On other threads it has been shown that Jewish thought of the centuries immediately before and during the forming of the Christian sect included a belief in a soul that survived death to ascend to heaven or paradise if deserving, gehenna if wicked. Some retained the idea of a heavenly Hades as a holding location with many chambers suitable to the person put there (like in the rich man and lazarus story) Re: Re: Why do the JW's not Believe in Hell? for example.
Often John 3:13 ?no one has ascended to heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.? has been understood as insisting that Jesus was telling Nicodemus that noone had gone to heaven prior to Jesus. Yet oddly Jesus appears to be saying that he alone has ascended to heaven. Commentators are struck by the surprising use of the perfect tense.
?The perfect tense ?has ascended? is unexpected.? Morris, The Gospel According to John, 223
?The use of the perfect tense is a difficulty, for it seems to imply that the Son of Man has already ascended into heaven.? Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, 1:132.
?The difficulty of the verse lies in the tense of ?has ascended.? It seems to imply that the Son of Man had already at the moment of speaking ascended into heaven.? C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (London: SPCK, 1972), 177.
So then what was the author of the words at John 3 trying to say? An answer may be found in comparing Jewish and Christian idiom. It appears that ?No one has ascended to heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven? is a figure of speech indicating a special divine enlightenment. Jesus in the context of verse 13 is revealing his unique understanding of the secrets of life and salvation. Significantly the phrase ?who is in heaven,? at the end of verse 13 which appears in many Greek as well as Latin and Syriac manuscripts, (A [ * ] Q Y 050 Ë 1,13 Ï latt sy c,p,h and late second early 3rd century Hippolytus, Against Hersies of Noetus 1, 1:7 ) indicates that Jesus, while living on earth, was at the same time also ?in heaven".. IOW We are speaking in metaphors. Being in comunication with God could be said to have 'ascended to heaven' to have heard these things. Nicodemus wants to understand "heavenly things" and it is only Jesus who "ascended to heaven" and "is in heaven" who can reveal them. As a side note, the variants and ommission of the closing words in some leading mss, "who is in heaven" posssibly resulted from literalizing the expression and trying to make sense of it in the same way that modern readers usually do.
Perhaps this is similar to what is meant at Eph 2:6 when it says Christians are ?seated in heavenly places?.
Similarly, Baruch 3:29 asks: ?Who has gone up to heaven and obtained her [Wisdom] and brought her down from the clouds??
Adam Clarke commented on this passage:
This seems to be a figurative expression for ?no one has known the mysteries of the Kingdom,? as in Deuteronomy 30:12 and Romans 10:6; and the expression is found in the generally received maxim that to be perfectly acquainted with the concerns of a place, it is necessary for a person to be on the spot.
A German expositor, Christian Schoettgen, in his Horae Hebraicae observed of John 3:13: ?It was an expression common among the Jews who often say of Moses that he ascended to heaven and there received a revelation on the institution of divine worship.? He quotes the rabbis as saying, ?It is not in heaven, that you should say, ?Oh that we had one like Moses the prophet of the Lord to ascend into heaven and bring it [the Law] down to us?? (Jerusalem Targum on Deut. 30:12).
So John 3:13 cannot be used as solid evidence that the author/editors of John denied the commonly believed idea of ancient worthies ascending to heaven. This understanding dovetails well with Jesus' assertion that Abraham Isaac and Jacob were raised and alive to worship God in Mark 12:26,7.