Cege

Thank you for the translation. Does the context insure that physical bodies are being referred to, or is there wiggle room to imply something else?


Thanks again. I don't know of any passages that describe what Jesus was wearing during any of the appearances after his death. Angels at the tomb were described as wearing all white garments which assumedly were of some kind of 'heavenly' material rather than earthly material but that isn't spelled out, either.

I guess it would be scandalous if Jesus were to have appeared naked but clothing isn't described. The linen he was wrapped in when placed inside the tomb was left behind, according to the gospels. I think the writers would have assumed that a God who could appear inside locked rooms and disappear then reappear from place to place would be wearing some special God-clothes.

Steven Carr

It refers to the dead. Do all dead people have physical bodies?

Cege

They all did at the time they died, but I guess you mean do they have physical bodies after they die.

I don't think they do, but I sure can't prove it.

The way the Bible describes them, dead people have a type of body, like in the story of Lazaruz at the gate and the rich man. After death one was comfortable in a heavenly place and one was in discomfort in a hellish place, and there's talk of a finger in cool water and a tongue in hot agony.

1st century Palestinians seemed to have expected a type of body that dead people had in whatever place they ended up after death. (the NT has Jesus and Paul saying additionally that those after-death-bodies were neither male nor female)

Steven Carr

So they did not need a corpse to be reanimated in order to have a type of body?

Ben C Smith

That Paul is talking about bodies is not a point in dispute. He is contrasting a psychical body with a pneumatical body (15.44). The question is not: Is Paul talking about bodies? Rather, the question is, as Paul himself asks in 15.35: What kind of body?

I do not think that Paul harmonizes with the gospel of Luke.

That does not change the fact that Paul is talking about bodies.

I love to quote Paul saying Jesus became a life-giving spirit.

But the fact that Paul thinks Jesus became a life-giving spirit does not in any way change the fact that Paul is, as he expressly tells us over and over, talking about bodies.

That is correct (well, at least to a point, and only in certain gospels). But it does nothing against Paul talking about bodies.

Ben.

Steven Carr

Do you think that in Luke, Jesus is disabusing the disciples of the notion that his resurrected body is made of a material whose nature is such that it can pass through walls without a miracle having occurred?

Ben C Smith

So many twists and turns in that statement I am not sure what my yes or no would mean. Let me just say that I think Luke is emphasizing that the body was genuinely physical, genuinely the same body that was buried, and genuinely Jesus.

I do see a contradiction between the not flesh and blood of Paul and the flesh and bone of Luke.

However, Paul is certainly talking about bodies, and certainly thought that the risen Jesus had one. According to Paul, the natural body is made of flesh and blood; the spiritual body is made of... well, he does not say.

Ben.

Steven Carr

Not exactly Paul's fault.

Wasn't there a famous scientist who declared that we will never know what celestial bodies are made of, just a few years before spectroscopy was invented?

How could Paul know what material heavenly bodies were made out of?

Cege

A re-animated corpse would have it's same body from the time when it lived before, but assumedly restored to full health and full function. Lazaruz the friend of Jesus is an example, as are the others raised from the dead during Jesus' ministry.

The dead, in another world, would have different kinds of bodies (although similiar to the earthly ones), as Jesus described about the beggar Lazaruz and the rich man, and the bodies of Moses and Isaiah seen at the transfiguration. Jesus explained also that after death, in paradise, people would not marry implying perhaps a sexless body. One of the men crucified beside Jesus was told he'd seen Jesus that day, after their deaths, in paradise which also implies a body of some sort but not exactly like an earthly body.

I don't believe Paul said he knew what they were made of, but he seemed to base his belief about spiritual bodies on the stories he'd heard about Jesus after death, the vision of Jesus he saw on the road to Damascus, and perhaps after that, when he (Paul) was carried into some sort of "3rd heaven" place to receive further revelations from God/Jesus (II Cor 12).