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Article: Positing paradise; Heaven on earth.(Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth)(Paradise: A History of the Idea That Rules the World)(Book review)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- July 1, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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For 3,000 years people have tried to imagine what paradise might look like. Two new books trace the history of the hereafter
WHERE do you find paradise on a map? To the modern eye, used to the cheap and functional cartography of roads and frontiers, the very question is absurd. Maps show real things, not imaginary ones. You might as well look for happiness in a telephone directory.
As Alessandro Scafi shows in his erudite history of the Christian effort to map paradise, pre-modern mapmakers focused on spiritual navigation, not the secular kind. They tried to portray time and space in a way that is still beautiful, but can seem baffling. Their maps showed ...