Bosom of Abraham

The phrase "Bosom of Abraham" refers to the place of comfort in sheol (Greek: "hades") where the Jews said the righteous dead awaited Judgment Day. The phrase "Bosom of Abraham" is found in ; ) or "the Bosom of Abraham" (; sqq.), and of the highest form of that reward as lying in "Abraham's Bosom".

Christian heaven

Among Christian writers, since the 1st century AD, "the Bosom of Abraham" has gradually ceased to designate a place of imperfect happiness, and it has generally become synonymous with Heaven itself.Fact|date=April 2008 Church fathers sometimes used the term to mean the limbo of the fathers, the abode of the righteous who died before Christ and who were not admitted to heaven until his resurrection. Sometimes they mean HeavenFact|date=February 2007, into which the just of the New Covenant are immediately introduced upon their demise. Tertullian, on the other hand, described the bosom of Abraham as that section of Hades in which the righteous dead await the day of the Lord. [Tertullian, " [http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0310.htm A Treatise on the Soul] ", Chapter 7.]

When Christians pray that the angels may carry the soul of the departed to "Abraham's Bosom", non-Orthodox Christians might mean it as heaven; as it is taught in the West that those in the Limbo of the Fathers went to heaven after the Ascension of Jesus, and so Abraham himself is now in heaven. However, the understanding of both Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy preserves the Bosom of Abraham as distinct from heaven.

Related concepts

The belief that the souls of the dead go immediately to hell, heaven, or purgatory has largely replaced the original concept of the Bosom of Abraham. Historically, however, many religious traditions have described something similar.

The Book of Enoch describes Enoch's travels through the cosmos and divides Sheol into four sections: for the truly righteous, the good, the wicked awaiting judgment at the resurrection, and the wicked that will not even be resurrected.

In William Shakespeare's play "Henry V," after the death of Sir John Falstaff, Mistress Quickly asserts confidently that "He's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom." Quickly, an uneducated innkeeper, has presumably confused the Christian idea of Abraham's bosom with the legend of King Arthur. The belief of soul sleep holds that the dead (righteous and unrighteous) rest unconsciously while awaiting Judgment Day.

In Islam, the righteous dead are said to await Judgment Day resting blissfully in their graves, much like the righteous dead rest in the Bosom of Abraham. The unrighteous, meanwhile, wait in torment.

ee also

*Abraham's bosom
*Bosom of Abraham Trinity a subject in medieval English art
*Limbo

References

External links

* [http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=362&letter=A Abraham's Bosom] in the Jewish Encyclopedia.