Good literature makes us think. The poet Stephen Vincent Benet’s short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” is a classic that everyone can enjoy, and it makes us think. It can raise many questions for perceptive readers. Lots of adaptations were made of the story, including two full-length movies in 1941 and 2001 - the [...]
Many people today, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, as well as people of other religions, are convinced that good people go to heaven when they die, while people who acted improperly go to Hell. But the notion that these places exist is pagan and entered Judaism only in the late second temple period, probably round 320 [...]
The following is a draft of a chapter from my forthcoming book "Nachmanides: An Unusual Thinker," which should be published sometime this year The prior chapter examined Nachmanides’ mystical view of God. This chapter looks at his approach to other subjects. Did Nachmanides insist that midrashic tales are not parables, but true facts? Did [...]
The concepts of a world to come, of life after death, of heaven, purgatory, and hell are not in the Hebrew Bible, but are post-biblical ideas. Maimonides, Judaism’s greatest thinker, wrote in his essay called Chelek that heaven and hell do not exist. If you accept his view do not expect to go to [...]
By Israel Drazin Among many good ideas, C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) offers readers an interesting concept about heaven and hell in his dream/parable “The Great Divorce.” He reveals that heaven is not a state of mind, but hell is. Heaven is what is real on earth. People who see life for what it [...]
