Is the Ascension Story an Embellishment?

[Rushing Jaws]

STM = "Seems to me"?

AFAIK

[Rushing Jaws]

Can Bauckman prove with 100% certainty the sources for Luke's gospel and prove that we can be 100% certain of the accuracy of their testimony?

Answer: Of course not. The best he can do is tell us that he has a high degree of confidence in the sources of Luke's story. Again, educated, rational people must ask themselves this all important question: Which is more probable? That Bauckman is wrong or that "resurrected" dead bodies really do levitate into the clouds?

It's all a matter of probabilities, Stein. If you believe that levitating bodies are more probable than an imminent scholar being wrong, you have demonstrated to all your irrationality.

Discussion of the Ascension is not helped by describing it as the levitation of a resurrected dead body into the clouds. It is no such thing.

The texts about it, in St Luke and also in Ephesians 4, are "transpositions", or "arrangements", in theological imagery (some of it from the Old Testament), of an event for which ordinary language has no means to describe it adequately. This need not surprise a Christian, because the Gospels emphasise the extraordinariness of Our Lord. So a (humanly speaking) extraordinary going out of the world is "in character". The Ascension, like the Resurrection, is not reducible to anything else. It is not a metaphor, or a myth, or a misunderstanding, but a real event. It is not within the power of man to do - it is a purely Divine Act. It is described in liturgical language, it uses cloud-imagery to point to the Deity of Our Lord and to recall the cloud-imagery of the Exodus, it presents the Ascended Lord as the Ark of the Covenant, and it does all this by telling a story.

The Exaltation of Christ at His Ascension is essential to Christianity, because it takes His Glorification at the Resurrection a step further. Because He ascends to the right hand of His Father, it shows both that He is King, and that He is Holy. He is not an angel, because no angel sits at the right hand of the Father. And it has Him beating the heaven-journeying heroes of myth at their own game: unlike Etana, Herakles, Bellerophon and the rest, this Divine Hero can be dated by the official under whom He was crucified. This Ascension really happened. And it in turn looks forward to His Coming as Judge, when He shall reward the righteous and the wicked alike, each according to his deserts.

[RhinestoneCowboy]

It's interesting how this amazing event gets no mention in Paul, Mark, or Matthew. You'd think they'd want their readers to know that
the Risen Lord spent 40 days on earth then physically ascended to heaven while people were watching. Hmmm...

[Gary]

That does not do justice to the Ascension as a "stage" in the Exaltation of the Risen and Glorified Christ. IMO, it is not historical, not because it is less real than history, but because history is less real than it. Which is surely what one should expect, as the One Who Ascends is not mere man, but God the Word made flesh. Since there is no adequate way of expressing a Divine Event in something as human words and human concepts, the more than human reality of the Ascension risks looking like what it is not: a myth invented by men.

Exactly.

The Ascension was a metaphysical event which must be believed by faith. If its proponents attempt to assert it was a literal, historical event, it should be rejected for the following reasons:

1. Only one author describes this event; the story lacks multiple attestation.
2. The story defies known scientific facts about the abilities of human beings.

If one person claimed to have been abducted by three foot tall, green, antennaed Martians and flown off to the Red Planet for three days of torture and mind probing, most people would refuse to believe this tall tale. A very extra-ordinary claim made by one person should not be accepted as fact without very extra-ordinary evidence.

No such extraordinary evidence exists for "Luke's" tall tale.

[Bisto]

Exactly.

The Ascension was a metaphysical event which must be believed by faith. If its proponents attempt to assert it was a literal, historical event, it should be rejected for the following reasons:

1. Only one author describes this event; the story lacks multiple attestation.
2. The story defies known scientific facts about the abilities of human beings.

If one person claimed to have been abducted by three foot tall, green, antennaed Martians and flown off to the Red Planet for three days of torture and mind probing, most people would refuse to believe this tall tale. A very extra-ordinary claim made by one person should not be accepted as fact without very extra-ordinary evidence.

No such extraordinary evidence exists for "Luke's" tall tale.

Didn't he say that he deems theologically heavy events to be MORE real than mere history? As in, not only as real as the latter, but more?

I remember Wright started TROTSOG talking about this. He basically argued that we can at least study the historical side, as in the natural consequences, of such events. We won't be covering the fullness of them, which is greater, as RJ says; but we will be covering what can be covered with the tools within our reach. He compares it to aiming to shoot the sun with an arrow by hitting its truthful reflection on a pool.

[shunyadragon]

The historical sequence of the gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the product of progressive embellishment in many ways based on the evidence. The earliest gospel, Matthew is clearly embellished from an earlier version. Whether true or not each gospel was progressively added material, particularly in the area of supporting miraculous events.

[robrecht]

The historical sequence of the gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the product of progressive embellishment in many ways based on the evidence. The earliest gospel, Matthew is clearly embellished from an earlier version. Whether true or not each gospel was progressively added material, particularly in the area of supporting miraculous events.

The gospel of Mark was written first. That's been the scholarly consensus for over a hundred years.

[Adam]

Except for the Jerusalem School and others who think Luke was written first. Then there are Catholics and other traditionalists who zealously maintain that Matthew was first, and the Griesbach Hypothesis also agrees with that.

The source for the Passion Narrative in John was first, in my opinion.

[shunyadragon]

Except for the Jerusalem School and others who think Luke was written first. Then there are Catholics and other traditionalists who zealously maintain that Matthew was first, and the Griesbach Hypothesis also agrees with that.

The source for the Passion Narrative in John was first, in my opinion.

All these traditional schools of the origin of the gospels are just that, traditional views and not based on the known facts about the sequence and origin of the gospels. Even the gospel of John has also known to be embellished.

[shunyadragon]

The gospel of Mark was written first. That's been the scholarly consensus for over a hundred years.

Sorry for the miscue. The unedited and unembellished Mark was indeed first known written gospel.

[Adam]

All these traditional schools of the origin of the gospels are just that, traditional views and not based on the known facts about the sequence and origin of the gospels. Even the gospel of John has also known to be embellished.

Absolute b...!

[Gary]

I think the Ascension story is the product of the ongoing embellishments of the Jesus story.

In Paul's day, there was no "empty tomb" story.

Everyone in the 50's AD knew that the bodies of persons crucified by the Romans were tossed into an unmarked, common grave and that that is exactly what had happened to Jesus' body. The early Christian belief in a resurrection, to that point, had never been based on an empty tomb story but solely on a few reports of sightings of the dead Jesus (in visions, dreams, and trances) to a few of the disciples (and allegedly to Paul) shortly after Jesus' death.

By the time that "Mark" got around to writing his book in the early or mid 70's, most if not all of the eyewitnesses to Jesus' crucifixion were dead. Those few who might have still been alive had been scattered to the far ends of the earth after the destruction of Jerusalem. Paul was also dead. So "Mark" felt free to write a completely new story about Jesus. Paul, in his epistles, mentions very little of the "Jesus" who he had "interacted with" on the Damascus Road and in Arabia. So for all we know, many of the stories in the Gospel of Mark are "Mark's" inventions, in particular, the Passion Story.

Christians in the 70's were having to defend their Resurrection belief from Jews who said it was complete nonsense as there is not one word in the Old Testament about a Resurrection of one man, the messiah. How could Christians shut the Jews up??? Answer: Invent an empty tomb! So "Mark" invents an empty tomb as physical evidence for the Resurrection Story. But how would poor Galilean peasants have afforded a hand hewn tomb for Jesus?? Answer: Invent a man named Joseph of Arimethea and make him a rich member of the Sanhedrin!

But wait! Why hadn't anyone, including Paul, ever heard about this empty tomb? Answer: "Because the women left the tomb in great fear...and told no one!"

Then a decade or so later, Christians are still under pressure to provide proof of a bodily resurrection of Jesus. So more (embellished) details are added to the story by Matthew and Luke. Matthew adds guards at the tomb to prove that a resurrection is the only plausible explanation for it being found empty. Now the women DON'T keep quiet, they blab the news to everyone! Now there are earthquakes and eclipses and dead people roaming the street! (Remember, we are now 50-70 years after the death of Jesus. All witnesses are now dead so no one can say, "Hey! That didn't happen!")

Then Jews and other skeptics asked, "If there really was a resurrection of a literal body...what happened to the body of Jesus after his post-death appearances??? Did he live on into his later years and die as Papias would later claim? Is his body buried somewhere? If so, where is it?" Hmm. Not good. Now people are going to demand to see the final resting place of the "resurrected Jesus". So "Luke" comes up with a solution: Jesus ascended into the clouds and was never seen again. ( Whew! No longer any need to provide a resurrected body. Another discrepancy resolved!)

[One Bad Pig]

You have a vivid imagination, Gary.

[Gary]

You have a vivid imagination, Gary.

That is the story the evidence points to.

[One Bad Pig]

That is the story the evidence points to.

Only in your head.