Interplanner
Well-known member
2P2P often makes as much out of one-off verses that it "needs" to glom on to NT teaching.
In today's drama, that expression is the 3rd heaven in 2 Cor 12:2.
Here is a short version of what the reference tool, the B-A-G lexicon, says. (This lexicon was a required purchase for Greek students at the 2P2P college I attended).
"The concept of more than one heaven is both Jewish and from among pagan sources... The plural 'ouranoi' is never found in Philo or Josephus... The plural is absent in the 4th Gospel yet is in the Rev only at 12:12 in a quote of the LXX. Ephesians always has the plural. In other NT documents, the plural and singular are interchanged for no apparent reason (Heb 9:23, 24 and an early Christian doc quoting that). It then lists several sources with "numbered" heavens going up to 8: Pseudo-Lucian, Philopatris, Simplicius, Epictetus, the Testimony of Levi and the Apocalypse of Moses... It is only in the Apocalypse of Moses (37) that "third heaven" and "Paradise" are found combined in the same way as 2 Cor 12..."
BAG, p598-9.
So STP, for one, owes us an explanation as to why he is willing to chop up heaven for the sake of the pseudo text Apocalypse of Moses, which he probably never heard of before today.
He also needs to explain if there is cell service between the sections; I need to decide which one to go to.
I'd kind of like Paradise, but I suppose there are others who would not.
And then there is this from the bio of Joan T. Mulholland of the Freedom Ride era in the US south during segregation: 'When they put us (riders) in prison, they put the black girls in one cell and us white girls in another.' That is, once you are in prison for such a thing, what difference does it make whether you are segregated? Is this the same kind of thinking?
Although I did not find the reference in BAG, neither under 'ouranois' nor in 'tritois' (third), I recall reading that the ancient world referred to the weather as the 1st heaven, the stars as the 2nd. They were thought to be concentric but functioned independent of each other. The stars did not cease to exist just because of daylight or clouds. The 8 heavens (see above) was early astronomy coming to grips with local bodies moving around us, independent of each other and of the distant stars. Likewise the 3rd heaven was the domain of God and other beings and righteous people, was again concentric and again independent of weather and stars, and did not cease simply because it was unseen. That is, it meant nothing other than heaven as opposed to earth, and was one place, undivided.
In today's drama, that expression is the 3rd heaven in 2 Cor 12:2.
Here is a short version of what the reference tool, the B-A-G lexicon, says. (This lexicon was a required purchase for Greek students at the 2P2P college I attended).
"The concept of more than one heaven is both Jewish and from among pagan sources... The plural 'ouranoi' is never found in Philo or Josephus... The plural is absent in the 4th Gospel yet is in the Rev only at 12:12 in a quote of the LXX. Ephesians always has the plural. In other NT documents, the plural and singular are interchanged for no apparent reason (Heb 9:23, 24 and an early Christian doc quoting that). It then lists several sources with "numbered" heavens going up to 8: Pseudo-Lucian, Philopatris, Simplicius, Epictetus, the Testimony of Levi and the Apocalypse of Moses... It is only in the Apocalypse of Moses (37) that "third heaven" and "Paradise" are found combined in the same way as 2 Cor 12..."
BAG, p598-9.
So STP, for one, owes us an explanation as to why he is willing to chop up heaven for the sake of the pseudo text Apocalypse of Moses, which he probably never heard of before today.
He also needs to explain if there is cell service between the sections; I need to decide which one to go to.
I'd kind of like Paradise, but I suppose there are others who would not.
And then there is this from the bio of Joan T. Mulholland of the Freedom Ride era in the US south during segregation: 'When they put us (riders) in prison, they put the black girls in one cell and us white girls in another.' That is, once you are in prison for such a thing, what difference does it make whether you are segregated? Is this the same kind of thinking?
Although I did not find the reference in BAG, neither under 'ouranois' nor in 'tritois' (third), I recall reading that the ancient world referred to the weather as the 1st heaven, the stars as the 2nd. They were thought to be concentric but functioned independent of each other. The stars did not cease to exist just because of daylight or clouds. The 8 heavens (see above) was early astronomy coming to grips with local bodies moving around us, independent of each other and of the distant stars. Likewise the 3rd heaven was the domain of God and other beings and righteous people, was again concentric and again independent of weather and stars, and did not cease simply because it was unseen. That is, it meant nothing other than heaven as opposed to earth, and was one place, undivided.
