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Loading...I am sometimes torn between wanting to be sensitive to people’s deeply rooted religious convictions and calling a spade a spade. think many readers would be surprised (and dubious) that have this sensitivity, since I’m often blasted precisely for trouncing people’s religious beliefs. But that’s almost never my intention. The one exception is when it comes to fundamentalism. I have no qualms about attacking Christian fundamentalist thinking head-on. But even then try to be sensitive to the people holding onto this kind of thinking, and I try to engage it with reason and evidence rather than with ridicule. But there are times when it is worthwhile calling a spade a spade, and sometimes we ought to just do that. I’ve been thinking about the passage summarized in the post yesterday from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, the passage from which the fundamentalist view of the “rapture” principally comes from. Jesus returns on the clouds of heaven, the dead in Christ rise first, and then those who are alive who are his followers are snatched up into the air also to meet Jesus in the clouds. This is something that is going to happen very soon. How do know that Paul thinks it is going to happen very soon? Look at the language he uses. It is the “dead” who will first rise. And then it is “we who are left, who remain until he comes.” Which group does Paul include himself in? He’s one of the ones who will be living at the time. He expects it to happen in his lifetime. So what spade am calling a spade? don’t see any way to assess this passage other than to say that it embodies and is embedded in an ancient Christian mythology. I’m not going to … THE REST OF THIS POST IS FOR MEMBERS ONLY. If you don’t belong yet, YOU DON”T KNOW WHAT YOU”RE MISSING (literally!)
The Myth of the Rapture: Calling a Spade a Spade
August 8, 2015
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Nothing like getting a learning visual on mistakes in the texts in modern times Dr Ehrman. You must be a tired scribe. Lol ! Still another great post. I’m reading through as many old posts as I can, but if you haven’t said much on the rapture I would dig to hear more.
I’m on the road and trying to do these posts on an I-pad, which is slow, clunky, and unbelievably error-inducing!!
What do you make of Paul’s view that he once went to the “third heaven”?
I think he had an ecstatic vision.
Is there any evidence of ecstatic visions in the first century being a result of mental illness or use of mind altering drugs?
Nope, no evidence.
There are many who believe, on the basis of no evidence other than inferences from scripture (i.e., what’s written, in the forms that we have “it”), that Saul of Tarsus in particular, as well as the possibly fictional Muhammad, the so-called prophets, the as-depicted fictional Moses, etc. etc., harbored and displayed the symptoms of Temporal Lobe (Limbic) Epilepsy. This has been the subject of articles in the scientific, mostly neurological, literature. None of these prove, or can prove this conjecture, but “it’s plausible.”. One example: J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1987;50:659-664
I know you feel torn between being sensitive to strongly held beliefs and calling a spade a spade. It is quite a dilemma, with little middle ground, which you navigate quite well. Keep plugging away at it.
The 3-story universe reminds me of John Robinson’s classic book entitled “Honest to God.”
Bart, I’m all for calling a spade a spade when it comes to fundamentalist beliefs like this.
Yes, and that kind of thinking in the modern world drives me crazy. I know people who still believe that nonsense. Some are even educated people. It’s nuts!
Does not the same logic applied to Jesus’ Ascension?
Yup! That happens only in Acts 1, but it’s the same logic. Jesus “went *up*”
Presumably there are more sophisticated views held by conservative Christians that say Paul is just expressing things in the concepts of his day. Are there?
I”m sure there must be! There is every shade of belief and believer out there!
I’m sure most people, like me, have never realized that God merely terraformed the planet Earth, rather than creating the whole shebang from nothing. I wonder if the myth reads more clearly in the original Hebrew?
No, it’s all right there in the English too. People just don’t think carefully about the words they’re reading (it took me years to realize that the water was already there when God began!)
In the Enuma Elish the created order also proceeds from a pre-existent watery cosmos and chaos (male and female principle) that kind of commingle bringing about subsequent creation phases as outcome of a kind of primeval sexual union of these watery regimes. Later on Marduk slays the watery dragon Tiamat, splits her carcass to create the firmaments of separation. This description kind of occurs in one of the Psalms but omitting Marduk as the hero god figure, of course.
The Hebrew scripture borrowing or spring boarding off the earlier Mesopotamian literature is rife across a number of Hebrew Bible books. I know a lot of scholars have written on these matters per the Hebrew Bible, but me thinks it still warrants a book aimed at better popularizing the subject to the lay public – much as Bart Ehrman books have so famously and successfully done per the New Testament. 🙂
You might want to look at Friedman and Silberstein, Unearthing the Bible.
Do you mean “The Bible Unearthed” by Silberman and Finkelstein? Or are they two distinct books with remarkably similar titles and authors? 😀
Yup, that’s what I meant. Sorry!
I became a Christian during the apocalyptic Jesus movement of the 70’s and like you, I was a true believer. Eventually I started doing some intense study of what the Bible really has to say on the subject of eschatology, came to the conclusion that it was all a jumbled and indecipherable mess, and this was the beginning of the end for me as a Christian.
Now I am sometimes told that it is unfortunate that I fell in with this crowd instead of discovering “real” Christianity in a more orthodox version. I beg to differ. As an apocalyptic I think I had much in common with the early Christians (and also a charismatic, BTW).
There is nothing wrong with seeking the truth about something. I had the same experience until I read the Bible a number of times while I read the works of Dr. Ehrman. Talk about opening my eyes to what early Christianity was all about, and what Christianity is all about today. It has been both a fascinating and gratifying experience. Keep reading.
I’m kinda relieved that it’s all a myth. Jesus would be returning to the Northern hemisphere (since everyone knows the heavens are above this hemisphere) and I was a bit worried for the folks in Australia who would have to be dragged through the ground and through the waters below the earth in order to be raptured along with everyone else. 🙂
Exactly!
I can’t help thinking of a particular bit of religious nonsense. Remember the original Star Trek? I’m sure there was an episode in which Captain Kirk and his crew visited a planet whose people, they thought, worshipped their sun. But in the end, they made the discovery – intended to be awe-inspiring – that those aliens actually worshipped…”the Son”! (Handy that their language was English…)
That was such a cringe-worthy non-sequitor
Unfortunately, Bliblical literacy is not taught in our schools. By literacy, I mean the who, when, and how the Bible came to be. Try getting that through the Texas or Kansas school board.
Did the writer of genesis thing that water was eternal and beginingless ?
Apparently
Seriously, a modern person *could* claim that Heaven and Hell exist in other dimensional realms (a concept that’s suitably vague), and those being “Raptured” will subjectively experience being taken “up,” when they’re really being taken into another dimension. That wasn’t the original idea, but it’s an explanation some would find satisfactory.
What would be harder for me, at least, to accept is Christianity’s not even mentioning all those other worlds we now know exist. *Why* did God (supposedly) create such a vast Universe? And why did He never tell us about it, while making all those predictions about a “Last Judgment” and so forth? (Of course, He didn’t even bother to tell His “chosen people” – the Jews – about the existence of the Americas!)
Giordano Bruno did have the audacity to speculate about – as I understand it – how some counterpart of the Christ story might have played out on other planets. And God, instead of encouraging *thought*, let him be burned at the stake.
your explanation is the one most would/do accept. However, I dont see why youre troubled by scripture not explaining certain realities that we know of now. I dont think that disclosing the americas was part of a Gods plan…”Hey everyone there are a couple other continents I created for you! Go west! or east! But not up or down because according to Bart there is not *up* or *down*.”
There’s not an up and down for you either!
I wish I had an answer for why people believe what they believe. I watched a documentary called “Going Clear” about people decompressing from the grip of scientology. Intelligent people. Accomplished people. John Travalota and Tom Cruise….well, they are celebrities, but not so sure they are intelligent…they appear to be. It is like the discovery of when you are older about how your classmates from high school and college line up on the political spectrum. It is hard to believe that some think what they think. I tried to read Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,”
but the message of how people formulate their religious and political beliefs is a convoluted as some beliefs. Complicated is all I can say. With six children in our family, three ended up liberals and three ended up conservatives from parents that were liberals. Go figure. Two of the kids had extreme religions, one Catholic, one a Jesus quoter ( but he doesn’t go to church), one who has no affiliation, and me, the only agnostic. I have found that people are going to believe what they want to believe no matter what anyone says to them. People do change over the course of a lifetime, but often it is hard to shake the foundation of the basic beliefs that people have. When it comes to something like believing in “The Rapture” then ignorance trumps everything. They are just ignorant people. I can’t imagine an intelligent person believing in it. Yet, I have been wrong before about that. With enough reinforcement, people come to believe anything. They are brainwashed. There is not talking about another point of view to my brother who is a Jehovah’s Witness. If you counter his arguments, then you are “the devil.” How does one compete with that? I know. One cannot compete with it. Just accept it.
Fascinating, Dr. E.
How does the three story universe fit in with the Gnostic view? Is the latter a refinement or deeper explanation for those in the know? If Paul was actually a Gnostic, as Pagles hypothesizes, is Paul telling a consistent story?
Also how does the Genesis creation story relate to the story of wisdom, logos, and little sparks floating around the physical universe? Was this supposed to have already happened when the ignorant God carved out the three-story universe?
Many gnostics (and other Christians) had a multi-level heavenly realm. I’m just referring to the cosmology behind Paul’s comments in 1 Thess — not to what all Christians (or others) thought at the time.
What I don’t understand is that if the 3-tiered universe included water above the firmament, where does god reside? Is he above the water that’s above the firmament? And if that’s so, then the tower of babel would have just risen up to the water and not god.
Yes, I suppose he’s above it all. The Tower of Babel story comes from a different source from the source for Genesis 1, so that source may not have imagined that above us is water.
Does “αρπαγησομεθα” translate into rapture?
αρπαγαω literally means something like “to snatch” or “to seize” or “to grab.” But yes, some such verb is what one would expect.
Well sure I Thessalonians 4:13-18 “embodies and is embedded in an ancient Christian mythology.” And, what a wonderful and powerful (and *living*!) mythology it is:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3l_LfGjXShg
😀
Whatever begins to exist has a cause
The universe began to exist
Therefore the universe has a cause.
prince, many cosmologists will disagree with both your premise and your conclusion.
I think we still have a concept of up and down, Bart. We still see reality that way–you do, I do, everybody does. We just know (if we’re educated) that it isn’t that simple. That up and down are relative concepts.
We still say we feel ‘up’ when we’re happy and ‘down’ when we’re sad. We still say someone’s on his way up when he or she is doing better in the world, and down when he or she is encountering setbacks. When the Dow Jones is up, investors are excited, when it’s down, they get scared.
Our view of reality hasn’t really changed that much.
And the rapture is silly, of course. But given that we bury people in the ground, it’s rather understandable that we associate it with death–Tibetans and some other cultures have seen it a bit differently. The Sumerians, of course, seem to have believed that everybody went ‘down’ into a rather hellish afterlife, regardless of how they lived or believed. I think on the whole I prefer the Christian concept of the afterlife. Though as a (lapsed) Catholic, I’ve a weakness for purgatory–that seems fair to me–we get our sins burned out of us before we move on. An eternity of punishment–or bliss–for a finite lifetime? Makes no sense. And who would want to be conscious for all eternity, anyhow? No matter how nice it was. The self doesn’t survive death, but that doesn’t mean nothing survives.
Just thinking out loud, sorry.
I still think there’s one hell of a lot of wisdom in what our forebears believed, and we leave it all behind at our peril. Someday people will be looking at what we educated folks believed in the 21st century and shaking their heads sadly. And repeat.
Oh yes, I certainly have a concept of up and down. But I realize that it is relative to where I am at the time! And there is no literal up (one that is true for all of us)
With regard to god not creating darkness and water what is the reply to someone who says: “when God created the heavens and the earth He created darkness and water as darkness and water were parts of the all inclusive heaven and earth”
There was nothing. And then there was all the raw material needed, including I assume, Uranium.
———
In the creation story, for example, when God “created the heavens and the earth,” how did he do it? Read Genesis 1. He didn’t create darkness or water. They were both there already.
So the “heavens and the earth” in Gen. 1:1 mean that he created “darkness and water”? I guess the question would be why the text doesn’t just say that then….
DR Ehrman:
I think that Genesis is saying that our earth was just water when God first created it. It was formless. God hadn’t created the dry ground yet. The earth was just a globe of water in space for some period of time, it was void, and darkness covered the surface of the waters. Nothing else had been created yet; God wasn’t finished yet.
Astronomers have discovered a planet made of water: http://www.zdnet.com/article/astronomers-discover-super-earth-planet-made-of-water/
this is how the author of 2 Peter understood it:
2 Peter 3:5-For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water.
The planet in the article you link is not made of water. The article states that it is “mostly water”. I suspect that this planet is much like Earth, in that its SURFACE is mostly covered with water. It is highly doubtful that the mantle, outer core, and inner core is made of water.
The author of 2nd Peter has a view of cosmology that appears to be consistent with Paul’s and the author of Genesis (Three story).
DR Ehrman:
Your Comment:
How do know that Paul thinks it is going to happen very soon? Look at the language he uses. it is the “dead” who will first rise. And then it is “we who are left, who remain until he comes.” Which group does Paul include himself in? He’s one of the ones who will be living at the time. He expects it to happen in his lifetime.
My Copmment:
To understand Paul’s words in 4:15-18 one must first understand what He wrote in the previous verses, (i.e V;13,14) I believe He wrote 4:15-18 to clear up a misunderstanding of what happens to those who have already died, Not to teach that Jesus was coming in His day.
Read carefully what Paul says in 4:13,14. He’s encouraging, exhorting, and teaching them in V:14, not to grieve as those who have no hope because God would bring with Him those who have died. Read Below:
(13-But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. 14-For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.)
in verse 15, now Paul is assuring them that this teaching (i.e, The dead would rise first), is from the Lord Himself, and further lays a doctrinal foundation teaching that applies to all believers in all generations regarding the coming of the Lord. (i.e, Then we who are alive, and remain Until), Etc.
So to understand V:15-18 in context you must first understand V:13 and 14.
Do you also believe that Paul was teaching that Jesus was returning in His lifetime when He said, in 1 Corinthians 15:51,52, “We will all be changed” “Behold I tell you a mystery WE will not all sleep”? He also includes himself here if you interpret We that way. I think Paul uses We in Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians to refer to Believers not only in his generation but in all generations. Read below:
(51-Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, 52-in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.)
When Paul said, “The dead will rise first, and then WE who are a live until he comes”, He was referring to all believers not just to those alive in His generation. Paul knew that other events must take place before Jesus would return.
I believe the Book of Enoch, scripture to some and nearly in the Bi ble, goes into some detail on the way things are structured. Apparently snow is kept in storehouses in the sky and attended by angels.
Maybe Paul “knew” that this was Solar deification and that the light he saw was the sun, and that he expected the sun to come closer (earth closer to the sun) with its gravity stronger pull us off the earth?
The explanation of the firmament passages in Genesis is quite excellent, in my opinion. You wrote, it took a while for you to understand it. That is true for a lot of people to envision it. Even in children to young adult illustrated books, one does not find the illustration your have shared.
I am a little discouraged that you did not mention here what you mentioned in one of your video lectures. “The third characteristic of an Apocalyptic worldview is vindication.” The Rapture is vindication.
Is there really no after incarnation reward for having lived a Christian life?
Is there really no after incarnation reward for the community of people who follow the sermons of Jesus?
Is it really all so thankless?
Then link it to Matthew 25: 23 Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
In Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life between Lives by Michael Newton, Ph.D., we are rewarded, we advance spiritually for being good souls and learning lessons when we have incarnations. That is our vindication.
So, call a spade a diamond. What we do to build our character to better our expression over less than desirable proclivities is vindicated. The acts of salvation we perform (be it a fireman, a WWII soldier rescuing victims of Nazism, or other) are vindicated when they happen; and, as Socrates believed he could live with himself in death, not ashamed of the life he lived, we are vindicated likewise
The Rapture is really about one’s views on vindication.
Attack Christians, but it’s not in vain. https://youtu.be/Os-Icoui5Hk (audio only). But see the young lady and the choir and the choir director: tell them there’s no vindication: https://youtu.be/Ni3vy8YmMwA
While I’m anything BUT a Christian (let alone fundamentalist), I’ve never found Paul’s “we” statements problematic for Christians, as he seems to be referring not literally to himself and the believers of that time, but generally to all Christians down through the ages. And this seems to be a common Jewish practice, as I’ve often heard this used by rabbis as well, where when telling a story about the Israelites, they may say, for example, “… then WE made the Golden Calf and God punished US…” though clearly the listeners present in synagogue today had nothing to do with the calf, the plural is used to identify and unify the Jewish listeners to all Jews throughout the ages, if that makes sense. Since Paul -was- originally Jewish, this doesn’t seem like a stretch, unless there are details in the text to suggest otherwise?
The problem is that he differentiates between *one* batch of Christians (the dead) and the *other* (the living) and includes himself not in both (as himself a Christian) but only in the latter.
Ah I see, meaning he would have said something like “those of US who are dead… and those of US who are living” rather than only identifying with the living group, in order for that to apply? Could be.
Yup!
Hello Dr. Ehrman
In regards to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, where Paul says “we who are alive and remain”, I have heard it argued that Paul is not referring to himself and his contemporaries, but to Christians at the time of the rapture. “We” is referring to people who are like Paul. Do you think this is a plausible interpretation? I have also heard a similar argument when it comes to verses like Matthew 24:34 concerning “this generation will not pass”. Christians will argue that “this generation” means the generation during the end times, but I don’t see any reason to interpret that from the text.
Someone else asked a similar question earlier. The problem is that Paul differentiates between those other people, who are dead, and “we” who are alive. So he groups himself with one group of Christians, the ones alive when it happens. (he doesn’t say, “then we who are dead who are in Christ will rise first.”)
Thank you! That makes sense. I am just seeing Elisbeth’s post right above mine with the same question. Sorry for the repeat question! I am also in agreement with her response so I will not repeat that either!
Sheesh, when I say “Look up in the sky”, I don’t tack on a million disclaimers like “Well, it’s not technically up, since it’s all relative in the universe…etc etc”. An easiness of speech does not prove Paul’s worldview is that much different than Christians today who say “Grandpa is up in heaven”. Sure, Paul may have believed in this 3-tier universe, but his words in that passage don’t explicitly reveal this. His expression of ‘up’ and ‘down’ is no different to the average person today and has no bearing on that person’s actual scientific beliefs.
Also, I think it is confusing to call this article “The Myth of the Rapture”. The term may not be in the bible, but the concept is there: Christians being caught up to meet Jesus in the air. In another comment, Bart mentioned that he believed Paul literally believed this event would occur. So it’s not a myth in the sense of it not being biblical. This event *is* what many Christians consider to be “the Rapture” (they just argue whether it’s pre- mid- or post-).
As for it being a “myth” in the general sense of the word — of course it is, just like 90% of the events in the bible. This doesn’t say much at all. I’m just a bit frustrated because there are christians who believe the concept of the Rapture is *not* in the bible at all. That the concept was some modern invention. Article headings like this especially by a scholar who believes the concept is in the text, only encourages this not-in-the-bible viewpoint.
Yes, many Christians today *still* operate with a three-story universe!
If Santa can deliver all those presents overnight, don’t you think Jesus could make a “Rapture ‘Round the World” tour? You do believe in Santa don’t you?
The doctrine of the rapture and people being left behind seems mostly an American phenomenon. In England the vast majority of conservative evangelicals, while teaching the bodily return of jesus, oppose the idea of the rapture.
I agree that Genesis and even Isaiah (circle of the earth) seem to be referring to a flat round disc (like a pizza)… but we also know that Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE figured out the earth was spherical… and so isn’t it possible that Genesis (which was completed I think around that time) and (more likely) Paul saw a geocentric motionless earth that still necessitated an up and down cosmology? We see even in the fourth century CE Lactantius mocking the idea of antipodes… but I don’t know that he mocked a round earth (he might have seen it as a trencher (pizza)… but I’m just wondering if they perhaps held a similar view to that of Aristotle and Ptolemy (still completely wrong, but so was everyone else except for the likes of Aristarchus)… Short version… do you think it’s possible Paul saw a motionless geocentric round earth that still required an up and down?
My sense is that different people believed very different things. The beliefs of highly erudite philosophers were not necessarily those of most everyone else, e.g.
How do know that Paul thinks it is going to happen very soon? Look at the language he uses. It is the “dead” who will first rise. And then it is “we who are left, who remain until he comes.” Which group does Paul include himself in? He’s one of the ones who will be living at the time. He expects it to happen in his lifetime.
I know this is an old post, but I wanted to point out that Paul’s description doesn’t necessarily prove that he thinks he will be among the living.
Imagine a sergeant about to lead his men into a battle: “Men, this is a very important battle we are heading into. The odds are against us, and most of us will probably be killed. But, if we succeed in taking our objective, we who survive will be given great honor and accolades.”
Now, is the sergeant saying that he is going to survive the battle? I would say no, even though he hopes to. I don’t doubt that Paul thought that Jesus’s return would be very soon, and that he could be alive. But I don’t think his wording indicates that he was sure he would be alive, especially in the dangerous times in which he lived.
Yes, but he wouldn’t put it that way if the battle was 200 years off!
Prof. Ehrman, I believe that Q 17:34-35 is evidence of a previously undetected trial. The couplet is a Roman decretum.
Other evidence includes Antiquities 18.4.6, describing the judicial practice of Philip the Tetrarch.
Talmud contains, I believe, actual trial documents, akin to Roman formularies. The arguments feature standard Talmudic minor-to-major reasoning (qal va homer).
Massekhet Semahot 8.7 justifies the execution of gay gentiles for sexual transgression, and is almost certainly a transcript presented by Pharisee Yohanan b. Zakkai to Philip the Tetrarch.
ySanhedrin 7.5 similarly justifies execution for sexual transgressors, but for lesbian gentiles. Same prosecutor, same judge.
Mishna Sanhedrin 1.2 names the judge as “Antigonus the Prince” (or “Hegemon”), with the name “Antigonus” being technically accurate.
These are in a footnote, pages 93-94, of Jacob Neusner’s 1962 book, “A Life of Yohanan Ben Zakkai Ca. 1-80 CE”. Neusner said the meaning of the passages was “obvious”, and not allegorical.
Yohanan b. Zakkai lived in ‘Arav, close to Chorazin and Bethsaida, a contemporary of both Philip the Tetrarch and the historical Jesus.
Now it’s relatively clear why sexually transgressive Jews (who were subject to Torah) were allowed to be seized for execution (stoning), but Philip the Tetrarch released the two non-Jews.
There’s also the problem that many scholars (including, I believe, Bart himself) doubt the Pauline authorship of 2 Thessalonians in the first place. It appears to belong to that group of NT writings, including esp. Hebrews (also a spurious Pauline text) attempting to assuage people’s growing doubts about Christ’s imminent return. Paul seems pretty clear in his authentic writings that Christ’s triumphal return and judgment are imminent and will include what Jesus referred to as this “present generation” who would see the Kingdom of God with their own eyes. This “rapture” eschatology seems to be a new and rather odd twist to that, but makes sense if you’re now several generations into the Christian movement with, notably, no Christ having returned yet. A lot of people were clearly getting nervous about that.