Layman

I do not know what Wright believed about Moses. Why don't you tell us? Afterall, surely you've read his book. Right?

I never said it was "absurd." I said it was wrong. And I proved it:

http://didjesusexist.com/resbody.html

Who said what was incomprehensible? And I thought you were claiming something about Greek thought. Have you ever noticed that when you are losing an argument you just take a detour into another topic?

Actually, Wright's point is that--to Jews--resurrection necessarily means a bodily one.

Please quote which Wright statement you claim to be refuting here. It's far from clear.

Steven Carr

LAYMAN
'Nice play on the English terms, but it's not the "afterlife." '

CARR
SO life after death is not the afterlife, in the mixed up world of Christian apologetics.

Greeks can talk about people returning bodily from the dead, when Greeks dismiss the idea of people returning bodily from the dead.

People can appear from the grave , never to die again, but are not resurrected, as resurrected means having an immortal after life, never to die again.


'Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God' means flesh and bones can inherit the kingdom of God.

Do apologists have anything other than word games?


LAYMAN
Actually, Wright's point is that--to Jews--resurrection necessarily means a bodily one.

CARR
Begs the question. People saw Moses returned from the dead.

Yet if he had a physical body, he must have died again, as you claim he was not resurrected, and only resurrection means 'did not die again.'

So Moses could not have had a physical body (I wonder where Wright covers the nature of Moses's body....).

So Jews could write that non-physical bodies 'appear' to them after death, never to die again. But 'never to die again' means resurrection. So non-physical bodies could be resurrected, unless you beg the idea of what resurrection means.

(I wonder where Jews made the distinction between resurrection and resuscitation. No doubt you will give me Wright's reference to Jews making such a distinction)

LAYMAN gave the followin quote by Wright
'Celsus 'knew the old myths of returning from the Underworld, but he was perfectly capable of distinguishing these from the actual resurrection of the body.'

Don't forget to give us Wright's reference to where Celsus makes the distinction between Greek ideas of bodily return from the dead and a genuine resurrection!

After all, Wright is the scholar and not me!

Layman

Being raised from the dead to continue to life on earth for a while longer until you die again is not "the afterlife." There is nothing mixed up about it. Being "raised from the dead" does not tell you anything about the final status of human beings, heaven, the immortality of the soul, or anything of the sort. It's not afterlife, it's life again.

The Greeks devalued the body while placing more emphasis on the spirit. Jews and Christians placed much more value on the body.

Greeks can have a few rare and distant myths about a few people being raised from the dead only to die again and not take seriously the the doctrine of the resurrection. Sure.

What are you talking about?

Nope. For humans to "inhereit" the kingdom of God they must first be transformed. Remember, "flesh and blood" is an idiom for human beings.


That is so ironic considering that you have ignored almost every question I have asked of you and played nothing but word games yourself.

Layman

So you admit you have no idea what Wright says about this? How can you claim some sort of contradiction in his writings about it then?

Jews could write, I suppose, that the spirit/soul of a human being in the intermediate state could appear to another person before that body is merged again with it's body at the resurrection of man.

No one is "begging the question" of what resurrection means, we are understanding what the early Christians meant by that term when they used it.

I have not used the term resuscitation, though I understand what some people have meant when they use it.

Since the two issues are definitionally different, there is no need to waste time proving that people made a distinction between them. It's like asking to give evidence that Jews distinguished between right and wrong.

Again, the difference is definitional. Resurrection to Christians had a specific meaning--the end time resurrection of the dead and their transformation into spiritual somas. What is your evidence that this is what Celsus meant?

These are the truest words you have written in this thread.

Steven Carr

Here is (I believe) what Celsus wrote

'Zalmoxis, the slave of Pythagoras, told the Scythians that he had come back from the dead. So Pythagoras told the Italians. Rhampsinitus pretended to have played dice with Demeter in Hell, and he showed a golden napkin which Demeter had given to him. Orpheus among the Odrysians, Protesilaus in Thessaly, Hercules at Tænarum, Theseus, all are said to have died and risen again. But did anyone really rise—really—in the body in which he had lived? Or shall we say that all these stories are fables, but that yours is true?'


Here is Wright's summary.
'Celsus 'knew the old myths of returning from the Underworld, but he was perfectly capable of distinguishing these from the actual resurrection of the body.'

Note Wright's careful word games here. He talks about Celsus distinguishing these from the actual resurrection of THE body, ie that the actual body came back out.

This is true, and strangely it gives the impression that Celsius never says there was a resurrection of A body.

Celsus doubts that these resurrections happened, but he clearly knows stories of bodily resurrection, even if he thought that people just pretended that the body they had was the same body of someone who had died, brought back to life.

Indeed, why would Zalmoxis or Pythagoras ever have bothered to tell these stories if they thought that nobody would have believed in a bodily resurrection?

Why would Celsus ever have brought the subject up, if he thought there were no parallels? He can't accuse Christians of double-standards and special pleading if he thought the cases were entirely different.

Steven Carr

LAYMAN
'Jews could write, I suppose, that the spirit/soul of a human being in the intermediate state could appear to another person before that body is merged again with it's body at the resurrection of man.'

CARR
And where did Jews do that? And could Jesus have been a spirit/soul who appeared in an intermediate state?


LAYMAN
'Remember, "flesh and blood" is an idiom for human beings'

CARR
SO Paul wrote that 'human beings cannot inherit the Kingdom of God'? Are you certain? Is this the Gospel? Human beings are barred from the Kingdom of God?

Layman

What is your point? That because Celsus made the same blundering erroneous arguments that you are attempting to construct you must be right? Hardly. An appeal to authority who is a 2000 year dead opponent of Christianity is hardly helpful to your case.

It does not change the difference between being raised from the dead to die again and resurrection. It does not give us any Greek examples of resurrection. It does not change that Paul affirmed, like the Pharisee he was, a physical resurrection of Jesus and of humanity. It adds absolutely nothing to your argument that Celsus may have made similar mistakes to the one's you are making.

Layman

Where did which Jews do what?

"Could" Jesus have been? Not according to Paul or any other early Christian.


They are unless they are transformed. Unless you are "Kingdom Now" type I suppose.

Tell me, how could the living "flesh and blood" be transformed to get into heaven but not the dead "flesh and blood"?

Bernard Muller

Steven Carr wrote:
And you can prove that NO Greeks believed in bodily resurrection, even though they were stories about it?

This is an extreme argument from silence.

There were Greek myths about bodily resurrection, showing that Greeks knew of the concept.

I was looking through Paul's letters to see how much that was believed then by Greek speaking Gentiles in Corinth. And that's what I see there. I am not denying resurrections in Greek mythology.

Also, (future) bodily resurrections appears in the OT, but were not believed by Jews, in the great majority, including Josephus and Philo of Alexandria:

Isa26:19 "But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead."

Eze37:1-10 "... I [God] will attach tendons to you ["dry bones"] and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath into you, and you will come to life ..."

Job19:25-27 "... in the end, he [God] will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God ..."

Da12:2a "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life ..."

Da12:13 "As for you [Daniel], go your way till the end [of your life]. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance."

Note: but from the same O.T., a few verses take away the possibility of future resurrection:

Ecclesiastes9:5-6 "For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward ... nevermore will they have a share in anything done under the sun."

Job7:9 "As the cloud disappears and vanishes away, so he who goes down to the grave does not come up" (conflicting with 19:25-27, likely a later interpolation, probably done after 'Daniel' appeared!).

So appearing in old texts, and being believed later, are two different things.

Of course, Layman will tell us that Moses was NOT resurrected. There were NO resurrections before Christ. Wright says so, so it must be a fact.
Either Moses was in a spiritual body, or he was resuscitated, and died again.

Moses is described with a visible body, which Peter identified himself as being Moses!!!

And Philo of Alexandria, earlier, believed that A) Moses resurrected, and B) heavenlies, including God himself and angels, could take human form when on earth.

A) In 'the sacrifices of Abel and Cain', III, quoted from Dt34:6,
"That no one is said to know of his [Moses'] tomb"
within a passage featuring "the migration of the perfect soul [Moses'] to the living God" and "raised the perfect man [Moses] from the things of the earth up to himself [God] ...", "to another abode".
Furthermore Philo declared in another book, 'on the life of Moses II', LI (291),
"[Moses, right before his death] was standing at the very starting-place [Mount Nebo], as it were, that he might fly away and complete his journey to heaven ..."

B) 'On dreams', I, (238) "God at times assumes the likeness of the angels, as he sometimes assumes even that of men"
'Questions and answers on Genesis', I, (92) "for the substance of angels is spiritual; but it occurs every now and then that on emergencies occurring they have imitated the appearance of men,
[do you remember the young (naked) man in Mk14:51-52?]
` and transformed themselves so as to assume the human shape [and then fathered children with mortal women!]"

So that concept was not new before Mark's gospel.

Then, "Mark" made a point that some patriarchs are alive during Moses' times, and therefore permanently:

Mk12:26-27 "But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken."

If these three can be alive, Moses also could be !!!

And according to the gospels, Jesus was not the first to resurrect (Lazarus, the widow's son, Matthew27:52).

Presumably an ethereal body, made out of an imperishable substance - not one which, for example, showed the marks of corruption in the form of wounds.

Yes, Paul is very unclear and probably leaned towards ethereal body.
Here are some clues:
Paul never explained the physicality of the heavenly body, but mentioned it is "spiritual" (1Co15:44-49), as opposed to "natural".
And in '2Corinthians', the body is to be left behind in order to join the Lord:
2Co5:6-8 "So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord."
And when Paul related of him going briefly to third heaven to meet Christ, it is "whether in the body [Paul's mortal one] or out of the body I do not know, God knows" (2Co12:3). Nothing is reported to be seen, but "inexpressible words" are heard (2Co12:4).

Obviously, Paul did not think one needs a body to be in paradise and "be present with the Lord".

Best regards, Bernard

Steven Carr

Wright claimed that Celsus distinguished these different types of resurrection.

Now having seen what Celsus wrote you say Celsus blunders all over the distinction.

Tell me, what dead body can be transformed at all when it has been eaten or cremated and is now part of another person? (What goes around comes around).

Should we ban transplants, as the heart will the belong to two different transformed bodies on a timeshare basis?

How do cremated bodies get transformed in Pauls' view? Please feel free to give us Paul's view (or Wright's if you want a higher authority)

Paul on what will happen to live people

2 Corinthians 4
'1Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, 3because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
6Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.

When Paul says that while we are at home in our body we are away from the Lord, he means that we will still be bin our body when we are with the Lord.

And when he says the earthly tent will be destroyed, and a heavenly tent is already there, not made by human hands, he means the earthly tent will be kept and transformed , not that we will get a new already prepared tent.

Just as when I tell my child that there is a new bike for him in the shop, for when his present bike is destroyed and broken, I just mean I will put a new coat of paint on his present bike.