Critical Analysis
The Jesus Seminar considers the New Testament accounts of Jesus' ascension as inventions of the Christian community in the Apostolic Age. They describe the Ascension as a convenient device to discredit ongoing appearance claims within the Christian community. New Testament scholar Rudolph Bultmann writes, " The cosmology of the N.T. is essentially mythical in character, The world is viewed as a three-storied structure, with the Earth in the center, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. Heaven is the abode of God and of celestial beings- angels....No one who is old enough to think for himself supposes that God lives in a local heaven. " It is possible that the writer of Acts 1v9 reasoned that if Christ returned to Heaven then he must have ascended up into the sky to get there, so that is what he wrote Christ as doing.
Read more about this topic: Ascension Of Jesus
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or analysis:
“Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest.... It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)