Gregg

Bernard, I don't think any Jesus Myther is going to agree with you that you "debunked" Doherty.

And I fail to see how the Jesus Myth position is "extreme." All it suggests is that Christianity started with a belief in a dying/rising savior god, similar to other dying/rising savior gods who no one asserts must have been real people once--then later someone wrote an allegorical story about this dying/rising savior, and a few decades after that people began mistaking this allegorical tale (and others based on it) for a biography.

What is "extreme" about this? I just don't understand.

luvluv

Steven Carr:

Heh. Sorry, I only know you from the EoG forums. But in looking over your profile it seems that you spend a lot of time here in BC&H, much more than myself, and it also appears that you know your stuff in this area.

I apologize to you and I retract my smart alecky statement.

luvluv

Bernard Muller:

Well, I didn't intend for this to be a discussion on the literal Ressurection. Rather, I'm told Wrignt presents a pretty scathing critique of any attempts to suggest that Paul (or any 1st century Jew) could have meant by the word "ressurection" anything other than a bodily ressurection. This is where I wanted to compare Wright's evidence with Doherty's, but it seems to have gotten away from me. Also, I am surprised that so few people have read any of Wright's books about the origin of Christianity, since they are probably the most scholarly treatment of the orthodox view. I thought quite a few of you would have read it, if only to attempt to refute it. Perhaps the length is prohibitive of such an endeavor.

General Question

As a side-note, how many of you are formally educated in Biblical Criticism or History, and how many of you have post-graduate degrees in either discipline? Just want to get a sense of who are the hobbyists (no offense) and who are the proffesionals. I don't visit this board very often so I wouldn't know, and I don't want to give anyone's opinion less (or more) weight than it merits.

Vinnie

I do believe Jesus' followers believed he rose from the dead and that he would return again. I do not believe they had the same view of Jesus as the author of the Gospel of Mark or as Paul. They all had common threads but they all had major differences.

I do believe it is certainly possible some of them believed in a spiritual resurrection as well. But some of my views are fluctuating right now. I am reading Maccoby. Was Payul really a Pharisee? You know, Josephus can be proved to habe given false claims about his religious orientation to bolster himself as well. That or he was practicing some kind of hitherto unknown math. There are a lot of issues about the Jerusalem church that are unknown.

I think some (like Paul) had visions. The rest developed from there. I deny the empty tomb story. The original apostles never advocated such a notion. Some may have believed in a bodily rez others a spiritual. At any case, the body was buried in a shallow grave//left for the dogs.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Summary of Wright:

Toto's Response: That's a BIG leap of faith right there, given that Mark was written at the earliest around the time of the destruction of the Temple and the scattering or slaughter of any eyewitnesses.


From my MArk article:

The Gospel material cannot be compared to folk literature in that it was not transmitted orally for a long enough duration. Unlike true folk literature, the Gospels are second and third generation sources which make use of earlier (oral and written) sources. "

This also fails to appreciate how Gospel material developed.

Also, Wright is wrong in his evaluation. Its simply incabable of being demonstrated. Neither can it be demonstrated that the church was ridiculously creative with the synoptic material (not counting passion). John is another matter.

The correct form critical assessment is we don't know. In general, the material was altered but it was not subject to reckless abandon.

Vinnie

Peter Kirby

I have read the complete text of Wright's The New Testament and the People of God. Unfortunately, it was a paperback and the spine broke, so I can't sell it. I have purchased his resurrection book (in hardback). The earliest that I will be able to read it is this summer. Finding time is a big problem.

If we want to have a discussion of "Spiritual vs. Physical" interpretations of resurrection language in the first century, I suggest that we start a new thread. I will post some links to material that anyone can read to get it started.

best,
Peter Kirby

Vorkosigan

Damn! Sure wish I had time to check into this thread! Just too busy right now, probably won't be back here for a while, maybe not until summer.

Here is a page of NTWright mania from some poor bastard who is obviously very far gone.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~kbush/wrightpage.html

All I can say, luv, is the Wright is simply a more scholarly version of Josh McDowell, and it is hard to take him seriously. I can think of lots of 700 page books I'd rather spend time with than Wright; in fact, Vols 2 and 3 of A Marginal Jew just arrived today.....

The site above has a long cite of the Resurrection Apologia...

http://home.hiwaay.net/~kbush/Wright_RSG.txt

For my own opinion, it's hard to read that, and imagine that I am interacting with a scholarly mind that is interested in generating a robust and credible explanation of the origins of Christianity.

I'd love to say more, but I am posting in ten minutes between classes. I probably won't even be able to answer this for a couple of weeks. Not being able to post here is simply pure torture. ARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!

Vorkosigan

Steven Carr

So when the Witch of Endor raised Samuel from the grave, Samuel was bodily present?

Wright shows that a resurrection meant a bodily resurrection, by denying that any other type of resurrection is a resurrection.

A variant of the No True Scotsman Fallacy.

In any case, Paul says clearly that our new body is already in Heaven

2 Thess. 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.

How anybody can interpret this to mean that resurrected people will not have a body is beyond me. Paul clearly says that they will.

Gregg

Of course Paul believed in a bodily resurrection. Please show me where Doherty suggests otherwise. It's very frustrating when people raise objections to arguments that Doherty doesn't even make.

If Christians can believe in the Trinity--three persons mystically coexisting in one person--then why couldn't Paul believe in a dying/rising savior god who mystically "became flesh" or "took on the likeness of flesh" while remaining in a spiritual dimension? Why couldn't he believe that this mystical "bodily death" and resurrection was sufficient for effecting the resurrection and transformation of human bodies? Why must literalism ("If he said flesh and a body, he must mean a real body that walked around on Earth!") apply in this instance?

This is the crux of the whole thing, IMO. It's hard for the 21st century mind--even 21st century minds who still accept strange, mystical things like the Trinity, substitionary atonement, and the like--to grasp the idea that Paul could believe in a being who mystically "became flesh" without actually becoming a person who walked on Earth.

Steven Carr

Wright writes :-
'This 'transphysicality' would represent a theo-
logical view of new humanity for which Jewish belief in resurrection had in some ways prepared the ground, but which goes beyond anything we find in non-Christian Jewish texts of the period.'

I thought Wright was claiming that we can tell what Paul thought Jesus would be resurrected as (bodily, ghostly, etc) by looking at Jewish texts to see what 'resurrection' meant. Luvluv seemed to be implying that.

Now we find we cannot do that, as the Christian conception of resurrection was different.

So what does examining Jewish ideas of resurrection tell us about what Christians thought a resurrection could be?

And what is 'transphysicality'? Does Wright want to claim a physical body when it suits him, and deny it when it does not?

Wright continues 'Furthermore, had they been attempting to speak of continuity and discontinuity between the present body and the risen one within the framework of biblical reflection common to mainstream first-century Judaism, they could have reached for an obvious solution, based on Daniel 12: while the
present body remains non-luminous, they could have had the risen body shining like a star.'

But Jesus could glow in the dark BEFORE the resurrection. Why does Wright say the present body remains non-luminous?

Luke 9:30 says 'Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus.'

Wright says the resurrection appearances have to do with recognition and non-recognition.

But it is very easy to recognise a resurrected body. It appears in glorious splendour, and the person can be recognised straight away, even if the observers have never seen the person before in there life.

Wright talks about the appearances being in Galilee in one Gospel and in Jerusalem in another and then says

'I suggest in fact, that the stories must be regarded as early, certainly well before Paul; and that, when placed side by side, they tell a tale which. despite the multiple surface inconsistencies, succeeds in hanging together.'

How can placing the appearances in Galilee, while another evangelist has Jesus commanding no trip to Galilee be a 'surface inconstincy', and how can these stories 'succeed in hanging together.'?