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They're not?ĮHRMAN: (Laughter) I know, exactly. GROSS: One of the theses of your book about the history of heaven and how is that views of heaven and hell don't go back to the earliest stages of Christianity, and they're not in the Old Testament or in Jesus' teachings. And so it's either a deep sleep, or it's a good outcome, and either way it's going to be fine. Nobody frets about it or gets upset by having it. And if it's not that, he said it would be like a deep sleep. When he was on trial, on capital charges - so it was a death sentence awaiting him - he was talking with his companions about what death would be, and his view is that it's one of two things.Įither we live on and we see those we knew before and those we didn't know before, and we spend all of our time being with them, which for him was absolute paradise because Socrates liked nothing better than conversing with people, and so now he could converse with Homer and with all the greats of the Greek past. And I still think that Socrates is the one who probably put it best. GROSS: So what do you believe about death now, about what happens after you die?ĮHRMAN: Well, I - you know, I've read about death and thought about death and the afterlife for many, many years now and what - you know, what philosophers say and theologians say and biblical scholars say and, you know, what people generally say. So I - you know, it's not that I wish I believed it so much as I wish that it were true. But if we do, it'll be something pleasant like that. And as I say in my book, as we'll probably get to, it may be true that we will live after we die. It's not that I wish I believed it I wish that it were true. GROSS: In a time like this, do you wish you could still believe in a heaven that offers eternal life, in a place where you would be united with loved ones?ĮHRMAN: Yeah, that would absolutely be good. But in terms of what I believe, I'm an atheist. And so in terms of what I know, I'm an agnostic. I actually consider myself both an atheist and an agnostic because I - you know, I don't really know if there's a superior being in the universe, but I don't believe there is. GROSS: Is it fair to say you're an atheist now?ĮHRMAN: That is fair to say (laughter). But there's still the issue of death, so it's just simply become more pronounced. Most people, of course, are more concerned about the process of dying right now or getting sick or the economics of that. But the pandemic, for me, is simply making it crystal clear why these are issues for so many people.
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I mean, my view is that, you know, people have always been concerned about death, about what happens to them when they die, and so that's why I took on this book in the first place. GROSS: So is the pandemic making you think differently about your book? Are you seeing your book in a way that you didn't quite when you were actually writing it?ĮHRMAN: I would say not so much. How are you and your family?īART EHRMAN: We're all well. Eventually, he left the faith altogether.īart Ehrman, welcome back to FRESH AIR. After attending the Moody Bible Institute, he studied at Princeton Theological Seminary, which introduced him to texts and interpretations that led him to a more liberal form of Christianity. At age 15, he became a born-again fundamentalist evangelical Christian. As for Ehrman's beliefs, as a child, he was an altar boy in the Episcopal Church. His books such as "Misquoting Jesus" and "How Jesus Became God" challenge a lot of beliefs and common wisdom. He examines the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, as well as writings from the Greek and Roman era.Įhrman is a distinguished professor of religious studies at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is one of America's most widely read scholars of early Christianity and the New Testament. In the new book, "Heaven And Hell: A History Of The Afterlife," my guest Bart Ehrman writes about where the ideas of heaven and hell came from. Your beliefs about what happens after death or if anything happens might shape how you're dealing with your fears and anxieties.
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Let's face it - the pandemic has made death a presence on a scale most of us aren't used to. When we originally scheduled the interview we're about to hear, we didn't realize how weirdly timely it would be.