Ascension: FAQ

Ascension

I received the following email from the US Mission in Geneva:

Did You Know?

In Switzerland, Ascension is celebrated on a Thursday, 40 days after Easter Sunday, though in other Roman Catholic areas, it may be celebrated the following Sunday. It commemorates the ascension of the resurrected Jesus into heaven and is a traditional feast day. Ascension is a public holiday in Switzerland and France; the U.S. Mission and many stores will be closed on Thursday, May 17.

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Community Liaison Office (CLO)

Although I appreciate a holiday as much as anyone, as an American I am always uncomfortable with having the state granting overtly religious holidays by law to all workers regardless of faith (the only religious holiday in the United States is Christmas).  So it got me thinking - what is this Ascension business and how did it come about?

What is Ascension?

It is the day 40 days following the death of Jesus that "Christ was raised up by his own powers" bodily into Heaven.  When I asked what he was doing the 40 days prior, I got a shrug or a sympathetic tongue clucking from my more religiously-oriented friends.
The Encyclopedia Britannica describes it thus:  

In Christian belief, the ascent of Jesus Christ into heaven on the 40th day after his Resurrection (Easter being reckoned as the first day). According to the first chapter of The Acts of the Apostles, after appearing to the Apostles on various occasions during a period of 40 days, Jesus was taken up in their presence and was then hidden from them by a cloud, a frequent biblical image signifying the presence of God. Although belief in the Ascension is apparent in other books of the New Testament, the emphasis and the imagery differ. In The Gospel According to John, the glorification described by the Ascension story seems to have taken place immediately after the Resurrection. The imagery of the account in The Gospel According to Luke is similar to that of Acts, but there is no mention of a period of 40 days.

The meaning of the Ascension for Christians is derived from their belief in the glorification and exaltation of Jesus following his death and Resurrection, as well as from the theme of his return to the Father. Thus, The Gospel According to John uses both the sayings of Jesus and his post-Resurrection appearances to indicate a new relationship between Jesus and his Father and between him and his followers, rather than a simple physical relocation from earth to heaven.

… Christ “was lifted up into heaven so that he might make us partakers of his Godhead.”

If Ascension is so important, it must be mentioned in multiple places in the Bible, right?

Not really.  Acts, which was believed to be written by Luke in 70-90 of the Common Era, is the main source of this feast and its dating.  (John describes the ascension as occurring as part of the resurrection).   Acts is a rather odd work in a strange collection of works, but it raises more questions than it answers for a modern skeptic.  To wit,
    Acts 2:31 implies that Jesus was in hell.  

2:31 He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.

Whatever for?  He was supposedly a perfect human being and according to Christians (but not, notably, by Jesus himself) the only son of Yahweh.  Why would a father allow his son not just to be tortured to death for a crime he didn't commit, but then do nothing post-mortem while he was in hell?  And how can the resurrection which occurred the Sunday following a Friday execution be so glorious if after all, Jesus did not actually rise into heaven for another 40 days (the Christians actually don't count the days post-mortem, only the days since Easter)?  This all seems rather dragged out and anticlimactic and frankly a little weird.  What did he do all this time except appear to some of his disciples, showing them his wounds to prove it was him, then going away again?  To where exactly?   
At any rate, he was raised up:

2:32 This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.

But the details are skimpy.  There were only 120 believers (according to Acts) until they started talking about this ascension business, and it got the crowd so worked up, they all agreed to become baptized, not in the name of Yahweh as Jesus and John the Baptizer did, but in the name now of Jesus.  This shot up their numbers by 2,500% in a day.  Being "amazed" or witness to something that could not be explained by people at the time (a burning bush comes to mind) seemed tantamount to proving that everything else you allege must be true, which is an interesting premise that any visitor to a Las Vegas magic show might understand but would have to deny. 
They went around doing magic, Peter did a little faith-healing (3:2-3:8).   Acts goes on to make some of the more virulent antisemitic charges, alleging that Pontius Pilate was determined to release Jesus (3:13) but "ye" meaning apparently the Jews "killed the Prince of Life" (3:15).   It rambles on in this way, alleging that the "prophet" whom god will make rise up among their people should be blindly obeyed or else "every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people." 
Again, Christians take the selected words and predictions of Jewish prophets and leaders who died centuries before Jesus was born and use those words - almost always so general as to be useless in terms of making concrete predictions or settling arguments that were sure to arise among later generations, often with lethal effects - to "prove" that Jesus was the messiah (messenger) predicted by Moses et al.  The only problem (for historians, not for the propagators of this new faith) is that by the time these claims were made, Moses and all the others were long dead.  Using Moses as an example, several possibilities exist: 

  - Moses as such never existed but was a mythical character, a mixture of legend, and a mix of actual Jewish leaders, so there was no actual Moses to say anything of the sort; 
  - Moses existed but was misquoted; 
  - Moses existed and was accurately quoted but was not talking about Jesus (the stance taken by the vast majority of Jews);
  - Moses existed, was somehow able to conjure up the figure of Jesus in his crystal ball, but was simply wrong.  There are plenty of well-meaning, convincing people who are wrong about predictions made for what will happen tomorrow; why should this be any less true for someone making predictions that will occur many centuries hence? 

 
The tone of Acts like that of much of the New Testament is a strange blend of apocalyptic despair tinged with hope of personal salvation if one repents and turns away from the "wicked generation" that did not properly follow Yahweh's mitzvahs.  It is no coincidence perhaps that the Republicans - who have mixed their interpretation of Christianity more nakedly and overtly with the political process - learned from this stunningly successful marketing combination:  first make them afraid, convince them of some external threat, then offer them confidently a recipe for avoiding personal annihilation or worse.   People when frightened will agree with plans they would consider absurd if they were not. 
At any rate it's quite clear that the world did not end 2,000 years ago and if a Kingdom of Heaven was ushered in by this new offshoot of Judaism, it would seem hard to convince any student of the Crusades, vicious religious wars that tore Europe apart, witch hunts, pogroms, and the Holocaust, all of which trace their roots to the idea that god took human form and came once to a particular place and time, wasn't recognized, was killed, but somehow even in being murdered was suffering so that those who recognized him (even post-mortem) would not have to suffer after they died.  

What are some commonly confused Christian holidays?

I don't know if they are commonly confused, but I certainly find the following 3 events that all begin in A and end in -tion or -sion to be confusing.   The Assumption is only celebrated by Catholics and disputed by Protestants and Eastern Orthodox:

Annunciation

in Christianity, the announcement by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive a Son of the Holy Spirit to be called Jesus (Luke 1:26–38); falls on March 25; the New Year was dated on this date until 1750.

Ascension  

in Christian belief, the ascent of Jesus Christ into heaven on the 40th day after his Resurrection (Easter being reckoned as the first day).

Assumption

Roman Catholic doctrine that Mary was assumed into heaven upon her death; there is

  no mention of this in the New Testament; the Assumption is

  not considered a revealed truth so is disputed by Protestants and Eastern Orthodox (the latter less so)

How did this occur?

In the West, starting around the 5th century according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Christ is shown from the side, climbing a hill, then grabbing the hand of god reaching down from a cloud to pull him up.  The apostles watch from below.
In Syria in the 6th century, they imagined it differently, showing Jesus from the front, holding a scroll and making a blessing gesture while he is lifted by angels.  They add Mary (who was not mentioned in the biblical account of this event) as well as Paul, who had never met Jesus and did not have his vision on the way to Damascus that made him flip from Christian persecutor to Christian salesman-in-chief.  
This particular depiction followed the "Roman tradition of representing the apotheosis of an emperor."  
By the 11th century, the Western artists started to imagine the event with a frontal Jesus, extending his hands to display his wounds.  Angels might or might not be present, indicating a third means of propulsion:  Jesus's own power.  
Many Renaissance and Baroque art focused on the ascension with lots of gory (and generally anatomically inaccurate) wounds.  

When was it developed?

There is no written evidence of the celebration until 4 centuries after Jesus was executed, but Augustine wrote of it in such a way that implied it went back to the early days of the Church.  It may have been celebrated in combination with Easter.  
At one point, its practice was banned; the Council of Elvira in 300 condemned the practice of feasting on the 40th day following Easter (if one neglected to keep Pentecost on the 50th day).  
Ascensio is the Latin term at the root of ascension, meaning rising.  
At any rate, there is evidence that this conception was borrowed, as were many Christian traditions, from popular pagan traditions and beliefs.  As Richard Dawkins puts it:

Matthew and Luke [are the] only two evangelists who treat the birth of Jesus at all.  Robert Gillooly shows how all the essential features of the Jesus legend, including the Star in the East, the Virgin birth, the veneration of the baby by kings, the miracles, the execution, the resurrection of the Ascension are borrowed -- every last one of them -- from other religions already in existence in the Mediterranean and near East region. ... Luke's desire to adapt Christianity for the Gentiles, and hence to press the familiar hot buttons of pagan Hellenistic religions (virgin birth, worshiped by kings, etc.)...

When is it celebrated?

Western Christianity:  
April 30-June 3 based on how Easter is calculated.  
Catholics in countries that don't observe the feast as a public holiday were given permission by the Pope to move the feast from Thursday to the following Sunday, to allow working Catholics to remain in compliance with Vatican decrees.
This switch occurred in 1992 in Australia, before 1996 in many parts of Europe, 1996 in Ireland, and before 1998 in Canada and some western United States and in England and Wales in 2007.

Eastern Christianity:
May 13- June 17 (in the Western calendar) based on how it is calculated.
They call it in Greek Analepsis, the "taking up", and also as the Episozomene, the "salvation from on high."
Since the Eastern Orthodox Church calculates Easter differently, they will usually celebrate it later than the Western church.
This is the time for the blessing of beans and grapes.

How is it celebrated?

Feasts and vigils mostly.  There might be a parade.  
The Easter Candle is extinguished.
The English used to carry a banner with a lion and a dragon, symbolizing the triumph of Jesus over "the evil one."  
Some churches had a dramatic reenactment where they would hoist a figure of Jesus above the altar and through a hole in the roof of the church.  Others added to this by having a devil guy go down at the same time.
England used to like to "beat the bounds" meaning, having parish members walk the parish boundaries, marking stones with chalk and then hitting them with sticks.  
At one time, they might have hit the young boys of the parish rather than stones.   The reason for this was that parishes had legal responsibility only for children born within the parish boundaries, and the beating was thought to be a warning to the young men of the parish to have sex with girls and women outside the parish if they were going to have sex out of wedlock, so the parish would not have the financial liability.  
In Florence a dove would slide down a string from the high altar to set off a vat of fireworks in front of the main entrance of the cathedral.  


Sources:
-  Acts, Skeptics Annotated Bible.
-  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Ascension
- "Ascension." Encyclopædia Britannica. Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2008.
- Dawkins, Richard, God Delusion, Bantam Books, 2006.