Steven Carr

Dear Mrs. Sieghart,
This email is also being published on the forum at Internet Infidels here at
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/

In your Thursday, 14/07/2005 column in the London Times, you praise the Bishop of Durham’s book ‘The Resurrection of the Son of God.’

This is certainly a tour de force. The Gospels say that the body which came out of the ground is the body that went into the ground, complete with wounds. The Gospels deny that the resurrected Jesus was a spirit. They maintain that flesh and blood did inherit the kingdom of God.

Wright spends many, many words making Paul say the same thing. No mean task when Paul says ‘And as for what you sow, you do not plant the body that is to be…’ Paul says ‘the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.’ Paul says ‘Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.’

Wright has to turn ‘a life-giving spirit’ into flesh, and empty it of any reference to real spirit, and , for good measure, he then has to empty Paul’s ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit’ of any reference to real flesh.

Wright also has to have Paul believing that Jesus was God made Flesh while on earth, yet only had a spiritual body after the resurrection. How much more spiritual can a body be than one which houses God Himself?

You praise Wright’s book as being lucid. Most of us find the verbal gymnastics in Wright’s books quite opaque.

However, there are theology writers who write clearly and do not have to perform semantic legerdemain to make writers say what a Bishop of Durham has committed himself to believing.

May I recommend ‘The Empty Tomb – Jesus Beyond the Grave’ edited by Robert Price and Jeffery Jay Lowder?

There are many good essays in the collection, but in my opinion there are three stand-outs.

Richard Carrier is a much sought after historian, speaker and debater. In his essay ‘The Spiritual Body of Christ’, he refutes Wright’s arguments with pellucid prose. He points out the absurdity of converted Christians like the Corinthians questioning the nature of the resurrected body of Christ, if Gospel stories were circulating of Jesus telling people exactly what his body was like. Carrier points out that it makes little sense that Paul knew of the words of Jesus , (A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have), and never use the words of his Lord and Saviour when describing the resurrected Jesus.

One of Richard’s essays on the Resurrection may be read here at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...n/lecture.html

Jeffery Jay Lowder is the cofounder of Internet Infidels and in his essay ‘Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb Story’, he surveys the main arguments put forward for the historicity of the empty tomb, and finds them wanting. It is an excellent essay and well worth reading.

Peter Kirby is a young man of astonishing intellect and energy. He has written a masterful essay ‘The Case Against the Empty Tomb’, which shows that there is very little evidence that the Gospel stories of women visiting an empty tomb are true. A version may be read here at http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...mb/index.shtml

I’m sure your readers will find ‘The Empty Tomb’ a much more persuasive and clear book on theology than N.T.Wright’s ‘Resurrection’ and one that does more justice to the Biblical text.

Best wishes,
Steven Carr

Toto

Sieghart's comments are here (I don't know for how long) tucked in between a plea to come to London - it's really quite safe and you're more likely to die in an auto accident on the way to the airport - and a note on buying £6 T-shirts at Marks and Spenser, where she wisely advises those merchants to "segregate its clothes so that middle-aged, sensible ladies who don’t care about fashion shop in one corner and young women who do care shop in another, [otherwise] both groups are going to feel that their tastes are being polluted by the other."

You can see why Ms. Sieghart was recruited to be on a lay committee to give an award for the best theological writing, although she couldn't understand the book that the professional theologians preferred - it just went over her head. But Tom Wright's book was

"Only plausible explanation"???

You can send your comments to www.timesonline.co.uk/debate

Steven Carr

Here is the very competition that the Bishop of Durham won
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.or...ses/050713.htm

www.michaelramseyprize.org.uk

One of the other judges was P.D. James - a well known (and excellent) writer of murder mystery crime novels.

The organisers invite comment and reflection on the winning book
at
http://www.michaelramseyprize.org.uk/bb/

Steven Carr

Christians believed about the resurrection that the old body would decay and a new body would form.

Clement writing to the Corinthians , says the Phoenix is a metaphor for the resurrection, and he explicitly says that the new Phoenix takes the old bones away with it.

The Corinthians could not have taken Paul to mean that the body which came out of the ground was the body which went in, or that there were no old bones of Jesus , when people writing to them explicitly say the opposite.

Wright, of course, denies that this was a Christian view.On page 463, he writes ' or a Stoic worldview in which the present world would dissolve into fire and be reborn, phoenix-like,....' apparently unware that 'phoenix-like' is exactly how Christians viewed the resurrection. 'Phoenix-like' was a Christian view, not just a Stoic view.

And on page 482, he mentions Clement's use of the Phoenix,but quite 'forgets' to tell his readers how Clement uses the Phoenix.


This is because it trashes his contention that Christians viewed a resurrected body as an old body transformed, while Clement explicitly says that the old body decays and is not any part of the new Pheonix (which carries away the old bones,and disposes of them)

' This is the only one of its kind, and lives five hundred years. And when the time of its dissolution draws near that it must die, it builds itself a nest of frankincense, and myrrh, and other spices, into which, when the time is fulfilled, it enters and dies. But as the flesh decays a certain kind of worm is produced, which, being nourished by the juices of the dead bird, brings forth feathers. Then, when it has acquired strength, it takes up that nest in which are the bones of its parent, and bearing these it passes from the land of Arabia into Egypt, to the city called Heliopolis. And, in open day, flying in the sight of all men, it places them on the altar of the sun, and having done this, hastens back to its former abode.'

andrewcriddle

IMO Clement is using the Phoenix as an analogy of Christian resurrection, not as a detailed blueprint. (In any case the new Phoenix appears continuous with the flesh of the old Phoenix even though not with its bones.)

Clement's support of the resurrection from the Septuagint of Job 19:26 at least suggests that Clement believed in the resurrection of the original body.

Andrew Criddle

Steven Carr

And your opinion of what Clement is using the Phoenix for counts for what exactly?

When doing so, Clement goes into remarkable detail about how a resurrection happens. What reason is there other than he wants to give details about how a resurrection happens?

Clement may well have had contradictory idea about what a resurrection was. After all he had nothing to go on. Just as Paul has to resort to theory about a resurrection when he was supposed to have had details given to him of exactly what a resurrected body looked like.

andrewcriddle

At least some of the details given by Clement seem most unlikely to be directly relevant to Christian resurrection eg depositing the bones from one's old body at the altar of the sun in Heliopolis.

Clement is a verbose writer with a tendency to bring in irrelevant detail. If the detail here serves a purpose the most obvious is to give verisimilitude. The piling up of details about how exactly the Phoenix is reborn serves to convince his audience that this is genuine natural history and not legend.

Andrew Criddle

Steven Carr

The depositing of the old bones would be highly relevant as a metaphor of how the old body is no longer needed, surely.

And why does Wright not quote the passage when he says that Clement's use of the Phoenix supports his view of what Christians thought of the resurrection - indeed he virtually denies that there were any other views than the ones he believes.

Hard to believe there were no other views of a resurrection, when apparently many people thought of Jesus as Jeremiah or Elijah returned from the grave - apparently well ahead of the general resurrection and not to a glorious incorruptible body.

Steven Carr

You do seem to be right, as Clement wants to assure his readers that the story is true, and witnessed by priests.

It is intriguing that when Clement wants proof of a resurrection, he points out that the old bones were seen.

He doesn't point to an empty nest of the Phoenix.

How could this be if people were using the empty tomb as a proof of a resurrection?

Steven Carr

Discussion has now been closed.

There wasn't much discussion was there?