Paul and Jesus

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.