Locating heaven in antiquity and today

Abstract

One feature of antiquity which can be hard for modern readers to make sense of is ancient three-tier cosmology. This article explores this difficulty and responses to it, focusing particularly on Rudolf Bultmann’s articulation of myth and demythologization in relation to the location of heaven in the New Testament. While some scholars suggest that Jewish and Christian writers in the late Second Temple period had already demythologized their cosmology, there is evidence in this literature of cosmological realism with respect to heaven’s vertical location “up there.” Moreover, scholars sometimes “remythologize” heaven using language of alternative realities, dimensions, or universes. Such language vindicates the importance of myth-making and suggests that demythologization is neither necessary nor sufficient. Further, it suggests that we instinctively reach for language at the edge of our observable cosmos to articulate the transcendence-with-immanence of the location of God’s abode.

“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”

—L. P. Hartley, The Go Between

The novelist L. P. Hartley expresses well a sentiment familiar to all those who study and teach historic cultures and literatures. In The Go-Between, the narrator Leo Colston is speaking of the rediscovery of events from his own exhilarating yet ultimately traumatic childhood; how much more foreign, we might justly reflect, are the cultures of two millennia or more ago. This very foreignness of the past, its utter strangeness, is both part of its fascination and also a major hurdle to our understanding. It is, moreover, a significant barrier to the comprehension of others when we try (and, sometimes, fail) to convey a sense of the past, no matter how knowledgeable or enthusiastic about it we may be. In this article I explore one aspect of the ancient worldview which proves particularly challenging for moderns to appreciate: cosmology, and more specifically the notion of heaven. ¹ The era in focus is the Second Temple period and in particular the corpus of the New Testament, though with reference to the wider ancient Jewish and biblical context.

I begin with a classic statement of the gulf between ancient and modern cosmologies, in Rudolf Bultmann’s 1941 essay “New Testament and Mythology.” I then explore a number of responses to the gap he identifies, including his own demythologization and what I term “prior demythologization,” whereby (some) ancients are read as having already demythologized their inherited cosmological myths. Next I argue against this final position by demonstrating that New Testament authors do hold to a form of cosmological realism with respect to heaven. Finally, I give examples of contemporary scholars undertaking a kind of remythologization using the idiom of current scientific cosmology, to demonstrate that myth and myth-making is instinctive and perhaps inescapable. At their best, both ancient and modern attempts to locate heaven in relation to the known cosmos seek to convey something of its transcendence and immanence.

Mind the (cosmological) gap

The gap between ancient and modern cosmologies is not a new observation, as the opening lines of Rudolf Bultmann’s 1941 essay “New Testament and Mythology” demonstrate:

The cosmology of the New Testament is essentially mythical in character. The world is viewed as a three-storied structure, with the earth in the centre, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. Heaven is the abode of God and of celestial beings—the angels. The underworld is hell, the place of torment. Even the earth [. . .] is the scene of the supernatural activity of God and his angels on the one hand, and of Satan and his daemons on the other. ²

A couple of pages later he goes on to say:

To this extent the kerygma is incredible to modern man, for he is convinced that the mythical view of the world is obsolete. We are therefore bound to ask whether, when we preach the Gospel to-day, we expect our converts to accept not only the Gospel message, but also the mythical view of the world in which it is set. ³

Bultmann is using the terms “myth” and “mythology” not in the colloquial sense of something untrue or fabricated, ⁴ but in the sense expressed, for example, by the first definition given in the latest edition of the OED:

A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces, which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon. (OED, “myth,” 1a) ⁵

Bultmann himself later clarified: “Myth intends to talk about a reality which lies beyond the reality that can be objectified, observed, and controlled, and which is of decisive significance for human existence.” ⁶ Bultmann is interested in the “reality beyond the reality” to which myth points. His concern is that if we attempt to objectify our observable reality in the ancient cosmological terms supplied by the NT, this will make the NT incredible to the modern reader. ⁷ For him, mythological elements which point to a greater reality but which should not be objectified in themselves include the pre-existence of Christ, the incarnation, the intervention of angels, the defeat of demonic forces, and Christ’s ascension and return. ⁸

Leaving aside the wider scope of Bultmann’s proposals, his presentation of ancient cosmology is sound. While there are of course variations and exceptions, there was a remarkable degree of consensus in conceptualizations of the universe across the ancient Levant, Greece, and Egypt. The earth was a disk, supported by pillars or floating like a raft on the waters which also surrounded it; the underworld (Sheol, Hades, Tartarus) was located below or at the periphery, ⁹ and heaven was a solid dome or firmament above. ¹⁰ Greek astronomers and mathematicians including Aristotle and Ptolemy qualified this picture: they did not radically alter the tripartite division into earth and what is below and above, but they did transform understanding of the nature and extent of heaven. ¹¹ They conceptualized the earth as a sphere, still fixed, surrounded by seven planetary spheres—one each for the moon, sun, and the five planets from Mercury to Saturn. On this understanding “heaven” is no longer the domain above a solid firmament, but becomes multiple, permeable heavens. It remains possible to locate God in the highest heaven, or beyond it in the realm of the unmoved mover.

Second Temple Jewish and NT writers sit somewhere between the ancient Israelite cosmology and understandings of Greek cosmology that had filtered down to a popular level. ¹² J. Edward Wright charts the evolution as a gradual displacement of ancient Near Eastern and biblical models by later Greek models. ¹³ That is correct, but we should not overlook features within the biblical tradition that are amenable to the multiple heavens inferred from Greek astronomical observations. It is not hard to assimilate the information that the heavens comprise numerous planetary spheres when one already believes that numbers such as three, seven, and ten are theologically significant, and when at the center of the nation’s devotional life is a temple which is held to reflect heaven and which is divided into a minimum of three or potentially several more chambers, porches, and courts. We see the integration of biblical and Greek cosmology explicitly in the depiction of creation in 2 En. 30:2–3[J], where seven “heavenly circles” bear the names of the observable planets, though with “Zeous” (Zeus, that is, Jupiter) and “Afridit” (Aphrodite, that is, Venus) swapped from their expected order. While the dating and origin of 2 Enoch is uncertain, the incorporation of Greek and biblical models of heaven would be conceivable with an early date (first-century CE) and less remarkable with a later date (into the medieval era). ¹⁴

The Ptolemaic model, detailed briefly above, became the predominant understanding and held sway until the age of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. The opposition they faced is a sign of how embedded Ptolemaic cosmology had become in the religious and political fabric of Christendom. ¹⁵ Nevertheless, they were ultimately successful in demonstrating that Earth too was a planet and orbited the sun, and they thus heralded the dawn of modern scientific cosmology. We, in the modern scientific age, are not in a position to revert to any pre-modern cosmology as an accurate portrayal of the physical universe we inhabit. ¹⁶

Responding to the cosmological gap

In response to the gulf between ancient and modern cosmologies, a number of interpretative frameworks have been envisaged. Here I briefly outline three before devoting more attention to two that involve demythologization. ¹⁷ One possibility is description, in which ancient cosmology is simply described and left at that; this is the approach of much contemporary history, valuable in itself. Description seeks to bridge the gulf by making the ancient worldview intelligible, but has no intrinsic interest in accounting for it or relating it to modern cosmology. ¹⁸ Yet for texts which continue to have a normative value in faith communities, this approach does not deal with the hermeneutical and, ultimately, theological questions of how to handle and teach such ideas. It is precisely this dynamic which gives rise to Bultmann’s concerns.

A second possibility is adoption, whereby ancient cosmology is taken to be an accurate description of our physical universe. This would be a fundamentalist approach. Although Bultmann states categorically that “it is impossible to revive an obsolete view of the world by a mere fiat,” ¹⁹ it is at least possible to try, as the existence of the Flat Earth Society suggests. ²⁰ The Society denies the theory of gravity and holds that the firmament of heaven “serves very well” as a scientific explanation. ²¹

A third approach is dismissal, where ancient cosmological ideas in the Bible are acknowledged but then simply ignored as irrelevant or obsolete. This, for Bultmann, is the approach of nineteenth-century liberalism, itself a child of the Enlightenment, which disregards the particular form of the NT in order to retain its alleged essence: universal principals of religious life and ethical norms. ²² One could envisage a combination of description and dismissal by someone with historical interest in ancient cosmology but no commitment to the normativity of the form of the biblical texts.

We now turn to Bultmann’s own proposed framework of demythologization. ²³ In a later essay, “On the Problem of Demythologizing” (1961), he defines it in this way:

By “demythologizing” I understand a hermeneutical procedure that inquires about the reality referred to by mythological statements or texts. This presupposes that myth indeed talks about a reality, but in an inadequate way. ²⁴

In his original essay, Bultmann articulates that reality as follows:

The real purpose of myth is not to present an objective picture of the world as it is, but to express man’s understanding of himself in the world in which he lives. Myth should be interpreted not cosmologically, but anthropologically, or better still, existentially. ²⁵

In Bultmann’s account, the NT retains its privileged spiritual status by offering the possibility of human self-understanding and salvation through encounter with Christ. ²⁶ Nevertheless, Bultmann’s proposal has been extensively discussed and critiqued within and beyond theological and philosophical circles. On the one hand, there are those who think he has not gone far enough—that he is inconsistent in holding on to the Christ event as an actual and non-mythological occurrence—and who therefore press for a more thoroughgoing existentialism. ²⁷ On the other hand, there are many who think he has gone too far, criticizing him for substituting existentialist philosophy for Christian theology. ²⁸ Some would also vindicate Bultmann’s project as essentially correct, even if requiring rearticulation. ²⁹ It is not my concern to revisit those arguments here.

While Bultmann would protest that “we cannot save the kerygma by selecting some of its features and subtracting others, and thus reduce the amount of mythology in it,” ³⁰ variations on Bultmann’s approach have been offered. These might differ on the nature of the core reality to which myth points, identifying it, for example, in political, psychological, or sociological rather than existential terms. Another variation would be on the scope of demythologization. For example, demythologizing core items of the Christian confession such as Christ’s pre-existence, incarnation, and so forth, might be taken to be unnecessary, and only those aspects of a biblical worldview that are, in the interpreter’s view, in more evident contradiction of contemporary science are demythologized. Even on this reduced scope, three-tiered cosmology and the Apostle Paul’s ascent to heaven are unlikely to survive the demythologizing cull. ³¹

The final approach to be considered is what I term prior demythologization. This holds that the biblical authors expressed themselves in ways that indicate they understood the nonliteral nature of mythological terms, and deployed them accordingly. ³² That is, they use such language to describe realities that they know are in fact other than the terms in which they portray them. This view is expressed by George Caird:

[T]he first mistake we can make is to imagine the people of biblical times naive enough to believe that God lived in the sky. There are always some naive people in any age, our own as well as theirs. But the writers of the Bible and its leading figures were not among them. They might, to be sure, look up to heaven in token of looking up to God (Mark 7:34). [. . .] But they knew that this was only a picture. ³³

The same point is made by Caird’s doctoral student, N. T. Wright, in several places:

We must not caricature ancient Jews and Christians as though they were naïve cave-men, believing in a three-decker universe with “supernatural” upstairs, “natural” downstairs and something nasty in down in the cellar. That shallow cosmological sketch is like the early maps that tried and failed to capture the globe on a sheet of paper. Perhaps some did “take it literally,” but that is not the main point. ³⁴

We should not allow the vivid, indeed lurid, language of the Middle Ages, or the many hymns and prayers which use the word “heaven” to denote, it seems, a far-off location within the cosmos we presently inhabit, to make us imagine that first-century Jews thought literalistically in that way too. ³⁵

I have several concerns with this approach: first, it shares Bultmann’s presupposition—that ancient cosmology is naive and primitive—and simply draws the line differently between such naivety and those people who properly understand the nature of reality. That line apparently falls between the biblical writers and everyone else, between ancient Jews and Christians and everyone else, between grown-ups and children, or between the intelligent and the stupid. ³⁶ Yet to move the line in any of these ways has the air of special pleading, arguably more so than in Bultmann’s case, given that he at least draws the line between ancient and modern modes of thinking, which are demonstrably different.

This leads to my second concern, which is that this approach is open to the criticism that it is apologetically motivated—it makes ancient writers acceptable to modern readers by portraying them as very much like twentieth- or twenty-first-century thinkers. The apologetic motivation seems particularly transparent when it is only “biblical man” or “Christian writers” who are exempt from naivety. Third, and most substantively, we can detect within the NT, as within many of the texts of its era, the presence of cosmological realism. ³⁷ By this I mean that what we might describe as text’s physical cosmology and its theological cosmology overlap. This is not to say that all NT writers are thoroughgoing cosmological realists, or that there is no demythologization in biblical texts; ³⁸ at a minimum level, all I need to show for this third concern to have substance is that at least some NT writers in at least some cases display cosmological realism. In practice, however, this is more widespread and more integral to the texts than either Caird or Wright allow, as I will now show.

The “upness” of heaven

In this section I substantiate my claim about the cosmological realism of NT documents, with reference to other comparable texts. At a basic level it is incontrovertible that the NT writers held a pre-scientific understanding of the cosmos. The two key questions are: what was their understanding of the physical universe—was it essentially the ancient Near Eastern schema, or did it reflect Greek astronomical developments to a greater or lesser extent? And, most crucially, what overlap was there between their physical cosmology and their theological cosmology—what is the relationship between the heavens above and heaven as the realm of God?

The NT texts clearly reflect ancient three-tiered cosmology at a number of points. Philippians 2:10 speaks of everyone “in heaven and on earth and under the earth” bowing before the exalted Jesus. In Acts 4:24 the disciples pray to God “who made the heaven and the earth, the sea, and everything in them.” Revelation 5:13 similarly talks of every creature “in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea” worshipping the Lamb on the throne (cf. 5:3; 10:6; Exod 20:4//Deut 5:8; ocean, firmament, and heaven, as well as earth, are distinctly enumerated in Apoc. Paul 21; 31). Such texts invoke the totality of the inhabitants of the cosmos by reference to its three parts (or four, if sea/underworld are separated out). This could simply be conventional language for denoting the whole of the created order, without implying cosmological realism. Yet there are several places where this route is not so easily taken. As a test case, I focus here on the integral “upness” of heaven as it is embedded in several NT texts.

Before I turn to those texts, it is worth noting that conceptualization of heaven or the afterlife as essentially “upwards” in higher cosmic realms is a widely shared assumption in the period. Many of the Jewish texts reflecting this will be cross-referenced at the appropriate points below; here I note some of the Greek and Roman texts. The pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides (sixth- to fifth-century BCE) portrays the afterlife as a journey of increasing knowledge of the celestial sphere including the sun, moon, heavens, stars, and the Milky Way (Poem 10–11). He likens the soul to heat and light (punning on ϕῶς which can mean “man” as well as “light”), which is conveyed in a chariot by the daughters of the Sun to the celestial sphere. ³⁹ The Pythagoreans believed that purified souls would proceed to the sun and moon, which they regarded as Islands of the Blessed (Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras 18). And Cicero’s character Africanus portrays the afterlife to the perplexed Scipio as a release of the chained mind from the heavy body which binds one to earth, giving the opportunity to travel through and learn about the heavenly spheres (Dream of Scipio 7, 9). ⁴⁰

In Mark 1:10, as Jesus emerges from the Jordan at his baptism, he sees “the heavens torn apart (σχιζομένους)” and the Spirit and divine voice descend from heaven toward him. As only Jesus is said to have seen this, one might deny that it is cosmologically significant. In Matt 3:16 “the heavens were opened (ἠνεῴχθησαν) to him” (cf. 2 Esd. [4 Ezra] 8:52; T. Levi 2:6), though some manuscripts omit “to him” (αὐτῷ), ⁴¹ suggesting they took it as a more publicly available occurrence. Matthew’s account is in any case more public, as the divine voice makes a general proclamation, “This is my Son,” rather than a direct personal address “You are my Son” (3:17). For Luke, the event is described with no subjective qualifications, and apparently takes place in view of “all the people” who had been baptized with Jesus: “the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form (σωματικῷ εἴδει)” (3:21–22). Strikingly, the account of Jesus’s baptism becomes more realist or public through the developing Synoptic tradition rather than less.

From the very beginning of Jesus’s earthly ministry we move to the very end, his ascension, for which Luke is again our key source. The text of Luke 24:50–53 is challenging, with some manuscripts omitting “and was carried up (ἀνεϕέρετο) into heaven” to leave just “Jesus withdrew from them.” ⁴² The text of Acts 1 is clearer: while the disciples were looking at him Jesus “was lifted up” (ἐπήρθη, 1:8), and then obscured from sight by a cloud. As the disciples are gazing toward heaven, angels come and ask them why they are looking into heaven, and they describe Jesus as “the one who was taken up from you into heaven” (ὁ ἀναλημϕθεὶς ἀϕ᾽ ὑμῶν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν, 1:11; cf. 1:2; Luke 9:51). Luke is generally held to be among the more sophisticated NT writers, ⁴³ yet here he portrays a literal ascension. This is a commonplace of apocalyptic literature of the period: Enoch is rushed “high up into heaven” (1 En. 14:8); Levi’s first and last heavens are distinguished as “lowest” and “uppermost” (T. Levi 3:2, 4); Baruch ascends through multiple heavens (3 Bar. 2:2 and passim); Abraham ascends with the angels on the wings of birds offered in sacrifice (Apoc. Ab. 15:4); Isaiah is lifted up into each successive heaven (Ascen. Isa. 8:1, 16; 9:6; cf. Ep. Ap. 51). ⁴⁴ The language of “upness” persists even as such texts have a range of strategies for indicating that heaven is also an utterly other place. ⁴⁵

Turning from the Gospels to the letters, Paul in 2 Cor 12:1–5 refers to “a man in Christ” (generally understood to be a reference to Paul himself) who ascended to the third heaven. The language of being snatched or seized (ἁρπάζω) can be used of physical removal to another place (Wis 4:10–11; 2 En. 3:1; Acts 8:39; Rev 12:5), though some have taken this to be an ecstatic experience only. However, Paul’s uncertainty about whether this was in the body or not, and the language of three heavens, suggests a vertical model and the possibility, even if not the actuality, of going there in one’s body and not only in a visionary or spiritual manner. This is the only place in the NT which explicitly enumerates different heavens, and there is an open question as to whether Paul thought this was the highest heaven or only the third of a larger number. ⁴⁶ In other Jewish and Christian literature of the period we find five, seven, and ten heavens, and seven is a number which recommends itself both as a biblical symbol of perfection or completion, and as accurately denoting the seven Greek planetary spheres. ⁴⁷ The elliptical reference in 2 Corinthians 12 is expanded at some length in the Apocalypse of Paul, including a depiction of the third heaven (ch. 19), from which Paul is subsequently led back down to the second heaven (ch. 21).

Elsewhere in the Pauline corpus, 1 Thess 4:13–5:11 speaks about Christ’s return, addressing apparent concerns among the Thessalonian Christian community that those who have died may miss the general resurrection. In response, Paul emphasizes the public nature of Christ’s return, the priority given to those who have died in him, and aspects of the general resurrection. As he does so, he uses language which demonstrates basic cosmological assumptions about the location of the ascended Christ. “The Lord himself [. . .] will descend from heaven (καταβήσεται ἀπ᾽ οὐρανοῦ),” and dead believers “will rise first” (4:16). The term for “rise” (ἀναστήσονται) is standard resurrection language but in response to the descent of Christ (καταβαίνω) the upward motion implicit in the believers’ arising becomes more salient (the prefix ἀνά conveying the sense “up”). Moreover, those who are alive “will be caught up in the clouds” with the newly resurrected to meet Christ. The vertical motion here is inferred less from the verb (ἁρπαγησόμεθα, “we will be seized [up],” though note it is the same verb as in 2 Cor 12:2) and more from the location: “in the clouds” (ἐν νεϕέλαις) in order to meet the Lord “in the air” (εἰς ἀέρα), both designations indicating the space between earth and heaven. Whether one takes such language as an initial stage of an ascent, or as the meeting of an imperial visit in order then to bring the distinguished visitor back into the host city, the vertical direction is clear. ⁴⁸ The air and clouds signify the middle region between earth and heaven. A similar episode is found in 3 Baruch: when Baruch ascends to the fifth heaven, he must await the archangel Michael’s descent to enable him to enter (3 Bar. 11:1–4), though it does not appear that Baruch is permitted to ascend further (the gates close again as Michael re-ascends, 14:1).

Hebrews speaks of Christ’s ascension in terms of him going “through the heavens” (4:15), language which seems to imply a journey through multiple heavens, and which coheres with the later statement that Christ is now “higher than the heavens” (ὑψηλότερος, 7:25). And in the Book of Revelation, John is invited to “come up” into heaven (ἀνάβα ὧδε, 4:1; cf. 1 En. 14:24; 15:1), and in his eschatological vision, from the vantage point of the earth, he sees the New Jerusalem “coming down from heaven” (καταβαίνουσαν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, 21:2).

The evidence suggests, then, that NT writers, like many Jewish authors of the same period, were largely content to make use of the ancient threefold distinction, without sharply or clearly distinguishing between various heavens, though we do also find intimations of multiple, permeable heavens which may reflect Greek cosmology and may also reflect aspects of OT symbolism. ⁴⁹ Within this, there is ready use of language of the “upness” of heaven as the location of God, including in narrative texts which purport to describe historical occurrences, especially Jesus’s ascension and events at his baptism.

Remythologizing the cosmos

To this point I have indicated that I agree with Bultmann, against Caird and Wright, that NT authors were to some extent cosmological realists. But I disagree with both positions that demythologization, whether ancient or contemporary, is either necessary or sufficient. One indication that demythologization is not necessary is the fact that talk of the “upness” of heaven has proved remarkably persistent even in the centuries since Copernicus and friends dealt a decisive blow to the notion of planetary spheres. Lucas Mix charts the continued prevalence of such language long after planetary physics had demonstrated that leaving earth’s atmosphere is an outward rather than an upward movement. ⁵⁰ Mix calls for the full decoupling of spiritual and spatial ascent; while he rightly decries some potential applications of “upward” developmental narratives, ⁵¹ the interweaving of spatial and spiritual ascent is not as inherently problematic as he suggests. We continue to think of heaven as “up there,” not because people simply suspend their critical faculties, but instead because we find such language continues to make sense and be satisfying within the world as we experience it, even as we know that its physical reality is different.

Demythologization is often unnecessary, then, and even when it does take place it is insufficient. We see this in the pervasiveness of what might be termed remythologization. ⁵² It is notable that in discussing heaven, a range of biblical scholars engage, in passing, in remythologizing, only using a more contemporary idiom. For example, the OT scholar Meredith Kline states that “The world of the Glory theophany is a dimensional realm normally invisible to man, where God reveals his presence . . . .” ⁵³ Rabbinic scholar Philip Alexander makes fairly extensive use of comparable language of a “different dimension” or a “parallel universe” to describe the ontological distinction of heaven from earth in early Jewish literature. ⁵⁴ And N. T. Wright, commenting on Paul, suggests that “Heaven (we might say) is a different dimension of reality, not a location within our dimension.” ⁵⁵

It is important to be clear that this language offers an alternative mythology rather than a demythologized explanation. This mythology is drawn from the intersection of contemporary science, philosophy, science fiction, and fantasy, rather than from the ancient world, but it is still mythological in the terms of the definition offered above. Consider the following thought experiment as a case in point: imagine a group of scholars in two thousand years’ time, trying to make sense of what exactly twentieth- and twenty-first-century biblical scholars believed about heaven. As they encounter this language in our texts, they comment, “of course, they didn’t literally mean heaven was in another dimension; ever since we sent the first inter-dimensional probe we’ve known that other dimensions are simply part of the multiverse, and that God is not to be found there.” ⁵⁶

Only since the late nineteenth century has the term “dimension” been used to speculate about a fourth dimension to spatial extension, ⁵⁷ and then (once time was described as the fourth dimension by General Relativity theory) a fifth dimension. ⁵⁸ The iconic opening to the cult 1960s television series The Twilight Zone used language of “another dimension” and “a fifth dimension.” While science fiction and fantasy have no doubt done much to popularize such language, ⁵⁹ it is also current—though not uncontroverted—in recent scientific discussion, where string theory posits many dimensions, ⁶⁰ and some theoretical physicists use terms such as “parallel universe” within discussions of a hypothetical “multiverse.” Because some aspects of multiverse theories are in principle unobservable, there is debate about whether they fall within the scope of physics, mathematics, philosophy, or metaphysics. ⁶¹ When contemporary scholars speak of heaven as another or a parallel “dimension,” “reality,” or “universe,” they are engaging in mythological discourse, offering an etiology or justification for a theological phenomenon, a way to comprehend heaven that makes sense in the present era.

Conclusion

While at first sight it may seem ironic that some contemporary scholars, in seeking to demythologize ancient cosmology, reach almost incidentally for language on the border of current mythologies, I contend that it is in fact rather fitting. The mythological nature of such language vindicates the explanatory power—indeed, perhaps the inescapability—of myth-making. If we turn to the frontiers of modern cosmology in trying to make sense of ancient cosmology, we are acting in much the same way as writers of the Second Temple period, or indeed those medieval scholastic thinkers who placed heaven in the realm beyond the planetary spheres, with angels and the righteous in the Empyrean realm of fire and God himself in the heaven of heavens beyond. ⁶² At their worst, all of these cosmologies present not so much a “God of the gaps” as a “God of the edges,” moving ever further away into realms that are just beyond our current scientific capacity for empirical observation. Yet at their best, each of these cosmologies seeks to articulate the location and nature of heaven in ways that integrate both transcendence and immanence, an integration which cannot but be just beyond our grasp.

While “dimensions” and “universes” may evoke a more readily available and thus more amenable myth for the modern mind, such language is, when one stops to think about it, equally as strange if not stranger than ancient or medieval cosmology. As the physicist Max Tegmark observes, “[W]hen we ask a profound question about the nature of reality, we surely expect an answer that sounds strange. [. . .] Perhaps we will gradually become more used to the weird ways of our cosmos, and even find its strangeness to be part of its charm.” ⁶³ We return, then, to where we started, with the idea of strangeness or foreignness. Yet here it is not ancient views of the cosmos but rather the cosmos itself that is strange, as it always has been and will continue to be to inquiring and wondering humanity. The strangeness of ancient cosmology is different from but no stranger than the strangeness of contemporary cosmology, and presumably further strangenesses await in the cosmologies yet to be imagined by the progress of scientific, philosophical, and religious inquiry.