Jesus' ascension

[Christian2]

Does the account of the ascension of Jesus appear in the earliest manuscripts? According to the Jesus Seminar, it does not.

Mark 16:19 (New International Version)
19After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.

The ending of Mark has been lost so we don’t know for sure if the ascension was included or not.

Luke 24:50-53

50When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. 51While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven.52Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 53And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

Acts 1
9After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.
10They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11"Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."

The ascension is alluded to in John.

John 3: 13No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.

And in Ephesians 4:

7But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8This is why it[a] says:
"When he ascended on high,
he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men."[b] 9(What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions[c]? 10He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)

Thank you.

[RBerman]

I wouldn't worry too much about the Jesus Seminar.

[Christian2]

I wouldn't worry too much about the Jesus Seminar.

I know they are on the radical fringe of scholarship, but they are influencing a lot of Christians in a negative way.

[John Reece]

No doubt they discount the account of the ascension in Luke 24:51 as well as the one in Mark 16:19.

In A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Bruce Metzger lists four endings to the Gospel of Mark that are current in the manuscripts. Metzger's discussion of the four ending spans four and a half pages. Suffice it to quote just the opening section regarding the longer ending, which includes the account of the ascension:

The last twelve verses of the commonly received text of Mark are absent from the two oldest Greek manuscripts (‏א and B), from the Old Latin codex Bobiensis (it^k), the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, about one hundred Armenian manuscripts, and the two oldest Georgian manuscripts (written A.D. 897 and A.D. 913).

The account in Mark is an abbreviated form of the resurrection story in Luke 24:51, the longer ending of which lacks support in a very small group of manuscripts that includes the original hand of ‏א. A minority of the committee that edited the UBS Greek New Testament favored the shorter ending of Luke that omits the account of the ascension, but the majority of the committee favored the inclusion of the longer ending that includes the account of the ascension — for four exegetically substantial reasons which occupy the better part of two pages in Metzger's commentary, which far and away exceeds the TWeb quote length limit.

In addition to the exegetically substantial basis for including the account of the ascension in Luke 24:51, the historicity of the ascension is supported by the account in Acts 1:6-11, by the 'sitting at the right hand' theology in Hebrews and Ephesians, and by John 3:13, as you noted in the OP.

[Christian2]

No doubt they discount the account of the ascension in Luke 24:51 as well as the one in Mark 16:19.

In A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Bruce Metzger lists four endings to the Gospel of Mark that are current in the manuscripts. Metzger's discussion of the four ending spans four and a half pages. Suffice it to quote just the opening section regarding the longer ending, which includes the account of the ascension:

The last twelve verses of the commonly received text of Mark are absent from the two oldest Greek manuscripts (‏א and B), from the Old Latin codex Bobiensis (it^k), the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, about one hundred Armenian manuscripts, and the two oldest Georgian manuscripts (written A.D. 897 and A.D. 913).

The account in Mark is an abbreviated form of the resurrection story in Luke 24:51, the longer ending of which lacks support in a very small group of manuscripts that includes the original hand of ‏א. A minority of the committee that edited the UBS Greek New Testament favored the shorter ending of Luke that omits the account of the ascension, but the majority of the committee favored the inclusion of the longer ending that includes the account of the ascension — for four exegetically substantial reasons which occupy the better part of two pages in Metzger's commentary, which far and away exceeds the TWeb quote length limit.

In addition to the exegetically substantial basis for including the account of the ascension in Luke 24:51, the historicity of the ascension is supported by the account in Acts 1:6-11, by the 'sitting at the right hand' theology in Hebrews and Ephesians, and by John 3:13, as you noted in the OP.

Thank you John.

[John Reece]

No doubt they discount the account of the ascension in Luke 24:51 as well as the one in Mark 16:19.

In A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Bruce Metzger lists four endings to the Gospel of Mark that are current in the manuscripts. Metzger's discussion of the four endings spans four and a half pages. Suffice it to quote just the opening section regarding the longer ending, which includes the account of the ascension:

The last twelve verses of the commonly received text of Mark are absent from the two oldest Greek manuscripts (‏א and B), from the Old Latin codex Bobiensis (it^k), the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, about one hundred Armenian manuscripts, and the two oldest Georgian manuscripts (written A.D. 897 and A.D. 913).

The account in Mark is an abbreviated form of the resurrection story in Luke, the longer ending of which lacks support in a very small group of manuscripts that includes the original hand of ‏א. A minority of the committee that edited the UBS Greek New Testament favored the shorter ending of Luke that omits the account of the ascension, but the majority of the committee favored the inclusion of the longer ending that includes the account of the ascension — for four exegetically substantial reasons which will be listed in a subsequent post below.

In addition to the exegetically substantial basis for including the account of the ascension in Luke 24:51, the historicity of the ascension is supported by the account in Acts 1:6-11, by the 'sitting at the right hand' theology in Hebrews and Ephesians, and by John 3:13, as you noted in the OP.

[John Reece]

Here are four reasons (listed by Metzger in his Commentary) why the majority of the UBS Greek NT editorial committee favored inclusion of the account of the ascension in Luke 24:51 (brackets added):

• (1) The rhythm of the sentence seems to require the presence of such a clause (compare the two coordinate clauses joined with καί in verse 50 and in verses 52-53).

• (2) Luke's opening statement in Acts ("In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day he was taken up [ἀνελήμφθη]) implies that he considered that he had made reference, however brief, to the ascension at the close of his first book.

• (3) If the shorter text were original, it is difficult to account for the presence of καὶ ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν ["and he was taken up into heaven"] in so many and such diversified witnesses, beginning with p⁷⁵ about A.D. 200.

• (4) If the clause were a copyist's addition, prompted by his noticing the implications of Acts 1:1-2 (see prior point (2) above), one would have expected him to adopt some form of the verb αναλαμβανειν, used in Acts 1:2 and other passages referring to the ascension, rather than the less appropriate αναφερειν, which in the New Testament ordinarily has the specialized meaning "to offer up."

I wrote in earlier posts that there were "four" reasons why the majority vote of the committee that edited the UBS GNT was to include the account of the ascension in Luke 24:51. I was mistaken. In his Commentary Metzger listed also a fifth reason (brackets added):

• Finally, (5) the omission of the clause in a few witnesses can be accounted for either (a) through accidental scribal oversight occasioned by homoeoarcton [see definition below] or (b) by deliberate excision, either (i) in order to relieve the apparent contradiction between this account (which seemingly places the ascension late Easter night) and the account in Acts 1:3-11 (which dates the ascension forty days after Easter), or (ii) in order to introduce a subtle theological differentiation between the Gospel and the Acts (i.e., the Western redactor, not approving of Luke's mentioning the ascension twice, first to conclude the earthly ministry of Jesus, and again, in Acts, to inaugurate the church age, preferred to push all doxological representations of Jesus to a time after the ascension in Acts, and therefore deleted the clause in question as well as the words προσκυνήσαντες αὐτὸν from verse 52 — for when the account of the ascension has been eliminated, the mention of Jesus being worshipped seems less appropriate).

Homoeoarcton: An unintentional error of eyesight committed when copying the biblical text, due to words or lines that begin similarly. Example: καί ... καί ...