Early Christianity
The ascent reported in 2 Corinthians 12
1st century · Eastern Mediterranean · Paul
Papyrus 46, c. 3rd century - the earliest substantial witness to the letter.
Source & rights
- What this is
- The source itself
- Object
- Manuscript
- Title
- Papyrus 46, a leaf of the earliest surviving codex of the Pauline epistles
- Date
- c. 3rd century
- Licence
- Public domain
- This copy
- Hosted at the size published by the source; not altered.
- Retrieved
- 2026-08-28
A photograph of the text or object this record concerns.
The text runs without spaces between words. The divisions a modern reader relies on are later editorial acts, and so are the chapter and verse numbers used to cite the passage at all.
Somewhere in a first-century letter, arguing with a congregation that has stopped taking him seriously, the writer mentions a man who was caught up as far as the third heaven and heard things that could not be repeated. He gives no description. He names no one. And twice, in the space of two sentences, he says that he does not know whether it happened in the body or out of it.
It is the oldest report in this collection and the least confident. Almost everything written afterwards about experiences of this kind is more certain than the earliest surviving account of one.
What the source is
A short passage inside a first-century letter in which the writer reports that a man was caught up to the third heaven, and twice states that he does not know whether this happened in the body or out of it.
The report is unusual in its own tradition for what it declines to do. It gives no description of what was seen, it names no agent, and it explicitly refuses to settle the mode of the experience - leaving that question open in the text itself rather than in a later reader's mind.
The report
No passage reproduced - Project translation in preparation
No passage is printed. Modern English translations are under copyright, and the older public-domain renderings use a register that would sit oddly on this site and, in places, resolve ambiguities the Greek leaves open. A short checked translation from a public-domain Greek text is the intended route.
Why it is in this archive
This is the conceptual anchor of the archive, and it is not here because of what it describes. It is here because of a refusal.
A first-century writer, with every rhetorical reason to be definite, records an ascent and then says twice that he does not know whether the body was involved. Almost every later account of a comparable experience is more confident than this one. That is worth noticing before reading anything else in this collection.
The words the source uses
Given in the language they were written in, with a plain rendering. None is treated as equivalent to a term from another tradition.
- paradeisos
- paradise
- Transliterated. The Greek word is itself a loan, older than the letter that uses it.
- tritos ouranos
- third heaven
- A place in a cosmology the letter assumes rather than explains.
How close is the source?
The surviving text presents itself as the words of the person who reports the experience.
01 · Reported by
The writer of the letter
02 · About
A man he declines to name
The relationship between the writer and this man is itself a long-standing question and is not settled here.
03 · Transmitted through
The manuscript tradition of the Pauline correspondence
Source gallery
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Project Nikolaos annotation
Written by this project. Not part of the source, and not a translation of anything in it.
Not “alien.” Not yet “vision” either. What exactly is being claimed?
I used to underline the nouns. I should have underlined the verbs. Here the verb is “I do not know,” and it is used twice.
Details, provenance and rights
- Experiencer state
- Unknown
- Reported agency
- No agency claimed
- Locomotion claim
- Ascent
- Physical trace
- None reported
- Witness or speaker
- The writer of the letter, reporting in the third person about a man he does not name
- Recorder / translator
- Transmitted through the manuscript tradition of the Pauline letters
- Edition
- To be selected from a public-domain critical text of the Greek
- Rights
- Requires a fresh, reviewed translation
- Cultural sensitivity
- Ordinary historical context
Provenance notes
- The chapter and verse divisions are medieval; the letter itself has none.
- No manuscript witness has been consulted by this project.
The Greek text is public domain. Modern English translations are not. Nothing here is reproduced from a copyrighted translation.
From the same shelf
Grouped by the tradition that produced them. Nothing here claims they share a cause.
