When we step onto the scales at home or the gym or our Weight Watchers sessions there usually isn't too much at stake. Yes, there might be disappointment (or joy!), and yes, the result might mean that we have to do without a few treats in the coming week to get back towards our target weight but usually the result won't have a huge impact on our daily life. But nearly 2000 years ago the writer of the Jewish comic novel the Testament of Abraham envisaged a weigh-in with eternal consequences for those who took part. This wasn't a physical weigh-in, assessing the intake of calories but rather, a spiritual evaluation, measuring not mass but moral worth. These scales measure the moral 'weight' or worth of the souls placed in the pans of the scale. The book describes how the souls of the dead are evaluated on balances wielded, not by God, but a fiery archangel called Dokiel and the judgement of his scales determines not the diet for the coming week but the fate of those souls for all eternity. Of course the image of an archangel holding the scales of judgement is one that anyone who is familiar with medieval and Renaissance art will recognise. In countless scenes of final or postmortem judgement, an angel is depicted weighing souls in the balances, the scales of divine justice. But in all of these scenes it is the archangel Michael (Abraham's guide in the Testament of Abraham) who takes centre stage, holding the scales in which the true worth of the dead is gauged. Dokiel disappears to be replaced by the warrior chief angel Michael and what is, in the Testament of Abraham, a postmortem judgement is (by and large) replaced in these scenes by the Final judgement at the second coming of Christ. In this post I try to explain where this image of being weighed in the balance might have come from and how it developed in later western Christian art. It's almost impossible to assess how much the Testament of Abraham influenced the later christian iconography of Michael with the scales but it seems to be the earliest literary reference to this idea and so provides a fascinating insight into how ideas of post mortem judgement developed in the first two centuries after the birth of Christ. Reading this post won't change your life (or make you thinner) but the next time you stand on those scales and see how much you way physically, you might also just wonder, as I do now, what the outcome would be if you were sitting in those angelic scales of justice instead! In the previous post I described what Abraham sees in the heavenly court room, - the glorious figure of Abel as the judge, seated on a magnificent throne, the great (huge) record of the good and wicked actions of mankind resting on a marvelous table, the two recording angels who write everything down and the two 'enforcer' angels, the pitiless angels who whip the souls to their judgement. The picture is designed to instill terror in the hearts of the readers and to emphasise that here cold, merciless justice will be done. There is no room for error (or mercy) here. Between the two gates stood a throne terrible of aspect, of terrible crystal gleaming like fire. Upon it sat a wondrous man bright as the sun, like to a son of God. Before him stood a table like crystal all of gold and fine linen. Upon the table there was lying a book, the thickness of it six cubits and the breadth of it ten cubits. On the right and left of it stood two angels holding paper and ink and pen. Before the table sat an angel of light holding in its hand a balance. On his left sat an angel all fiery pitiless and severe holding in his hand a trumpet having within it all-consuming fire with which to try the sinners. [Testament of Abraham 12.4-10 Translations throughout by W. A. Cragie (adapted)] The court is in session!So, having seen all of this in place, Abraham is now allowed to see the court in action. As he (and we) follow the procedure we get an idea of how justice in this place actually works. It's as if we first see a fixed tableau which suddenly bursts into life The wondrous man who sat upon the throne himself judged and sentenced the souls. The two angels on the right and on the left wrote down, the one on the right the righteousness and the one on the left the wickedness. The one before the table who held the balance weighed the souls. The fiery angel who held the fire tried the souls. Abraham asked the commander-in-chief "What is this that we behold?" The Commander-in-chief said: "These things that you see, holy Abraham, are the judgement and recompense". [Testament of Abraham 12.11-15] The souls of the dead are weighed in the scales and tried by fire. The two recording angels write down the good and bad deeds. It is not clear at this point how this all works. What is the function of the book (not mentioned here in this detail of the workings of the court)?. The two recording angels write down the good and bad deeds, but it is not clear whether they write these down after the souls have been weighed and 'tried by fire' or before (and the two lists are then used as the basis with the weighing and fire as the basis for the angelic Abel's judgement). Does the weighing angel weigh the souls themselves, and if so how does that work? Does he weigh them against each other (which might seem a bit unfair - if I get weighed against Hitler I might win, but weighed against my wife who is 'practically perfect in very way' I will undoubtedly end up in 'hell'!) or does he weigh them against an absolute standard i.e. the 'righteousness of God' and if so what, in this very visual image, does 'the righteousness of God' look like? We get more detail (but not much more clarity) in the next part of the Testament where the whole process is explained to Abraham again The two angels on the right hand and on the left these are the ones who write down the sins and the righteousness; the one on the right writes down the righteousness and the one on the left the sins. The angel like the sun holding the balance in his hands is the archangel Dokiel the just weigher, and he weighs the righteousnesses and sins with the righteousness of God. The fiery and pitiless angel, holding the fire in his hand, is the archangel Puriel who has power over fire and tries the works of men through fire. If the fire consumes the work of any person the angel of judgement immediately seizes him and carries him away to the place of sinners, a most bitter place of punishment. If the fire approves the work of anyone and does not seize upon it, that person is justified and the angel of righteousness takes him and carries him up to be saved in the lot of the just. And thus, most righteous Abraham all things in all people are tried by fire and he balance. [Testament of Abraham 13.9-13] Weighing us upThe most interesting character in this part of the story to me (mainly because of the richness of the later iconography it inspired) is the 'weighing angel'. We are told in the earlier descriptions of the court that this angel weighs the souls, but here we are told that he (presumably a 'he') weighs not the souls themselves but the good and bad deeds against one another. That makes more sense, although we are also told that he weighs those against the 'righteousness of God'. We are also told here that this angel is in fact an archangel and that his name is Dokiel. Archangels were 'top angels', the most significant servants/messengers of God. Gabriel and Michael are archangels. In the biblical and post biblical texts there was no one fixed number of archangels; some texts identify three, some seven and some texts seem to recognise even more. Interestingly in late medieval accounts of angelic hierarchies, archangels come very near the bottom of the lists! But in the biblical material themselves archangels are 'serious players', God's chief agents in the world. The name Dokiel is difficult to explain. There are no other reference to an angel known as Dokiel. Names in biblical and post biblical texts often relate to the purpose or function of that character. The name Dokiel is probably a Hebrew name and there are a number of Hebrew words which have a similar root i.e. a 'd' followed by a 'k' or 'q' sound (i.e. 'dq') which might have been used as the basis for this name. One is the Hebrew word for 'fine', as in 'precise', 'delicate'. If that were the case, then the name would indicate that this is the angel who makes the fine, precise measurements of worth needed for divine judgement. Another possibility is that the name is based on the Hebrew word for dust ('daq') and a we find that word liked to the divine scales of justice in this verse about judgement in Isaiah 40: Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket, It is almost impossible now to determine where the name came from, but the use of the name Dokiel in the context of a story where he weighs 'righteousnesses' would have had significance for the first readers of the text (which was originally written in Greek) since Dokiel and the Greek word for righteousnesses sound alike. Dokiel is the righteousness angel! But if the name presents a bit of a puzzle the origin of the actual concept of the divine 'weigh-in' is much easier to describe. In fact the number of possibilities is overwhelming! And we must start of course, as with any Jewish writing, with the source material available in the Hebrew Bible The biblical scalesThe idea of the dead being weighed to determine their moral worth, their righteousness or wickedness, is drawn primarily from the image of God weighing souls to determine their worth in the Hebrew Bible. I have already made reference to the text in Isaiah 40 which talks about the nations being weighed like dust in God's scales. In Job chapter 31 Job defends himself from the charge brought by his 'friends' that it is his own sin that has brought the afflictions upon him and his family. He argues that if he has been false or unjust God could easily find this out by weighing him in the divine balance. This is a metaphor for God's ability to see the true worth of a human being, his ability to know deep inside someone's heart. ‘If I have walked with falsehood, God will know if he has sinned, says Job, because God is able to 'weigh him up'; God can easily find out his true worth, just as if he were weighing him on a set of scales. This powerful, spiritual metaphor for God's assessment of our lives comes from the rather mundane word of commercial weights and measures! All trade and commerce in the ancient world depended on the determination of something's weight to ensure it's worth, it's value. Even money was weighed because the value of gold and silver coins depended on how pure they were. The importance of 'true weights' is emphasised in the bible and the use of false weights is condemned. The idea that God weighs people or nations (as above) on his divine (and therefore true) scales was then a familiar and powerful image. Whatever we might say or do outwardly, whatever we might try to hide from others (or even ourselves!), God will know the truth and determine the true value of our live and deeds. God will 'weigh us up'. The writing on the wallA striking illustration of the use of this metaphorical imagery is found in the book of Daniel where the Babylonian king, Belshazzar, is told by means of the mysterious writing on the wall that "you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting" (Daniel 5.27). The words inscribed by the finger of God on the wall at the feast accuse Belshazzar of deceit. He pretends to be worthy (as a king should be) but in fact he has been weighed on the divine scales and found to be 'lightweight', i.e. there is no real worth or value to him. He is a fraud. This idea of God weighing us up in his scales occurs in other biblical texts (Psalm 62.9; Proverbs 16.1-2; Proverbs 21.1-2; ) and in post biblical texts such as 1 Enoch 61.8 And the Lord of Spirits set the Chosen One on the throne of his glory and he will judge all the works of his holy ones in heaven above and in the balance he will weigh their deeds [Translation M. Knibb]. In 4 Ezra we read about the scribe, Ezra, lying in bed in Babylon reflecting on the injustice in the world (especially the wealth of the wicked which he could see all around him in the great pagan city). As he wonders about this injustice he prays to God and says For I have traveled widely amongst the nations and have seen that they abound in wealth though they are unmindful of your commandments. Now therefore weigh in the balance our iniquities and those of the inhabitants of the world and it will be found which way the turn of the scale will incline [4 Ezra 3.33-34 Translation NRSV] As light as a featherSo, obviously, biblical and post biblical texts must have shaped the idea of human lives being 'weighed in the balance' by God as a means of judging their true value or worth. But there may well have been a more local connection too. The Testament of Abraham was probably written by a Jewish writer living somewhere in the Jewish diaspora (the Jewish communities outside of Palestine, scattered throughout the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean world). The main reason for thinking that is that the book shows no traces of having had a Hebrew original. It seems to have been written originally in Greek which was the language of the diaspora communities. It also has 'universalistic' outlook, which doesn't mean that everyone goes to paradise (see previous posts!), but rather that it deals with the whole earth as God's domain and all the peoples of the world as his responsibility, which fits with the idea that it was written by someone dealing on a daily basis with life as a member of a religious minority and having to relate to the 'majority' world view. A likely place of origin for the book is the Egyptian city of Alexandria. This is partly because Alexandria for a long time had a strong and vibrant Jewish community (until the widespread Jewish revolt of 115-117 A.D.) but also because there seem to be connections between Egyptian culture and some of the ideas in the book, not least perhaps this idea of being weighed in the scales. The idea of God weighing the souls of the dead to determine their righteousness or otherwise was an established and familiar element in the Egyptian myths about judgement after death in which the heart of an individual was taken from the body and placed on scales where its weight was compared to that of a feather. There is a good description of how this works here. If the heart was found to be as light as the feather (i.e not weighed down with wickedness) it was reattached to the body and that person passed into the afterlife! If it proved to be heavier than the feather that person was eaten up by the terrible monster Ammit. 'It's in your stars'But the idea of the balancing scales as an image of the way 'ultimate decisions' were made was also part of the ancient Near Eastern belief about the influence of the planets and the stars. The image of weighing scales was associated with the star sign Libra. The idea of the Zodiac, the idea that the twelve star signs held great importance for human affairs, was well known throughout the ancient world when the Testament of Abraham was written. It may well have found it's roots in Mesopotamia/Babylon and at least one scholar has made the intriguing suggestion that when the finger on the wall condemned Belshazzar, as described in the passage in Daniel discussed above, the star sign Libra was in its ascendancy. In other words the writer is suggesting that the weighing scales were now working on behalf of the God of the Jews not the deities of Babylon. I have also read in a number of places the suggestion that the Mesopotamian sun god Shamesh who was also the God of justice (because he could see everything that went on) is pictured wielding scales, but I can find no evidence of this. A Jewish writer in the diaspora would have been very familiar with this image of the scales holding human destinies in the balance. There is evidence that the awareness of the twelve star signs played a role in Jewish religion in the early centuries A.D. as indicated by the remarkable mosaic in the synagogue in Hammath Tiberias. This doesn't mean that the Jews were 'into astrology'. The importance of the stars was built in to the widely held conception of cosmology in the Ptolemaic cosmological system, in which the earth sat at the centre of a number of concentric spheres. The outermost sphere was the sphere of the stars. These beliefs were the scientific orthodoxy of the day and no different from us today relating our faith to acceptance of an expanding universe, black holes and quantum physics. Fates and WeightsIf the idea of the weighing scales in the hand of an angel was influenced by the biblical and post biblical texts, shaped by Egyptian funeral ideology and supported by a belief in a universe where human deeds and history were 'weighed-up' and influenced by the stars, the idea would have caused no great surprise in a culture shaped by Greek thought where belief the divine weighing of human fates was widespread, In classical mythology Zeus is described as weighing up the fates of individuals and is sometimes depicted in surviving artistic depictions holding a set of scales. The formative literary influence came from Homer's poem, the Iliad where Zeus is described weighing the fates of two opponents in his scales to determine the outcome of a conflict. In one instance he places the fates of Achilles and Hector on the two sides of the scales to determine the outcome of their duel And brilliant Achilles shook his head at the armies, never letting them hurl their sharp spears at Hector — someone might snatch the glory, Achilles come in second. But once they reached the springs for the fourth time, then Father Zeus held out his sacred golden scales: in them he placed two fates of death that lays men low — one for Achilles, one for Hector breaker of horses — and gripping the beam mid-haft the Father raised it high and down went Hector's day of doom, dragging him down to the strong House of Death — and god Apollo left him. Iliad Book 22 The 'fates of death' in the text above are, in Greek, the Keres, female daemons of violent death. It is important to recognise then that this is a very different process from that referred to in the Hebrew Bible. Here it is not the worth or righteousness of souls that is weighed but the fates of two individuals. The worth or value of the two being weighed is irrelevant! In some versions of the myth it is Hermes who holds the scales. Will the real Lady Justice please stand upNo doubt inspired by the famous scales of Zeus but with a somewhat different emphasis, we can see numerous images on ancient coins of the 'scales of justice' held by various Graeco-Roman deities.In Greek mythology Themis and her daughter Dike were associated with Justice and are sometimes portrayed with weighing scales (see left). Here the Greek goddess of retribution, Nemesis, is represented holding scales in this relief from Lattaqie dating from the 3rd century A.D. In the Roman mythological system the goddess Aequitas adopted many of the features and functions of Dike/Nemesis and was usually portrayed holding scales. Here she is portrayed (on the right as we look at the image) on the reverse of a coin featuring the emperor Philip the Arab from the 3rd century A.D.. A true originalSo the first readers of the Testament would not have been surprised to read or hear about the dead being weighed in the divine scales to discover their worthiness. Scales were all around them, in the bible, in the Egyptian stories that they heard and on the coins they used. And for one month a year even the stars seemed to say life is 'weighed in the balances'. We can imagine them nodding as they heard of the dramatic weighing angel, saying to themselves 'yes, that is how it will be'. But in one aspect the book is truly original. No where else that I know of is the weighing done by an angel. In the biblical stories it is always God who does the weighing and in the Greek/Egyptian myths it is a deity who weighs human affairs or the hearts of the dead. Here, in the Testament of Abraham, the task is deputed to an archangel, the mysterious Dokiel. God is somewhere else, in the highest heaven, watching the proceedings below, and judgement has been 'contracted out' to the 'angelic services' (and the biblical superhero, Abel). So here it is Dokiel, not God, holding the scales. It is hard to say for sure why this might have happened and it could well be related to the nature of the idea that God will judging people and nations in his scales. The biblical references are not literal but metaphorical, in other words God is able to judge human hearts as if he were able to put us in a set of scales and weigh our worthiness. The biblical writers were not suggesting that this would literally happen (not least because the biblical writers had no notion of a post mortem judgement of immaterial souls!!!!). But in the Testament of Abraham it has become a literal part of the process. There will be books, there will be a trial by fire and there will be a set of scales on which the souls of the dead will be weighed! And if it has become a literal part of the process of judgment, it makes sense to have one of God's chief agents doing the job rather than God himself, not least because the precise, fine, accurate measurement of worth and righteousness will soon be balanced against the abundant mercy of God. It would be strange if God first condemned the souls and then saved them regardless. This way, like the appeal court judge, God is distanced from the original legal process and allowed freedom to intervene with gratuitous, sovereign divine freedom. Whatever the reason for this original development, it seems that the Testament is the first text to place the scales of divine judgement in the hands of an angel. Dokiel is a true original! Michael in the Middle AgesBut, somehow, by the time we find images of weighing angels in medieval and Renaissance art (and there are plenty) Dokiel has disappeared (it was a glorious but brief career!) to be replaced by Michael himself. MIchael is no longer just the warrior angel, the commander-in-chief of the Lord's armies, he is now also the 'weigher-in-chief', the mighty wielder of the scales. In some images of the Last Judgment he is more central and imposing even that Christ! The earliest painted image that I can find of Michael weighing the dead is this panel painting from a church in Catalonia. Michael weighs a soul while (it appears) the devil tries to influence the weighing process unfairly! This dates from the second quarter of 13th century. This is clearly not a Last Judgement scene and seems more like the situation described in the Testament of Abraham of postmortem judgement. (Rather worryingly it appears the dead are decapitated and only the head is placed in the scales! Does this indicate that it is only the intellect that is being judged?!!) My favourite representation of Michael judging with the scales comes from the wonderful Beaune Altarpiece painted by Rogier van den Weyden. You can read more about the origins of this fantastic painting in a previous post here. But close on its heels (in terms of my own favourites) are the spectacular visions of the archangels weighing souls by Guariento di Arpo. He based these images on Byzantine iconography giving his angelic subjects a wholly 'other' and somewhat androgynous character. What is remarkable is that in the bible Michael is always portrayed as the warrior angel, leading the armies of God. This role is emphasised in this famous text from Revelation And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. Revelation 12.7-9 NRSV So the obvious question is how did Michael, the commander-in-chief of the Lord's armies, become Michael the wielder-of-the-scales of divine judgement? Well, as with so many of the questions raised by this fascinating text it's hard (impossible?) to be sure but I think it may be because in many of the images the scene is transferred from the postmortem judgment of individuals to the Last Judgement, the resurrection and judgement of the dead, the final showdown between God and the forces of evil. With this change of context it makes perfect sense to have Michael (rather than an otherwise únknown and unattested minor archangel) take charge of the scales. In the most famous description of the resurrection of the dead at the Day of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible in the book of Daniel, we find Michael deeply involved. ‘At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. But you, Daniel, keep the words secret and the book sealed until the time of the end. Many shall be running back and forth, and evil shall increase.’ Daniel 12.1-3 NRSV Here Michael is 'the Prince', the protector of the people of God, the one who will destroy the forces opposing God's people. He is very much the warrior angel, and there is no mention of any scales. But anyone in the middle ages reading that text and taking it literally as a vision of the resurrection and the Last Judgement would therefore expect to find Michael playing a prominent role in that Last Judgement scene. If they also believed that an archangel weighing the resurrected dead would also be an essential part of that event, it would make perfect sense to put Michael in that role. After all he was there anyway! Poor old Dokiel was sacked! He may have been the first weighing angel but like so many innovators he was soon replaced by a sexier model! Where's Michael?Different artists took their own approach to the role of Michael the weigher-of-souls. Stefan Lochner decided he could dispense with him completely. There is no 'weighing of souls' here - just a fierce battle. Presumably Christ knows his own without the need to weigh them, or maybe he's just waiting to see the outcome of the fierce conflict below. It could be that Lochner was simply a minimalist - after all he also does away with the huge number of usual suspects engaged in praying for the dead below them, leaving only Mary and St John. Hans Memling, on the other hand, keeps Michael as the weigher-of-souls (with even bigger weighing dishes!) but puts him back on the front line as a warrior angel with full armour and demon-piercing lance! Connections and InspirationsThe image of a fearsome angel weighing souls became a standard of the imagery of the Last Judgement in the middle ages and Renaissance (in the west). That this idea dated from the first or second centuries A.D. is attested by its presence here in this comic novel from the Jewish Egyptian diaspora, where the biblical metaphor of the weighing of human worth was translated into vivid angelic imagery under the influence of Egyptian and Classical mythology. For me it is fascinating to see how early this idea of an angel weighing the dead to see if they deserved to go to paradise originated. The idea dates right back perhaps to the first two centuries of our era, the most formative period of the Christian tradition and a time when Judaism itself was undergoing considerable changes. It is tempting to speculate on how and to what degree this text influences the later Christian iconography, but I can't do that. I don't know enough about how these texts were transmitted and used and what other sources there were for the iconography of Michael holding the divine weighing scales at the Last Judgement. But it would be lovely to think that this was the source, that this humorous, irreverent Jewish comic novel provided the raw material for one of the most striking and widespread images of Christian art in the middle ages! So, about two millenia ago, some Jews and some Christians clearly believed that after death there would be an immediate judgement in which an individual's good and bad deeds would be weighed against each other. That comparison was best illustrated and imagined as a kind of weighing with good and bad placed on different sides of a pair of scales, an act performed here, not by God, but by one of his agents, an archangel. Here is one of the most basic forms of human belief in postmortem judgement imagined with flare and ingenuity. This system of assessing merit for the afterworld is still one of the most popular conceptions of how judgement works! The good go to heaven and the bad . . . . . don't (belief in a literal hell has somewhat subsided). This is an easy system to get your head around. It seems to fit with our most basic sense of fairness and justice. It matches our belief about economics (whether we are in profit or loss!) and it allows us a good deal of hopefulness (after all how many really bad deeds will we admit to?!). But what happens when someone is in-between; when the good and the bad deeds balance themselves out; when the scales dip decisively neither one way nor the other? In the next post I will describe how the Testament of Abraham answers that very problem. You may also be interested in . . . .
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Archives
April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
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