Rapture

One of Ehrman's missteps in his Revelation work is that he claimed the word "rapture" is not in the whole Bible. He wins through technicalities in English - and in the original Greek - for the Revelation, Greek "Apocalypse". He is however wrong in the Latin for Paul, in which language and in whose writings "rapture" actually exists.

A rapturus is one about to be taken. 1 Thessalonians 4:17 in the Vulgate indeed reads rapiemur cum illis in nubibus obviam Christo in aëra. That's literally the futuretense passivevoice plural of rapio, my amici. We may see a synonym with assumpturus.

I'm bringing this up because Ehrman's target is, exactly, this intersection of the Revelation with Saint Paul, upon where the former's Tribulation might sit with the latter's Rapture. Indeed the Latin tradition does (on occasion) preach a pretrib Rapture, along the way toward preaching the Revelation generally. h/t Roger Pearse this teaching is often ascribed to Ephrem Syros. I don't know where Ephrem himself ever cared for the Apocalypse, being a Syrian. [UPDATE 7/15/24: And I don't know that Catholics should cite him.] Still, quite a bit of Greek got ascribed to him including on the Rapture. More so in Latin. Maybe Pelagians had a hand in it, or Tertullianists; it's mostly Protestants on that beat these days.

Anyway one of many PseudoEphrem speeches can be found at soothkeep.info with commentary, and a sketch of PseudoEphrem's thought.

Someone else might want to go through this material to figure out what lore derived whence. Origen is supposed to have composed sermons on the Apocalypse, now lost; likewise Nepos of Egypt. Maybe some of their work ended up under Ephrem's name. Pearse surmised that De fine mundi came from Emperor Marcian's Constantinople. That would put its sources rather earlier. It is difficult to say absent the extensive current-events we find in, say, PseudoMethodius.

Again: you, dear readers, don't have to take PseudoEphrem seriously and I am not asking you to read the Revelation in any language. I do however suggest to Bart Ehrman that he read this stuff, since he's supposed to be an expert charging money for his expertise, not just one of us cranks with free blogs.