Rapture (pronounced rap-cher)
(1) Ecstatic joy
or delight; joyful ecstasy; bliss, beatitude, exaltation.
(2) The carrying
of a person to another place or sphere of existence.
(3) In Christian
theology, the experience, anticipated by some fundamentalist Christians, of
meeting Christ midway in the air upon his return to earth.
(4) The act of carrying off (archaic).
1590: A compound word, the construct being rapt + ure (the suffix -ure was from the Middle English -ure, from the Old French -ure, from the Latin -tūra and was used to create a word meaning (1) a process; a condition; a result of an action or (2) an official entity or function). Rapt was from the Medieval Latin raptūra, (seizure, rape, kidnapping), from the Classical Latin raptus (a carrying off, abduction, snatching away; rape (the future active participle of rapiō)). In the sense of “carrying off”, the English use was in parallel with the Middle French rapture with the meaning drawn from the Medieval Latin raptura (seizure, rape, kidnapping, carrying off, abduction, snatching away) and the word rape is a cognate of this. The sense of "spiritual ecstasy, state of mental transport or exaltation" is recorded by circa 1600 (as “the raptures”), the connecting notion being a sudden or violent taking and carrying away. The meaning "expression of exalted or passionate feeling" in words or music is from the 1610s and from here it became frequently used in sacred music and art.
The earliest
attested use in English is with women as objects and in the seventeenth century
it sometimes carried the meaning of the verb “rape”. The use of the word “rape” in the sense of “carrying
off” in so much art and sculpture from Antiquity and the Middle Ages is the cause
of much misunderstanding in modern audiences.
Sense of "spiritual ecstasy or state of mental transport” was first
recorded in the 1630s and rapture as a verb meaning "to enrapture, put in
a state of rapture" (implied in raptured) became widely used. The adjective rapturous (ecstatically joyous
or exalted) dates from the 1670s, the adverb rapturously having emerged a
decade earlier. The verb enrapture, a
creation apparently of the church, is attested from 1740. The adjective ravishing, dating from the mid
fourteenth century and meaning "enchanting, exciting rapture or ecstasy"
(present-participle adjective from the verb ravish) is now probably associated
with Mills & Boon romances but the origin was sacred, the figurative notion
being "carrying off from earth to heaven"; the adverb was ravishingly.
In Christian
eschatology, the rapture refers to the end
of days when all Christian believers (both the living and resurrected dead)
will rise into the sky and join Christ for eternity, a vision in Paul's first
letter to the Thessalonians (1
Thessalonians 4:17)).
Then we which are alive and remain shall be
caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so
shall we ever be with the Lord.
Rapturists prefer
this to less exclusive second comings such as those mentioned in Second Thessalonians, Matthew, First
Corinthians and Revelation.
Home
Thoughts from Abroad (1845) by Robert Browning (1812–1889)
I
Oh, to be in England now
that April’s there
And whoever wakes in
England sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and
the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole
are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings
on the orchard bough
In England—now!
II
And after April, when May
follows
And the white-throat
builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom’d
pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and
scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at
the bent spray’s edge—
That’s the wise thrush: he
sings each song twice over
Lest you should think he
never could re-capture
The first fine careless
rapture!
And, though the fields
look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when
noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little
children’s dower,
Far brighter than this
gaudy melon-flower!
Rapture (2019) by Roberta J Heslop, oil & acrylic on canvas.
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