Gamera

But it does. We have a preChristian, Jewish translation of a arguably messianic passage that uses a word that arguably means "virgin," when the original Hebrew arguably did not. Then -- apparently coincidently in your mind -- Christianity, which was predominately Jewish in its early make-up, expresses the notion of the virgin birth.

Now you can disagree with this evidence, but you can't say it isn't evidence. It appears to be pretty convincing to me.

The evidence is as set forth above.

No you cited later Christian writers silence on the the issue as positive evidence for the proposition the 1st century Jewish messianic thought did NOT include a strain involving virgin birth. I challenged you to make the connection -- i.e., show evidence that later Christian writers would be in a position to know anything about 1st century Jewish messianic thought. You haven't evinced any evidence to date. So I think its fair to reject that argument.

Again, a timing marker requires a mark, i.e., a sign, as Isaiah calls it. What kind of sign is the birth of a kid by a young woman. It happens every day. Sorry, this is perhaps the weakest argument you can make on the issue. Again, tell us WHAT IS THE SIGN Isaiah refers to?

Amaleq13

We have a pre-Christian passage that describes a prophecy that will be fulfilled by the time a young woman's unborn child reaches the age of reason and we have a late 1st century story re-written by a Christian which interprets that passage as a messianic prophecy of a miraculous virgin birth.

We have no evidence that any messianic Jews understood this passage to be describing this as a miraculous birth from a virgin.

We have 2nd century evidence that Jews rejected this Christian interpretation.

You have, as I've already noted, nothing to support your assertion except speculative possibilities.

Fine. It was a secondary line of thought that changes nothing. You still lack any evidence to support your assertion.

Again, Diogenes has answered this question in the appropriate thread.

TedM

If I may butt in and respond to Steven's last post regarding 1 Cor 15 and dead bodies rising.....

We don't know from the passage that anyone asked what the body would be like, though we know how Paul feels about the question.

It may be as simple as this: Some people questioned why there was no evidence of resurrection among those who had died. They may have expected people to come to life and walk around the same way they had heard that Jesus had, or for their bodies to disappear the same way Jesus' had. This may be why Paul seems to have been stressing--both before and after the 'what is the body like' issue, the idea that resurrection for believers would occur in the future.

Or simply that they were worried because what applied to his resurrection HADN'T applied to their fellow believers who had died.

Or, ..the same sort of resurrection as Jesus, one in which his body became imperishable. Paul never says Jesus left his natural body behind. He does say Jesus became a life-giving spirit, but he also says that what is mortal will 'put on' what is imperishable, and that there will be a spiritual 'body'.

He also says in Rom 6:4 that believers will ALSO WALK in newness of life as Jesus did after his resurrection. Rom 8:11 says that "he (God) who raised Christ Jesus from teh dead will give life to your mortal bodies ALSO". These verses MAY be implying that Paul believed Jesus' mortal body had been raised from the dead--'putting on' what is imperishable.


I don't see a reason for Paul to have to prove that Jesus had not left his dead body behind since they already believed he had been raised.


But why Christ, a man who had been crucified? And why does Paul phrase it the way he does--Christ (the man) was "raised from the dead", instead of something more like "Christ's spirit raised up from out of his body"?


I don't think Paul is specifically referring to Jesus' body here.


Honestly, the story about the fish and wounds never meant much to me in my Christian days. I always have thought of the resurrection in terms of my spirit.


What wasn't the Corinthian's concern? That the bodies were not raised? Paul's answer IS similar to both groups: Christ was raised first and upon his return those who died will be raised, and those on earth will join them.




Maybe they denied bodily resurrection, but it isn't hard to maintain if they saw Jesus as different from those rotting in their graves. Why are you so sure about what they believed with regard to Jesus' resurrection?


That's easy. IF they never saw Jesus' corpse but did see the rotting bodies of prior believers, it only makes sense that they would question bodily resurrection for prior believers.


If you mean "no bodily resurrection of the dead", I'd say there are many. Probably many believe that Jesus' bodily resurrection was more to prove that he was resurrected to others than to demonstrate the kind of body one will have.


This is no problem if Paul also believed that Jesus' bodily resurrection was more to prove that he was resurrected to others than to demonstrate the kind of body one will have. Why should Paul or anyone else assume that the resurrected body of Jesus as shown in the gospels is the same as believers' will have? I always was taught that the important thing is that my 'soul' would live forever. Much the same as Paul's emphasis on the imperishable.


Exactly. Paul had no need to tell the Gospel stories about Jesus' resurrected body because the main point to Christians is that resurrection means eternal life--not that we get to eat and look at old scars for eternity.



In 1 Cor 15, Paul stresses the following:

1. Jesus was resurrected first
2. Believers will be resurrected in the future
3. The resurrected body will be imperishable

His response is consistent with the idea that the Corinthians believed Jesus had been bodily resurrected. Paul's silence with regard to the fish and wounds is consistent with the idea that Paul didn't care one way or another whether Jesus' body was able to digest fish.

I see no need to see a glaring Gospel silence with regard to the kind of body that will exist in resurrection because

1. it is not even clear that the Corinthians were asking that question
and
2. Paul makes it clear that his main concern about the resurrected body is that it will be imperishable/eternal, and with God and fellow believers. This viewpoint/priority is common among Christians even today, and this viewpoint is not inconsistent with the resurrected body of Jesus as described in the Gospels.

This fish and wounds are simply unimportant details.

ted

Steven Carr

Well, clearly it *was* what they were saying , or else Paul would never have raised it.


They were doubting *any* resurrection, present or future. Paul has to assure them that the dead were not lost.

You are quite right that there was something about the resurrection of Jesus which made the churches in Thessalonika and Corinth doubt that their dead comrades would be resurrected.

Paul could easily have used Ezekiel 37, or Daniel 12:2 or Isaiah 26:19.

But he is silent.

He is also silent about how Jesus 'proved' the resurrection.



Paul never says that mortal bodies will 'put on' what is imperishable.

Nor does a corpse 'put on' imperishability. That implies that something is on top of something. That there is a corpse underneath something. Nobody has read the Gospel stories and said that the corpse of Jesus put something on.

When the disciples put on the Holy Spirit, they didn't. They received the Holy Spirit. They didn't put it on. Nobody has ever used a 'put on' analogy for how the disciples received the Holy Spirit, because it entered *into* them.

By 'put on', Paul explains in 2 Cor. 5, that we will shed the present body and put on a new body.

It is so natural to take Paul's words that way. Take the Gnostic work 'Treatise on the resurrection' - ' He transformed himself into an imperishable Aeon and raised himself up, having swallowed the visible by the invisible....'

This is the phrase used in Paul where the mortal is 'swallowed up' The Greek word is 'katapino' - drunk down, consumed to the last drop, devoured.

Has anybody ever said that when Jesus rose from the grave, in his flesh and bones body, with wounds, that what had been motral about him was now consumed to the last drop?

The Gnostic work 'The Gospel of Truth' also uses Paul - 'Having divested himself of these perishable rags, he clothed himself in incorruptibility, which no one could possibly take from him.'

What else can you take from a clothing metaphor and a 'put on' phrase, apart from Jesus divesting himself of his mortal body and 'putting on' an incorrpuptible body?




Romans 8:11 is about our present state, not the resurrection. As far as Paul is concerned, without the spirit of Christ entering us, we are dead men walking.

Of course, how Paul thinks the spirit of Christ can be locked up in an immortal, physical body and still enter us is a big problem for people who teach that Paul said Jesus spirit was in a physical body.

Perhaps the physical body of Christ was vacant, lying motionless, while his spirit left his body to enter us.

People are so used to Paul talking about receiving the spirit of Christ and being in Christ that they don't realise that , at the same time, Paul is supposed to be teaching about a Christ localised in a physical body. He clearly can't be.

The resurrection stories have Jesus entering locked rooms and covering big distances very quickly, but not even they have Jesus in more than one place at once. Bodies just can't do that.

Gamera

But we do -- the existence of the concept in early Christianity which was predominantly made up a Christian Jews who considered themselves Jews.

Not surprisingly since Christianity had by then diverged from Judaism and the two had become hostile to one another. Indeed, the fact the Judaism ultimately went out of its way to reject a Christian notion suggest it was not merely a Christian notion, but one that existed in Judaism in some form or other, and needed to stamped out by the religious authorities.

Anything is possible. That's not evidence. What is evidence is the existence of the doctrine in the early Christian Church which was predominantly Jewish made up of people who thought of themselves as Jews. Under your scenario the concept of the virgin birth just suddenly popped up out of nowhere in Christian communities. In my scenario, it has a provenance, coming out of Jewish messianic thought. Let the reader decide which is more likely.

Gamera

Of course your premise is false. Jesus had no desire to prove his resurrection to anybody except the original apostels. His very point in offering his body for examination to Thomas was that the Apostle's beleif, being based on evidence, will be inferior to those who believe through the gospel message and not "proof" (obviously God could prove Jesus' resurrection tomorrow if he wanted, but faith is the core of gospel, not proof)

John 20:
Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." 30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.

This passage rebuts your premise that the business with the wounds was Jesus' way of "proving" his resurrection. The exact opposite was true, as the passage shows. So Paul doesn't mention an incident that Jesus himself says is an inferior way of having faith. And somehow you blame him for that.

Julian

The point here is to differentiate the christians in general and Paul in particular from the dangerous criminal movements and insurrectionists. The Greek issue is just a story hook to make the main point. Not handled very well by the author since The Egyptian would obviously have been able to speak Greek and any Roman who knew of him would have known this. It is a silly passage but the point it makes is historically interesting.

Besides, Greek was common in Egypt.

Julian

mithy73

That's one interpretation. Another is that it was his assertion that he was from Tarsus that answered the query, not the assertion that he was a Jew. I think it's reasonable to presume that Tarsus would have been far more Hellenized than Judaea, owing to their respective geographical locations.

Steven Carr

Just incredible.

Remember the churches in Thessalonika and Corinth already believed in the resurrection of Jesus.

What they did not believe was their own resurrection, because they thought dead bodies remained dead.

Paul assures them that the dead are not lost (so those churches did not believe that the dead lived on in spirit form), and not to worry about corpses, as the dead will raise again in a spiritual body. He tells the Corinthians the natural body is just a seed which dies.

They will become like the last Adam, 'a life-giving spirit'.

So Paul should have used Jesus proof of the general resurrection in Matthew 22

31But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."

Presumably the Thessalonikans and Corinthians had never heard Jesus say that, because they believed the dead were lost.

And if Paul wanted to prove to the Thessalonikans and Corinthians that dead bodies can rise, (he didn't, but if he had wanted to), he had plenty of examples of dead bodies rising, including Jesus.

In fact, the *fake* Paul in 3 Corinthians does just that.

So we know early Christians felt that Paul should not have been silent, and forged a version of 1 Corinthians 15 where he is not silent.


Why is it 'inferior' for the Corinthians and Thessalonikans to believe based on hearing stories about Jesus appearing to the disciples?

After all , John says he is telling people those appearance stories , so that they may believe.

And you think it is right for John to tell people those appearance stories , so they they may believe, and it also right for Paul not to tell people those appearance stories.

Such is apologetics.

If author mentions stories, it is right for him to do so.

And if another author doesn't mention stories, it is right for him to do that.

In reality, if John felt people should hear those stories, then clearly Paul should also have felt that people should hear those stories, or at least hear something along the lines of 'the resurrection is a resurrection of the flesh which died.'

Paul never says anything like that. Indeed in 1 Corinthians 6 and 2 Corinthians 5, he talks about the destruction of flesh.

Perhaps he had read 1 Peter, which says 'All flesh is grass', which apparently means that some flesh will be made immortal.

Dina Noun

As Thomas Paine put it in his Age of Reason ..

Actually, not believing without "occular and manual demonstration" is much more expected for us, since unlike the disciple Thomas, we did not travel with Jesus for years, we did not witness His many miracles firsthand, and we were not told beforehand by Jesus Himself that He was going to be executed and then raised the third day.

So, if Jesus allows me to stick my finger in his holes, then I'll believe.