Joe Bloe

Huh? Why would a gentile of the time find a virgin birth story to be bizarre or to have no resonance? Pagan religions were full of stories of divine paternity. All sorts of people were allegedly born of virgins impregnated by gods. Perseus was the son of Danae impregnated by Zeus. Zeus also got it on with Semele to impregnate her with Dionysius. Stories went around about Augustus, Romulus, Plato, Alexander the Great, and others that their mothers were virgins and they had divine paternity.

It's the Jews who found this sort of stuff bizarre, and for whom it had no resonance. Why do you think Christianity caught on so well with the gentiles but was rejected by the Jews?

TedM

Paul is less clear about whether the kind of body was being questioned ('someone may ask'), but it is a reasonable question to think one would have, especially if those dying in Christ were rotting in their graves just like everyone had always done.

Paul refers to those who have died after Christ a number of times in the chapter. Verses 6, 18, 20, 23, 29 And he seems to place particular importance on the order of resurrection: Christ being the first "firstfruits", "then at his coming those who belong to Christ". He further specifies a mystery in verse 51 that "we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed", from "perishable to imperishable".

It looks to me like Paul may have been sensitive to concerns of believers regarding those that have died already--prior to the return of Christ. Their bodies didn't rise. Yet, those believers believed (or once did) that Christ rose. While Paul doesn't say "as we all know Christ's body is missing as evidence of his resurrection", he also doesn't say that they were claiming Christ's body was also lying in the grave, corrupting..

What Paul does say is that Christ was the first to rise and that he appeared to a whole bunch of people, lastly to him.

Why was Christ believed to have been the first to rise, if not because of a missing body? Would not the claim of a body have been a subject an early Christian such as Paul would have defended had such a claim existed?

As for the eating fish story, it's a confusing depiction: Jesus being hard to recognize, appearing to be physical yet able to disappear and walk through doors. Might it be that this depiction would not be helpful to those who were doubting not Christ's raising, but the raising of those who had already died and whose bodies were no doubt shown to have not been raised? Might it not be that Paul thought he had answered the two major concerns?:

1. why bodies of those who died still existed and were corrupting, (ie they would be raised later)

2. how their bodies would be raised (as imperishable, just as Christ's is already believed to be by them (ie no need for a fish story)

ted

The Bishop

Claim? Established? Isn't it patently obvious simply by reading the text?Can I just say I'm less than keen on the complete thought being broken up with questions that are essentially answered in the last part? "Have you any evidence? Have you any evidence? Have you any evidence?" No, at the end of the day I made a statement based on reasonable premises. Have you any evidence that the Jews did not so believe, or that the one identifiable Jew who wrote as if he did believe in it was an aberration of some kind?

I'm pretty sure a virgin birth significance is actually considerably pre-Christian, and is actually not particularly Hellenistic. I'm not saying it was an overall Jewish tenet, but some messianic Jews who were most familiar with the Greek Scriptures may have found Isaiah 7:14 significant. I think many people might agree that's a reasonable hypothesis. It requires significant evidence to the contrary to be ruled out of court. I hope I'm allowed to hypothesise here, a little at least.

Well, sure, three hundred years later, post-Jamnia, post-Constantine. What Jewish authorities were arguing long after the restoration of Hebrew as the principal source of devotion, cannot be said to give us an accurate view of what Hellenistic Jews of the first century thought.

Steven Carr

They were indeed irrelevant, as Paul had no interesting in showing that a resurrected Jesus walked the earth in a flesh and bones body.

The Bishop

Right. So, what's the argument about again? What are we trying to prove about Paul if he's silent about Gospel topics? Or if he believed Jesus's resurrection to have been a non-corporeal one? Is there some significance here that I'm missing from Chunk's original question or your extension of it?

Joe Bloe

Uh, no. Why would a messianic Jew from Judea/Galilee have written in Greek rather than Aramaic? Why would he rely on the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew scriptures rather than the original Hebrew? Along those lines, why would a former messianic Jew have used Greek ideas such as a virgin birth and divine parentage? Why would an alleged eyewitness have used Mark, not even alleged to be an eyewitness, as his main source? It is far from patently obvious that the author was a messianic Jew turned Christian. Yes, there's evidence and claims to point to which can support that conclusion, but the body of evidence we now have is not univocal, there's also evidence that points to other conclusions. Whatever your conclusion as to the authorship, and whatever is actually true as to the real authorship, I don't see how it can reasonably be stated that there is so little evidence against your interpretation that it is "patently obvious."

Vivisector

Good stuff, Ted.

Putting aside questions of textual integrity, 1 Cor seems to be Paul responding to specific questions/concerns that arose within the Corinthian church, including practical questions regarding resurrection. I agree with you that Christ's resurrection isn't being questioned, only the resurrection of others (e.g., Deimos died ten years ago, and he's still dead; and we know Aristarchus was eaten by a shark, and there's no way he's coming back - at least, we hope not). I get the idea that the Corinthians may have believed that Christ's resurrection was bodily and that, while they might have been able to believe this in a special case, they couldn't believe it in the general case because of the practical issues.

Wondering aloud (a bad habit on here), I wonder if the Corinthians maybe got the wrong idea about Christ's resurrection, thinking it to have been a bodily resurrection - either directly from Paul, or through further reflection on Paul's original preaching. Perhaps Paul's writings here are intended to clarify his original teaching, or they could be the result of his having further worked out his own thoughts on the topic. Either way, I don't think Paul ever believed that Jesus's original body was reanimated. I read Paul as saying that the Corinthians will eventually (if they'll just be patient for a couple of thousand years) be resurrected as Jesus was - through transformation of the old body into the new.

Personally, I don't believe Paul ever heard this story. Even if he had, I doubt he would have believed it at the time he wrote 1 Cor.

I think so, with the possible exception that (at least some of) the Corinthians might have believed Christ's resurrection to have been physical.

V.

Amaleq13

It is an inference that certainly can be supported by the author's relatively greater emphasis on Judaism but, to my knowledge, it has not been established anywhere near conclusively. As I suggested, however, even if we could establish that the author was Jewish that would neither suggest nor require that his apparent belief in the virgin birth of Jesus was shared by any other Jews with regard to the expected Messiah.

And that was the original claim: "...the issue of a virgin birth was significant to messianic Jews".

The burden is upon you to support the claim.

I would be more interested in the evidence that supports your conclusion than an expression of your confidence in it.

Your first statement seems to be somewhat of a step back from the original assertion in terms of the certainty with which it is presented and I agree that it is a reasonable hypothesis but, like all hypotheses, it requires supportive evidence to be shown to be likely true. That evidence is what I what I am requesting. If there is no such evidence, the hypothesis is simply an unsupported possibility rather than "ruled out of court".

What evidence exists to suggest that earlier Jews held the opposite view? Surely the existence of such an earlier opposing view would have been a wonderful counter-argument for both Justin and Jerome yet both men accept that this is the standard Jewish position on the subject.

Steven Carr

You would think so, wouldn’t you, especially if you are a Corinthian Christian who thinks a resurrection involves reassembling a decayed corpse. (Except for Jesus, who was a god and so could live after his death in spirit form.)



Paul calls people 'idiots' for asking that question.



To Paul, it is as reasonable as asking how a magician can produce an untorn card from your pocket, when you have seen him burn the card with a cigarette lighter.



Because the card that is produced is not the card which is burned. Any idiot should be able to work that out, which is why Paul calls the Corinthians fools.



Presumably, the Corinthians were worried that Jesus was so different from us that what applied to his resurrection could not happen to us.



Paul calls Jesus ‘the last Adam’, using typology, because he believed that we would share in the same sort of resurrection as Jesus, becoming a spirit and leaving his natural body behind.



If Paul had wanted to prove to the Corinthians that Jesus had not left his dead body behind, he would have used the stories of Jesus eating and being touched. After all, that is how Jesus himself proved that he had been resurrected (according to the Gospels)



Why would Paul be silent about the proofs that Jesus himself felt should be used as proof?







Because he 'appeared' to Paul in a vision, the way a man of Macedonia 'appeared' to Paul in a vision.



Did a body go missing from Macedonia when a man from Macedonia appeared to Paul?







Paul claims that if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.



Presumably he felt that if there was a natural body in grave, there was also a spiritual body.

Oh yes, I am always running into Christians who believe the stories of Jesus eating fish, being touched and appearing to the disciples, yet doubt that God will raise their own bodies.

Paul addresses this in 1 Thess. 4, and never calls people 'idiots' for worrying about it.

He uses entirely different arguments, so that can't have been the concern of the Corinthians.

They denied bodily resurrection. Hard to maintain that Jesus was bodily resurrected, and that bodily resurrection is impossible. And , if they had an example of an imperishable resurrection, leaving no body behind, why would they doubt that they too would be raised?

Have you ever met a convert to Christianity who maintains that Jesus was bodily resurrected, but that there will be no resurrection of the dead?

Paul responds by telling them that God will destroy both stomach and food (so no need for a fish story).

Paul also responds by telling them that there are different types of bodies. The natural comes first and then the spiritual.

So no need for Gospel stories where the body which leaves the tomb is identical to the body which enters the tomb, but now the laws are changed. It still has wounds, but the wounds are not fatal or harmful.

Gamera

First classical pagans didn't conceive these mythological impregnations as virgin births. They were impregnations from gods with human like attributes, including lust.

Second, a virgin birth was unimportant, even bizarre, to classical pagans because they had no doctrine of sin, or at least as sin as a consequent of birth.

Third, I agree many Hebrew speaking Jews might think a virgin birth bizarre, but not those who were part of the diaspora in Hellenized classic culture, since the Septuagint conceptualizes the messaiah, rightly or wrongly in translating the Hebrew, as the fruit of a virgin birth. The Septuagint was their creation, and presumably they choose to use parthenos to translate the less specific Hebrew. That's powerful evidence of a doctrine of virgin birth among Jews in the diaspora.