WHEN, WHERE AND WHY DID THE ASCENSION HAPPEN?

THE EVIDENCE

At first there seems to be no problem about the Ascension – when Jesus left the earth and went into heaven (or the sky – the Greek means both).  Luke, writing in the Book of Acts, says that it happened forty days after the resurrection, on the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem.

However, the other sources – the four gospels and Paul in 1 Corinthians – don’t mention the event, which is a bit surprising.  Here is what they say,  starting with what I believe to be the most reliable:

• 1 Corinthians 15.5-8.  The resurrection appearances are listed as Peter, the twelve (actually the eleven), over 500 people at once, most still alive at the time of writing – 56 AD, Jesus’ brother James, all the apostles (more than 12?) and finally to Paul himself on the Damascus road.  Where did these appearances take place?  And what has happened to the Ascension?
• Mark 16.7 The strange young man in the tomb tells the women that Jesus will lead the way back to Galilee.  So did most of the Resurrection appearances happen in the north, in Galilee? (Mark 16.19 does mention the Ascension, but that is a much later insertion).
• Luke 24.50-51. Luke gives a précis of Jesus’ instructions after his resurrection with no time indications.  He tells them (the eleven plus Cleopas and friend?) to “stay here in the city.”  The Ascension then takes place at Bethany.  (Bethany is close to the Mount of Olives).
• Acts 1.3-9 Jesus appeared to the apostles over forty days and told them not to leave Jerusalem until they were baptised with the Holy Spirit.  Then “he was lifted up and a cloud hid him from their sight.”  This was on the “mount called Olivet.”
• John 20 + 21 Jesus appeared to the eleven, minus Thomas, on the day of his resurrection and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He then appeared to all of them including Thomas a week after his first appearance, still in Jerusalem; “They were again in the house.” Jesus appeared to seven of his disciples, including Peter, by the Sea of Galilee.  There are no time indications.  Nothing about the Ascension or about the gift of the Spirit.
• Matthew 28.16-20 The eleven went to a mountain in Galilee and were sent out to “make disciples of all nations.”

THE PROBLEM OF PLACE

Mark seems clear – Jesus would meet his followers in Galilee.  Matthew says the same.  Luke is insistent that the appearances were all in Jerusalem.  John has initial meetings in Jerusalem and a later one in Galilee.  Paul does not specify, except that clearly the appearance to him was a long way from Jerusalem, a two week journey.

THE PROBLEM OF TIME

Luke is apparently precise on the question of timing.  Jesus rose again two days after Passover.  The Spirit came at Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, forty seven days later.  (Pentecost means fifty, and refers to the Feast of Shavuot, seven weeks after Pentecost:  7 x 7 = 49, rounded up to 50. And he tells us the time interval between the resurrection and the Ascension was 40 days.  But in the Bible, forty was another way of saying ‘a lot’.  (Wandering in the wilderness, the reigns of Eli, David, Solomon, prophecies of exile etc.). Rather like us saying, “I’ll see you in a couple of days.”  We don’t necessarily mean “the day after tomorrow”.

A WAY FORWARD

Are there any clues to help us sort all this out?  Yes, one very big clue.  The distance from Nazareth to Jerusalem.  That is 84 miles.  No Egged buses ran in Judaea and Samaria then.  You had to walk.  For six days, there and back.  There was no prospect of popping over to Jerusalem for a weekend.  At Passover pilgrims would arrive a week before the feast, making various acts of penance, and stay for a week after.  In other words, Galileans who took part in the three obligatory annual festivals in Jerusalem would have to block out of their diaries three whole months.

The feast of Pentecost was different.  You only had to attend the festival for one day (two days if celebrating it outside Judaea in other parts of the ancient world).  But you still would want to make the journey worthwhile.

There was also the problem of robbers.  The parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates the danger of being attacked, robbed and possibly killed by lawless criminal gangs, like the two thieves crucified with Jesus.  The answer was to travel in convoy, so as to have safety in numbers.  I therefore assume that there would be thousands of pilgrims travelling through the Jordan valley a week before Passover and a week after.  Perhaps the same would hold true for the feast of Shavuot/Weeks/Pentecost.

A TRAVEL DIARY

Here is my guess at the apostles’ travel diary for these fifty days, taking this year’s calendar as an example:

• 1st/2nd April  Passover
• 4th Resurrection:  Appearances to Mary Magdalen, Peter, Cleopas and friend,  the eleven.
• 11th Appearance to Thomas and the eleven
• 12th – 19th Walk back to Galilee; sabbath spent in southern Galilee.
  • or possibly
• 18th – 24th Walk back to Galilee to avoid travelling on the sabbath.
• From 20th (or 25th) to 7th May, two to three weeks:
  • Appearing to 500 followers at once
  • Visit to Jesus’ brother James
  • Meeting Peter and six other by Lake of Galilee.
• 9th – 14th May Walk back to Jerusalem.  Arrive in time for sabbath on14th/15th.
• Some time between 16th and 21st May – the Ascension.  Present church tradition puts it on 13th May.

So:  quite a busy month and a half.  But it does seem workable.  All you need are strong legs and sturdy sandals.  And a warm cloak to wrap up in at night.

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

It is a most mysterious tradition.  The more one tries to pin it down, the more difficult it becomes.  I am thinking of those traditional paintings of the Ascension which portray Jesus as two feet disappearing into a cloud.

But the difficulty of talking about it in a way that makes sense is not limited to religious traditions.  Physicists tell me that the laptop on which I am writing this is 99% empty space.  That I am over 90% water.  That the stars in the night sky are actually at least two trillion galaxies – 2,000,000,000,000 each with at least a billion suns.  The double helix of our DNA does not look anything like the diagrams we see.

All religions claim that beyond and within our perceived phenomenal world there is an order of being that encompasses and infuses everything.  ‘God’ is the word we use to point to that. (Or Allah, Elohim, Great Spirit, Brahman/Atman, even perhaps Nibbana).  Yet Christians claims that, unimaginably, the One who is beyond and with and in everything has intersected our finite human world of space and time.  The cataclysm of the Cross and the explosion of the Resurrection has brought about the marriage of the finite and the infinite, the human and the divine, in the one man Yeshua of Nazareth, our pioneer to make all of us in principle the free-born citizens of the realm of the Spirit.

Or something like that.

If you would like more on the Ascension, do look up my previous blog on this subject on https://www.bibleinbrief.org/2018/05/10/what-happened-on-ascension-day/.   

One comment on it was “Understandable, Powerful, meaningful. Thank you.”

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