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2Co_12:2. He now quotes instar omnium a single event of such a nature, specially memorable to him and probably unique in his experience, 2Co_12:2-4.
οἶδα ἄνθρωπον κ . τ . λ .] I know a man … who was snatched away. Paul speaks of himself as of a third person, because he wishes to adduce something in which no part of the glory at all falls on the Ego proper. And how suitable in reality was the nature of such an event to the modest mode of representation, excluding all self-glory! In that ecstasy the Ego had indeed really ceased to be the subject of its own activity, and had become quite the object of the activity of others, so that Paul in his usual condition came before himself as other than he had been in the ecstasy, and his I, considered from the standpoint of that ecstasy, appeared as a he.
ἐν Χριστῷ ] a man to be found in Christ (as the element of life), 1Co_1:30, a Christian; not: “quod in Christo dico, i.e. quod sine ambitione dictum velim,” Beza, connecting it with οἶδα (comp. Emmerling).
πρὸ ἐτῶν δεκατεσσάρων ] belongs to ἁρπαγέντα , from which it is separated by the parenthesis. We may add that this note of time is already decisive against those, who either find in this incident the conversion of the apostle (or at least something connected therewith), as Damasus, Thomas, Lyra, L. Capellus, Grotius, Oeder, Keil, Opusc. p. 318 ff.; Matthaei, Religionsgl. I. p. 610 ff., and others, including Bretschneider and Reiche, and quite recently Stölting, Beitr. z. Exeg. d. Paul. Br. 1869, p. 173—or identify it with the appearance in the temple, Act_22:17 ff., as Calvin (but uncertainly), Spanheim, Lightfoot, J. Capellus, Rinck, Schrader, and others; comp. also Schott, Erört. p. 100 ff.; Wurm in the Tüb. Zeitschr. 1833, 1, p. 41 ff.; Wieseler, p. 165, and on Gal. p. 591 ff.; Osiander. The conversion was upwards of twenty years earlier than this Epistle (see on Acts, Introd. § 4). See, besides, Estius and Fritzsche, Diss. I. p. 58 ff.; Anger, rat. temp. p. 164 ff. In fact, even if the definition of the time of this event could be reconciled with that of the appearance in the temple, Act_22:17 ff., still the narrative of this passage (see especially 2Co_12:4 : ἤκουσεν ἄῤῥητα κ . τ . λ .) is at any rate so essentially different from that in Acts 22, that the identity is not to be assumed.[354] The connection which Wieseler assumes with the Damascene history does not exist in reality (comp. on 2Co_11:32 f.), but with 2Co_12:1 there begins something new. The event here mentioned, which falls in point of time to the stay at Antioch or to the end of the stay at Tarsus (Act_11:25), is to us quite unknown otherwise. The reason, however, why Paul added the definition of time is, according to Chrysostom, Pelagius, Theodoret, and others, given thus: “videmus Paulum ipsum per annos quatuordecim tacuisse, nec verbum fuisse facturum, nisi importunitas malignorum coëgisset,” Calvin. But how purely arbitrary! And whence is it known that he had been so long silent regarding the ecstasy? No; the specification of time flowed without special design just as naturally from the pre-eminently remarkable character which the event had for Paul, as from the mode of the representation, according to which he speaks of himself as of a third person, in whose case the notice of an already long past suggested itself spontaneously; for “longo tempore alius a se ipso quisque factus videtur” (Bengel).
εἴτε ἐν σώματι ] sc. ἡρπάγη from what follows. Regarding εἴτε … εἴτε , whether … or, see Hartung, Partikell. II. p. 202 f., also Dissen, ad Dem. de Cor. p. 224. He puts the two cases as quite equal as respects possibility, not the first as more probable; hence with the second εἴτε no καί is added; see Dissen. In that ecstasy his lower consciousness had so utterly fallen into abeyance, that he could not afterwards tell (according to Athan. c. Ar. Serm. 4 : dared not tell) whether this had taken place by means of a temporary withdrawal of his spirit out of the body, or whether his whole person, the body included ( ἐν σώματι ), had been snatched away. By this alternative he expresses simply the utter incomprehensibleness for him of the manner of the occurrence. It is to him as if either the one or the other had taken place, but he knows neither the former nor the latter; hence he is not to be made responsible for the possibility or eventual mode of the one or other. “Ignoratio modi non tollit certain rei scientiam,” Bengel. Following Augustine, Genes. ad lit. xii. 5, Thomas and Estius explained ἐν σώματι : anima in corpore manente, so that Paul would say that he does not know whether it took place in a vision ( ἐν σώματι ) or by an actual snatching away of the spirit ( ἐκτὸς τοῦ σ .). But if he had been uncertain, and had wished to represent himself as uncertain, whether the matter were only a seeing and perceiving by means of the spiritual senses or a real snatching away, it would not have had at all the great importance which it is held to have in the context, and he would only have exposed to his rivals a weak point, seeing that inward visions of the supernatural, although in the form of divinely presented apparitions, had not the quite extraordinary character which Paul manifestly wishes to ascribe to the event described. This also in opposition to Beyschlag, 1864, p. 207, who explains the alternative εἴτε ἐν σώματι only as the bestowal of a marvellous “range” and “reach” of the inward senses—in spite of the ἁρπαγέντα . Moreover, we must not ascribe to the apostle the Rabbinical opinion (in Schoettgen, Hor. p. 697) that he who is caught into paradise puts off his body and is clothed with an ethereal body; because otherwise he could not have put the case εἴτε ἐν σώματι .[355] So much, however, is clear, that for such a divine purpose he held as possible a temporary miraculous withdrawal of the spirit from the body without death.[356] The mode[357] in which this conceived possibility was to take place must be left undetermined, and is not to be brought under the point of view of the separability of the bare πνεῦμα (without the ΨΥΧΉ ) from the body (Osiander); for spirit and soul form inseparably the Ego even in the trichotomistic expression of 1Th_5:23, as likewise Heb_4:12 (see Lünemann in loc.). Comp. also Calovius against Cameron. Hence also it is not to be said with Lactantius: “abit animus, manet anima.”
The anarthrous ἐν σώματι means bodily, and that his own body was meant by it, and τοῦ σώματος with the article is not anything different, was obvious of itself to the reader; ΣῶΜΑ did not need the article, Stallbaum, ad Plat. Phaed. p. 83 C.
ἁρπαγέντα ] the stated word used of sudden, involuntary raptures. See Act_8:39; Rev_12:5; 1Th_4:17. The form of the 2d aorist belongs to the deteriorated Greek. See Thomas Mag. p. 424; Buttmann, I. p. 381.
τὸν τοιοῦτον ] summing up again (Kühner, II. p. 330): such an one, with whom it was so. Comp. 1Co_5:5.
ἕως ΤΡΊΤΟΥ ΟὐΡ .] thus, through the first and second heaven into the third.[358] As the conception of several heavens pervades the whole of the O. and N. T. (see especially, Eph_4:10; Heb_4:14); as the Rabbins almost unanimously (Rabbi Juda assumed only two) reckon seven heavens (see the many passages in Wetstein, Schoettgen, Hor. p. 718 ff.; comp. also Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth. I. p. 460; Hahn, Theol. d. N. T. I. p. 247); and as Paul here names a definite number, without the doctrine of only three heavens occurring elsewhere; as he also in 2Co_12:4 specifies yet a higher locality situated beyond the third heaven: it is quite arbitrary to deny that he had the conception of seven heavens, as was done by Origen, contra Celsum, vi. p 289: ἑπτὰ δὲ οὐρανοὺς , ἢ ὅλως περιωρισμένον ἀριθμὸν αὐτῶν , αἱ φερόμεναι ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις οὐκ ἀπαγγέλλουσι γραφαί . The rationalistic explanations of more recent expositors, such as that of Billroth (following Schoettgen): that he only meant by this figurative (?) expression to express the nearness in which his spirit found itself to God, have as little exegetical warrant as the explanation of Calvin, Calovius, and others, that the holy number three stands κατʼ ἐξοχήν pro summo et perfectissimo, so that τρίτου denotes “the highest and most perfect sphere of the higher world” (Osiander);[359] or as the assertion of others (Estius, Clericus, Bengel, and others), that it is a doctrine of Scripture that there are only three heavens (the heaven of clouds, the heaven of stars, and the empyrean; according to Damascenus, Thomas, Cornelius a Lapide, and others, “coelum sidereum, crystallinum, empyreum;” according to Grotius: “regio nubifera, reg. astrifera, reg. angelifera”), or the fiction of Grotius and Emmerling, that the Jews at that time had assumed only these three heavens. It is true that, according to the Rabbins, the third heaven was still no very exalted region.[360] But we do not know at all what conception of the difference of the seven heavens Paul followed (see below), and are therefore not at all justified in conjecturing, with Rückert, in opposition to the number seven, that Paul was not following the usual hypothesis, but another, according to which the third heaven was at least one of the higher;[361] but see on 2Co_12:4, where a still further ascent from the third heaven into paradise is mentioned. Even de Wette finds the usual view most probable, that by the third heaven is meant the highest; “in such things belonging to pious fancy nothing was established until the Rabbinical tradition became fixed.” But the third heaven must have been to the readers a well-known and already established conception; hence we are the less entitled to depart from the historically attested number seven, and to adopt the number three (nowhere attested among the Jews) which became current in the church only on the basis of this passage (Suicer, Thes. II. p. 251), while still in the Test. XII. Patr. (belonging to the second century) p. 546 f., the number seven holds its ground, and the seven heavens are exactly described, as also the Ascensio Jesaiae (belonging to the third century) has still this conception of Jewish gnosis (see Lücke, Einl. in d. Offenb. Joh. I. p. 287 f., ed. 2). How Paul conceived to himself the several heavens as differing, we cannot determine, especially as in those Apocryphal books and among the Rabbins the statements on the point are very divergent. Erroneously, because the conception of several heavens is an historical one, Hofmann (comp. also his Schriftbeweis, II. 1, p. 535) has regarded ἕως τρίτου οὐρανοῦ as belonging to the vision, not to the conception (in connection with which he lays stress on the absence of the article), and spiritualizes the definite concrete utterance to this effect, that Paul in the vision, which made visible to him in a spiritual manner the invisible, “saw himself caught away beyond the lower domains of the supermundane and up into a higher region.” This is to depart from the clear literal meaning and to lose oneself in generalities. It is quite unwarranted to adduce the absence of the article with τρίτου , since with ordinal numbers the article is not at all required, Mat_20:3; Mar_15:25; Act_2:15; Act_23:23; Joh_1:40; Thuc. ii. 70. 5; Xen. Anab. iii. 6. 1; Lucian, Alex. 18; 1Sa_4:7; Susann. 15; see Kühner, ad Xen. Anab. vii. 7. 35; Nägelsbach on the Iliad, p. 292, ed. 3.
[354] According to Wieseler, the ἄῤῥητα ῥήματα were the preparatory basis for the delegation of the apostle in Act_22:18; Act_22:21. But there is no hint of this in either text. And the revelation laying the basis for his vocation among the Gentiles had been received by Paul much earlier than the appearance in the temple, Gal_1:15.
[355] Just as little is the case put to be made conceivable as a momentary transfiguration of the body (Osiander). The bodily transfiguration is simply an eschatological event (1Co_15:51 ff.; 1Th_4:17), and a transformation of such a nature, that after it the return to the previous condition is quite inconceivable.
[356] Comp. the passage already quoted in Wetstein from Philo, de Somn. I. p. 626, where Moses ἀσώματος γενόμενος is said to have fasted forty days.
[357] The remark of Delitzsch in this connection: “because what is experienced compresses itself, after the fashion of eternity, into a moment” (Psychol. p. 357), is to me obscure and too strange to make it conceivable by me.
[358] In Lucian, Philopatr. 12, Christ ( Γαλιλαῖος ) is mocked at as εἰς τρίτον οὐρανὸν ἀκροβατήσας καὶ τὰ κάλλιστα ἐκμεμαθηκώς .
[359] The old Lutherans, in the interests of the doctrine of ubiquity, maintained that the third heaven and paradise denote “statum potius alterius saeculi quam locum,” Hunnius.
[360] The Rabbinical division was different, e.g. (1) velum; (2) expansum; (3) nubes; (4) habitaculum; (5) habitatio; (6) sedes fixa; (7) Araboth or ταμεῖον . Others divide in other ways. See Wetstein.
[361] Rückert appeals to the fact that R. Juda assumed only two heavens. But this isolated departure from the usual Rabbinical type of doctrine cannot have any application here, where a third heaven is named. Passages would rather have to be shown, in which the number of heavens was assumed to be under seven and above two. In the absence of such passages, Rückert’s conjecture is groundless.