Entering heaven alive

Entering heaven alive (called by various religions "ascension", "assumption", or "translation") is a belief held in various religions. Since death is the normal end to an individual's life on Earth and the beginning of afterlife, entering heaven without dying first is considered exceptional and usually a sign of a deity's special recognition of the individual's piety. In the Hebrew Bible, there are two exceptions to the general rule that humans could not go to heaven – Enoch and Elijah – but neither is clear. mentions Enoch as one who "walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away", but it does not explicitly say whether he was alive or dead, and it does not say where God took him. The Books of Kings describes the prophet Elijah being taken towards "shamayim" in a whirlwind, but the word can mean either heaven as the abode of God, or the sky (as the word "heavens" does in modern English), and so again the text is ambiguous. According to the post-biblical Midrash, eight people went to (or will go to) heaven (also referred to as the Garden of Eden and paradise) alive: Enoch, Noah's great grandfather (Genesis 5:22–24) Elijah (2 Kings 2:11) Serah, daughter of Asher, son of Jacob (Midrash Yalkut Shimoni (Yechezkel 367)) Eliezer, the servant of Abraham who chose Rebecca to be Isaac's wife Hiram, king of Tyre, who helped Solomon build the first temple Ebed-Melech, the Ethiopian Jaabez, the son of Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi, who was editor of the Mishnah Bithiah, the daughter of Pharaoh Ascension of JesusAssumption of MaryRaptureBiblical cosmology and Translation (Mormonism) The Christian Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, follows the Jewish narrative and mentions that Enoch was "taken" by God, and that Elijah was bodily assumed into Heaven on a chariot of fire. Jesus is considered by the vast majority of Christians to have died before being resurrected and ascending to heaven.