Note 20 — Chapter V · THE ASCENSION.

Among all the New Testament histories of miracles, the ascension least demanded such an expenditure of perverted acumen, since the attestations to its historical validity are peculiarly weak,—not only to us who, having no risen Jesus, can consequently have no ascended one, but apart from all prior conclusions and in every point of view. Matthew and John, who according to the common idea were the two eyewitnesses among the Evangelists, do not mention it; it is narrated by Mark and Luke alone, while in the rest of the New Testament writings decided allusions to it are wanting. But this absence of allusions to the ascension in the rest of the New Testament is denied by orthodox expositors. When, say they, Jesus in Matthew (xxvi. 64), declares before the high priest, that hereafter the Son of Man will be seen sitting at the right hand of God: this presupposes an exaltation thither, consequently an ascension; when in John (iii. 13), he says, no one hath ascended into heaven but the Son of Man who came from heaven, and at another time (vi. 62) tells the disciples that they will hereafter see him ascend where he was before; further, when on the morning of the resurrection he declares that he is not yet ascended to his Father, implying that he is about to do so (xx. 17): there could hardly be more explicit allusions to the ascension; again, when the apostles in the Acts so often speak of an exaltation of Jesus to the right hand of God (ii. 33, v. 31, comp. vii. 56), and Paul represents him as ascended up far above all heavens ἀναβὰς ὑπεράνω πάντων τῶν οὐρανῶν (Ephes. iv. 10), Peter, as gone into heaven πορευθεὶς εἰς οὐρανὸν (1 Pet. iii. 22): there can be no doubt that they all knew of his ascension.20 All these passages, however, with the exception perhaps of John vi. 62, where a SEEING the Son of Man ascend, θεωρεῖν ἀναβαίνοντα τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, is spoken of, contain only in general his exaltation to heaven, without intimating that it was an external, visible fact, that took place in the presence of the disciples. Rather, when we find Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 5 ff. ranking the appearance of Jesus to himself, which occurred long after the alleged ascension, with the Christophanies before this epoch, so entirely without any pause or indication of a distinction: we must doubt, not merely that all the appearances which he enumerates besides his own can have occurred before the ascension,21 but whether the Apostle can have had any knowledge at all of an ascension as an external fact which closed the earthly life of Jesus. As to the author of the fourth gospel,—in his metaphorical language, we are not compelled by the word θεωρῆτε, any more than by the ὄψεσθε in relation to the angels ascending and descending upon Jesus, i. 52, to ascribe to him a knowledge of the visible ascension of Jesus, of which he gives no intimation at the conclusion of his gospel.