John Kesler

Rather than thinking of "spirit" as a substance, think of it as a classification of beings. The author of Hebrews, for example, saw no incongruity in angels being "spirits" and having bodies.

The latter reference appears to refer to Genesis 18-19's stories about Abraham and Lot's hospitality to angels who appeared as men, and even ate food (18:8, 19:3).

Clivedurdle

in Sodom wasn't it? :devil1:

What was going on when Jacob wrestled with an angel? Didn't he hurt his hip?

Did God walk in the garden in the cool of the evening? Did Moses see God's backside?

Do not these examples and many many more show the writers anthropormophised the gods? Gave them flesh and human characteristics of anger, love, etc etc?

What conclusion does one therefore come to about what Paul is doing? He isn't doing that much different. It is like a jazz riff on pre existing ideas.

Is it not only another way of describing the relationships between humans and gods? Paul has the secret of how we can all be gods through the classic magical idea of copying.

Ben C Smith

I agree.

If all of this is just to highlight the familiar contradiction between Paul and Luke, I am there. Paul says that Jesus became a spirit and that the resurrection body has no flesh or blood; Luke has Jesus implying that he cannot be a spirit because he is indeed made of flesh and bones. These statements are, at the very least, in tension.

Here is an interesting sidenote. Jerome writes in On Famous Men 16, the chapter on Ignatius:

...et proprie ad Polycarpum, commendans illi Antiochensem ecclesiam, in qua et de evangelio quod nupe a me translatum est super persona Christi ponit testimonium dicens: Ego vero et post resurrectionem in carne eum vidi, et credo quai sit. et, quando venit ad Petrum et ad eos qui cum Petro erant, dixit eis: Ecce, palpate me, et videte quia non sum daemonium incorporale. et statim tetigerunt eum et crediderunt.

...and properly to Polycarp, commending the Antiochene church to him, in which [Ignatius] put testimony also of the gospel which was recently translated by me about the person of Christ, saying: I also truly saw him in the flesh after the resurrection, and believe that he is. And, when he came to Peter and to those who were with Peter, he said to them: Behold, handle me and see that I am not an incorporeal daemon. And immediately they touched him and believed.

The gospel recently translated by Jerome is the Nazoraean gospel, which Jerome calls the gospel according to the Hebrews. Jerome is claiming that Ignatius got the words incorporeal daemon from this apocryphal gospel.

Ben.

Clivedurdle

That cannot be correct. What is the Holy Spirit then, a classification of God or fully God?

Clivedurdle

Are they?

Or are they looking at something in different ways?

Can we define what Paul and Luke were attempting to do and why they came up with their solutions?

Is it a debate about what a resurrected body is like?

If so, are we looking at an evolution from a spiritual Christ to a fleshy and bloody Christ? Is the change from MJ to HJ recorded in the new testament?

Clivedurdle

Nor did Genesis or a myriad examples in the Bible!

Is there a misunderstanding of mythological here?

Hercules had a very interesting sex life. It is not a problem for Jesus to walk around Galilee, Arthur and Merlin wandered around Tintagel and Superman around Metropolis.

Clivedurdle

What are the dates of this and John 21?

Are these examples of the construction of orthodoxy?

GakuseiDon

It looks that way to me, also. But then the question is, what did Paul think that Jesus's resurrected body was? If Paul regarded it as an "incorporeal daemon" then that doesn't seem to warrant the attention he gives to it. A spirit leaves the body and flies to heaven? I'm not sure how common place such a belief was, but I wonder if that was ever described as a "resurrection".

To me, it seems to me that Paul's talk of "first fruits", different types of bodies, and how living bodies will be transformed suggests that something more than just a spirit leaving the body and going to heaven are involved in "resurrection".

Steven Carr

Jesus became a spirit who lives inside Christians.

Doug Shaver

They obviously are looking at something in different ways. And those ways are inconsistent.

Is it so improbable that two Christian writers would disagree with one another?