Tigers!

The place is heaven, God's home. It's not something that any of us can grasp, otherwise it would be more easily understood.
Heaven is both a place and a concept. It's existence cannot be measured by any of our instruments yet our hearts and minds can begin to comprehend.
Wish I could explain it better. Maybe I'm too tired.:frown:

Fortuna

In later Christianity heaven and the throne of god were out beyond the Ptolemaic outer celestial star sphere.

Ptolemy's system was accepted by the Christian intellectuals from the late Roman period through the middle ages, and some refused to give it up even after Kepler and Newton ! This is what was taught in the universities and in the abbeys. Ptolemy's system is really a refinement of Aristotle's cosmology as I understand it.

Wiki has an article about ptolemy's celestial system with a little diagram of it but for some reason the enlarge button is no working. This Link tells about it and there is a diagram a few pgdn's down the page.

Basically, the Ptolemaic system has a spherical earth at the center of the cosmos, with the sun, moon, planets and stars (order like moon, fast planets, sun, slow planets and stars) fixed on concentric spheres that rotate around the earth. (the objects themselves also rotate in small epicycles, etc)

Out beyond the outermost star celestial sphere is where the levels of heaven start and their god(s) lived out there and that is supposedly wher eheaven was. The Ptolemaic system is also what is being referenced in Dante's Divine Comedy,(in the Paradisio part of course).

It is clear that the Ptolomeic system is not really compatible with the Genesis 1 model, and some, like Augustine, simply interpreted Gen 1 metaphorically. Others seem to have resolved contradictions between the genesis model and Ptolemy's.(Just like biblical literalists today somehow resolve it with modern cosmology, I guess).

So, my guess would be that Christians pretty much believed that heaven, or the kingdom of heaven was up in the sky somewhere. In one of the NT gospels, Jesus is portrayed as "ascending" up into heaven.

As I remember, the apocalpse of John of Patmos (or "Revelation" as some Bibles call it) has a scene where god peels back the firmament and stars fall to earth. In that scene, I think the author thinks of the earth as being like a terrarium with a cover, and with one of their gods (god or Jesus) peeling away the firmament. (think of it like you were sitting in a covered stadium and a giant tore off the top). This model is more in line with the genesis firmament and the "circle of the earth". In that passage, I always thought of it like the circle of the earth was a reference to the outer layer of the firmament.

Chris Weimer

Or have no idea. For your credit, it is hard to explain a concept that doesn't really exist and has never been pinned down to any satisfaction.

Soul Invictus, also bear in mind that Mark's basileia tou theou is Matthew's basileia twn ouranwn. In other words, at least according to Matthew, the Kingdom of God is in the sky.

spin

If you want to believe this conjecturing.

Funny that, isn't it? That's the very nature of language. Of course it's a place and a concept, at least in our minds. Every external construct (of the mind, ie representing something in the world) has an internal representation. The construct "heaven" is for us a place, but at the same time it's a concept in our heads. So's "toilet".

We're not talking about any actual existence, but the way it was perceived, its concept.

But then, you're in no position to make any meaningful comments about it, are you?

OK, let's put it down to you being too tired.


spin

Eldarion Lathria

Ah the Hohlweltlehre!, another variety of balderdash believed in by the late Adolf Hitler. With reference here to the thread "Was Adolf Hitler a creationist? it wouldn't surprise me one bit. The man believed in so many different kinds of nonsense that it would have taken a long article to detail it all. In fact, such an article was written, Pseudoscience in Naziland by Willy Ley.

Eldarion Lathria

Iasion

Greetings,

Typo?
Or the Unconquerable Soul?

:-)

Soul Invictus

No typo. That's my handle. I often get Sol Invictus though, which isn't the way I set it up.

Do you happen to have any passages from Matthew? Or is it basically the same stuff from Luke (tell me again why the Synoptic gospels are just rehash of each other?)

Iasion

Silly me :-)
Forgot that was how you spelled it.

Iasion

Chris Weimer

Mark 1.15 and Matthew 4.17.

spin

One could also add that GJohn is keen on the notion of Jesus coming down from (from katabainw) heaven -- see eg Jn 3:13, which talks about going up to (from anabainw) heaven as well. It's very hard not to take these terms "heaven", "ascend", and "descend" as literal, given no indications for the reader to take them any other way.


spin