Solo

That may be but there is later gospel and other NT material which clearly show that rising from the dead had another meaning which is attributed to Jesus through "Q" ("let the dead bury their dead"). Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15 takes an issue with the "metaphoric" view of the resurrection as something that has nothing to do with post-mortem. Mark has Jesus flatly contradict Paul's 1Cr15:

The whole exposition of Marlk is a double-talk with a "knight move" in it. Jesus gives an example of Moses' conversation with God to assert "the living experience of God" (which is what was traded in the non-Pauline Jesus circles as "rising from the dead") in order to ridicule the Sadduccee brain-teaser. The Sadduccees had in mind the Pharisee concept of bodily rising at the end of time, to which Jesus replies (25) that at resurrection men are like angels (hos aggelos) in heaven, i.e. without sexual function. This of course is calculated to invoke a post-mortem angelic innocence but to the "knowing reader" of the gospel it refers to the sexlessness (sometimes temporary one after severe hypermanic episodes) of those who experience the kingdom down here on earth. He is talking "dead" in figurative, gnostic sense (of the "Q" tradition) yet wrapping it in literal meaning of death. Luke understood this structure very well and modified exegetically the crucial explanatory verse of Mark (20:36) 'and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection'. Now the question for those who wish to challenge this reading would be : 'why would Luke insist that the post-mortem resurrected faithful would not be dying again ?'


Jiri

DCHindley

FWIW,

In my analysis (based on my stoopid and obviously wrong hypothesis that the Christological passages in the Pauline letters are overlayed upon letters that had nothing to do with the Christ movement), I segregate the original (normal text) from the interpolations (bold text).

1 Corinthians 15:35-50

35 But some one will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" 36 You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. (Compare 1 Enoch 43:4) 42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (Gn 2:7) 46 But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. 50 I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

The original argument seems to have been that the resurrected body is spiritual, supported by an analogy that a plant seed "dies" (ceases being an inert thing) and becomes a living plant. Vss 45-50, though, go off on a tangent and obviously relate to Christ as a "second Adam", which has little to do with resurrection bodies. Vs 41 does not directly support the seed argument and is thematically related to vss 45-50. In my mind, the interpolator took the dichotomy of a material body becoming a spiritual body as his cue to add Christ dogma peculiar to whatever group he represented.

The gist of my analysis is that the Christological passages do not appear to have any structure to them, but rather appear to be comments and assertions in reaction to statements in the original. The original letters, with Christological passages removed, offer clear and consistant arguments relating to God's justification of gentiles by faith without accepting circumcision, and a couple tangential issues relating to Jewish beliefs about resurrection, how to live peaceably within Greco-Roman households, etc.

For whatever reasons, and luckily for us, the interpolator did not consider omitting these statements that he (or she) comments upon. As a result, the interpolated passages (about 35% of the English text if I correctly recall my earlier attempts to quantify them) as a whole (original + interpolations) form a logical nightmare.

DCH

Sheshbazzar

So it seems that the first "Paul"(s) taught a total replacement of the physical body by a new "spiritual" body, one composed of an entirely different ("heavenly") substance than was the original "earthly" body.
Latter "Paul"(s), redactors, and Xians, misunderstood this teaching and reworked the texts to support their idea that the "resurrected" body would be reconstructed from the elements of the original body, even though it be long dead and decomposed into bones or dust.
This would explain why the latter Xian Gospels would feature a lot of "dead bodies being brought back to life" stories, as a propaganda move to advance the latter, but more popular Xian conception.
They couldn't tolerate the story ending with a body gone missing, but had to embellish it with descriptions of a resurrected and very physical body, replete with the open wounds; "a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me have", being added latter specifically to counteract the original teaching that the resurrected body would be "spiritual", a better "heavenly" body, one not subject to any of the weaknesses nor to injuries that brought death to bodies composed of "dust" as was the body of Adam.

DCHindley

Not really. I would propose that the Pauline redactor did his or her thing before the canonical gospels were written, and certainly before 2nd century Christian "philosophers" tried their hand at integrating Christian teachings (including those in the gospels) within a Platonic framework. Obviously, different Christians at different times had different opinions about resurrection. Christianity has never been a monolithic movement.

Interestingly, the idea that everything in the physical world has its spiritual counterpart has a Platonic basis in their theory of ideal reality, where material reality is a murky reflection of the ideal reality. Later Christian "philosophers" were essentially "sophhists" and not so much serious philosophers. Sophistry was much more interested in rhetoric, not so much in truth value.

DCH

Doug Shaver

There was probably nothing like what we know nowadays as Christian doctrine. That doesn't mean Paul didn't have a doctrine that he felt obliged to defend. He just didn't call it a doctrine. He called it a gospel.

Sheshbazzar

DC, I had not read your #12 post prior to my posting of #13, so although it may appear as though I was responding to your post, such was not the case.
Indeed, when I did read your post I was pleased to see that our views are quite similar on this matter.
I was generalizing about redaction's, the reference to "Latter "Paul"(s)" would be only in respect to such latter pseudonymous writer(s) reworking earlier Pauline writings regardless of when such redaction took place. And perhaps even the documents they were set on "correcting" and "improving", had already previously been so reworked. It is my view that the Pauline epistles are the work of many hands over a long period of time.

eta. The result being as you put it; I concur.

GakuseiDon

Yes, and I suspect that there were two (at least!) competing "philosophical" streams explaining the significance of Jesus's missing body: a Hellenized Jewish one, and a "Judaized" Roman one. IMHO the first came out of the Jerusalem Group and resulted in the Gospels, while the second was the Pauline Group and resulted in Gnosticism. Though eventually they merged in the Second Century, stitched together using Platonic concepts.

GakuseiDon

Yes, that's close to my own view as well (though I'm only an interested amateur in all this!) I think Paul would have been shocked at how Jesus was portrayed in the Gospels, with the resurrected Jesus having wounds still on show.

Steven Carr

Where does Paul even hint at a missing body, rather than a destroyed body?

Steven Carr

It is a quite orthodox Jewish standpoint.

Many Jews have said that alleged god would raise people as they are, complete with wounds.

But God would keep them alive and heal the wounds. 'I wound and I heal' were the proof-texts.

As you point out though, this was not the view of Paul,