The ideas about the afterlife in heaven and hell are deeply ingrained in modern, popular culture, based on Christian doctrines and imagery from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the present. However, this concept of the afterlife is almost entirely absent from the Old Testament. In making his covenant with Abraham, God does not promise eternal life in heaven. Rather, Abraham is blessed with prosperity, long life, and a vast posterity. In this lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place briefly traces the development of our modern ideas about afterlife from its pagan origins to the present.