Old Testament’s “the Afterlife” as mundus inversus
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15633/ps.3979Keywords:
Old Testament, afterlife, “world upside down”, biblical interpretationAbstract
The ancients’ imagination of what the afterlife looked like can be interpreted differently. This paper shows what Old Testament beliefs were about “the beyond” against the background of the universal human concept known as mundus inversus (“world upside down”). This idea is not only well suited to present some biblical texts in a wider cultural perspective, but thanks to its universal and interdisciplinary character, it can be a starting point in research for new directions in biblical interpretation. In fact, “the afterlife” is commonly perceived as a “world turned upside down”.
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