In On the Historicity of Jesus I cite the Revelation of Moses establishing not only that Jewish lore held that the Garden of Eden was located in outer space (roughly in the vicinity of, if not in fact on, Venus or the Sun, depending on which geocentric scheme they adopted), but that Adam himself was buried there—as well as Eve and their kids. Thus establishing burials in space were a well-conceived notion at the time. However, “Revelation of Moses” can refer to several texts; and the one I am referring to is also more commonly known as the Life of Adam and Eve. And some people dispute this reading of the text. This article provides guidance.

Essential Background

In OHJ I provide several collections of background information, with extensive citations of evidence and scholarship. Because a lot of people don’t seem to know basic things about, for example, the actual context and worldview of the ancient societies in question. This includes the fact that unlike today, no one then believed “heaven” was in another plane of existence, with no physical location in our universe; to the contrary, when they said “heaven” they meant what we mean by outer space: a place you could physically see from earth and actually visit if you could fly the requisite distance (and evade the physical hazards involved).

People generally were geocentrists, and a spherical earth was commonly believed by most among the educated (that fact had by then been proved by multiple lines of sound scientific evidence). But even people who still insisted the earth was a flat disk shared the same cosmological belief: that the heavens physically surrounded the earth in several layers of concentric spheres, each filled with its own versions of objects, places, gardens and castles, living beings. They did not believe in an extraterrestrial vacuum. But even we didn’t until the 19th century; up to then we were still maintaining space was filled with a mysterious gas called “ether,” which was essentially exactly what ancient people believed. And they believed it was at least possible you could breathe there. So if you showed them a telescope, they would tell you you could use it to spy on angels in heaven; and if you had an adequate rocket, they would tell you you could use it to go visit angels in heaven. They could even give you reasonable estimates of how many miles away the various heavens were.

That heaven was a physical place in this universe that you could see from earth and physically visit if you had the means of flying is something people forget the significance of today, because even fundamentalist Christians no longer believe this (with good reason: science has resoundingly refuted it). But if you read ancient texts with the modern view in mind, of heaven being “somewhere else,” in another dimension of existence, neither visible nor reachable from earth, you will completely misinterpret what ancient texts are saying. Only if you accept that they were instead talking about outer space will you get right the ideas they are expressing.

And this includes the specific structure of the universe as they understood it. Not only were the heavens in outer space—in fact were outer space—but they aligned with the planets: the lowest sphere of heaven (often called instead “the firmament,” occupied or even held up by air rather than ether) was capped by the moon; the next (typically called the First Heaven), by Mercury; the next (the Second Heaven), by Venus; then the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and finally the Stars, for Seven “ethereal” Heavens and one “aerial” Firmament. The capstone was typically the occupying and signifying locale, so the “Stars” were the associated location of the Seventh Heaven, while for the Third Heaven that would be the Sun.

Which all means, “a garden in the third heaven” could very well have meant “a garden located on the Sun,” although that wasn’t the only location imaginable (all manner of things not visible from earth could float within any heavenly sphere); it’s just the most prominent. Although some geocentric schemes swapped the position of the Sun and Venus, making Venus the signifying locale of the Third Heaven, and it’s hard to ascertain which scheme Jewish cosmologists adopted. But in this different case, Eden could be on Venus, the Morning Star. I say much more about all this in OHJ, with more quotations of ancient sources and cited scholarship. But you have the gist now.

Within all that I wrote the following:

This meant there were things in heaven. The Testament of Abraham, for example, says Abraham was shown structures in heaven, including gates and roads and thrones and halls and tables and linens and books with ink and quill and so on, as well as an (apparently) resurrected Adam and Abel observing and judging the souls of the dead. And in fact the Revelation of Moses says Adam was buried in Paradise, literally up in outer space, in the third heaven, complete with celestial linen and oils. Thus human corpses could be buried in the heavens. Because there was obviously soil up in Paradise—in fact, not only is all manner of celestial vegetation planted in it, but when Adam is buried in it, he is buried in the same place from which God took the clay of which Adam was made. In many other Jewish apocrypha there are accounts of all manner of solid structures in all other levels of heaven, too, so tombs and graves obviously can exist there as well. Thus, according to the Revelation of Moses, Adam is cast down from Paradise, residing on earth below for the remainder of his life; but in death his body is carried back up to the heavens for burial. Abel is likewise buried there, and later so is Eve, and many others among the righteous dead. This also means the original Tree of Life is in outer space (being in the very Paradise which is located in the third heaven), just as the true Temple and Altar of God are in outer space.

OHJ, pp. 196-97

I note as well that Paul and the early Christians also believed this: Paul himself says Paradise (the Garden of Eden itself) is located in the third heaven, and that he (or someone he knew) had visited there. If burials and gardens could exist in the third heaven, they could also exist in the firmament (the vast aerial space between Earth and the moon), where we are also told in several sources there are copies of everything on earth, as there are in every level of heaven, such that at each level the copies are more pure and perfect. These same sources also show that mortal humans could teleport or fly up into these realms, whether by their own magical power (like Simon Magus or Apollonius of Tyana), or carried by angels or demons or other creatures or vehicles (as in legend were Isaiah and Elijah; likewise Icarus, Daedalus, and Bellerophon).

Reading the Life of Adam & Eve

This legendary text, surviving in many forms, typically dated to the early first century, tells the tale of how Adam and Eve lived and died after being cast down from Paradise in the Third Heaven onto Earth below to live out their days in misery and struggle. The last sections of the text are occupied with the story of Adam’s slow death and subsequent funeral and fate. It ends relating that the rest of his family were taken up by angels and buried with him upon their own respective deaths. And it is this death of Adam and what happens after that interests us here. Here I shall translate from the Greek text (the earliest version we have; I’m consulting the Knibb edition), adapting the 1885 translation of Roberts, Donaldson and Cleveland or the latest edition by the Scriptural Research Institute, whichever I confirm to be more accurate (I’ll comment when our translations differ in any way pertinent).

After Eve mourns the corpse of Adam upon Earth, an angel tells her, “Behold, Adam, thy husband, has gone forth from his body. Arise and see his spirit carried up to Him that made him, to meet Him,” which Eve then watches happen (§32). Thus Adam’s soul is with God, which we know any Jewish reader would understand to mean in the highest (the Seventh) heaven, the residence of God Almighty. At this point Adam’s body is still lying on Earth, being mourned by angels and family alike, and then taken to a lake to be washed, during which moment God sings a lament over Adam’s body (§33-37). After that, God then “stretched forth his hand and raised Adam, handing him over to the archangel Michael,” telling him, “Raise him into Paradise, unto the third heaven, and leave him there” until Judgment Day (§37). Michael then takes the body, anoints it, summons more angels, and carries out the instruction. So it’s indisputable that this is Adam’s corpse being taken up into the third heaven, after his soul has already been taken up in an earlier passage.

After God tells Michael to get the body, and Michael anoints it, all the angels are summoned again to pay it last respects as it lay “on Earth” (the words tê gê, can mean either “Earth” or “the ground,” but in context here we can take it as indicating the former) before “they came to where the body of Adam was and took it and went to Paradise,” thus fulfilling God’s order as to what was to be done with the body (§38; some versions of the text even say “and the body of Adam was then lying on the ground in Paradise,” §39). So there can be no doubt this is about the body of Adam.

God then tells Michael to “go into Paradise, into the third heaven” to fetch materials for Adam’s interment and bring them to God (“bring me cloths of fine linen and silk” from there, §40). Whatever God does with those materials is not said, but God then instructs Michael to use them to cover Adam’s body and prepare it for burial. This means Michael and God are not in the third heaven when having these conversations. So we are seeing a scene after God has put humanity to sleep (§38) and Adam’s body has been deposited in the third heaven at his previous instruction (§39). God now sends Michael back down to bring him materials, then sends Michael back down again to lay them on Adam. None of this happens on Earth.

To the contrary, after the preserved corpse of Abel is brought up to be buried next to Adam as well, both are “to be buried, according to God’s command, in the part of Paradise where God found the dust” with which he made Adam originally (§40). Which means the original Paradise Adam came from. And here it says the angels had to “take them up” there (arai, from aeirô, “raise, lift, take up”), clearly indicating this Paradise is above the Earth. And as to where they took them, the exact phrase is eis ta merê tou paradeisou, eis ton topon, in this context meaning, “in the part of paradise, the place” where the dirt Adam came from was found. As with many generic phrases like this, context determines meaning. For example, elsewhere eis ta merê tou paradeisou means, instead, “an area near” Paradise (§10; even J.R. Levison, whom I next discuss, agrees this is a valid connotation), when Eve and Seth on Earth go beseeching the angels to fetch medicines from Paradise (as they say they will do in §9, as Adam tells them to go “near Paradise,” plêsion tou paradeisou), because obviously (as the story makes clear) they don’t enter into Paradise. This reference to getting “near” to or “in the vicinity” of Paradise would thus mean a high place, being “near to heaven” or more directly below Paradise above, so as to beg angels there to come down. It’s never said it is “near” because Paradise is “on” Earth.

God (still commanding from above) then orders more angels into Paradise to collect herbs for the burial, “and they laid them in the ground, and thus they took the two bodies, and buried them in the place they had dug out and built up” (§40; that an actual tomb is meant is indicated in §42, when God puts a “three-cornered” seal on it to prevent the body being disturbed). Again the phrase en tê gê and like phrases can mean both “on the Earth” and “in the ground.” For example, in §19, when still in Paradise (before the “fall”), Adam bends the forbidden tree’s bough down “to the ground” so Eve can pick its fruit; and in §32, when already on Earth, Eve “falls to the ground” in obeisance—obviously in these sentences the phrase does not mean “to the Earth,” but “to the ground.” So again context determines meaning. And here, when speaking of digging Adam’s grave where the original soil Adam was formed from was found, in such a context it’s clear they are talking about soil, not the Earth below. Paradise is never located on Earth in the Greek text of the Life of Adam and Eve, so there is no basis for ever reading that into any sentence like this.

God then converses with Adam’s corpse as it rests “in the ground” and promises him his future resurrection (§41). It’s clear the text means “ground” again here, because Adam was just buried in the ground in Paradise, and what God sings to Adam now is “from dust (gê) you are; to dust (gê) you go,” using the same word. So he’s talking about what Adam was made of and will be reduced to (“dust to dust”). This is then made clear again when the text mentions Eve did not know where Adam was buried because God put all humanity to sleep during that event, so “when the Lord came to Paradise to bury Adam” (§42), Eve, too, was knocked out. Thus again, Adam is buried in Paradise. No mention of it being on Earth. Instead we’ve already been told twice where it is: in the third heaven (§37, §40).

Because of God’s sleep spell “no one on the Earth” knew the grave’s location (save Seth, who was spared the sleep spell); that same phrase again, but the context this time indicates it means the Earth as a location, and not dirt as a material. But still no mention is made of Paradise being there. As the rest of the text makes unmistakably clear: Adam was definitely buried in Paradise; and Paradise was definitely in “the third heaven,” not “on Earth” (and accordingly the text never says it was). Paul the Apostle likewise says Paradise was in the third heaven, so we have independent corroboration of this belief. And other Jewish literature corroborates this, as Paradise was widely believed to be above the earth somewhere in the heavens. In OHJ I cited Tabor’s Things Unutterable for a large collection of citations and expert discussion of this point; there are many more. Indeed, even the traditional text of Ezekiel 28 appears to locate Eden in the heavens, declaring it is on “God’s mountain,” which we can assume is a metaphor for the heavens, because Ezekiel concludes his poem with God throwing Adam down to the Earth from there—so he evidently wasn’t on the Earth before then. So neither was Paradise.

To nail the point conclusively, when in the Life of Adam and Eve Eve is telling her kids about how she and Adam were kicked out of heaven, she concludes her tale with the very words, “After we took some stuff, we came out of Paradise. And we were on Earth” (§29). Which means they were not on Earth before then. Which means the Paradise they left was not on Earth. So where was it? Well, the text twice tells us: in the third heaven. There isn’t really any logical way to get around this.

Attempting to Get Around This

Many, especially modern Christians, find this very uncomfortable. So some do try to dispute it. In real scholarship, the best attempt at this so far is J.R. Levison’s “Terrestrial Paradise in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve” in the Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 28 (2018). Although Levison actually agrees with my reading that Adam’s body was buried in the third heaven; nevertheless he tries to contend that there are two Paradises in this text, one on earth and one in heaven (a claim he’s not the first to make), and apologists can latch onto this to try and weasel out an argument that somehow Adam isn’t buried in the celestial Paradise.

Usually what such folks argue is that Adam’s “soul” is what must be taken to the third heaven, while his body is buried in the “terrestrial” Paradise; but that interpretation is refuted by the fact that the story already says Adam’s soul had gone up to heaven before it describes God instructing angels to take “Adam” from Earth up to the third heaven and leave him there until judgment day. So only his body can be meant at that point. And to that can be added everything else I just pointed out, like confusing what words like “near” and “earth” mean, usually by ignoring context and trying to import more desired meanings nowhere supported by the text or story itself (though existing translations can encourage this mistake; so one has to look at and understand the actual Greek to see why it’s a mistake). This tactic also requires ignoring key passages (like the obvious meaning of Eve’s remark in §29 that they weren’t on Earth until they left Paradise) and obvious sequences of events (like Adam’s funeral and burial immediately following and matching God’s instruction to take him to the third heaven to leave him there until the resurrection).

Still, even Levison’s attempt to argue the Life of Adam and Eve mentions two Paradises makes no logical sense and does not have any support in the text. Of course, apologists can’t really cite him anyway, since he concurs with me that his imagined “Earthly paradise, depicted in delectable detail, is different from paradise in the third heaven, where Adam’s body is kept” and it is “to paradise in the third heaven—presumably a different paradise from the earthly locale, where most of the drama transpires—Adam’s body is consigned until the day of judgment.” Likewise, Levison says, “When paradise is conceived as existing in the third heaven, both times in the burial scene, the text says so clearly.”

But when it comes to the “two Paradises” theory apart from that, the only arguments Levison and others have are those same semantic confusions (conflating “on the ground” with “on Earth”; conflating “near” with “horizontally adjacent”) and the circular argument that heavenly places can’t have “mundane elements…such as…windows and gates and regions and spices and deciduous trees” and animals and walls and doors and such like, therefore when Paradise is described as having those things, an earthly Paradise must be meant. This argument presumes the conclusion in the premises: that heavenly places can’t have those things. It’s therefore fallaciously circular. In fact this text clearly says the heavens do have such things: when God sends angels for fine wool and silk he explicitly sends them “to Paradise, to the third heaven” (§40). So Levison’s argument is immediately refuted by the text itself. It’s even refuted by himself: he agrees Adam is buried in the third heaven, which means he must concede there is dirt there, even stone with which to build a tomb, as the text clearly mentions both. Levison is also refuted by a vast literature establishing all sorts of such things exist in all the heavens in popular Jewish imagination (as you already saw one example of in my quotation from OHJ above); so Levison’s premise is simply hopelessly uninformed and wholly anachronistic (see OHJ, Chapter 5, Element 38, along with Elements 34-37, for extensive evidence and cited scholarship); as well as circular.

Levison deploys other circular arguments. For instance, he thinks that because Philo thought Paradise contained trees, that therefore he thought it existed on Earth—but Levison can present no example of Philo ever saying it was. So Levison is simply presuming his conclusion true, in the very formulation of his premise. In actual fact, Philo never lays out what he thinks can’t reside in any level of heaven, or where he thought Paradise itself resided. And what he does not say, we should not presume. But it wouldn’t matter anyway; whatever ideology Philo chose to subscribe to, he’s not the author of the Life of Adam and Eve, and we are interested in what that person thought, not Philo. We likewise want to know if others thought the same way (e.g. Paul clearly thought Paradise was in the third heaven, and assumes this was commonly accepted among his fellow Christians). It would be of no use to this purpose knowing whether Philo held a different view. And Levison doesn’t present any actual evidence of what Philo thought about this anyway. By contrast, I cite passages clearly indicating Philo did believe everything on Earth had its more perfect counterpart in heaven (OHJ, pp. 195-98)—by deduction, that means he thought gardens and trees could reside there too. Although Philo leans toward Paradise in particular being an allegory, not an actual place, even that is contrary to Levison’s supposition, and the rest of what Philo says, even more so.

Levison deploys another circular argument, more pertinent to our interest, when he tries to argue that because Adam and Eve, after their fall, went to live “in the East,” that this means Paradise must have been located on Earth to the West. This again presumes the conclusion in the premise. The text does not say they went “east of Paradise.” It never locates the direction of Paradise at all. It just says that once they were on Earth, they went East. This could be accomplished by someone just fallen from space as easily as anyone else. There is simply no evidence here for Paradise being on Earth either. Unless you assume Levison’s conclusion in your very premises; but circular logic is invalid. Levison should know better. (So should his peer reviewers.)

Some of Levison’s arguments are bizarre confusions I struggle even to comprehend. Such as when he claims of the sentence, “when the Lord came to paradise to bury Adam, all fell asleep until God gave the command to bury Adam” so “no one upon the earth knew” where he was buried, that this must mean Adam was in an earth-based Paradise at that point, and only later taken up to be buried in the celestial Paradise when everyone was asleep. This illogically requires Levison to assume “the Lord came to paradise to bury Adam” before people fell asleep; but the text clearly says he did so after they fell asleep. Levison seems to be confusing God’s lamenting over Adam by the Acherusian lake as God visiting him in Paradise; but that lake is not in Paradise, and Adam’s body isn’t taken up to heaven from there until several paragraphs later. So Levison is hopelessly confused here. He illogically presumes the juxtaposition of “paradise” and “on Earth” somehow connects the two, when they are not at all connected in any sentence. What the text is saying is simply that every mortal fell asleep before Adam was taken up to Paradise, so no one on Earth knew Adam was buried in Paradise at all. It is not saying they knew his corpse was in some Paradise on earth and then mysteriously disappeared (coincidentally to a parallel Paradise in heaven). Indeed, Levison seems not to know that no living mortal ever enters Paradise in this story (except in flashbacks to before the fall).

Levison even more bizarrely says that Eve’s sentence in §29 (which he conveniently doesn’t quote) “need hardly suggest descent” to Earth; in fact, it cannot be interpreted any other way. “We left Paradise and [then] we were on Earth” unmistakably is saying they were not previously on Earth—which means neither was Paradise. I see no logical way around that. And Levison doesn’t even attempt an argument at this point. He just pretends the sentence didn’t say that. Similarly, Levison just insists without argument that in §1-14 “paradise is on earth.” Nowhere in §1-14 is it ever said Paradise is on Earth. Likewise Levison says that when Seth gets near Paradise and begs an angel to fetch him supplies from within Paradise, this leaves “little to suggest other than that they entered into paradise itself.” Exactly the contrary: that Seth has to beg angels to fetch him things from Paradise entails Seth could not enter Paradise. And accordingly he is never described as entering the place. Levison at least allows I could be right about that. But even weirder, he keeps talking about Seth at this point reaching “the walls” of Paradise. Never does the text say Seth ever found or approached any “walls” of Paradise (much less passed through them). Levison thus not only ignores evidence refuting him; he simply invents evidence supporting him. This is strange stuff.

And that’s it. Levison has no other arguments.

Conclusion

As this article by J.R. Levison attests, even the latest peer reviewed literature, indeed even literature hostile to some of my own conclusions, nevertheless agrees with my central conclusion that in the early first century Life of Adam and Eve, Adam and his whole family are all buried in the third heaven; and this proves burials in outer space were an ordinary belief when Christianity began. And even where Levison tries to disagree with me (insisting other scenes in this text imagine a “second” Paradise, located on Earth), he not only is repeatedly refuted by his own evidence, but has to fabricate evidence that doesn’t exist, and repeatedly argue in a circle, just to get his conclusion at all. He’s so obviously wrong nothing further need be said about that. And yet even this guy corroborates what I’ve been saying all along: early Jewish lore conceived of burials in outer space, most particularly of Adam and his kin.