I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. (2 Corinthians 12:2–4)
The idea of ascending to the third, or highest, level of heaven and gazing upon the glory of God was viewed within the mystical Jewish circles of Paul’s day as the highest and most extraordinary experience a human could have.1 Moses alone had been allowed to ascend Mount Sinai and communicate directly with God and Elijah had been taken up to heaven in a fiery heavenly chariot (Exodus 24:15–18; 2 Kings 2:11–12). In the two centuries before Paul’s time, texts like the Similitudes of Enoch, 2 (Slavonic) Enoch, and the Ascension of Isaiah, in which Enoch and Isaiah ascend to the highest heaven, gaze upon God’s throne, and experience a transformed glorification, were widely circulated.
We don’t know the precise year Paul writes this report in this section of 2 Corinthians, but it falls into the general range of his time in Arabia.2 One should not imagine Paul’s “conversion” as necessarily a sudden one-time event on a single day, as reported in the book of Acts. What he calls his “revelation of Jesus Christ” was something he was “taught,” which implies a period of heavenly tutoring that would have involved multiple “visions and revelations of the Lord” (Galatians 1:12; 2 Corinthians 12:1). This particular ascent experience was one of many visions and revelations he had received, and his experiences were so extraordinary that there was some danger that he would fall victim to pride—knowing that he among all human beings had been allowed to see and hear such forbidden mysteries. Consequently, Christ allowed a messenger (Greek angelos) of Satan to harass Paul with some kind of physical affliction he describes:
And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:8–9)
Presumably Paul refers to some kind of physical disability, and speculations as to its nature read like the multiple entries in a medical encyclopedia—epilepsy, stuttering, extreme nearsightedness, migraine headaches, and colic, to name a few.3 Since Paul explicitly says the thorn in the flesh was an “angel” of Satan, it is more likely that he refers to a demonic attack of some type—perhaps causing him to be tempted in some way.4
This extraordinary experience of being taken to heaven and presumably seeing both the glory of God as well as Jesus Christ in his glorified state put Paul among a select privileged few in the history of ancient Israel and in his mind this experience superseded anything Peter, James, and the rest of the apostles had experienced with Jesus on earth. One could safely say that Paul would have seen this privileged experience as surpassing anything any human being had ever received. In effect, Paul had tasted in a proleptic way the glorification that would be revealed at the second coming of Jesus in the clouds of heaven.
MOSES AND ELIJAH AT MOUNT SINAI
What makes it all the more likely that Paul’s choice of going away into Arabia had to do with Moses and Elijah is that he discusses the Mount Sinai revelations of both of them in his letters (2 Corinthians 3:4–11; Romans 11:2–5). These are not passing references that merely indicate Paul’s familiarity with biblical narratives. He draws specific parallels between the message and mission that he received by revelation from Christ and the roles of Moses and Elijah in their own times. Pairing these two particular figures is not accidental. They were considered the two greatest prophets of Israel’s past, and the work of each was to be repeated in some fashion in the Last Days. There are prophecies in the Hebrew Bible about a “Prophet like Moses” appearing once again, as well as a second “Elijah,” who would restore the people of Israel just before the final Day of Judgment (Deuteronomy 18:15–18; Malachi 4:5–6). Various Jewish apocalyptic groups in the time of Jesus expected both Moses- and Elijah-like figures to manifest themselves in the Last Days.5
The gospel of Mark reports an extraordinary experience in the life of Jesus when he and three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John, are “on a high mountain.” They see Jesus “transfigured” before their eyes, so that his body and clothing are gleaming white, and standing beside him are Moses and Elijah—indicating that the Last Days had indeed arrived (Mark 9:2–8).
By tracing the journeys of Moses and Elijah to the Arabian area of the Sinai desert, quite literally, Paul was paralleling his own extraordinary revelations with those of the two greatest Hebrew prophets. He is quite specific about this point.
Moses saw the extraordinary glory of God at Mount Sinai, he received the revelation of the Torah, and he inaugurated the covenant between God and the nation of Israel. Paul likewise believed that he saw the glory of God—in the face of Christ, that he received the Torah of Christ, and that he became the administrator of God’s new covenant with a new spiritual Israel. In view of the new, all that was old was now fading and passing away. Paul refers to the covenant that Moses brought as the “dispensation of death,” contrasting it to the new covenant that he calls the “dispensation of the Spirit”: “Now if the dispensation of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such splendor that the Israelites could not look at Moses’s face because of its brightness, fading as this was, will not the dispensation of the Spirit be attended with greater splendor?” (2 Corinthians 3:7–8). Indeed, this “greater splendor” of the new covenant is so much more brilliant that “once it comes, what once had splendor has come to have no splendor at all, because of the splendor that surpasses it” (2 Corinthians 3:10). Paul then makes the startling assertion that God has hardened the minds of the Jewish people so that when they “hear Moses read,” the reading of the Torah actually becomes a veil to keep them from seeing the splendor of Christ! (2 Corinthians 3:14–15).
One has to appreciate how utterly alien this idea is within Judaism. The reading and study of the Torah was considered the central duty and occupation of every faithful Jew:
Rabbi Hillel said: Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving your fellow creatures and bringing them close to the Torah. (Pirke Avot 1:12)
Rabbi Shammai said: Make your study of the Torah a fixed habit. Say little and do much, and receive all men with a cheerful face. (Pirke Avot 1:15)6
According to the New Testament, Josephus, Philo, and other contemporary sources, the Torah was read regularly in synagogues throughout the Roman world and both Jesus and his Jerusalem apostles participated in these activities in the homeland, as did the apostles in the Diaspora—the term for Jews who were living outside the Land of Israel.7
According to Paul, this listening to Moses is the very problem at the root of Jewish unbelief in Jesus. If one lays aside the Torah and turns to Christ, the veil is suddenly removed and those who were blinded by the Torah of Moses can see the true glory of God in the face of Christ: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Paul links the Spirit of Christ, the glory of Christ made in the image of God, and the ongoing transformation of those who are in Christ from one degree of glory to another. This cluster of ideas is consistent in all Paul’s letters, as we have seen. Paul’s Gospel is the revelation of the hidden mystery that God is creating a family of glorified Spirit-beings. That message necessitates a new covenant or Torah of Christ and a newly formed people of Israel—now defined by the Spirit and no longer by the “flesh.”