How Many Heavens?

“He it is Who created for you all that is on the earth. Then He turned to Heaven and fashioned it into seven heavens, and He is Knower of all things.”

“Then He decreed that they be seven heavens in two days and revealed to each heaven its command. And We adorned the lowest heaven with lamps and a guard. That is the Decree of the Mighty, the Knowing.”

― Quran 2.29 & 41.12

“I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.”

― 2 Corinthians 12.2-4

“The beliefs in the existence of seven heavens originated in Mesopotamia at a rather late date, but the idea of three heavens was not less common than that of seven. In Mesopotamian mythology, heaven is, in general, not a place for humans. This is evident from the words of Gilgamesh to his friend Enkidu: "Who can go up to heaven, my friend? Only the God dwells with Shamash forever ..." This reservation is also found in the Hebrew Bible, as one can see in Ps 115:16: "The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth He has given to the sons of men" (RSV). Similar statements may be found in Deut 10:14 and 30:12 or in Prov 30:3–4. There is no need for one to ascend to heaven to learn the "secret things," which belong to God only (cf. Deut 29:28 and Sir 3:21–23). A direct condemnation of this desire to ascend to heaven is found in Isa 14.13-15. There, the prideful King of Babylon, who wants to ascend to heaven and become like God, is cast down to the netherworld of worms and maggots. (Dream) Visions of the heavens or the netherworld and journeys thereto are well represented in Mesopotamian mythology. Adela Yarbro Collins writes: "Support for the conclusion that the motif of seven heavens derives from the Babylonian tradition is its combination with the notion of the correspondence between the earthly and the heavenly Paradise." Although the seven heaven motif is to be found in Sumerian literature, W.G. Lambert claims that the most common number of heavens in second and early first millennia b.c.e. Babylonia was three.”

― Ursula Schattner-Rieser, Levi in the Third Sky: On the "Ascent to Heaven" Legends within Their Near Eastern Context and J.T. Milik’s Unpublished Version of the Aramaic Levi Document, in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context Vol. 2

Of related interest to the theme of expulsions and/or blockings from heaven:

“In connection with the gods of West Africa I may remark that in almost all the series of native tradition there, you will find accounts of a time when there was direct intercourse between the gods or spirits that live in the sky, and men. That intercourse is always said to have been cut off by some human error; for example, the Fernando Po people say that once upon a time there was no trouble or serious disturbance upon earth because there was a ladder, made like the one you get palm-nuts with, "only long, long;" and this ladder reached from earth to heaven so the gods could go up and down it and attend personally to mundane affairs. But one day a cripple boy started to go up the ladder, and he had got a long way up when his mother saw him, and went up in pursuit. The gods, horrified at the prospect of having boys and women invading heaven, threw down the ladder, and have since left humanity severely alone.”

― Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, 1897