"... Presumably Paul was operating in a seven-heaven worldview when he said that in his out-of-the-body experience he was taken to the third heaven, where he heard unrepeatable words (2 Corinthians 12:1-4 NEB) ... What are we to make of this jumble of pre-scientific cosmologies? What are we to make of our own cosmology in light of them? Clearly, we have more physical evidence for ours than the ancients (or the Empera) had for theirs, with images from our giant telescopes and our spaceships. But that physical evidence does not make our cosmology 'true' and theirs 'false,' for ours, too, will seem amateurish, primitive, and amusing to people two thousand years from now ... The pseudepigrapha, from which we get our understanding of the development of the cosmology of the Jews in intertestamental and New Testament times. obviously contain contradictions and inconsistencies, especially of detail. But the detail is not the important part for us. WVe need to realize that the universe was geocentric, and that by New Testament times people believed it had seven heavens, the topmost one of which was God's dwelling place. Multiple heavens and God's location in the highest one are consistent views throughout the Bible and are part of the ideological framework through which God's nature and God's relationship to us is revealed in the Bible ..."