Bart D. EHRMAN, Journeys to Heaven and Hell: Tours of the Afterlife in the Early Christian Tradition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022. xii + 328 pages, HB, $32.50. ISBN 978-0-3002-5700-7. Reviewed by Thomas SIMMONS, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota 57069.

Professor Bart Ehrman is likely the most widely read New Testament scholar living today. An erstwhile believer, his agnosticism occasionally interferes with his compelling, thoughtful examination of pre-Christian, Jewish, and early Christian katabasis narratives. The skeptic’s occasional snide-ness can be distracting, such as when he distills Matthew 6:20 with: “When Jesus instructed the rich to give what they had to the poor in order to have ‘treasures in heaven,’ he apparently really meant it” (124).

In other respects, however, this is a worthwhile and engaging book. The first three chapters contrast journeys to the underworld from Homer and Virgil with Enoch, Apocalypse of Paul, Acts of Thomas, and Gospel of Nicodemus. Ehrman assesses how pagans and Christians utilized the afterworld to explicate the meaning of life and to promote their respectively distinctive agendas.  He demonstrates how, although differentiated fates for the wicked post-mortem are present, Aeneid 6 rejects any eschatological hope in the afterlife. Instead, the end is Rome: “Rome is the eschatological goal of human existence” (49). For Virgil, meaning comes from this life – existence in a well-ordered society, though “the Roman achievement will be fraught with pain and suffering – bloody wars, senseless killings, civil unrest, attempted rebellions, occasional tyranny, dashed hopes, moments of despair – from the outset and into perpetuity. The glory of Rome comes with a terrible price” (ibid.).

With Jewish and early Christian guided tours of hell, by contrast, punishments and rewards derive from the will of a divine sovereign and – of course – the accounts do not glorify Rome. While pagan katabasis stories prioritize life before death, with Jewish and Christians versions, things are reversed. “Earthy life is a prolegomenon to what really matters in the life to come” (82).

The last three chapters trace the evolution of the promotion of universalist salvation in the early Church by mean of intricate analyses of scribe-editing in texts like Sibylline Oracles 2, Apocalypse of Peter, and Acts of Pilate. Ehrman shows that the universal salvation associated with Origen lost acceptance over the first few centuries following Christ’s death and resurrection. He also makes a strong case for explaining why Apocalypse of Peter was ultimately rejected as part of sacred Scripture while 2 Peter was accepted, despite their relative popularity initially being transposed: the theological tide had shifted away from universal salvation.

“For the burgeoning orthodox communities of the late fourth and fifth centuries, God does not revoke his judgments or change his mind – least of all because of the weak pleas of the faint of heart who would defy God’s just character in order to relieve the eternal pain for those who in fact deserve worse than they were getting” (210). Since Apocalypse of Peter endorsed just such a view of the ultimate fate of the damned, it had to go. Peter “could not have written the Apocalypse, and so, the salvation of all spelled its condemnation” (ibid.).

Professor Ehrman’s personal preference for apokatastasis is evident here, as is his occasional disdain for the authenticity of theological truths elsewhere. But those minor faults by no means overwhelm his carefully phrased, intelligently organized, and methodically researched book.