A comprehensive survey of how religions understand death, dying, and the afterlife, drawing on examples from Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Shamanic perspectives. 

• Considers shared and differing views of death across the world’s major religions, including on the nature of death itself, the reasons for it, the identity of those who die, religious rituals, and on how the living should respond to death
• Places emphasis on the varying concepts of the ‘self’ or soul
• Uses a thematic structure to facilitate a broader comparative understanding
• Written in an accessible style to appeal to an undergraduate audience, it fills major gap in current textbook literature

• Understanding Death 4
• Contents 8
• Preface 12
• Acknowledgments 16
• 1 Understanding Death 18
  • Return from the Dead 21
  • Debates and Definitions 26
  • Death and the Self 31
  • Ritual and Transformation 36
  • Notes 39
  • References and Further Reading 39
• 2 Primal Perspectives on Death 42
  • Soul Theories of Primal Peoples 45
  • The Destiny of Souls 51
  • Afterlife among the Warao 52