Transient

You are missing the whole point.
It is the persons brain cells and memories etc etc that are the important and difficult things in reconstructing a person, not the rotten flesh and silly old bones. Don't try to tell me that some old rotten flesh and crumpled bones are of any use in reconstructing memories etc.
Which is easier, taking a copy of a persons complete brain or their silly bone structure just before death?
There is no reason why a god of such power would need an old body and if he did then heaven help all those poor old cremated souls lol.
It is so stupid it is totally ridiculous.
And it has nothing to do with all that garbage about spiritual appearances etc.
The people did not need to see an empty tomb - that could mean anything - they need to see the risen "Jesus". The empty tomb was an mistake in the plot like there is usually in most Hollywood films - authors make mistakes.

Cege

Perhaps I can add to everyone's confusion. In the OT, Samuel dies, then appears up from the earth before Saul when summoned by a witch, then disappears back into the earth (Sheol?). Samuel was recognizable in form and by clothing, and he could speak in an understandable language.

As for why a god would need a body to do a resurrection, the God of the Bible is described as operating according to his "own" ways, not in ways understandable by man. Obviously that's an out, when logic and explanations fail, but there it is.

Transient

I am not coming from a perspective that assumes that the OT or NT is necessarily true or that it conveys the methods or attributes of a real god.
Again I say - why would a god need old bones when he has to do a complete brain reconstruct which cannot be done from bones?

Petergdi

Maybe, but how exactly is it "stupid" for first century Jews not to have been taught the same things that you were taught about the human brain?

If you want to convince someone of something, you have to do it in terms that will fit with what they already believe about the world. So if the culture understands a missing body to be an essential part of a resurrection story, the body had better be missing.

Peter.

Transient

So you are trying to say that a real god just emptied the tomb to help the poor people understand that their "Jesus" had really risen?
That is not logical. For a start it would have been a great time to hammer home the reality that a god does not need old bones to do a brain reconstruct and in fact it would have been very reassuring to those that may have loved ones die without many bones left.
As an aside, how many bones does said god need and in what condition.
Follow that line of reasoning for a while and you will see the stupidity of the stories and their authors. Those authors were just humans who made mistakes in their story lines that their generation would not have been aware of.

Transient

maybe "stupid" is not the word I should use but instead read "deceiptful" because presumably they intended their readers to believe their stories as real events.
I have no problem with authors writing stuff as fiction but take offence at authors trying to pass off fiction as reality.

Petergdi

Why do you think God should communicate knowledge this way?

I don't think such a thing has ever happened (God communicating knowledge about nature through any method but the study of nature) and I fail to see how it would be a good thing.

Peter.

aa5874

But over 1700 years ago the Church writers used the supposed creation of Adam to claim that God did NOT need an actual body for resurrection.

As in the case where a dead body was digested by animals, where a dead body was digested by fish and then the fish was eaten by another man, or when a body is dissolved by chemical agents or burnt to ashes.

This is found in the writings of Athenagoras of Athens "On the Resurrection of the Dead" 3 Based on Athenagoras, God perhaps only needs to know your name and that you died. God supposedly has the power to re-create DISSOLVED BODIES using the ELEMENTS as was done with ADAM.

Cege

Resurrecting a complete brain, minus the body (old bones and all), would presumably not be nearly as impressive as resurrecting the complete body (old bones and all) with the complete brain in operation.

Transient

So it is obvious anyway that the old bones and rotten flesh are completely unnecessary for the resurrection of a body because the poor old authors of those fictional stories didn't realize that the brain was going to be the difficult part and there was nothing left of that lol.
Conclusion: the gospels are fiction written by authors that may have set out to mislead their readers but in doing so made errors that are obvious these days. So all the discussions on whether the tomb was empty, whether guards were posted etc are all red herrings and irrelevant.