The idea that "souls" go to heaven upon death long predates
Christianity. A brief look at ancient history reveals that the people of
Babylon and Egypt, as well as subjects of other ancient kingdoms, held
similar beliefs.
According to This Believing World, by Lewis Brown, the Egyptian god Osiris
was killed and reputed to be 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" (MacMillan,
New York, 1946, p. 83).
Brown 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 the soul could 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).
Brown 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. And that is why we find this complex
idea of a slain and resurrected god common in many parts of the world.
