by fulltimestudent 8 Replies latest watchtower bible
An email from Biblical Archeological Review yessterday, contained a link to a discussion by James Tabor on Paul's Journey to Paradise. Tabor demonstrates that we can read Paul's 'experience' against the background of his times, in which the phenomenon of 'heavenly journeys' was common. His analysis helps us understand what was happening and why Paul would cite his 'experience.'
Here's the reference: http://jamestabor.com/2013/01/02/if-i-ascend-to-heaven-pauls-journey-to-paradise/
He did a Ph.D in this?
No wonder you can do degree courses on Harry Potter.
We also have other records of other Christian 'journeys to paradise,' in later Christian documents. Robin Lane Fox, in his excellent history of early Christianity entitled, Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World, reviews the records of visionary experiences left by early Christian martyrs. Among the best, Fox claims, are the memoirs of the African martyr Marian. Marian wrote of his vision while awaiting his death...
Quote: "Our road lay through a country of lovely meadows, clothed with the lush foliage of green woods, shaded by tall cypresses and pine trees which beat on the very heavens, so that you would think the place was crowned, amid all its winding perimeter, with green groves. In the middle was a hollow abounding in the teeming veins of a crystal clear fountain ... (the place) ws like Paradise. A river ran in the valley betwen high hills on either side, like a theatre (so that) the stream in its hollow drank the martyrs' blessed blood. " unquote.
Fox suggests that Marian was drawing on traditional concepts (in Roman culture)and claims, "that there is no better literary evocation of the traditional 'pleasant spot' in all third century Latin." (Fox, Penguin edition, 2006. pp. 438,439).
Paradoxically, these green and pleasant spaces evoked by Marian's vision, were usually associated with pagan temples and were soon (a century or so later) to ring with the sound of axes, as Christian vandals sought to remove every trace of them from history.
Now, cantleave, you have aroused my curiousity. Why do you feel an examination of that topic is as inconsequential as one on Harry Potter?
Thank you for this. I have bookmarked that article. What I find significant is the absence of a belief in heaven in early Israel.
I did not see reference to a story told by Plato of a man who died, spent some time in the third heaven, and came back to talk about it. I am convinced it is the Greek concept of a finer, perfect world to follow that influenced Paul's description of heaven. Repudiation of the world. We are reborn to a heavenly, perfect realm.
Thnx for posting about the Plato reference, jgnat. If you can find the time you may like to post some more detail.
In regard to a greek concept of a finer future world, pls post on that also (if you have time). Hesiod in his long poem realting Gk concepts of origins, describes a 'loss of perfection,' in his Theogony, in which he relates a creation account, and loss of human nobility in series that the author of Daniel 2 and the dream image seems to have drawn on.
It is described in Plato's Republic, the last six paragraphs. Here's part of the opening:
Well, I said, I will tell you a tale; not one of the tales which Odysseus tells to the hero Alcinous, yet this too is a tale of a hero, Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth. He was slain in battle, and ten days afterwards, when the bodies of the dead were taken up already in a state of corruption, his body was found unaffected by decay, and carried away home to be buried. And on the twelfth day, as he was lying on the funeral pile, he returned to life and told them what he had seen in the other world.
He said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgment on them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. He drew near, and they told him that he was to be the messenger who would carry the report of the other world to men, and they bade him hear and see all that was to be heard and seen in that place.
Then he beheld and saw on one side the souls departing at either opening of heaven and earthwhen sentence had been given on them; and at the two other openings other souls, some ascending out of the earth dusty and worn with travel, some descending out of heaven clean and bright. And arriving ever and anon they seemed to have come from a long journey, and they went forth with gladness into the meadow...
I have an imperfect understanding of the Greek view of the world and the ideal beyond but some of it may be captured in Plato's descripition of the "Form of the Good".
Thnx for posting Plato's story, jgnat. I must go back to the Republic, I've attempted it, but the political views expressed by Plato are (to me) bleak.
I find Aristotle's The Politics much more enticing to read. Aristotle and his students collected and analysed the constitutions of (about 160, if I recollect accurately) 160 states and cities, and comments on their advantages and disadvantages. Reading Aristotle, I realised we do not live under real democracies, but rather a form of oligarchies, in which two oligarchies, vie with each other, to persuade ill-informed voters that they can provide a better government. They seldom do!
