{"id":967,"date":"2009-07-17T09:36:55","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T09:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html"},"modified":"2009-07-17T09:36:55","modified_gmt":"2009-07-17T09:36:55","slug":"did-luke-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html","title":{"rendered":"Did Luke Steal His Vision of Heaven from Osiris?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/imgs\/heaven.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"heaven.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/128\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/07\/heaven-thumb-600x388-6457.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"388\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center;margin: 0 auto 20px\" \/><\/a><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Faiths\/Christianity\/2009\/06\/Where-Did-Heaven-Come-From.aspx?p=1\">Our excerpt from Robert Wright&#8217;s important new book Evolution of God<\/a> focuses on the origins of the modern idea of heaven.  Wright suggests that Luke evolved the idea of heaven to compensate for the fact that the anticiated resurrection of the dead hadn&#8217;t happened yet.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Had Christian doctrine not evolved in response to this challenge, it would have lost credibility as the Kingdom of God failed to show up on Earth&#8211;as generations and generations of Christians were seen to have died without getting their reward. So the Kingdom of God had to be relocated from Earth to heaven, where generations of Christians had presumably gotten their reward&#8211;and you could, too, if you accepted Christ as your savior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Noting that Luke&#8217;s account did not appear in quite the same way in the other Gospels, Wright speculates that Luke may have borrowed a bit from some of the Pagan religions:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Am I saying that Luke stole his afterlife scenario from a competing religion? Not with great confidence, no. But if you wanted to indict him on this charge, you would not be wholly lacking in evidence. The evidence would focus on the Egyptian God Osiris. Osiris bears a certain resemblance to Jesus as Christians would later come to conceive him; Osiris inhabited the afterworld and judged the recently deceased, granting eternal life to those who believed in him and lived by his code. But Osiris was doing this a long time before Jesus was born, and meanwhile he had migrated to the Roman Empire, where he had developed a following.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/Faiths\/Christianity\/2009\/06\/Where-Did-Heaven-Come-From.aspx?p=1\">whole excerpt<\/a> (and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.evolutionofgod.net\/\">book<\/a>) are fascinating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our excerpt from Robert Wright&#8217;s important new book Evolution of God focuses on the origins of the modern idea of heaven. Wright suggests that Luke evolved the idea of heaven to compensate for the fact that the anticiated resurrection of the dead hadn&#8217;t happened yet. Had Christian doctrine not evolved in response to this challenge,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Did Luke Steal His Vision of Heaven from Osiris? - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Did Luke Steal His Vision of Heaven from Osiris? - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Our excerpt from Robert Wright&#8217;s important new book Evolution of God focuses on the origins of the modern idea of heaven. Wright suggests that Luke evolved the idea of heaven to compensate for the fact that the anticiated resurrection of the dead hadn&#8217;t happened yet. Had Christian doctrine not evolved in response to this challenge,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-07-17T09:36:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/07\/heaven-thumb-600x388-6457.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Did Luke Steal His Vision of Heaven from Osiris? - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Did Luke Steal His Vision of Heaven from Osiris? - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Our excerpt from Robert Wright&#8217;s important new book Evolution of God focuses on the origins of the modern idea of heaven. 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Had Christian doctrine not evolved in response to this challenge,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-07-17T09:36:55+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/07\/heaven-thumb-600x388-6457.jpg"}],"author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html","name":"Did Luke Steal His Vision of Heaven from Osiris? - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/07\/heaven-thumb-600x388-6457.jpg","datePublished":"2009-07-17T09:36:55+00:00","dateModified":"2009-07-17T09:36:55+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/07\/heaven-thumb-600x388-6457.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/files\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/07\/heaven-thumb-600x388-6457.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/07\/did-luke-b.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Did Luke Steal His Vision of Heaven from Osiris?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}