14. The bodily ascent of Jesus into Heaven following the Resurrection
According to the Bible and most Christian faiths, Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and after a period of time among the living on earth was taken bodily into heaven, a miracle known as the Ascension. As with other miracles attributed to Jesus, not all of the Gospels relate the event in the same manner. Luke and John refer to the Ascension in descriptions and timing differing from Matthew and Mark. It is mentioned in several of the later Epistles of Paul. As with many of the miracles attributed to Jesus and his ministry, ascending bodily into heaven was an occurrence mentioned with some regularity in ancient documents and folklore, including that of the Jews of Jesus’s day. The Old Testament and contemporaneous literature which is not part of the accepted liturgical canon are replete with stories of bodily ascent into the eternal reward.
Among them are Enoch (included in Genesis as well as apocryphal works), Ezra, Baruch, who was the companion of Jeremiah, Elijah, and Job’s children, who were delivered bodily to heaven after being resurrected in the book describing Job’s trials at the hands of God and Satan. Non-Jews included Augustus, the Emperor of Rome, whose ascent was witnessed by members of the Roman Senate. The Greek hero Heracles, as well as his Roman counterpart Hercules, ascended into heaven, according to the ancient myths about them. The Ascension of Jesus is thus one more miracle which occurred to other personages both before and after his own, and is another miraculous event ignored by Paul in the earliest written records though described later in letters which today appear in the Bible.
