What Comes Next?

Life after Death

A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion

Alan F. Segal 

Doubleday, $37.50, 866 pp.

What accounts for the abiding interest in the possibility of existence after our earthly demise? Many of us still wonder whether good deeds will be rewarded in another life (when they so clearly are not in this one), or whether bad deeds (or the bad deeds of others, at least) will be punished in another life. Why have people believed so firmly in a reality based on virtually no evidence? On a more timely note, why are many suicide bombers motivated by a particularly sensual vision of a heavenly paradise?

Alan Segal's new book immerses us in how Western religious traditions have conceptualized belief in the afterlife. The book's strengths lie both in the range of materials and the voice of the author. We are confronted here with rich expositions of views of the afterlife in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian society, in early Iranian and Greek culture, and in the developing texts of the classical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We find a wide range of traditions and writings, a fascinating blend of myth, story, theology, and reflection that amazes us with the sheer ingenuity of the human mind. Segal writes well, reads widely, and possesses a generosity of spirit, intellectual curiosity, and humility that are engaging and inviting.

Segal emphasizes both the diversity among different religious and cultural views, and--maybe of equal importance--the diversity within each religious tradition. We are reminded, for example, that belief in the resurrection of the dead is not an essential feature of the Jewish Bible but a view that developed primarily in response to the martyrdoms of the Maccabean revolt. The author considers a wide range of factors, including climate in Egypt, history in Israel, and social marginality in Christianity and Islam. As a result, the religious beliefs are set helpfully in the broader cultures from which they emerged.

Most of the writing is accessible, and Segal's analysis is sufficiently well documented. The level of detail and exposition in these ample pages may overwhelm general readers, however, while the book's scope does not allow space for the more nuanced reflection that scholars would expect. As a result, unfortunately, the book may not serve the needs of either group. In addition, there are some features of the book that may either mislead or misrepresent.

First, the extensive discussions of certain texts are not authoritative. For example, based on a few scant verses, Segal tries to draw a clear contrast between the views of Paul on the Eucharist and those presented in the Synoptic Gospels. As a result, anachronistically he reads a search for a detailed theology of the Eucharist back into first-century texts. It is not clear how this dispute informs Christian views of the afterlife. Indeed, focusing so heavily on understanding the meaning of Jesus' Resurrection seems to assume that Jesus' "afterlife" is identical to ours, without recognizing the unique human and divine life that Jesus lived (and the unique death he died). To see "face to face" is not the same as being of one substance with God. An overemphasis on the disputes about the precise meaning of Jesus' Resurrection obscures a deeper Christian appreciation of the mystery of what God has done to promise us an eternal life that is somehow continuous with our current lives.

Second, there are discussions that mislead through oversimplification. For example, Segal's overreliance on Elaine Pagels leads him to conclude that the Gnostics exhibited more intellectual sophistication, universality, and "humanity" than the orthodox tradition, a view reinforcing the all-too-common tendency to demonize the tradition. Similarly, his use of the criterion of dissimilarity in the discussions of New Testament passages relies too narrowly on a historically dubious set of assumptions, as do most efforts to disentangle "what Jesus really said." Segal includes several elements in this approach, especially the highly questionable view that "for a fact about Jesus to be accepted as unassailable, it must not be in the interest of the church to tell us." The "real" Jesus who emerges is thereby set apart from the community that follows him and whose "interests" may be more congruent with his own than such scholars care to admit.

More broadly, the focus on classical texts creates a misleading impression of the way these texts are actually read and used within the community. To begin with, the subtitle should perhaps have read "A History of the Afterlife in Western Religious Texts" rather than "in Western Religion." Religion is found not only in the classical texts of our traditions, but in the lived experience of religious believers. While Segal does occasionally discuss such matters, they are too rarely acknowledged in a book that purports to be discussing Western religion. Detailed exposition of texts that are relatively marginal (such as a lengthy discussion of "pseudepigraphic" literature including noncanonical apocalyptic and other writings) or debates that are not central for understanding the afterlife (such as a long section summarizing the basic debates on the canonical Gospels) crowd out reflection on how the texts of these traditions have been adopted in liturgy or embodied in action. How are these texts used in worship? What do our burial services say about our views of what comes next? How are the commentaries on the classical religious texts used and read, and how do they influence the actual beliefs of adherents today? "Western religion" includes the centuries of lived activity and reflection found in communities throughout the world.

I hope these comments do not dissuade readers from delving into this rich book, for there is much here to challenge our presuppositions and enliven our imaginations. Segal's decision to focus so heavily on textual exposition is a helpful starting point for asking some difficult and troubling questions, such as whether belief in the afterlife is correlated with more or less attention to ethical action in this life, or whether, in rejecting certain "traditional" understandings of the afterlife, we are being more or less faithful to the central insights of our own religious traditions.

Barry Jay Seltser is a senior executive in the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).