Heaven

in theology, the place or state of the ble ed. Heaven among the Greeks and Latins was regarded as the home of the greater gods, not as the abode of the just after death. In most of the ethnic beliefs, heaven, as a state, is a realization of the earthly summum bonum. There are_ three chief sites of the ethnic heaven: ia, Some distant part of this earth: he seats of happine are represented by some Hindu writers to be vast mountains on the N. of India; (2) below the earth, as many of the lower races still think; and (3) in the extreme West, an opinion with poetic beauty in its favor, since it is in that region the sun descends to his home, the land where, according to the solar myths, there is no more night. In Jewish history, many pa ages relate to heaven, or the heaven of heavens, as the special abode of God, and very high. With regard to man, the references in the Old Testament to a state of existence beyond the present are few; these few, however, a ign joy and pleasure to the righteous, attended by resplendent glory. In Christianity, the heaven of ble edne is spoken of as if its locality was upward from the earth.