In your book Heaven & Hell, you reference Matthew 24:35, which says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will certainly not pass away.” Is Jesus talking about the sky, or heaven? Heaven having an ending would be a new teaching for me, so this verse is a little bit problematic. Thank you for your help. — C.D.
Many Jews conceived of three heavens (as outlined in Q&A 0549). Only one is the “abode” of God and his angels. The phrase “heaven and earth” seems to stand for all that is – at least the physical creation. Clearly God would not erase himself or his own abode, so Jesus must be referring to the sky (where the birds fly) and space (where the stars are). He is using a figure of speech called a merism.
Wikipedia provides quite a solid explanation:
“Merism (Latin: merismus, Ancient Greek: μερισμός, romanized: merismós) is a rhetorical device (or figure of speech) in which a combination of two contrasting parts of the whole refer to the whole. For example, in order to say that someone “searched everywhere.” one could use the merism “searched high and low”… Merisms are common in the Old Testament. For example, in Genesis 1:1, when God creates את השמים ואת הארץ (modern pronunciation: et hashamaim ve-et ha’arets), “the heavens and the earth” (NRSV), the two parts (heavens and earth) do not refer only to the heavens and the earth. Rather, they refer to the heavens, the earth and everything between them: God created the entire world, the whole universe. Other famous examples of Biblical merisms are Genesis 1:5 in which “evening” and “morning” refer to “one day” (including noon, afternoon, etc.) and Psalm 139 in which the psalmist declares that God knows “my downsitting and my uprising”: God knows all of the psalmist's actions.”
In other words, some parts of the Bible are illuminated by a knowledge of language and literature. This is one good reason to keep studying—regardless of how many times you’ve read the Bible through.
