stephan huller

I am sure few people have thought about this. Most people are content to argue over interpolations in 1 Corinthians Chapter 15. Yet the point of the material is to argue for the change which came over Moses's flesh (cf. Mimar Marqe Book 5) as now having come over the whole of the new Israel:

It is very difficult to sort out what the original argument was because of interpolations but the basic idea is clear - humanity was refashioned after Christ rather than Adam. Instead of merely having flesh, Christians now resemble Moses in the Samaritan tradition - i.e. they are God-men with 'spiritual flesh.'

I can't prove how 'the baptism for the dead' fit into everything unless it meant that 'dead flesh' became alive through baptism (although there is also a persistent argument in favor of this meaning some sort of vicarious baptism as in the Mormon faith). Nevertheless one thing is clear - those who had undergone the Pauline 'death baptism' of the so-called heretical tradition claimed to have received spiritual flesh and walked around as 'perfect' God-men in the here and now (i.e. not 'in the here after' as in the Catholic tradition).

My question is could this tradition have been taken seriously if the 'perfect' looked pretty much the same as every other idiot walking around on the earth? Could Christian presbyters have succeeded in winning over thousands of converts to the idea that they were God-men no visible physical transformation had come over their person? In other words, were ancient people that stupid that they accepted the grandiose claims associated with Moses in the Samaritan tradition without any visible proofs of a metamorphosis?

In the Pentateuch let's not forget - Moses's skin is transformed. He has light shining from his flesh. He has to wear a dress over his whole body like the cliche ghost costume from Halloween. How could Christianity have succeeded in convincing people that their God-men were God-men without any proof that they were divine?

stephan huller

A parallel tradition in Judaism called The Revelation of Moses:

dalehileman

I had received the most prodigious kind of spiritual flesh from a sudden insight into the size of the Universe as an apodictical existential pantheist professing that nothing is entirely anything while everything is partly something else so emphasizing the bodily nature of the spiritual experience

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=306315

mountainman

A parallel tradition smuggled into the Gnostic answer to the Christian apostles casting lots for the conversion and dominion of the world is found in "The Acts of Thomas" in the INSERTED Hymn of the Pearl. It is clearly related to an integral ascetism, alien to that found in the life of Jesus and the apostles and Paul and other Greek new testament related sources.

Also re the OP the body is never static, but continually in a state of change and inter-exchange with the environment (air=breath, water, food, concepts). The ancients were well aware of this. But what do you mean by 'spiritul flesh'? For example do any of Bilbo Baggins or Bob Marley or Mahatma Gandi have spiritual flesh?