The idea that "souls" go to heaven at death originated in pagan religion,
not the Bible. A brief look at ancient history reveals that the people
of Babylon, Egypt and other kingdoms imagined such an afterlife.
According to This Believing World, by Lewis Browne, the Egyptian
god Osiris was thought to have been killed, resurrected and taken to heaven: "Osiris
came to life again! He was miraculously resurrected from death and taken
up to heaven; and there in heaven, so the myth declared, he lived on eternally" (1946,
p. 83).
Browne explains: "The Egyptians reasoned that if it was the fate of the
god Osiris to be resurrected after death, then a way could be found to
make it the fate of man, too...The bliss of immortality that had formerly
been reserved only for kings was then promised to all men...The heavenly
existence of the dead was carried on in the realm of Osiris, and it was
described in considerable detail by the Egyptian theologians. It was believed
that on death the soul of a man set out at once to reach a Judgment Hall
on high...and stood before the celestial throne of Osiris, the Judge. There
it gave account of itself to Osiris and his forty-two associate gods" (p.
84).
If able to satisfy the gods, "the soul was straightway gathered into the
fold of Osiris. But if it could not, if it was found wanting when weighed
in the heavenly balances, then it was cast into a hell, to be rent to shreds
of the 'Devouress.' For only the righteous souls, only the guiltless, were
thought to be deserving of life everlasting" (pp. 86-87).
This idea of men being able to follow their savior-god into heaven was
a central focus of the ancient mystery religions. Browne continues: "Mankind
everywhere, in Mexico and Iceland, in Zululand and China, makes more or
less the same wild guesses in its convulsive effort to solve the riddle
of existence...
