James Brown

No, I mean an ordinary man who resembled Jesus walked around and said, "Hey, guys, it's me, alive and all. Cool, huh?" Meanwhile, the body of the actual Jesus was rotting away somewhere.

Wouldn't that explain why so many of the post-crucifixion appearances involve a case of mistaken identity?

mountainman

Now I get your drift James A. Thanks Yalla.
YES. It is indeed an alternative and a then-typical explanation.
Gods were commonly thought of as travelling-about humans in disguise.
And the Jesus god could not be thought of (written about) outside the context of the times,

Cege

I don't think human form is the question at all. It's that the human form Jesus reportedly took after resurrection didn't look like the human form of Jesus before resurrection. Or maybe just his face is the issue.

The travelers in Luke, though, didn't recognize Jesus by his face or by his voice. He talked with them for a while but they didn't recognize him until they sat down to dinner and broke bread.

The author Luke goes on in Acts to describe the face of Stephen just before he was stoned as like "the face of an angel". Jesus doesn't get a description like that in the gospels; he just isn't recognized immediately by people who had known him well.

I think the authors wanted to emphasize that Jesus was in a glorified body of some sort rather than just a plain old body brought back to life. They wanted to convey a sense of transformation and mysterious new abilities (the ability to appear and disappear being foremost among them).

braces_for_impact

I should think it's obvious.


He regenerated. Duh.

Transient

and the transfiguration was him hopping into his tardis.

Russellonius

Because it was ideological opponents of Jesus and his disciples who wrote the story. It reflects that there was resistance to the myth on the part of the disciples that needed to be overcome.

Chili

I think they are just having fun with the readers and really want to tell us that his disciples would recognize him because they were in the upper room with him but the rest was not. Our voice will be the same in heaven as on earth because it is conventional. For the eyes to be opened to see him they must be told because we see with look with our eyes but see with our mind.

ChristMyth

I always assumed that the authors were trying to say something about the new body that would be resurrected at the end time. Jesus was the first to be resurrected, throwing off the old flesh and putting on a new form that was "Jesus" and "not Jesus" at the same time. Eventually, all those who followed him would do the same.

That being said, I'm not sure that gMark's quote should be counted with the rest since it's thought to be added at a later date. How independent should we consider it?

mountainman

Just a small quibble with the "literary facts":
Jesus was not the first to be resurrected.
Others who experienced prior resurrection include ...

1) Elisha the prophet (2 Kgs. 4.32-35),
2) Lazarus also rose before Jesus’ resurrection (John 11:43f.),
3) in the time of the Passion “many bodies of those who had fallen asleep” were raised (Matt. 27.52f.)

How different did the HJ? look to the Gnostics ?

The Gospel of Nicodemus (incorporating the Acts of Pilate) provides
an extremely vivid narrative of the resurrection event, descent into hell, etc.
In fact two of the raised many bodies in the time of the passion are stated to have authored this Gnostic narrative.

We have the Gospel of Peter describing Jesus being walking away from the tomb with the support of two gigantic figures who's heads reached to the heaven, whereas Jesus's head went above the heaven. The Cross ambled along after this trio and talked to the Boss - in this case God.

In the Acts of John Jesus does not leave footprints in the sand.
John cannot seem to touch Jesus' physical body.

In The Acts of Andrew and Matthew we have the Intrepid Travels of the Apostles to the Land of the Cannibals. Welcome Aboard !!! Why does Jesus drive a Water Taxi ?

In The Letter of Peter to Philip (NHC 8.2) the risen Jesus speaks through a massive pyrotechic display above the Mount of Olives, and asks the apostles why TF are they bothering him AGAIN?


The gnostics appear to have had Jesus appear differently after the resurrection by writing him into the gnostic gospels and acts in a huge variety of forms and characters. Photius summarises this:

Chili

To me it is obvious that heaven is a state of mind and that the entire event takes place in the mind of the man called Joseph who was regenerated in his mind where the transformation of water into wine takes place, to say that the first six days wherein knowledge was set aside into water so that dry land was created for us to walk on while in oblivion is now transformed into wine that is ours to consume, if you wish, in that it is served for us to have direct access to it, with 'it' being the celestial sea or reign of God [already] inside us.
.

IOW, in the Cana event that is totally absent in Matthew where Herod killed the inner child instead of exposing it to the New World that until now was the netherworld or soul or subconscuious mind, Jesus here was exposed to his soul nature where he encountered his own lineage for up to 1000 years = the reign of God in him.

That the inner child would die in Matthew is foreshadowed already with the absent manger and swaddling clothes that protected and nourished the inner child of Joseph who so had no choice but bugger off to Egypt again as if it was an event wherein he was ran over by the Q-train that he could not handle, much like "the horror' of Camus in "Heart of Africa," saying 'wtf was that' and hence he was not home when the magi arrive and back to Egypt (read conscious mind) he goes for protection where he was dreaming again and now goes to Galilee (and not Israel) where he settled in a town called Nazareth "so it can be said that he was a Nazorean" (but really was not a God ordained Nazaroid)

Now please notice that Mattew's Jesus was not "driven by the spirit" to go to Galilee as Luke's Jesus was in 4:14 but instead was led there by the 'angel of light' as dreamer without a mandate (note that the Lord has no angels but Lucifer).

Then we go to the baptism where John does not want to baptise Jesus because that is totally backwards as John suggested in that the spirit is greater than water (water into wine instead of wine into water), which then is why the dove only hovered over Jesus in Matthew instead of descend on him as in Luke (cf. Mt.3:16 and Lk. 3:22. In this the foreshadow is found that reading 'bible passages' will be needed to keep Matthew's Jesus afloat who so never will be able to walk on water in the New Jerusalem (go by his intuition that has become as solid as rock with the sea gone in the New World), and so it is that back to Galilee he goes after he was raised to be a wolf there needed to nurse 'the lamb of God' in others.

Not sure if I am right in this but from the above it can be said that we do not even know now who this Jesus was they did not recognize then.