helmvgod

When is the first verified time that the early christians were proclaiming the miracle of the resurrection? Is all we have the reference in Acts to go on? The dating of acts is uncertain, also. When can we say for sure that christians were making this proclamation?

EDIT: referring to the physical resurrection.

Iasion

Hmmm...
Ignatius maybe?
Early 2nd century, or a bit later.

Iasion

Toto

What do you require for "verified?" And what details do you require for the resurrection?

Paul refers to Christ as "raised from the dead." His epistles are usually dated to the middle of the 1st century, but can't be "verified" in a legal sense to have been written before the 2nd. And Paul does not have the resurrection scenario of an empty tomb, etc.

1 Cor 15: 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. . .

12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, . .

15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.

The gospels and Acts have the resurrection story, and are usually dated to the late first century, but could have been written in the second century.

helmvgod

I should have said more specifically, the physical resurrection. Paul does not really talk about the physical resurrection, and seems to speak against it.

Toto

The argument has been made that the earliest Christians believed in a spiritual resurrection, where the old body would have been left in the grave to rot, and the soul clothed in a new, transformed body. Richard Carrier has argued for this in detail in his chapter "The Spritual Body of Christ and the Empty Tomb," along with other authors in The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave.

But we can't tell exactly when Christians started to believe in a bodily resurrection. The winning faction in the ideological struggles in the church decided that Christ had risen bodily, and that was how it had been from the beginning, and they defined Christianity.

helmvgod

There must be an earliest reference, though. What argument can be made that the early christians actually believed in the physical resurrection?

Toto

We don't have firm dates for most early Christian documents.

Richard Carrier has a page devoted to criticisms of his chapters in the Empty Tomb. You can check some of them out.

Basically, the argument that early Christians actually believed in a physical resurrection depends on accepting at face value the gospels as representing what earlier Christians believed, although they were not written down until much later. But dating the gospels is a difficult issue, and maintaining that there was a reliable transmission of beliefs is a matter of faith.

Ben C Smith

Earliest reference to a bodily resurrection: Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.44. One can debate it all one wants; but Paul calls it a spiritual body, not a disembodied spirit.

Ben.

mg01

Where does Paul get the third day reference from scripture?

Ben C Smith

Did you forget that other thread a while ago? Hosea 6.2 (LXX) has εν τη ημερα τη τριτη αναστησομεθα (in the day, the third one, we shall be resurrected). 1 Corinthians 15.4 has εγηγερται τη ημερα τη τριτη (he was raised on the day, the third one).

Ben.