Steven Carr

I see it did not take too long for Jake O'Connell to start rewriting the Bible.

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...oconnell2.html

'This is of course reminiscent of 1 Corinthians 15:54, where Paul says that the mortal corruptible preresurrection body must "put on" the incorruptible immortal resurrection body. '

No. 1 Corinthians 15:54 has no mention of 'body'. O'Connell just made that up.

Here is the text 'When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."

' Paul knows that though his present body may die, he can look forward to receiving the resurrection body (5:1).'

Here is 2 Corinthians 5:1 'Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.'

It says 'destroyed', not just 'die'.

I guess this is how Christian apologists are forced to debate. If the Bible does not say what they want it to say, they are forced to change what the Bible says to make it support their arguments.

So an easy victory for Richard Carrier already, and we have only gone 2 rounds.

It is beyond me why O'Connell thinks Paul thought of Jesus as a human set of nested Russian dolls, with an immortal body put on top of a corruptible body.

What a horrible image!

O'Connell says 'Ideally, he does not want to ever experience a bodiless state in heaven, but wants to go straight from the preresurrection body to the resurrection body'

You go FROM one body TO another body?

And O'Connell claims the idea that there is only ever one body?

O'Connell says 'Also, 2 Baruch 49-51 discusses at some length how the body will be transformed at the resurrection.'

Here is what 2 Baruch says. Notice the great length of the discussion of the transformation 'at the resurrection'

'For the earth shall then assuredly restore the dead,
Which it now receives, in order to preserve them
It shall make no change in their form,But as it has received, so shall it restore them, And as I delivered them unto it, so also shall it raise them.'

'It shall make no change in their form' must be talking about a transformation, in O'Connell's grasp of the passage.

The transformation takes place in Baruch AFTER the resurrection, not at the resurrection.

O'CONNELL
As for (3), Paul's failure to mention a resurrection of the flesh at most suggests that he thinks the flesh will be transformed at the resurrection so that it is no longer flesh (if it even suggests that), and a transformation of the flesh is still 1BT.

CARR
'No longer flesh'? But Jesus said the body was flesh and bone.