’s “Plague Song” is included in E. Egli and G. Finsler (eds.), Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, Volume 1 (Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn, 1905), p. 67. I have followed the translation given in A. E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), p. 133.

Predestination: The concept of predestination existed in Pauline literature, but it was Augustine, in his letters against the Pelagians (a group deemed heretical that emphasized free will), who first popularized it. P. R. L. Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

An angel…sprinkles soil: J. I. Smith and Y. Y. Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 35–36.

“Who shall live”: R. Hammer, Entering the High Holy Days: A Guide to Origins, Themes, and Prayers (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2005), p. 87.

“Lead many to righteous ness”: Daniel 12:3.

“Righteous” Christians: Revelation 2:14–20.

“The earth shall be inherited”: Sura 21 (“The Prophets”), verse 105.

“Smiling in their agonies”: Josephus, “The Jewish War,” in Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans, ed. L. H. Feldman and M. Reinhold (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996), pp. 248–51.

Blood sacrifice: B. Lang, Sacred Games: A History of Christian Worship (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 222.

Salvation of all: Thanks to Craig Townsend, vicar of St. James Church in New York City, for his careful eye and his familiarity with Christian liturgy.

“Let fire and the cross”: A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, eds., The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers (London: Elibron Classics, 2005), p. 214.

“The seed of the church”: O. Chadwick, A History of Christianity (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), p. 35.

“This is my body”: Matthew 26:26–29. Almost the same words occur in Mark and Luke; the earliest version of the scene can be found in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26.

“Yearn for everlasting life”: Benedict, Rule of Saint Benedict in English (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981), p. 28.

“Clothe not yourself”: S. Israel, Charge!: History’s Greatest Military Speeches (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007), p. 49.

Special favor in heaven: Perhaps to mitigate their austere earthly existence, twelfth-and thirteenth-century Cistercians actively promoted the idea that they would receive special treatment in the afterlife. In some tellings, deceased monks went first to a gentle, rather attractive version of purgatory, similar to a cloister, where they would be visited regularly by the Virgin Mary; then graduated to a blissful paradise set aside only for members of their order. B. P. McGuire, “A Lost Clairvaux Exemplum Found: The Liber Visionum Et Miraculorum Compiled Under Prior John of Clairvaux,” Analecta Cisterciensia 39, no. 1 (January–June 1983): 27–62. See also the Treatise on the Purgatory of St. Patrick, detailed in C. Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 38.

Auxiliary prayers for their dead: C. Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066–1550 (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 179.

Eight deadly sins: Evagrius, “On the Eight Thoughts,” in Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, ed. R. E. Sinkewicz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 66–90.

Edited down to the familiar seven: Gregory, Morals on the Book of Job (Oxford: F. and J. Rivington, 1850), p. 490; see also U. Voll and S. A. Kenel, “Deadly Sins,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia (Detroit: Thomson/Gale, 2003), vol. 4, pp. 565–67. For more detail on the role of Gregory the Great in the development of a theory of salvation, see J. A. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 141–53.

Penance was public: J. T. McNeill and H. M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A Translation of the Principal “Libri Poenitentiales” and Selections from Related Documents (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). P. J. Geary, “Penance (The West),” in Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages (e-reference ed.), ed. A. Vauchez, trans. A. Walford (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), www.oxford-middleages.com/entry?entry=t179.e2155-s1.

Not yet fine-tuned: Per J. Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 217; the concept of venial sins as distinct from mortal sins was likely formalized, along with the doctrine of purgatory, around the twelfth century.

“When I am grown old”: See W. C. Placher, A History of Christian Theology: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), p. 132.

Ledgers of sins: Thanks to Jeffrey Burton Russell for pointing me to the penitentials.

Not for sissies: McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, pp. 98–116.

Aquinas made distinctions: I am indebted to Timothy Renick, director of religious studies at Georgia State University, for his guidance on Aquinas. See T. Renick, Aquinas for Armchair Theologians (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002); and J. P. Wawrykow, The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), pp. 142–45.

“The more love”: T. Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1:12:6. Translation given in C. McDannell and B. Lang, Heaven: A History (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), p. 90.

Busy sorting and weighing sins: S. B. Nuland, Maimonides (New York: Nextbook/Schocken, 2005). See also J. L. Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds (New York: Doubleday, 2008).

The number 613: The number 613 is also traditionally taken to represent 365 negative commandments (one for each day of the year) plus 248 positive commandments (one for each organ of the body). See A. Rothkoff, “Mitzvah,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), vol. 14, p. 372.

Thirteen general principles: H. A. Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Works (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 157–173.

Physician to the sultan: F. Rosner, The Medical Legacy of Moses Maimonides (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1998), p. 14.

Roman Catholic hierarchy: Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory.

“Neither glorified nor punished”: Orations 40:23 (“The Oration on Holy Baptism”), in G. Nazianzen, “Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen,” in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd series, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace (Grand Rapids, MI: T. & T. Clark), vol. 7, pp. 203–436.

Augustine was harsh: Le Goff, drawing on the work of Joseph Ntedika, notes that Augustine’s early discussions of purgatory were somewhat cursory; it was only after 413, when Augustine squared off against the universalist theories of the misericordes, that he began to formulate a more sharply defined theory of post-death purgation as an extension of earthly penance. See Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, pp. 61–85.

“God…adopts our babies”: “Institutes of the Christian Religion” (1536), quoted in B. A. Gerrish, “The Place of Calvin in Christian Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, ed. D. K. McKim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 289–304.

“Grant me the grace”: G. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004), p. 534.

“The third group shall go down”: Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, pp. 39–40.

Kaddish for twelve months: An excellent guide to Kaddish is M. Lamm, The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning (Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David Publishers, 2000). See also A. Diamant, Saying Kaddish: How to Comfort the Dying, Bury the Dead, and Mourn as a Jew (New York: Schocken, 1998).

Barzakh: Smith and Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death, pp. 41–52.

“The good go either at once”: Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, p. 165.

“The Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick”: See the version in E. Gardiner, ed., Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante (New York: Italica Press, 1989), pp. 135–48.

“So replete with suffering”: T. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, vol. 5, pt. 3, 2nd sect. and suppl. (New York: Cosimo, 2007), pp. 3006–7.

Popes were granting indulgences: M. Purcell, Papal Crusading Policy: The Chief Instruments of Papal Crusading Policy and Crusade to the Holy Land from the Final Loss of Jerusalem to the Fall of Acre 1244–1291 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), pp. 36–61. See also D. Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), pp. 65–66.

“Diriges…tyme of my burial”: E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 346, 360–62.

The prayers of the poor: Ibid., pp. 360–62.

The abuse of indulgences: P. Collinson, The Reformation (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003).

Prayer to Saint Gertrude: Mission to Empty Purgatory, “Calculations,” MTEP.com, 2009, http://www.mtep.com/calculations.htm.

Revived the practice of indulgences: Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, “Announces Indulgences During Pauline Year,” DioceseofBrooklyn.org, August 5, 2008, http://dioceseofbrooklyn.org/default_article.aspx?id=2084. See also J. N. Latino, “Year of St. Paul Offers Indulgences,” MississippiCatholic.com, November 14, 2008, http://www.mississippicatholic.com/categories/diocese/2008/111408/indulgences.html.

A test of worthiness: I am indebted to Kathleen Flake, associate professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University, for her guidance on Mormonism. For a good overview, see C. L. Bushman and R. L. Bushman, Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); and also J. Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

“Whose glory is that of the sun”: Doctrine and Covenants 76:70, in “The Official Scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” LDS.org, 2006, http://scriptures.lds.org/en/contents. See also Doctrine and Covenants 88:20–39.

A sixth-generation Mormon: Toscano also appeared on a two-part documentary about Mormonism: Frontline, “The Mormons,” first broadcast on April 30 and May 1, 2007, by PBS. Produced and directed by H. Whitney, and written by H. Whitney and J. Barnes.

“I lost hold of Christ”: J. M. Kittelson, Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986), pp. 78–80. See also the first book in Martin Brecht’s authoritative three-volume biography: M. Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation 1483–1521 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).

“Sobald das Geld”: The jingle is attributed to Tetzel, perhaps spuriously, by two contemporary witnesses; it’s also mentioned by Luther in Theses 27 and 28. P. Schaff, History of the Christian Church (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891), p. 153.

Raped the Virgin: R. D. Linder, The Reformation Era (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008), p. 22.

“Confident of entering into heaven”: M. Luther, Works of Martin Luther, with Introduction and Notes (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman, 1915), p. 38.

“Equal to St. Paul”: McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 150.

CHAPTER SEVEN: VISIONARIES

The story he tells: D. Piper and C. B. Murphey, 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 2004), pp. 25–44. See also D. Piper and C. B. Murphey, Heaven Is Real: Lessons on Earthly Joy from the Man Who Spent 90 Minutes in Heaven (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), p. 137.

“Enjoy your life”: S. Mitchell, Gilgamesh: A New English Version (New York: Free Press, 2004), pp. 168–69. See also C. Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

Inspired partly by Gilgamesh: See, for example, W. Burkert, “‘Or Also a Godly Singer’: Akkadian and Early Greek Literature,” in Gilgamesh: A Reader, ed. J. Maier (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1997), pp. 178–91.

The earliest apocalyptic literature: For a survey of heavenly apocalyptic literature in Judaism and Christianity, see M. Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

“Because God took him”: Genesis 5:24.

“A wall…built of hailstones”: Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys, p. 21.

John…is guided to heaven: “Around the throne” (Revelation, 4:2–5); “a new heaven” (21:1); “Alpha and Omega” (22:13); sent to hell (22:18–21).

“No eye has seen”: 1 Corinthians 2:9–10. I’ve followed the New International translation here. The NIV Study Bible, 10th Anniversary Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995).

“Things that are not to be told”: 2 Corinthians 12:2–4.

Paul’s trip to heaven: J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 624–34. See also E. Gardiner, Visions of Heaven and Hell Before Dante (New York: Italica Press, 1988).

“Who carried his servant by night”: Sura 17 (“The Journey by Night”), verse 1.

Given in the hadith tradition: See a.-S. M. Ibn ‘Alawi, “The Hadith of Isra’ and Mi‘raj,” in Islamic Doctrines and Beliefs, vol. 1 (Damascus, Syria: ISCA, 1999), pp. 55–98.

Muhammad and Gabriel: For the sake of clarity, I’ve used the familiar spelling, here and elsewhere, for the names of biblical characters. Note, though, that in most Islamic texts Gabriel is referred to as “Jibril” Jesus as “Isa” Enoch as “Idris” Moses as “Musa” and so forth.

He sees houris there: “Miracle of Al-Isra & Al-Miraj,” IslamAwareness.net, 2009, http://www.islamawareness.net/Isra/miracle.html.

“The Vision of Tundale”: All descriptions taken from Gardiner, Visions of Heaven and Hell, pp. 149–97.

“His beard is crisped”: G. Boccaccio and L. B. Aretino, The Earliest Lives of Dante, trans. James Robinson Smith (New York: Henry Holt, 1901), pp. 42–43. For a short, pleasurable biography, see P. S. Hawkins, Dante: A Brief History (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006).

Intended to be news and art: I am grateful to Peter Hawkins, professor of religion and literature at Yale University’s Divinity School and Institute of Sacred Music, for his insights into medieval visionaries and Dante in particular.

Whom Dante allegedly glimpsed: It’s been suggested that “Beatrice” may have been a pseudonym, or even a mere literary device; the abbreviation favored by Dante for the almost-divine object of his affections—“Bice”—could as easily stand for the Latin phrase “Beato Iesu Cristo,” or “Blessed Jesus Christ.” See J. M. Ferrante, “Beatrice,” in Lansing, The Dante Encylopedia, pp. 89–95.

“Nothing else in Western literature”: H. Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Riverhead Trade, 1995), pp. 72–73.

My own volume: I’ve used the Hollanders’ translation throughout: Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, trans. by Robert and Jean Hollander, introduction and notes by Robert Hollander (New York: Doubleday, 2007).

“Rose a living man”: J. A. Symonds, The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella (Teddington, UK: The Echo Library, 2007), p. 14.

Inspired…the Sistine Chapel: For a discussion of the resonances between Dante’s epic and Michelangelo’s frescoes, see J. L. Miller, Dante and the Unorthodox: The Aesthetics of Transgression (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005), pp. 30–32.

All have loved Dante: See the extensive postscript in N. R. Havely, Dante (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007).

“Fart and think of Dante”: D. Bair, Samuel Beckett: A Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p. 145.

“As if the prisms”: S. Heaney, Station Island (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1985).

“Looked at me with eyes so full”: Dante, Paradiso, canto 4:139–142, p. 91.

Dante’s heaven: “We were in a cloud,” Ibid., canto 2:31–36, p. 37; “goodness that is infinite,” 33:81, p. 823; “painted with our likeness,” 33:131, p. 827; “struck by a bolt,” 33:141–42, p. 827; “turning with the Love,” 33:143–45, p. 827.

Like a baby: Ibid., canto 23:121–29, p. 565.

The painter Giotto: Thanks to Ena Heller, executive director of the Museum of Biblical Art, for pointing me to these pictures.

“Each of the little sparks”: T. Teeman, “Attention: Towering Intellect at Work,” The Times, January 24, 2007.

“Do not ask of a vision”: C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 144.

“Did our ancestors”: U. K. Le Guin, “Paradises Lost,” in The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), pp. 213–48.

Mother of modern heaven studies: I am indebted to Carol Zaleski, professor of world religions at Smith College, for her generous insights. See especially her book Otherworld Journeys.

“One second I was alive”: Piper and Murphey, Heaven Is Real, pp. 1–2.

Surprisingly high: B. Greyson, “Dissociation in People Who Have Near-Death Experiences: Out of Their Bodies or Out of Their Minds?” The Lancet 355 (2000): 460–63. Original study published as B. Greyson, “The Incidence of Near-Death Experiences,” Medicine and Psychiatry 1 (1998): 92–99. Gallup data from 1982 go further, suggesting that up to twenty-three million Americans claim to have had “verge of death” experiences, of whom eight million had “some kind of mystical encounter” see G. Gallup and W. Proctor, Adventures in Immortality (London: Corgi Books, 1984).

Surveys of NDE accounts: See, for instance, R. A. Moody and P. Perry, Life Before Life: Regression into Past Lives (London: Macmillan, 1990). Note, however, that some studies do suggest a decline in the overt religiosity of NDEs since ancient times. In the words of the Dutch scholar Jan Bremmer, modern NDEs “testify to the continuing decline of the afterlife. Heaven is still made of gold and marble, but it is rather empty, except for a few relatives, and even God is no longer there…evidently, every age gets the afterlife it deserves.” J. N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife: The 1995 Read-Tuckwell Lectures at the University of Bristol (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 102.

Common across cultures: J. Belanti, M. Perera, and K. Jagadheesan, “Phenomenology of Near-Death Experiences: A Cross-Cultural Perspective,” Transcultural Psychiatry 45, no. 1 (2008): 121–33.

Brain scans of religious people: See, for instance, E. D’Aquili and A. B. Newberg, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1999). Also A. Newberg and M. R. Waldman, How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009).

A stiff dose of ketamine: K. Jansen, “Neuroscience, Ketamine, and the Near-Death Experience: The Role of Glutamate and the NMDA Receptor,” in The Near-Death Experience: A Reader, ed. L. W. Bailey and J. Yates (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 265–82.

“Into a golden Light”: K. Jansen, Ketamine: Dreams and Realities (Sarasota, FL: The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 2000), p. 99.

“There was nothing special”: C. Dickey, Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son (New York: Touchstone, 1998), p. 128.

“Memory cogitating”: P. Roth, Indignation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008), p. 55.

M. Cox-Chapman, The Case for Heaven: Near-Death Experiences as Evidence of the Afterlife (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995). The book that popularized the near-death experience phenomenon for a generation is R. Moody, Life After Life (New York: Bantam, 1978).

Mary Dooley: Cox-Chapman, The Case for Heaven, pp. 14–15.

“The blissful state of the soul”: M. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah: The Book of Knowledge (Jerusalem: Boys Town Jerusalem Publishers, 1965), p. 367.

CHAPTER EIGHT: REUNIONS

Wed in the spirit world: J. T. Duke, “Marriage: Eternal Marriage,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. D. H. Ludlow (New York: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 857–59.

“Chain of generations”: B. Young, Discourses of Brigham Young: Second President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (South Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Co., 1971), pp. 406–408.

“Celestial room”: “Temples: A Virtual Tour of Celestial Rooms,” LightPlanet.com, 2008, http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/temples/celestial_room.html.

Needs to be inducted into heaven: E. W. Fugal, “Salvation of the Dead,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. Ludlow, pp. 1257–59.

For posthumously baptizing Jews: G. Niebuhr, “Mormons to End Holocaust Victim Baptism,” New York Times, April 29, 1995.

1982 Gallup poll: G. Gallup and W. Proctor, Adventures in Immortality (London: Corgi Books, 1984), from C. McDannell and B. Lang, Heaven: A History (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), p. 307.

“He and his bride”: N. R. Kleinfield, “Doors Closed, Kennedys Offer Their Farewells,” New York Times, July 24, 1999.

“Heaven isn’t heaven”: The Simpsons, “Thank God It’s Doomsday!” first broadcast on May 8, 2005, on Fox. Directed by M. Marcantel.

“I want to lay my head”: B. Brown Taylor, “Leaving Myself Behind,” in Heaven, ed. R. Ferlo (New York: Seabury Books, 2007), p. 10.

“A great homecoming”: N. R. Gibbs and M. Duffy, The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (New York: Center Street, 2007), p. 155.

Widespread only in the last two centuries: For a more detailed account of the development of the family-reunion-in-heaven meme, see McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, pp. 228–29.

“No marriage in heaven”: Mark 12:25.

“Into his divine arms”: From Mechthild of Magdeburg and F. J. Tobin, The Flowing Light of the Godhead (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), quoted in McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 101.

“Should someone ask”: S. Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948), p. 286. With gratitide to Dov Weiss, doctoral student in the history of Judaism, University of Chicago.

Begs readers to pray: Augustine, Confessions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), book 9, chapter 13.

Consoles a grieving widow: Augustine, “Letter 130 (A.D. 412): To Proba, a Devoted Handmaid of God,” New Advent, 2008, http://www.newadvent.org/fa thers/1102130.htm.

“Having no neighbor”: T. Aquinas, Summa Theologica, vol. 2 (II–1), Q4—Art. 8, quoted in P. Hawkins, Undiscovered Country: Imagining the World to Come (New York: Seabury Books, 2009), p. 72.

Crowded stadium: Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, verse translation by Robert and Jean Hollander, introduction and notes by Robert Hollander (New York: Doubleday, 2007), cantos 31–32.

“Look at Anna”: Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, canto 32:133–135, p. 799.

More tender and human: I. Earls, Renaissance Art: A Topical Dictionary (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 173.

“Irrespective of spiritual merit”: McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, pp. 133.

“Purified heaven”: See A. E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) and A. E. McGrath, A Brief History of Heaven (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003).

In Puritan New England: For a more complete discussion of the Puritans’ limited recreational options, see B. C. Daniels, Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995).

Described the Puritan mind-set: Thanks to David D. Hall, Bartlett Research Professor of New England Church History at Harvard Divinity School, for his guidance on early American views on heaven.

“None of that Confusion”: Sermon III in J. Mitchell, A Discourse of the Glory to Which God Hath Called Believers by Jesus Christ Delivered in Some Sermons out of the I Pet. 5 Chap. 10 ver.: Together with an Annexed Letter (London: Printed for Nathaniel Ponder at the Peacock in the Poultry, 1677), p. 67.

“Enjoyment of persons loved”: H. S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 229.

The roots…Swedenborg: See chapter seven (“Swedenborg and the Emergence of a Modern Heaven”) in McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, pp. 181–227.

Began to have visions: Rose notes that some stories in the Swedenborgian tradition suggest that Swedenborg spoke to angels as a child.

“Eat not so much”: C. O. Sigstedt, The Swedenborg Epic: The Life and Works of Emanuel Swedenborg (New York: Record Press, 1971), p. 198.

“Like the dwellings on earth”: E. Swedenborg, Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell, Drawn from Things Heard and Seen (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2000), quoted in McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 192.

Meeting Martin Luther: McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 188. See also W. M. White, Emanuel Swedenborg: His Life and Writings (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1867), pp. 437–38.

Swedenborg meets Cicero: White, Emanuel Swedenborg, pp. 349–51.

“I long to scatter”: Swedenborg Foundation, “Illuminating the World of Spirit,” Swedenborg.com, 2005, http://www.swedenborg.com/catalog/2005catalog.pdf.

“Sublime genius”: R. W. Emerson, “Swedenborg; or, the Mystic,” in Representative Men: Seven Lectures (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1903), p. 112.

“Humanizing” of heaven: N. O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). See also S. R. Prothero, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).

“And the mother gave”: H. W. Longfellow, “The Reaper and the Flowers,” in The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), vol. 1, pp. 22–23. Thanks to David Hall for pointing me to this poem.

“I actually saw men”: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, notes by B. H. Roberts (Salt Lake City, Utah: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1948), p. 362.

“The same sociality”: Ibid., p. 323.

Heaven…offered no comfort: P. S. Paludan, “Religion and the American Civil War,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. R. M. Miller, H. S. Stout, and C. R. Wilson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 30.

The idea of a domesticated heaven: See McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, pp. 264–73; also note Paludan, “Religion and the American Civil War,” pp. 21–42. For a related discussion of shifting views toward death and the afterlife during the Civil War, see G. Laderman, The Sacred Remains: American Attitudes toward Death, 1799–1883, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 132–33.

The Gates Ajar: E. S. Phelps, The Gates Ajar (London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1872).

“Mountains as we see them…when the wind coos”: Phelps, The Gates Ajar, p. 85.

“Summer holidays”: Ibid., p. 88, quoting from C. Lamb, Essays of Elia: To Which Are Added Letters, and Rosamund, a Tale (Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1835), p. 32.

“Blessed sunshine”: Phelps, The Gates Ajar, p. 61.

“See the sparkle”: Ibid., p. 52.

Sold eighty thousand copies: McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 265.

“Don’t believe a loving God”: “Universalism,” Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, April 18, 2008, http://www.uua.org/visitors/ourhis tory/6904.shtml.

Spiritualism started as a vogue: I am indebted to Stephen Prothero for his guidance on American Spiritualism. See also A. Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); R. L. Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); and B. E. Carroll, Spiritualism in Antebellum America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).

Margaret and Kate Fox: A. L. Underhill, The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism (New York: Thomas R. Knox, 1885).

“The basest cowardice”: A. F. Tyler, Freedom’s Ferment; Phases of American Social History to 1860 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).

“Tell the Fox girls”: “Death of Margaret Fox Kane; Youngest of the Once Celebrated Fox Sisters, Mediums,” New York Times, March 10, 1893.

Fox sisters traveled America: E. W. Vanderhoof, Historical Sketches of Western New York (New York: AMS Press, 1972).

One astonishing night: “Spirit Mediums Outdone. Lively Rappings in the Academy of Music. Dr. Richmond and One of the Fox Sisters Give Exhibitions of Their Skill Before a Remarkably Responsive Crowd—Spiritualism Formally Renounced,” New York Tribune, October 22, 1888.

“Poverty and obscurity”: “Death of Margaret Fox Kane,” New York Times.

“Willie lives”: J. H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), p. 220–21.

Planchettes: L. A. Long, Rehabilitating Bodies: Health, History, and the American Civil War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 73.

“Neurotic consequences”: P. Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), quoted in McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 328.

“We dig a lot deeper”: D. Van Biema, “Does Heaven Exist?” Time, March 24, 1997.

“You were a great man”: “Online Memorial tribute: Samuel Hicks Sr.,” ChristianMemorials.com, 2009, http://www.christianmemorials.com/tributes/samuel-hicks-sr (accessed May 18, 2009).

“JP will be greatly missed”: “In Loving Memory: Johnnie Lane Parker, Sr.,” ValleyOfLife.com, 2009, http://www.valleyoflife.com/JohnnieLParkerSr/ (accessed May 18, 2009).

For a 2001 poll: “Do Pets Go to Heaven?” BeliefNet.com, 2001, http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/Angels/2001/05/Do-Pets-Go-to-Heaven.aspx.

“The day comes”: “The Rainbow Bridge,” Critters.com, 2008, from http://www.critters.com/rainbow-bridge.php. The poem, though anonymous, closely follows the text of “All Pets Go to Heaven,” an essay published in W. Sife, The Loss of a Pet (New York: Howell Book House, 1998), p. 162.

A 2005 Gallup poll: L. Lyons, “Paranormal Beliefs Come (Super) Naturally to Some,” Gallup.com, November 1, 2005, http://www.gallup.com/poll/19558/Paranormal-Beliefs-Come-SuperNaturally-Some.aspx.

CHAPTER NINE: IS HEAVEN BORING?

Their song “Heaven”: D. Byrne and J. Harrison, “Heaven,” from Fear Of Music, Talking Heads album, Bleu Disque Music/Warner Chappell Music, 1979.

“Heaven and Hell are both metaphors”: D. Byrne, The New Sins (New York: McSweeney’s, 2006).

“An insight or an inspiring word”: P. Hawkins, Undiscovered Country: Imagining the World to Come (New York: Seabury Books, 2009), p. 78.

“Many mansions”: John 14:2.

Concern over celestial tedium: The concept of a dynamic, changing heaven was also sketched out by seventeenth-and eighteenth-century philosophers like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Immanuel Kant; for a more complete account of the idea of progress in heaven, see C. McDannell and B. Lang, Heaven: A History (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), pp. 276–306.

“Singing hymns”: M. Twain, Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

“A free cruise to Alaska”: D. Fohrman, “Why in Heaven Do We Look Forward to Heaven?” Jewish World Review, February 17, 2006, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/david/fohrman_sabbath5.php3.

Devoid of cinematic particulars: My gratitude to Martin Marty, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, for his exhaustive insights on the changes in American religion and religiosity in modern times. See also M. E. Marty, Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984).

“If I drop heaven”: J. A. Wright, What Makes You So Strong?: Sermons of Joy and Strength from Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., ed. J. K. Ross (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1993), pp. 57–58.

“It’s nice and warm”: T. Gilliam and T. Jones, The Meaning of Life, Celandine Films, 1983.

“Heaven is totally overrated”: J. Stein, “A Little Bit of Heaven on Earth,” Los Angeles Times, December 21, 2007.

Stein wrote…Alcorn blogged: Stein, “A Little Bit of Heaven on Earth” and R. Alcorn, “Joel Stein, Starbucks and Heaven,” The Eternal Perspectives Blog, December 21, 2007, http://randyalcorn.blogspot.com/2007/12/joel-steinstarbucks-and-heaven.html.

“Seekers”: D. Stone, “One Nation Under God?” Newsweek, April 7, 2009, http://www.newsweek.com/id/192915. For more detail, see W. C. Roof, A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993). Also note R. C. Fuller, Spiritual, but Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

“A big bull ring”: E. Hemingway and C. Baker, Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (New York: Scribner, 1981), p. 165.

No tears in heaven: Revelation 21:4.

“More talk of heaven”: M. Ralls, “What Can We Say About the Afterlife?” The Christian Century, December 14, 2004.

“Want to go back to college”: L. Miller, “The Gospel of Prothero,” Newsweek, March 12, 2007.

“Motion and stillness”: J. B. Russell, A History of Heaven: The Singing Silence (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press, 1997), p. 187.

“Like this present world”: E-mail, April 21, 2009.

“Change, rescue, transformation”: N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), p. 5.

Through a glass darkly: 1 Corinthians 13:12.

“We will see him”: 1 John 3:2.

“God will be known”: Book 22, chapter 30, in Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 1087.

“For my sight”: Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, verse translation by Robert and Jean Hollander, introduction and notes by Robert Hollander (New York: Doubleday, 2007), canto 33.

“Perfect union of the soul”: T. Aquinas, Q96: Art. 1, quoted in McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 90.

“Contemplated with wonder”: T. Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa Contra Gentiles (Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1995), quoted in McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 90.

Religious mystics: For an account of the rise of Christian mysticism, see B. McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad, 1992). A modern imagining of passionate mysticism can be found in R. Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy (New York: E. Burlingame Books, 1991).

“In the life of immortality”: G. P. E. Luttikhuizen, ed., Paradise Interpreted: Representations of Biblical Paradise in Judaism and Christianity (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), p. 177.

“Took her into his arms”: From “The Herald of Divine Love,” quoted in McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 103. See their discussion of Gertrude, pp. 102–6. See also McDannell and Lang on the beatific vision, pp. 88–94.

“Like the bow in a cloud”: Ezekiel 1:28.

“Gaze upon the King”: A. F. Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004), p. 508.

The following account: “The Measure of the Divine Body,” Work of the Chariot, 2009, http://www.workofthechariot.com. See also W. Bacher and L. Blau, “Shi’ur Komah,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, 2002, www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=646&letter=S&search=Sefer%20Raziel%20ha-Gadol.

“In joy…from the fire”: The Zohar, trans. H. Sperling and M. Simon (London: Soncino Press, 1934), vol. 5, p. 26, quoted in S. P. Raphael, Jewish Views of the Afterlife (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1994).

“What the whirling is”: S. Can, Fundamentals of Rumi’s Thought: A Mevlevi Sufi Perspective (Istanbul: The Light, 2004), pp. 205–206. See also J. a.-D. Rûmî and C. Barks, The Essential Rumi (San Francisco: Harper, 1995).

“His voice was deep and rich”: C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; a Story for Children (New York: Macmillan, 1950), pp. 127–28.

“Mauled and licked clean”: M. Goldberg, Bee Season: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2000), p. 270.

Miriam…has a tambourine: Exodus 15:20.

Sing praises to the Lord: Psalms 98:6.

Something angels did in heaven: M. Weinfeld, Normative and Sectarian Judaism in the Second Temple Period (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005), p. 48.

Full of singing: “Holy, Holy, Holy,” Revelation 4:8 (and see also Isaiah 6:3); “ten thousand times ten thousand” angels: Revelation 5:8–13.

“Above, the hosts of angels”: “Homily on Isaiah,” quoted in M. Barker, The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2003), p. 143.

“It exists before they were there”: J. Ratzinger, “‘In the Presence of the Angels I Will Sing Your Praise’: The Regensburg Tradition and the Reform of the Liturgy,” Adoremus Bulletin, October–December 1996, http://www.adoremus.org/10–12–96-Ratzi.html.

Fearsome organ music: R. Moody, “On Celestial Music,” in R. Ferlo, Heaven (New York: Seabury Books, 2007), pp. 46–58.

“Listens with special pleasure”: K. Barth, “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,” in Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich, ed. W. Leibrecht (New York: Harper, 1959), pp. 61–79. I have here followed the translation given in C. J. Green, Karl Barth: Theologian of Freedom (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991; first published 1989 by Collins).

Choral singing: S. J. White, Foundations of Christian Worship (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), p. 43.

Harmony singing: B. B. Patterson, “Appalachian Religious Music,” in Encyclopedia of Religion in the South, ed. S. S. Hill and C. H. Lippy (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), pp. 69–73.

Fastest-growing brand: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Pentecostalism,” PewForum.org, 2009, http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=140. See also “World Christian Database,” Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2005, http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org.

And time itself: This, of course, was the point made by the Church Fathers who sought to collapse time: for them, eternity could not be dull, because it lacked duration in any meaningful sense. See Augustine, Confessions, book 11, chapter 13.

By the nineteenth century: Note, however, that some revisionist historians argue that the concept of progress was well established in classical antiquity. See, for instance, L. Edelstein, The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967).

Occasional days off: See section 17 in E. Swedenborg, The Delights of Wisdom Respecting Conjugal Love: After Which Follow the Pleasures of Insanity Respecting Scortatory Love (London: Printed for the Society, 1790).

“So much work”: McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 315. See also pp. 201–11 and pp. 276–306 for a discussion of the evolution of the idea of progress in heaven.

“Higher and still higher”: J. Dodsworth, The Better Land; or, the Christian Emigrant’s Guide to Heaven (London: Ilkeston, 1853), p. 290, quoted in McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, p. 284.

“Their progress will be unlimited”: Quoted in G. Ahmad, The Essence of Islam (Tilford, UK: Islam International Publications, 2004), p. 424.

“To the Academy”: H. Freedman and G. Scholem, “Academy on High,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), vol. 1, pp. 353–54.

“There is no eating”: Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakoth 17a, quoted in B. HaLevi, “Life After Life: Jewish Sources of Dying, Death and Beyond,” RabbiB.com, 2009, http://www.rabbib.com/images/Life_After_Death_Sources.pdf.

Dylan decided to study: “Bob Dylan’s Life with the Lubavitchers,” New York Magazine, June 6, 1983.

Reincarnation…in Jewish thought: Raphael, Jewish Views of the Afterlife. I am grateful to Simcha Raphael for his analysis and insight into contemporary mystical Judaism.

“All souls”: The Zohar, vol. 3, p. 302, quoted in Raphael, Jewish Views of the Afterlife, p. 316.

“U2…like Bono”: J. Pareles, “Pop and Jazz Guide,” New York Times, June 29, 2001, and J. Pareles, “A Rock Star’s Struggle Where Militant Islam Rules,” New York Times, July 17, 2003.

Who dreamed the American dream: See S. Ahmad, Rock and Roll Jihad: A Muslim Rock Star’s Revolution for Peace (New York: Free Press, 2010).

Tawhid: See also H. A. Hameed, “Tauhid and Adl: A Discussion,” in Encyclopaedic Survey of Islamic Culture, ed. M. Taher (New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1997), pp. 77–101.

EPILOGUE

“Gathered to his people”: Genesis 25:8.

Whose works I generally admire: See, for example, S. Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), and C. Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Grand Central, 2007).

Just a third: “While Most U.S. Adults Believe in God, Only 58 Percent Are ‘Absolutely Certain,’” Harris Interactive, October 31, 2006, http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=707.

“I go out at night”: V. van Gogh, “Letter to Theo van Gogh, 28 September 1888,” The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, No. 543, trans. R. Harrison, http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/18/543.htm.

Agnes Long: L. Miller, “Life in Solitary,” Newsweek, June 20, 2005. Agnes Long has since left Madeline Island and can’t be located.

Heaven is marriage: See Revelation 21:2.

“Loves everybody”: J. Meacham, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” Newsweek, August 14, 2006.

What we cannot reach: E. Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, ed. R. W. Franklin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999).