Johnny Skeptic

The ascension of Jesus appears only in Luke. Only the disciples are mentioned as being eyewitnesses, but there is no indication how many of the disciples were present. In Lee Strobel's 'The Case For Christ,' William Lane Craig says "Only Matthew reports that guards were placed around the tomb. But in any event, I don’t think the guard story is an important facet of the evidence for the Resurrection. For one thing, it’s too disputed by contemporary scholarship. I find it prudent to base my arguments on evidence that’s most widely accepted by the majority of scholars, so the guard story is better left aside.�

Following Craig's own same line of reasoning, it is also reasonable to say "Only Luke reports the ascension of Jesus. But in any event, I don’t think the story of the ascension is an important facet of fundamentalist Christian theology. For one thing, it’s too disputed by contemporary scholarship. I find it prudent to base my arguments on evidence that’s most widely accepted by the majority of scholars, so the guard story is better left aside.�

Can the same argument not also be properly applied to Paul's uncorroborated claim of the 500 eyewitnesses?

In 1st Corinthians 15:14 Paul says "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." Paul was wrong. He should have said "And if Christ be not risen and ascended into heaven, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." A Resurrection without an ascension is not a credible argument. Rising from the dead and ascending into heaven are two entirely different abilities. One ability need not necessarily authenticate the other. If Jesus did not ascend into heaven, and there are not any good reasons at all to assume that he did, then even if he did rise from the dead, the Resurrection is not worth discussing.

Diogenes the Cynic

Obviously, if Craig is willing to admit that a single uncorroborated attestation is insufficient to establish the historicity of a claim, this standard can be applied to a number of things in the Gospels.

Even more problematic for the ascension is the question of where the hell Jesus was going when he sailed up into the sky. Outer space?

manimal2878

well they thought heaven was just above the clouds.

Strobel is an asshat it seems to me.

I read the case for faith, and some of the statements seemed to me downright dishonest.

Also he seems to not know the differance between evolution and abiogenisis so he can't be too bright or didn't do very much research.

Steven Carr

You won't find the usual suspects clamouring to defend the eye-witness accounts of the Ascension. It is virtually ignored by defenders of Acts, despite it being one of their crucial post-resurrection sightings of Jesus.


These Bible-deniers will claim that the Bible says anything other than what it actually does say - that the eyewitnesses to the resurrection also saw Jesus ascend into the sky , on his way to Heaven.

They cannot sell that to a 21st century public, so they deny that that is what the Bible claims.

I haven't had time yet to read Layman's piece about Acts, but I'm willing to bet that it claims that it never makes a mistake in geography, and he is utterly silent about Luke gettting the geographical location of heaven correct. I could be wrong, in which case I apologise.

Of course , the claim of 500 brethren is a) totally uncorrobrated and b) contradicts Acts which wants to convey the idea that the church was very small, about 120 people at the time of the Ascenscion and then gew explosively.

Johnny Skeptic

It does seem that Craig has presented skeptics with a golden opportunity. He was thinking only of the story about the guards, but he had no idea that his comment would be used elsewhere by skeptics. The Ascension and the 500 eyewitnesses are very important to fundamentalist Christian theology. I have never heard of anyone debating the Ascension, but it needs to be debated.

jonesg

The ascension is irrelevant to the purpose served by Jesus the man.
A lot of that stuff is just religion, not spirituality.

Juma

Why just attack the ascension when the entire crusifiction is a mistake?
Paulus didnt talk about a crucified human being but about a religious symbolic death that must forego the rebirth as a "better person". Later, somebody combined the mitraic cult which speaks about a death at the "heavens cross" (an astronomical construct) with paulus gnostic texts and voila: the new testament was born. And today there are people that beleives in it... sigh...

Clivedurdle

So the bible is not all the word of God?

Back to the Ascension, what studies of this have been done?

Johnny Skeptic

The ascension of Jesus is not irrelevant because without it Christians would have to deal with skeptics' claiming that even if Jesus did rise from the dead, he might have died again just like Lazarus did.

Steven Carr

The word "taken up" (NIV) or "carried up" (KJV), the Greek verb anaphero, "to cause to move from a lower position to a higher, take, lead, bring up."

But one of the most detail eyewitness accounts of the resurrected Jesus is hardly mentioned nowadays, because nobody can sell the idea that you get from the ground to Heaven via the sky.

NT Wright claims 'The 'Ascension' is about just that: Jesus going ahead into God's sphere, into God's future, against the day when heaven and earth become one, and he is once more personally present in the new, combined, heaven-and-earth.'

Jesus went *anywhere* in Wright's view, into the future, into a different dimension, anywhere except up. The last thing Christians want an Ascension to be, is a change in height.....

The author of Acts clearly made up the story based on his, and his readers expectations, of how Jesus would leave the Earth. (one problem for early Christians was that Jesus was resurrected , yet was no longer on Earth)

As Heaven was upwards , he wrote a story about Jesus going upwards, and stuck in some eyewitnesses and angels for good measure. His audience would have expected nothing less.

Joseph Smith got rid of his Golden Plates the same way. They went up to Heaven.