Heaven : a history / Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang

New Haven : Yale University Press, 1988. 1st edition. Hardcover. Fine cloth copy in a near-fine, very slightly edge-dulled dust wrapper. Remains particularly well-preserved overall; tight, bright, clean and strong. Physical description; 411 pp.: illustrations. Contents; 1. The dawn of Heaven -- Semitic background: communicating with the dead -- Yahweh alone: no promise for the dead -- Apocalypticism: the promise of resurrection -- Hellenistic Judaism; the promise of Heaven -- Jewish views of the afterlife in the First Century -- 2. Jesus and the Christian promise -- Jesus: no marriage in Heaven -- Paul -- Revelation to John -- 3. Irenaeus and Augustine on our Heavenly bodies -- 4. Medieval Pleasures -- 5. The pleasures of Renaissance paradise -- 6. God at the center: protestant and Catholic Reformers -- Luther and Calvin -- Catholic Reformers -- Pious and Ascetic Middle class -- Theocentric Heaven -- 7. Swedenborg and the emergence of a modern Heaven -- 8. Love in the heavenly realm -- Pre-romantic precursors: Milton and Swedenborg -- Love and Marriage -- 9. Eternal motion: progress in the other world -- Kinetic revolution in Heaven -- Persisting theocentric traditions -- Spiritualism: a thick description of Heaven -- Anthropocentric Heaven -- 10. Heaven in contemporary Christianity. Subjects; Heaven History of doctrines. Future life. Eschatology History of doctrines. Donation: Armstrong, Karen. Lang, Bernhard. McDannell, Colleen.