The Ascension

[fredonly]

Jesus' alleged Ascension to heaven is problematic text. Here's how Luke describes Jesus' ascension into heaven:

Luke 24:50-51
When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.

Acts 1:8-9
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

Implications:
1. Heaven is actually up in the sky. Really?! We know that's where 1st centuryJews believed it to be. But it ain't so!

2. If Jesus actually ascended into the sky while his followers watched, why didn't Mark, Matthew and John relate the event? This would have been nearly as remarkable as his alleged Resurrection.

Heaven isn't up in the sky*, and it's absurd to think such a monumental event would be omitted by any evangelists. The best explanation for these curiosities is that the Ascension did not occur, and Luke made it up. Why do this? Perhaps to explain why Jesus wasn't around any more.

Apologists like to point to incidental historical accuracies in the New Testament, as evidence the Gospels are trustworthy history. But fictions like the Ascension show that the evangelists weren't averse to making stuff up to fit their purposes- so the Gospels can't be assumed to be historically accurate in terms of relating alleged miraculous events.

__________________
*William Lane Craig rationalizes Jesus flight as being a show for the disciples. They believed heaven was "up there", and so Jesus vanished from the earthly spatio-temporal plane in this way so they would know where he went. This does rationalize the event, but pure invention is a better explanation, especially in light of the silence of the other evangelists on it.

[JehovahsWitness]

... it is agree that [the gospels] were written in Greek - which means they were not written in Palestine.

• Linguistically, the Greek evidence shows how far Palestine in Jesus' time was a bilingual or multilingual society. - Prof James Barr University of Manchester

• How widespread the use of Koine was can be seen from the fact that the decrees of the imperial governors and of the Roman senate were translated into Koine to be distributed throughout the Roman Empire -Insight on the Scriptures Vol I

• “Although the main body of the Jewish people rejected Hellenism and its ways, intercourse with the Greek peoples and the use of the Greek language was by no means eschewed. . .” - Hellenism, by N. Bentwich, 1919, p. 115

• With little reservation, the speech community of first-century CE Palestine was almost certainly multilingual (with Greek as its lingua franca) - Hughson T. Ong, The Multilingual Jesus and the Sociolinguistic World of the New Testament

Re: ancient Palestine being a multilingual society, see Rydbeck, “Language,” 361–68; see also Fitzmyer, “Languages,” 501–31; James, Language of Palestine. See also Stanley E. Porter,Verbal Aspect, 111–56; Introduction The complex multilingualism of Palestine 11–38.

CONCLUSION Evidently there is no academic consensus on the extent to which Greek was used in Palestine but one thing is agreed on Greek was indeed one of the languages of Palestine. This being the case it is NOT accurate to say the mere use of Greek indicates the gospels must have been written outside of Palestine.

Wrong.

Are you seriously suggesting that any of the scholars you cited claims that Greek was not spoken or written in first century Palestine by anyone. Including the Greeks ( that lived in the Greek cities) in first century Palestine? Is that your position ?

[JehovahsWitness]

Anyway.... regarding where the gospels were written , you stated the following

...There's no consensus on precisely where the Gospels were written...

So my QUESTION for you is the following : does this mean that where the gospel's were penned is not part of your argument? If YES, then thats fine we dont need to bring it up again. If NO kindly provide the scholarly opinions in where all four were written to support your position.

[fredonly]

Are you seriously suggesting that any of the scholars you cited claims that Greek was not spoken or written in first century Palestine by anyone. Including the Greeks ( that lived in the Greek cities) in first century Palestine? Is that your position ?

Of course not. The alleged witnesses (disciples) to the alleged ascension were all from rural Galilee, so it's very unlikely they spoke Greek. Any stories they told would have to be translated into Greek, and these Aramaic-speaking disciples wouldn't be able to correct any errors. This was just one aspect of the problem with assuming this story was a veridical tradition preserved over 50 years. As I've said, this scenario is very unlikely - but if it did occur, it implies the tradition was greatly valued.

[JehovahsWitness]

Are you seriously suggesting that any of the scholars you cited claims that Greek was not spoken or written in first century Palestine by anyone. Including the Greeks ( that lived in the Greek cities) in first century Palestine? Is that your position ?

Of course not.

Okay good. Anyway.... regarding where the gospels were written , you stated the following

...There's no consensus on precisely where the Gospels were written...

So my QUESTION for you is the following : does this mean that where the gospel's were penned is not part of your argument? If YES, then thats fine we dont need to bring it up again. If NO kindly provide the scholarly opinions in where all four were written to support your position.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #274]

Almost certainly no. It is interesting to speculate or guess where the gospels were written (I'd guess in Alexandria for John,. Antioch maybe for Matthew, and Rome for Luke. Mark, I wouldn't like to guess}.

But it can form no part of any argument as it is no more that hopeful guesses. The more relevant aspect is that they did not know what they were talking about on occasions, so could not be eyewitnesses or even close to them, and Matthew, was surely not (as is often claimed) a Jew as he understands little about it including the scriptures, though he uses them a lot to find Prophecies.

[fredonly]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #274]
The specific place where each was written isn't relevant, but it is relevant that they were written in different communities. The narrative would need to have spread widely, while remaining uncorrupted.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #274]
... The narrative would need to have spread widely, while remaining uncorrupted.

Widely from where to where? "Widely" needs at least two points...

(A) < -------- wide --------> (B)

Point of origin (A)?
Point of arrival (B)?

Unless you have a different definition for "wide", your the statement is unsupported without point (A) and (B). Please provide the information needed to verify your claim.



IS IT IMPOSSIBLE OR UNLIKELY THE APOSTLES (EYEWITNESSES) OF THE ASCENTION TRAVELED TO THE COMMUNITIES WHERE THE GOSPELS WERE PENNED? ("too wide")

CONTEMPORARY: living or occurring at the same time
Definitions from Oxford Languages

In order to propose the idea that the narrative ( in the person of the eyewitnesses of the ascention) could not have reached the gospel writers, one must propose the distance between the two to have been "too wide" (meaning "too far") to be crossed either by their contemporaries ( the gospel writers) to reach them or for the Apostles to personally have reached the the communities where the writers penned the gospels*.

* Of course writers could have heard (ORAL TRANSMISSION) the narrative personally from the Apostles at ANY mutual reached location before they penned them

[The Nice Centurion]

1. Heaven is actually up in the sky. Really?! We know that's where 1st centuryJews believed it to be. But it ain't so!

2. If Jesus actually ascended into the sky while his followers watched, why didn't Mark, Matthew and John relate the event? This would have been nearly as remarkable as his alleged Resurrection.

Heaven isn't up in the sky*, and it's absurd to think such a monumental event would be omitted by any evangelists. The best explanation for these curiosities is that the Ascension did not occur, and Luke made it up. Why do this? Perhaps to explain why Jesus wasn't around any more.

Apologists like to point to incidental historical accuracies in the New Testament, as evidence the Gospels are trustworthy history. But fictions like the Ascension show that the evangelists weren't averse to making stuff up to fit their purposes- so the Gospels can't be assumed to be historically accurate in terms of relating alleged miraculous events.

__________________
*William Lane Craig rationalizes Jesus flight as being a show for the disciples. They believed heaven was "up there", and so Jesus vanished from the earthly spatio-temporal plane in this way so they would know where he went. This does rationalize the event, but pure invention is a better explanation, especially in light of the silence of the other evangelists on it.

If heaven isnt up in the sky, then where is it

[fredonly]

Unless you have a different definition for "wide", your the statement is unsupported without point (A) and (B).

This website contains a map showing the locations of the earliest Christian communities.

https://www.the-map-as-history.com/Hist ... st-century

Here's the Distance from Jerusalem (the point of origin is the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem) to a sampling of the Christian communites outside Palestine:

Antioch*: 300 miles
Tarsus: 370 miles
Corinth*: 800 miles
Ephesus*: 600 miles
Cyrene: 900 miles
Rome*: 1400 miles

* Each of these are among the locations proposed by various scholars as places a Gospel was written. There's no consensus, but clearly all the communities were quite distant from Jerusalem, and not very close to each other.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #274]
... The narrative would need to have spread widely, while remaining uncorrupted.

Widely from where to where? "Widely" needs at least two points...

(A) < -------- wide --------> (B)

Point of origin (A)?
Point of arrival (B)?

Unless you have a different definition for "wide", your the statement is unsupported without point (A) and (B). Please provide the information needed to verify your claim.



IS IT IMPOSSIBLE OR UNLIKELY THE APOSTLES (EYEWITNESSES) OF THE ASCENTION TRAVELED TO THE COMMUNITIES WHERE THE GOSPELS WERE PENNED? ("too wide")

CONTEMPORARY: living or occurring at the same time
Definitions from Oxford Languages

In order to propose the idea that the narrative ( in the person of the eyewitnesses of the ascention) could not have reached the gospel writers, one must propose the distance between the two to have been "too wide" (meaning "too far") to be crossed either by their contemporaries ( the gospel writers) to reach them or for the Apostles to personally have reached the the communities where the writers penned the gospels*.

* Of course writers could have heard (ORAL TRANSMISSION) the narrative personally from the Apostles at ANY mutual reached location before they penned them

This argument fails for the usual reason, at least from where I'm standing. The Elephant in the room: a priori assumption that the Bible - believers are right to take the story as what is claimed - the gospels are based on eyewitness narrative, whether written by them or told by them toothers who write them down.

Is it impossible that the transmission of the gospels could have happened that way? Virtually, yes.

Why? Not because they couldn't have passed the narrative on or written it themselves after they became miracle saints after the Pentecost events. But virtually impossible because the gospels are not coherent, reliable or make sense as the workof people who were there.

Thus the who argument you are making is sunk because it fails for the usual Believer fallacy,assuming as a give the claimthat itself is under question.

If it isn't assumed to be the reliable narrative of the disciples - and the fact that the Ascension is not even hinted at by the synoptics is just One of the many, many reasons to doubt the reliability of the gospels - then discussing whether the transmission of such a story is irrelevant and a red herring, though perhaps not intentional. It is a result from Bible -apologists arguing from a position of Faith which invalidated just about all their arguments from the start.