Entering heaven alive
The term refers to the Assumption in religions and myths widespread motive to go to a highest goal. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam it refers specifically that someone definitely and bodily enters the afterlife without dying (or a corpse without leave ).
In German-speaking countries, the term usually refers to the Assumption recording the two Christian festivals Ascension ( a moveable feast, on the 40th day after Easter) and Mary in the sky, folksy " Assumption ", called on August 15.
Shamans, Greeks and Romans
Already the ancient Egyptian concept of the heavenly ascent or the sky voyage of shaman bring the pursuit to express, to arrive at an ultimate goal, as is the occurrence airworthy beings (angels ) and the divine assistance ( Emndeduranki, Sumer ) or own fate ( Ikarus ). Plato and Plutarch describe otherworld journeys. The Hellenistic mystery religions such as Mithraism, give instructions for a trip to heaven.
A rapture is already in Homer before ( Iphigenia ), and the Ascension is already among the Greeks and Romans are known ( Hercules, Romulus ). Livy (1.16 ) and Plutarch ( Rom. 28.36 ) describe how Romulus was caught and lifted into the sky. It was thought for so-called heroes, that they would return to their divine fathers.
Old Testament and Judaism
The Old Testament describes the rapture of Enoch in Genesis ( 5:24), after he was 365 years on earth ( 5:23), and the Ascension of the Prophet Elijah in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11). Judaism knows the legends of the Assumption of Moses, the origin of BC dates back to the 1st century, and the later resulting from the Ascension of Isaiah.
New Testament and Christianity
The Ascension of Jesus Christ mentioned in the New Testament three times: In Mark 16:19, Luke 24:51, and in Acts 1.1 to 11. Only in the last position it is described in detail. Thus the risen Christ over forty days away repeatedly met his disciples, and is then taken up into heaven, where he receives the power of heaven and earth with the place " at the right hand of God." In Christianity there is in the Catholic and Orthodox Church the belief in the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven, popularly referred to as the Assumption. In the Apocrypha and the ascension of Simon Peter is described.
Qur'an and Islamic
In Sura 4, verse 157 states that Isa bin Maryam (Jesus) had died a natural death, but was raised by God to be.
Islamic traditions, according to the prophet Mohammed was transferred miraculously from Mecca to Jerusalem, from where he ascended to heaven. The al -Aqsa Mosque (after Sura 17, verse 1: " the distant place of worship " ), built in the early eighth century, put the Islamic Koran exegesis definitively with this Quranic distant place of worship the same, and made them and the entire area of Jerusalem, so that the third- holiest place after Mecca and Medina. Muhammad's Ascension was, however, not from the al -Aqsa Mosque, but from that boulder on the Temple Mount in place, was built above the under the Umayyad Dome of the Rock. Created in the 10th century literature praising the virtues of Jerusalem - Fada ʾ il bayt al - Maqdis - continues this tradition.