Tribute Thread For the Recently Raptured Faith

Firstly it wouldn't be meant or understood by a 1st century Jew as a literal cloud. In Exodus when God spoke to the Israelites He spoke to them from a cloud. They were led by a pillar of cloud. In Daniel 7 the Son of Man comes with the clouds of heaven. "Incidentally Acts doesn't say that He rose on a cloud it says He rose into a cloud." This would be understood as Jesus being lifted into the presence of God.As to whether He rose vertically or not I have no idea nor does it matter. Heaven was always envisioned as being up so it makes sense they would say that He was "lifted up" into God's heavenly space. You have me there. I am totally unfamiliar with your reference even after googling around.

So what do you believe witnesses to the ascension did actually see?Simply from the wiki entry on the ascension of Jesus. Wki

quote:

---

Ascension stories were fairly common around the time of Jesus and the gospel-authors, signifying the deification of a noteworthy person (usually a Roman Emperor), and in Judaism as an indication of divine approval.

---

quote:

---

Non-Jewish readers would have been familiar with the case of the emperor Augustus, whose ascent was witnessed by Senators; Romulus the founder of Rome, who, like Jesus, was taken to heaven in a cloud; the Greek hero Heracles (Hercules); and others.

---

It is interesting that in Luke’s Gospel it simply says that Jesus departed and was carried up to heaven. In Acts he talks about going up into a cloud. Mark says that He was received up in heaven. Matthew and John don’t have an account of the ascension.
Actually the accounts are all pretty much the same. The account in Acts about ascending into a cloud is simply Luke’s way of saying that Jesus went into the presence of God. In the Exodus story there are several occasions where it records Yahweh speaking to them from a cloud. There is also the account of them being led by Yahweh in a pillar of cloud. Again, it wouldn’t have been meant as a physical cloud, but meant metaphorically as the presence of God.
As far as being carried up is concerned people have always imagined God’s heavenly dimension as being up. In the end my best guess as to what they saw was that they saw Him simply disappear leaving our Earthly universe behind and returning to God’s heavenly universe. Thanks for the link. It was interesting and informative. I don’t see a link however between the other ascension accounts and Luke’s. I see the ascension accounts in the Bible to being in reference again to Daniel 7, where the Son of Man is presented to the Ancient of Days and given dominion over the Kingdom. Another Jewish way of saying this was that He would be seated at God’s right hand.

So your interpretation, based on what’s in the bible, of what witnesses to Jesus’s ascension actually saw is that Jesus’s physical body just vanished in front of them. Is that correct? I don’t understand your reasoning here. The accounts and graphical depictions of the various ascensions are all pretty similar with the person in question being bodily elevated into the sky towards heaven to sit with the gods (or God in the case of Jesus’s ascension and presumably Mary’s ascension too).What’s the difference between the notion that Jesus ascended to join the Christian God and the notion that Augustus or Heracles ascended to heaven to sit with Jupiter or Zeus? I’m not seeing any great distinction.

Maybe that is the case. The ascension accounts really just say that Jesus "ascended into God's presence. The book of Daniel and particularly Daniel 7 was a book that was clearly a major part of Jesus' self awareness. We know this as He very often refers to Himself as the "Son of Man". I don't see any of the Biblical references necessarily being about one particular instance.Here is the Daniel 7 passage.

quote:

---

13 In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

---

No doubt there had to be a last time that anybody witnessed the resurrected Jesus, (it might have been Paul), but I don't think that the various accounts of resurrection refer to one particular instance. They are all however saying that Jesus went into the presence of the "Ancient of Days" or the presence of God. They may have borrowed some of the language used, but the difference is that people experienced the resurrected Jesus prior to His ascension. If there is no resurrection there is no ascension, and for that matter no Christianity.Edited by GDR, : Forgot to end the quote

Probably the fact that there were witnesses to Jesus' ascension because it was real, while the other two were made up to fit the deity story. You don't offer any accounts of them after all.

The Roman senator Numerius Atticus personally witnessed Augustus's ascension. Link

Not really:Acts 1:6-11

quote:

---

After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. 10 As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. 11 Men of Galilee, they said, why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!

---

Who are the two robed men in your view?
This sounds more like Jesus bodily rising upwards than just vanishing - No?And here are various images of Jesus ascension LinkI can't find anywhere that agrees with your interpretation of Jesus just vanishing. As far as I can tell you just invented that. Do you have a link or other source that comes to that same interpretation? But the ascension stories relating to Heracles and Romulus predate Christ and Augustus dies in 14AD so his probably does too. So I'm still lost as to the distinction you are making about the different ascension stories. If anything it seems that Christianity borrowed the idea of ascension from the Greeks and Romans.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Wiki in general supports my view. Here is a quote from it.

quote:

---

The common thread linking all the New Testament ascension references, reflected in the major Christian creeds and confessional statements, is the exaltation of Jesus, meaning that through his ascension Jesus took his seat at the right hand of God in Heaven:[3] "He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty." (Apostles' Creed) It implies the human Jesus being taken into Heaven and marks the beginning of Christ's heavenly rule, and its hold on the Christian imagination is evidenced by its importance in Christian art through the centuries.

---

Here's the link The Ascension of Jesus I'm not going to pretend to know. They aren't mentioned anywhere else including Luke's Gospel. It could be two of Jesus' followers who understood Jesus' message and announced their beliefs. Sure if you read it like we read 21st century accounts in a western culture. I contend that a 1st century Jew would understand it differently. If there was more than one account of this I would maybe understand it in a more literally way but it reads to me like the typical hyperbole of that culture. It is possible that they used the language of ascension to make the statement that Jesus was King and Caesar wasn't. We aren't going to know for sure but it is strange that Luke only gives that account in Acts and not in his Gospel. Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

I’m talking about what the witnesses of the acension actually observed. Because you (and others) have been talking about eyewitness accounts in this thread. And about how convincing they are to you. So I’m trying to get your thinking on the eyewitness account of the ascension rather than speculation about where Jesus ended up at the end of it all.Nowhere in wiki is there ANY support for your notion that Jesus just vanished before their eyes. Can you link to anywhere that has that interpretation or is that something you invented?On the other hand pretty much every depiction of the ascension (which generally predate depictions of the crucifixion btw) shows Christ rising up into the sky. A lot of them also show the two figures in white, as angels.

quote:

---

After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

​

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? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.

---

Are you suggesting that the description above and the overwhelming majority of pictorial depictions going back millenia are unreliable and unconvincing as to what actually occurred....?

There are accounts of the resurrected Jesus appearing and disappearing in the Gospels. However, the point of the ascension accounts is that Jesus was exalted by the Father. I'm content to say that this is what is understood, and that the accounts are likely to covey that message metaphorically.They may or may not have known that it was the final appearance, but the point is that it really isn't important. At some point He departed our Earthly dimension for God's heavenly dimension however it looked. Sure and we see lots of paintings of animals go 2 by 2 into the ark. So what? We see pictures depicting the parable of the Good Samaritan. I'd say that the are likely visual depictions of a metaphor.

OK. So we can disregard what was supposedly witnessed in terms of the physical act of ascension as simply hyperbole and metaphor. And we’ve now abandoned the ‘just vanishing’ hypothesis too it seems.Fair enough.But I do find it perplexing how you can put so much store in proclaimed-to-be-witnessed descriptions one minute and be so dismissive of them the next. It seems wholly inconsistent and utterly based on what you want to believe or find personally plausible. Apparently floating off into the clouds is a step too far for our miraculous and reanimated Jesus.I’d suggest that whatever motivated the ascension metaphor/hyperbole/fabrication may well of been at play in other areas that you are prepared to take as fact...

There is only one account that says more than just that He ascended . It even is inconsistent with his own previous account. Jesus' resurrection is consistent through all the writers in the NT.Possibly it did happen in roughly the way that is described in Acts 1, but frankly it only matters if you want to be a literalist. You get lots of cheers from Faith anyway.

Googling ‘resurrection inconsistencies’ suggests that the various accounts differ pretty significantly.This is the first site that appears on that search LinkThe (un)reliability of witness accounts in the bible matters if your position is largely based on how convincing you find witness accounts in the bible.

I looked over the site you linked and some of the contradictions are valid. The point though is that by the time the Gospel compilations were put together there were differences in the accounts. The point is that they all agree that Jesus was resurrected and in a way that would not have been fabricated by 1st century Jews.Again, it is like witnesses to a car accident but not just a few hours later but in cases where the Gospels were compiled using the oral tradition decades later. Again however they consistently agree that Jesus was resurrected.