“Caught up to the third heaven”
I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven… The things he heard were too sacred for words, things that man is not permitted to tell. (2 Corinthians 12:2–4 BSB)
What it sounds like today
'Third heaven' sounds like a ranking of blessedness.
The cultural key
Jewish cosmology mapped the heavens in layers, three in some schemes, seven in others; in the three-tier map the first heaven is the sky of birds and clouds, the second the realm of the celestial lights, and the third the presence of God, which is why Paul can restate it as 'caught up into paradise,' the reopened garden (see the Luke 23:43 entry). The coy 'I know a man' is a modesty formula for himself, as verse 7 concedes; ascent-to-heaven reports were a known genre, and Paul cites his own only under duress, fourteen years late, to deflate rivals boasting of visions.
Recovered meaning
Paul admits to the summit experience of his era's spirituality and refuses to monetize it: no content disclosed, credit given in the third person, and the whole episode filed as setup for the thorn that kept him weak. Boasting culture judo-flipped.