Where does our world end and the otherworld begin? Can one cross the boundaries between them, whether in life or after death? Is it possible to describe, with any certainty, the spaces above and beyond the visible cosmos? Today, we are accustomed to thinking of the traditional Western answers to such questions as among the ideas bequeathed to us by Judaism and Christianity. Striking, however, is how few of these answers can be found in the Hebrew Bible. Biblical references to creation, the cosmos, and Eden (especially Genesis 2–3) have garnered a disproportionate amount of attention in the history of Christian biblical interpretation and in modern scholarship. Yet such references are surprisingly few and often quite elusive.
