Ascension (Hastings' Dictionary)

Ascension is the name given to that linal withdrawal of the Risen Christ from His diseiple.i wliich is described in Ac I"*-. There is no account of anything exactly like it in the OT, though the same word has been applied to the de- parture of Enoch and of Elijah from this life. In Sir 44" as in He 1 1° Enoch's removal is called a tran.^lation (/xereWfl);), but in Sir 49" as in Ac 1" it is an assumption (d^fXiJ/i^^T) diri ttjs y^s). This last alone seems to be employed of Elijah.

In the LXX of 2 K 2" we have aveX-hijL'per, HXioi) iv fvcctiaiiLf (ij tit riv oipaii6y, and in Sir 48" Elijah is 6 ifaXrjfKpSelt iv XaiXoiri vvpbs. Cheyne's Hnlluwing of Criticism treats this last as ' the grandest prose poem in the OT,' but, even so, it opened the mind to the idea that human life might have another is-sue than that which awaits it in the ordinary course of nature. In the NT the A. does not bulk largely as an independent event. In Mt it is not mentioned at all.

In Mk it is found only in the dubious appendix (16"), and there it is narrated in UT words, a fact which suggests that the writer is recording what he believed, not what he had seen. The first half of the verse — ai'(\-/i/ji^6ri els rdf ovpayif — is from 2 K 2" ; and the second — (Kidiutf iK Se(iuii> ToD 9eov — from Ps 110'. The explicit reference in Lk 24" (dUjTrj dir' aiVii- ital ivttptprro tU rbv ovpavov) lias the last live words doubly bracketed in WH. 'The A.

,' they say in a note, ' apparently did not lie within the proper scope of the Gospels, as seen in their genuine texts ; its true place was at the head of tlie Acts of the Apostles, as the preparation for the day of Pente- cost, and thus the beginning of the history of the Church.' The insertion of the words, aff/p^prro eis tAk Bvpa)'6i>, in I.k 24", would thus be due to some one who assumed that 'a separation from the disciples at the close of a Gospel must be the A.'

Hut it can hardly be doubted that Luke means in these verses (24*°"") to describe the Jinnl sejiaration of Jesus from His disciples, so that the assumption in ques- tion would be justified ; and the dilliculty remains untouched, that this final separation, whatever its circuiiist-ances, seems to take place, on the most natural construction of the whole passage (vv.'""), on the evening of the Resurrection day, whereas in Ac 1 it is forty days later.

In the I'ourth Gospel 'here are more explicit references to the A. than in any of the rest, but no narrative. ' What if ye shall see the Son of Man a.scending (ivadaiyovTa) where he was before?' (6"'). More notable still is the languageof 20", where ,Iesus suys to Mary .Miig- dalene, ' Touch me not; for I have not yet ivscended (di'o/i<'/j7)»o) to the Father : but go to my brethren and tell them, I ascend (di'a^aii'u) to my Katherand your Father, and my God and j'our God.'

The r resent tense in this last clause is not quite clear, t might describe what was imminent, an A. close at hand : but Westcott renders it, ' I am ascend OL. I. — II ing,' as if the process had actually begun. ' In one sense the change symbolised by the visible A. wa being wrought for the apostles during the forty daj-s, as they gradually became familiarised witu the plienonieua of Christ's higher life' (Com. on Jn 20"). Rut it is confusing to combine with the visible A.

the idea of something going on in the apostles' minds for six weeks before. Christ's manifestations of Himself during those weeks to His di.sciples, undoubtedly familiarised them with the idea that now He no more belonged to this world, but had another and higher mode of bein^ ; but the A., as a separate event, is more than this.

It is the solemn close of even such manifestations, and the exaltation of Christ into a life where con- tact with Him may be more close and intimate than ever (this is the force of ' Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended '), but must be purely spiritual. In the Book of Acts ( l'"-) the A. narrative is most complete.

Jesus had been speaking to the disciples about the universal destination of His kingdom, and the promised gift of the Spirit, and as He finished He was taken up (iw-fipBri — liere only in NT applied to the A.) while they looked on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. Two men in white raiment assured the apostles that He would come in like manner as they had seen Him go into heaven.

The Epistles may be said to look at Christ in His exaltation, ' seated at the right hand of God,' and rather to involve the A. than to refer directly to it. Yet there are passages in several in which allusion seems to be made to the same event as is described in Acts. Eph 4*"'" is one. Christ is there spoken of as 6 ava^kt v-jrepivoj irivruv tw¥ ovpavQiv.

Similarly, though there is perhaps a more poetic and less historical Havour in the words, we read of Him in He 4'^ as &u\i]\v0lna, toi>s ^payovt and in 7^ as v^p-qXdrepoi tuiv ovpavutv yevb^voi. There is less dubiety as to the reference in 1 P 3* it iariv iv bt^i^ diov TopfvBelt fit oupavdy, and in the hymn cited in 1 Ti 3" ive\-fip.ipeTi iv S6(t!, where the same word ia used as in Mark and in Acts. It is quite true to say that the A. is not separ- ately emph.

asized in the NT as an event distinct from the Resurrection, or from the state of exalta- tion to which it was the solemn entrance. But it is quite false to say that it is identified with either, or that Resurrection, A., and sitting at God's right hand, are all names for the same thing. Certainly each of them might be used in any age, and they might be used still as a comprehensive name for the glory of Christ, but this does not abolish the distinction between them. When .

lesus rose from the dead. He 'manifested himself to His di.scijiles. Already He belonged to another world, and it was only when He would that He put Him- self in any relation with those who had loved Him in this. After each manifestation He parted from them ; how, we cannot tell ; the N't only sug- gests that it was not in that way which marked the A.

When faith in the Resurrection was as- sured in the apostles' hearts; when He had ex pounded to them the Christian significance of the OT, and the universal destination of the gospel ; when He had again promised the Holy Spirit to endue them with power from on high, He parted from them for the last time in such a way that they knew it was the last ; He passed with some- thing like kingly state to the right hand of the Father.

To ttilk about Copernicanisin in th'- connexion, and to object to the whole idea of tne A. because we cannot put down the heaven into which .lesus entered on a star-map, is to miscon- ceive the Resurrection and everything connected with it. The Lord of glory manifested Himself to Hi-i own, and at last put a term to these iiianifesta- tious in a mode as gracious as it was sublime ; but 162 ASCENSION ASENATH the whole series of events is one with which as- tronomy has nothing to do.

Neither is there any reason to argue back from the phenomena of the Epistles, tlirough those of the Gospels, to the conclusion that the Christian belief in the exaltation of Jesus created the beau- tiful myth of the A. Westcott and Hort may be ri^ht in their suggestion that the A.

does not belong to the idea of a Gospel, though the sugges- tion does not of itself seem conclusive ; but even if the final parting of Jesus is referred to in Lk 24", and even if the date is not the same as in Ac I, it does not follow that the story in Acts is mythi- cal.

Luke may have learned the details more accurately in the interval that elapsed between the composition of his two works ; and in any case it is highly improbable that a myth-producing spirit, wUich had the same motive to impel it from the fiist hour the Kesurrection was preached, should have suddenly (as it would be in this case) gener- ated an A. myth at the very moment when it would dislocate St. Luke's histories. Neither is there any reason to oppose to each other, as many do, the A.

narrative and what is called the religious idea underlying it, as husk is opposed to kernel. The Christian faith certainly holds that ' Christ, as the transfigured One, is absolutely exempt from the limitations of earth and nature, and that He, the ever-living One, is the head of humanity, exalted in glory, in whom humanity is conscious of its own exaltation ' (Schenkel, Bibd-Lexicon, s.v. Himmelfahrt Jesu). But the A. story is not the husk of which this faith is the kernel.

It is the record of the last and apparently the most impos- ing of those manifestations of the Risen One to which this faith owes its origin. No kind of ob- jection lies against the A. which does not lie also against the Resurrection. Its historicity is of the same kind, though the direct attestation of it is less ; and the manifestation of Christ, at a later date, under quite exceptional circumstances, to St. Paul at his conversion, while it is in harmony with the fact of the A.

, does not reallj' alFect its signifi- cance as the formal cessation of this mode of mani- festation. In Itself the A. is no more than a point of transition : its theological significance cannot be distinguished from that of tlie Kesurrection and Exaltation of Chri.st. If we regard Chri.st merely as ideal man, the A. may be said to complete the manifestation of human nature and its destiny : this exaltation, and not the corruption of the grave, is what God made man for.

Man is not revealed in moral character simply ; there is a mode of being which answers to ideal goodness, and the A. is our clearest look at it. If we regard it in relation to the work of Christ's earthly life, it merges in His exaltation as Go<rs acknowledgment of that work, and the reward bestowed on him for it (see Ph 2"'").

If we regard it in relation to the future, it seems to be, judged by our Lord's own words in Lk 2i*^, Ac P, and Jn 14-16, the condition of His sending the Spirit in the power of which the apostles were to preach repentance and remission of sins everywhere. It enthroned Him, not only in their imaginations, but in reality ; He was able now to exercise all power in heaven and on earth.

' Being therefore exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath poured forth this which ye see andliear. For David ascended not into the heavens ' {ovk di-^/Si)). This is the aspect of the subject which prevails in the NT. LlTKRATtniB. — The subject la dis^uissed in all the I.i%-es of Christ : u t.vplc&l on onpoi!t« sides may be named Neander (p. 484fl. Eng. tr.) and Hose, Genchichte Jemi, 5 113. See also Swete, Thf ApostU^ Creed, p. WtT.

, the commentators on Ac l»f- ; Milli^an, Agcfn^ion and Utavenly Friestliood, Lect. I. ; WMl KnowUng, Witmu o/ th» BpitlUa, p. 397 tt. J. Denney. ASCENT is the rendering in AV of three Heb. words. 1. njii'? ma Yileh, used of the ' ascent (pass) of Akrabbim ' (Nu 34), and the ' ascent of the Mt. of Olives ' (2 S 15*).

Besides these two instance (all that occur in AV), RV correctly gives the same rendering ' ascent,' where A v uses such Shrases as ' the going up to,' in Jos 10" IS- ' 18", g 8", 1 S 9", 2 S 15, 2 K 9", 2 Ch 20" 32', Is 15», Jer 48', in all of which the same Heb. term nbnp ia employed. The plural rit^-jip of the cognate fem. form occurs in the well-known title of several Psalms En nv, AV ' Song of degrees,' EV ' Song of ascents '). See Psalms. 2. t?

v '6lah, ia rendered ' ascent ' by both AV and RV in 1 K 10», ' his ascent by which he went up into tlio house ol the Lord,' although RVm ofTers as an altemativa rendering, ' his burnt-oll'ering which he ottered in,' etc. This last is certainly the usual meaning of nSv, and there appears to be no sufficient reason for departing from it in the present instance. 1/ Solomon offered sacrifices on the colossal scale referred to in 1 K 8", the admiration of the queen of Sheba was natural enough.

This is the view of the passage taken by Kittel, Reuss, Kamphauscn, Kautzsch, etc., and it has the support of L.XX {i\oKa.irru(rip), Syriac and Vulg. 3. In the parallel pa-ssage 2 Ch 9'' we find rii^si^ 'altyyah. This word signifies elsewhere an ' upper chamber ' (inttpi^ov), and it is so rendered, or by ' chamber ' alone, in 1 K IT'"- «», 2 K 4i»- ", 2 S 18°, 1 Ch 28", 2 Ch 3», Neh 3W, Ps 104»- >», Jer 22"- " (in Jg 3»- » both AV and RV have ' parlour ').

If we retain the MT, we must understand the reference to be to an upper chamber which Solomon was building (observe the imperf. nSj^;) upon the temple. This, however, yields an improbable and unsuitable meaning, and in all likelihood the text ought to be corrected from 'iP:Va to Vilify (LXX oXoKavTuimTa) in confoimrty witii I K 10" (see notes on 2 Ch 9* by Kittel in Haupf » Sacred Bks. of OT, and by Kautzsch in Ileil. Schr. d. A.T.) J. A. Sklbie. ASEAS ("AtroIoO, 1 Es 9".

— One of the sons of Annas who ai;reed to put away his ' strange ' wife, called Isshijah (.Ti}^: = ' whom J" lends'), Ezr 10".