"Bruce Mullan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Last night in our home group we were reading John 17. I had a bizarre >thought. It says in 17:1, "After Jesus had spoken these words, he >looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come." > >What does it mean "he looked up to heaven"? Did Jesus believe it was a >geographical place? Was it just the Gospel writer who believed this? >Why, if God is into the Bible being as literal and accurate as some >suggest, did God allow this kind of ancient thinking about both the >nature of "heaven" and the nature of the world (flat rather than round, >etc) to be included in the canon?
Was it: A. Jesus knew it wasn't a geographical place but also knew his listeners did not have the science to understand that, so looked up for their benefit and the writer noted this. B. Jesus didn't look up (and perhaps didn't even say those words) but the writer, who would have thought heaven was a geographical place, had Jesus do and say this because the writer thought this helped to convey the revelation of God he had experienced in Jesus. C. Jesus did think heaven was a geographical place because, as a human, he had to work with only the scientific knowledge of his day. Finally, those who voted on the canon would have seen no problem with the passage because, at that time, there was no scientific evidence to suggest that heaven was not "up there". Cheers, Jonathan __________________________________________________________________ Switch to Netscape Internet Service. As low as $9.95 a month -- Sign up today at http://isp.netscape.com/register Netscape. Just the Net You Need. New! Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer Search from anywhere on the Web and block those annoying pop-ups. Download now at http://channels.netscape.com/ns/search/install.jsp ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
