Thomas II

How far up did Jesus travel during the Ascension until he reached Heaven?

drewcosten

Heh. I like Robert Farrar Capon's thoughts on this. He interprets most of the recorded actions of Jesus in the gospels as acted out parables (although he doesn't necessarily claim that all of the recorded actions definitely happened if I recall correctly). So Jesus only needed to get as far as behind the first cloud to make whatever parabolic point He was making, presuming the event happened (I can't remember what that point supposedly was, I'd have to reread "Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus" sometime to figure that out).

funinspace

The second cloud above and left of Zeus's pad.

John A. Broussard

It's intriguing to note how little the Ascension is mentioned these days, while the Resurrection is prime material for believing that Jesus is divine.

Maybe aircraft (especially helicopters) make ascending up into the clouds appear to be less dramatic than it used to be.

On the other hand, it's still quite a feat to come back after being three days dead.

Thomas II

Yes,and even more to do that and show up into a room going through the walls...
Do you still have fear when you question some things,like "God" is gonna git you or something like that for questioning and negating?
And if not anymore,did you have this kind of fear in the past?
There is no way you went to the Jesuits and you did not have that fear...

John A. Broussard

Of course.

Though I do have to thank the Jesuits for protesting too much. They finally forced me around the corner--Ad maiorem dei gloriam.

Thomas II

I know exactly the feeling...How do they do it, the bastards?
They fuck with our minds, but at the same time they make us question everything... :rolling:

goozlefotz

Even by the NT account, he was not dead for three days. From Friday evening to Sunday morning is at most a day and a half. All they knew was that on Sunday morning he was gone. So, it was definitely less that 1.5 days. It may have been only a few hours.

Steven Carr

This is because apologists want us to believe these 'eyewitness accounts', yet this is an 'eyewitness account' of something that they cannot sell even to themselves, let alone other people.

The usual trick nowadays is just to deny that the Bible says what it says.

Jesus did not ascend into the sky. He went into another dimension.


http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_B...ll_Rapture.htm

'Understanding what will happen requires a far more sophisticated cosmology than the one in which “heaven� is somewhere up there in our universe, rather than in a different dimension, a different space-time, altogether.'

Yes, the multiverse is alive and well and living in NT Wright's books. And the poor disciples were not sophisticated to know what they were seeing when they gazed into Heaven.

Acts 1:10 'They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11"Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky?'

Happily Wright has a far more sophisticated theology than this rather childish book which says the disciples looked into the sky when they saw Jesus ascend.

How the disciples gazed into another dimension (without even a CERN accelerator to help them) is another matter.

And how did Stephen see Jesus in Heaven? If a camera had been placed in the location of Stephen's eyes, would it have recorded a picture of Heaven?

I have been told that Stephen saw the resurrected Jesus with the 'eye of faith'.

So much for the evidential value of seeing the resurrected Jesus. It could all have been the 'eye of faith'.

But apologists have to explain how eyewitnesses saw an ascenscion and where did the physical body go.

I guess we won't see many of them on this thread.

andrewcriddle

It may be worth noting that the 'Western' text of Acts, (Augustine and Coptic Sahidic with partial support from Codex Bezae) Reads in 1:9 'A cloud covered him and he was lifted up' with no mention (except in Bezae) of the disciples watching Jesus ascend.

This probably implies that a literal visible ascension was problematic to some people in the early church, but might possibly mean that the literal visible ascension in the standard text of Acts is not original.

Andrew Criddle