1 Corinthians 15

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

It’s not plausible that J of A would have made a deal with Pilate given the nature of the charges (claiming to be the “King of the Jews”). That was a challenged not only to the authority of Pilate, but to the authority of Caesar himself.

The four Gospels are not independent records. Matthew and Luke both copy liberally (and verbaitim) from Mark (Matthew, in particular, contains about 80% of the Mark copied verbatim), so the presence of J of A in those other synpotics means nothing.

The presence in John is a little more unusual, but it’s not unique to find a few stray references to Mark found in John. John was written 30 years later than Mark, which is ample time for J of A to have entered oral tradition. Lets also not forget the smoking gun that “Arimathea” was not a real place, but a clear literay construction.

Yes, it’s plausible to identify Jesus as a peasant. He is explicitly identified as belonging to the tekton class, which was a class of sub-peasant, subsistence day laborors. The fact that the Gospels say he was called “rabbi” does not mean he was any kind of ordained clergy in the modern sense. That significance of the word arose after the destruction of he temple in 70 CE, when the primary focus of Jewish worship and practice shifted from the Temple to study of the Torah. That word in Jesus’ day just meant “teacher” and did not imply anything about economic status.

[elucidator]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

… He just includes himself at the end of a list of people that Jesus “appeared” to. That would indicate that Paul so those other appearances as basically visions like his own…

It is difficult to judge over such vast oceans of time, but I am not encumbered in my conjectures, I don’t like Paul very much, so that makes it easier.

I suspect that Paul was anxious to put his own revelation on at least an equal footing with those Christians who had actually been in Jesus’ physical presence. If possible, on a superior footing, perhaps he puts himself at the last of the list to emphasize his distinction, he is the last person Jesus directly spoke to, and in an utterly spiritual form, to boot. Of course a spiritual form is superior in revelation to a physical presence. It’s spiritual, sublime, like geometry!

Paul was eager to gentrify and Hellenize Christianity, clean up the trailer trash spirituality of magic and exorcism (I mean, seriously? Casting out demons? You want to convert a Platonic idealist with ghosts and goblins?..get real!..). And, of course, if trimming your dick with a knife was the only way to get into this church, well, there are any number of perfectly fine Dionysian cults available…

No, it simply wouldn’t do, a body gets tombed up, ripens for a few days and then goes walking about? Kind of thing would create rather a sensation, don’t you think? What, the Romans said “Well, forget it, one crucifixion per customer, if it doesn’t take, we ain’t fucking with anybody with that kind of mojo! We’ll just ignore him, maybe he’ll go away…”

While it is true we have so little in the way of information that is not grubbed up with his smart-ass Greek fingerprints, I don’t like him, don’t trust him. As the theologian J. Tiberius Kirk has it, God does not need a starship. Well, then, even less a salesman, especially one with a pious pickle up his butt. Feh!

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@elucidator

suspect that Paul was anxious to put his own revelation on at least an equal footing with those Christians who had actually been in Jesus’ physical presence.

Definitely. He was very pissy about his self-appointed status as an “Apostle” (a self-designation which, reading between the lines, the real apostles found rather dubious), and wasn’t willing to admit to an ounce of difference in authority or validity of experience. Hell, I wouldn’t even be surprised if he made up his whole conversion story.

No, it simply wouldn’t do, a body gets tombed up, ripens for a few days and then goes walking about? Kind of thing would create rather a sensation, don’t you think?

It wasn’t even just Jesus, according to Matthew. A whole passel of “saints” also clawed their way out of their graves, went into Jerusalem and were “seen by many” (before they got their brains eaten, I’m assuming). You’d think somebody would have taken notice of that too. One walking stiff is one thing - maybe he wasn’t quite dead - but a whole graveyard full of them? The Romans were bureaucrats, surely they would have started a commission.

[Meatros]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Price’s argument is interesting. It hadn’t occured to me to see those passages as contradictory before, and I can see his reasoning for it. I’m not convinced that Paul himself couldn’t have just said one thing on tuesday and another on wednesday, though. He was kind of a hustler and could be facile with the facts.

Price goes on and provides some more evidence. In fact, in the book I’m reading, he replies to Craig’s counter argument. He also makes a good case for the ‘500 witnesses’ bit being an interpolation as well.

It’s an interesting argument.

What it and the other arguments are doing is effectively making me realize that we can’t really say for certain what the original beliefs were. It reminds me of something that Erhman said with regard to the reliability of the scripture. He said something to the effect that we don’t know how well the original bible materials were copied since we don’t have them. We have the letters/gospels after they’d been finalized (or rather, in the process of finalization), which says nothing about their original state.

[Skammer]

One of the problems with dismissing the possibility that Jesus’ body was turned over to his disciples is that people of the time would have known if that were never done. But no one in the first centuries raised any objections to the claim that Jesus was handed over for burial. In other words, opponents disputed the empty tomb, but no one ever came forward to say there could not have been a tomb in the first place.

As far as Paul’s view of a physical vs. spiritual resurrection – first of all, “spiritual resurrection” would be a revolutionary concept in Jewish thought. As ITR Champion said above, when Jews spoke of resurrection they intended a physical, bodily resurrection. That makes it first of all unlikely that Paul would mean a spiritual resurrection. If Paul really had meant a spiritual resurrection, he would have had to specifically identify it as such since first century readers would immediately equate ‘resurrection’ with ‘bodily raised.’

Also, Paul’s use of the word soma strongly implies a resurrection of the body. See http://www.christianorigins.com/resbody.html for this argument.

[Meatros]

@Skammer

One of the problems with dismissing the possibility that Jesus’ body was turned over to his disciples is that people of the time would have known if that were never done. But no one in the first centuries raised any objections to the claim that Jesus was handed over for burial. In other words, opponents disputed the empty tomb, but no one ever came forward to say there could not have been a tomb in the first place.

Apologists often make this argument, but I don’t think it actually carries any weight. Why bother? The Jews at the time objected to Christianity because they viewed it as a perversion of their religion.

Not only that, but didn’t the followers wait 40 days before going out and preaching? Certainly it would have taken a bit before anyone would have cared enough to start launching objections. By that time the corpse would probably have been unrecognizable.

That’s assuming that the original Christians believed in a physical resurrection. If they didn’t - which is a possibility - then producing a body wouldn’t haven’t meant anything. The original Christians would have scoffed and said, ‘yeah, of course that body is there, Jesus is strolling around town in a spiritual body’.

@Skammer

As far as Paul’s view of a physical vs. spiritual resurrection – first of all, “spiritual resurrection” would be a revolutionary concept in Jewish thought.

As would a God man, which Jesus supposedly was.

You seem to assume that there was a monolithic Jewish ‘thought’, which wasn’t true during the time. There were many groups of Jews with differing beliefs.

@Skammer

As ITR Champion said above, when Jews spoke of resurrection they intended a physical, bodily resurrection. That makes it first of all unlikely that Paul would mean a spiritual resurrection. If Paul really had meant a spiritual resurrection, he would have had to specifically identify it as such since first century readers would immediately equate ‘resurrection’ with ‘bodily raised.’

Who are ‘the Jews’ being referring to? Maybe the Pharasees, this might be true. Further, the line of thought could have been from the surrounding paganism.

@Skammer

Also, Paul’s use of the word soma strongly implies a resurrection of the body. See http://www.christianorigins.com/resbody.html for this argument.

I’ll give that a look. Right now I’m reading Richard Carrier’s argument on a spiritual resurrection.

[Meatros]

Sorry, that last response sounded a lot more confident then I intended. I certainly do not know what the early Christians believed. At this point, I don’t think one can simply dismiss the spiritual body hypothesis because it wouldn’t have been a jewish idea… Especially since some of Christian beliefs aren’t ‘jewish’, as I mentioned (Jesus = God, virgin birth, etc).

[Skammer]

@Meatros

You seem to assume that there was a monolithic Jewish ‘thought’, which wasn’t true during the time. There were many groups of Jews with differing beliefs.

Who are ‘the Jews’ being referring to? Maybe the Pharasees, this might be true. Further, the line of thought could have been from the surrounding paganism.

Right, I didn’t mean to imply that there was a consensus among the Jews. But Paul was Pharisee, and the standard understanding of “resurrection” would have been a physical event. Even for other Jewish groups who denied the resurrection, they would have had the same understanding of what it was. If Paul had meant a spiritual event he would have had to explicitly explain so.

ETA: And I agree with your point about Jesus-is-God not being a Jewish concept. I think that was an understanding that happened more gradually, specifically because it was so foreign to Judaism.

[Meatros]

@Skammer

Right, I didn’t mean to imply that there was a consensus among the Jews. But Paul was Pharisee, and the standard understanding of “resurrection” would have been a physical event. Even for other Jewish groups who denied the resurrection, they would have had the same understanding of what it was. If Paul had meant a spiritual event he would have had to explicitly explain so.

Maybe. I’m not convinced as of yet. I’m not convinced that Paul’s message hasn’t been fundamentally altered. I’m still a noob at this though, so my position is agnosticism.

@Skammer

ETA: And I agree with your point about Jesus-is-God not being a Jewish concept. I think that was an understanding that happened more gradually, specifically because it was so foreign to Judaism.

One of the early criticisms of Christianity was the pagan influence. I’m thinking of Justin Martyr’s dialogue with Typhro (who’s name I almost always spell wrong…). Typhro complains about the virgin birth and other things and Justin response that Jesus is in scripture (Old Testament) and also says that the Pagan religions imitated Christ (virgin births, godmen, etc).

It doesn’t seem too much of a stretch for me that a spiritual body would be included in those beliefs. Especially if after the fall of the temple it got discarded and replaced with the physical body (a la Mark and the gospels). Later Christians could have interpolated scripture to match their views.

Of course, this is speculation on my part - again, I’m still learning. I’m not going to discount something simply because it wouldn’t have been a ‘jewish’ idea. I do give credence to the idea that Paul would have explicated on the spiritual body - so I do note that part of your criticism. I’ll be interested to see how Carrier addresses this in his essay that I’m reading.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Skammer

One of the problems with dismissing the possibility that Jesus’ body was turned over to his disciples is that people of the time would have known if that were never done. But no one in the first centuries raised any objections to the claim that Jesus was handed over for burial.

If the empty tomb story didn’t arise until Mark’s Gospel, 40 years after the crucifixion, written for a Gentile audience outside of Palestine (and not a very large audience at that), then who was going to be around to contradict it? It would have taken a decade or two for Mark to have even been copied and disseminated very widely, at which point you’re talking about a story being told about an obscure preacher who was killed in a now destroyed city a half-century before. These books were also not being sold at Barnes & Noble or on Amazon. There were a few dozen to a few hundred copies around within the reasonable lifespan of any surviving witnesses, and they were read aloud in small, obscure Christian congregations. In order for a witness to contradict it, that witness would have had to have survived the destruction of Jerusalem, transplanted to Rome (where Mark was most likely written), learned Koine Greek, then for some reason happened to have wandered into a reading of Mark’s Gospel 50 years later.

Even if some creaky old codger had been around and heard the empty tomb story all those decades later, and even if he had (for whatever reason) remembered this nobody preacher who’d been executed by Pilate, and told the congregation that he remembered that Galilean preacher getting dumped in a common criminal’s grave (why he would have been an audience to the burial is something else that would have to be answered), why do you think the congregation would have cared or taken any note of it, much less written it down, and copied it for generation after generation, so that we’d have a record of it now?

The odds that any surviving eyewitness of the burial of Jesus would have ever been aware of the Gospel of Mark at all is low. The odds that his objections would have mattered to the faithful even lower. The odds that we would have a record of such an incident even if it had happened is miniscule to non-existent.

As far as Paul’s view of a physical vs. spiritual resurrection – first of all, “spiritual resurrection” would be a revolutionary concept in Jewish thought. As ITR Champion said above, when Jews spoke of resurrection they intended a physical, bodily resurrection. That makes it first of all unlikely that Paul would mean a spiritual resurrection. If Paul really had meant a spiritual resurrection, he would have had to specifically identify it as such since first century readers would immediately equate ‘resurrection’ with ‘bodily raised.’

Paul explicitly said that resurrections occured in spiritual bodies (σῶμα πνευματικόν), and he called people “fools” for saying it could happen with physical bodies.

Also, Paul’s use of the word soma strongly implies a resurrection of the body. See http://www.christianorigins.com/resbody.html for this argument.

Paul says (in 1 Cor. 15:44), that bodies are sown as σῶμα πνευματικόν (“body physical”) and raised as σῶμα πνευματικόν (“body spirit”). The Greek is clear here. pneuma means “spirit” (or more literally “breath”). Pneuma Hagion is the phrased translated as “Holy Spirit.”

[Skammer]

Mark was written 40 years later, but it seems unlikely that Mark made up the crucifixion story himself - there was some sort of oral history preceding it. After all, Matthew and Luke differ on several details, which indicates that they had access to some source(s) for the resurrection story outside of Mark. So some version of that story was around earlier.

But more importantly, I’m not saying that someone would have to specifically recall Jesus being tossed into a pit. I’m arguing that it’s unlikely that, confronted with the story, no one questioned the fact that the Romans would have allowed a body to be taken away like that. Even people in Rome were familiar with crucifixions and how they were carried out.

[Meatros]

@Skammer

Mark was written 40 years later, but it seems unlikely that Mark made up the crucifixion story himself - there was some sort of oral history preceding it. After all, Matthew and Luke differ on several details, which indicates that they had access to some source(s) for the resurrection story outside of Mark. So some version of that story was around earlier.

I don’t think people think that Mark completely made up the story. What I think people suggest is that Mark used an early creed and mythologized it, pulling from the Old Testament what he thought would have happened. Jesus should have done X or Y because Daniel says so, that sort of thing.

@Skammer

But more importantly, I’m not saying that someone would have to specifically recall Jesus being tossed into a pit. I’m arguing that it’s unlikely that, confronted with the story, no one questioned the fact that the Romans would have allowed a body to be taken away like that. Even people in Rome were familiar with crucifixions and how they were carried out.

They wouldn’t have had any way to refute the claim either way. It’s not like it would be impossible for Jesus’ body to have been put in a tomb. How would the skeptic in 80 AD have possibly refuted the notion?

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Skammer

Mark was written 40 years later, but it seems unlikely that Mark made up the crucifixion story himself .

I’m not talking about the crucifixion, just the empty tomb story. The disples probably scattere after Jesus was arrested, and it’s likely that none of them ever cared what happened to the body (as John Crossan puts it, “no one who cared knew, and no one who knew cared”).

But more importantly, I’m not saying that someone would have to specifically recall Jesus being tossed into a pit. I’m arguing that it’s unlikely that, confronted with the story, no one questioned the fact that the Romans would have allowed a body to be taken away like that. Even people in Rome were familiar with crucifixions and how they were carried out.

That was the reason for the invention of the Joseph of Arimathea character.

People weren’t really expecting journalistic history from these stories anyway. They were myths, not NY Times articles.

[Skammer]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

Paul explicitly said that resurrections occured in spiritual bodies (σῶμα πνευματικόν), and he called people “fools” for saying it could happen with physical bodies.

Paul says (in 1 Cor. 15:44), that bodies are sown as σῶμα πνευματικόν (“body physical”) and raised as σῶμα πνευματικόν (“body spirit”). The Greek is clear here. pneuma means “spirit” (or more literally “breath”). Pneuma Hagion is the phrased translated as “Holy Spirit.”

Sorry, I forgot to address this. Wright argues that when Paul refers to the “body spiritual” it does not refer to a non-corporeal body, but a body that is controlled (I think he says “animated”) by spirit, as opposed to the original body which is controlled by “the flesh”. It’s a much longer argument he details in The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003).

[Meatros]

@Skammer

Right, I didn’t mean to imply that there was a consensus among the Jews. But Paul was Pharisee, and the standard understanding of “resurrection” would have been a physical event. Even for other Jewish groups who denied the resurrection, they would have had the same understanding of what it was. If Paul had meant a spiritual event he would have had to explicitly explain so.

ETA: And I agree with your point about Jesus-is-God not being a Jewish concept. I think that was an understanding that happened more gradually, specifically because it was so foreign to Judaism.

I’m reading more on this and apparently there were probably between 10 and 20 sects of Jews. Carrier brings up a list in his essay in the empty tomb book. He also mentions Philo with respect to spiritual bodies. In particular a verse from De Cherum (from here:

I therefore, consisting of soul and body, and appearing to have a mind, and reason, and outward sense, find that not one of all these things is my own property. (114) For where was my body before my birth? and where will it go when I am departed? And what becomes of the differences of age of that being which at present appears to exist? Where is now the infant?–where the child?–where the boy?–where the youth just arriving at the age of puberty?–where the young man?–where is he now whose beard is just budding, the vigorous and perfect man? Whence came the soul, and whither will it go? and how long will it remain with us? and what is its essence, or what may we speak of as such? Moreover, when did we acquire it? Was it before our birth?–But then we ourselves did not exist. Shall we have it after our death?–But then we shall not exist, we who are now a combination of distinctive qualities in combination with our bodies; but rather we shall then be hastening to a regeneration, becoming in combination with incorporeal beings: (115) and now, when we are alive we are governed rather than governing, and we are understood ourselves rather than understanding anything else; for our soul understands us without being understood by us, and it imposes commands upon us which we are necessitated to obey, as servants are compelled to obey a mistress; and whenever it chooses to abandon us and to depart to the Ruler of all things, it will depart, leaving our house destitute of life. And even if we attempt to compel it to remain, it will disappear; for its nature is composed of unsubstantial parts, such as afford no handle to the body.

Contra what Apologists may wish to portray, I think that there just might be evidence of a vast array of differing early Jewish beliefs.

[Meatros]

Philo, Migration of Abraham (here):

(192) Having then in this manner learnt to accomplish the abandonment of mortal things, you shall become instructed in the proper doctrines respecting the uncreated God, unless indeed you think that our mind, when it has put off the body, the external senses, and reason, can, when destitute of all these things and naked, perceive existing things, and that the mind of the universe, that is to say, God, does not dwell outside of all material nature, and that he contains everything and is not contained by anything; and further, he does not penetrate beyond things by his intellect alone, like a man, but also by his essential nature, as is natural for a God to do; (193) for it is not our mind which made the body, but that it is the work of something else, on which account it is contained in the body as in a vessel; but the mind of the universe created the universe, and the Creator is better than the created, therefore it can never be contained in what is inferior to itself; besides that it is not suitable for the father to be contained in the son, but rather for the son to derive increase from the love of the father.

[Meatros]

Philo Answers on Genesis:

(92) On what principle it was that giants were born of angels and women? (#Ge 6:4). The poets call those men who were born out of the earth giants, that is to say, sons of the Earth.{11}{the Greek name Gigas is said to be derived from geµ and gennaoµ, “to bring forth.”} But Moses here uses this appellation improperly, and he uses it too very often merely to denote the vast personal size of the principal men, equal to that of Hajk{12}{hajk is an addition of the Armenian translator; it is the name of a fabulous patriarch of the Armenian nation.} or Hercules. But he relates that these giants were sprung from a combined procreation of two natures, namely, from angels and mortal women; for the substance of angels is spiritual; but it occurs every now and then that on emergencies occurring they have imitated the appearance of men, and transformed themselves so as to assume the human shape; as they did on this occasion, when forming connexions with women for the production of giants. But if the children turn out imitators of the wickedness of their mothers, departing from the virtue of their fathers, let them depart, according to the determination of the will of a depraved race, and because of their proud contempt for the supreme Deity, and so be condemned as guilty of voluntary and deliberate wickedness. But sometimes Moses styles the angels the sons of God, inasmuch as they were not produced by any mortal, but are incorporeal, as being spirits destitute of any body; or rather that exhorter and teacher of virtue, namely Moses, calls those men who are very excellent and endowed with great virtue the sons of God; and the wicked and depraved men he calls bodies, or flesh.

The implication seems to be that the spiritual is a different substance - able to procreate with women…

[Meatros]

Last one for now - Josephus, War of the Jews (referencing the Essenes), from here:

[154] For their doctrine is this: That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue for ever; and that they come out of the most subtile air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And this is like the opinions of the Greeks, that good souls have their habitations beyond the ocean, in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow, or with intense heat, but that this place is such as is refreshed by the gentle breathing of a west wind, that is perpetually blowing from the ocean; while they allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den, full of never-ceasing punishments. And indeed the Greeks seem to me to have followed the same notion, when they allot the islands of the blessed to their brave men, whom they call heroes and demi-gods; and to the souls of the wicked, the region of the ungodly, in Hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, such as Sisyphus, and Tantalus, and Ixion, and Tityus, are punished; which is built on this first supposition, that souls are immortal; and thence are those exhortations to virtue and dehortations from wickedness collected; whereby good men are bettered in the conduct of their life by the hope they have of reward after their death; and whereby the vehement inclinations of bad men to vice are restrained, by the fear and expectation they are in, that although they should lie concealed in this life, they should suffer immortal punishment after their death. These are the Divine doctrines of the Essens 1 about the soul, which lay an unavoidable bait for such as have once had a taste of their philosophy.

[Meatros]

Missed the edit window, this is it, I swear!

Also, from here:

But then as to the two other orders at first mentioned, the Pharisees are those who are esteemed most skillful in the exact explication of their laws, and introduce the first sect. These ascribe all to fate [or providence], and to God, and yet allow, that to act what is right, or the contrary, is principally in the power of men, although fate does co-operate in every action. They say that all souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies, - but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment.

[New_Deal_Democrat]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

It is exceedingly implausible from a historical perspective that a crucifixion victim would have been given over for burial. It just wasn’t done. In actual practice, bodies were either left on the cross to rot or buried commonly in lime pits. Denial of a proper burial was part of the punishment.

There is zero reason to think Paul was referring to an empty tomb since he never mentions that himself, and since he never mentions a physical resurrection (he only speaks of "appearances, does not say they were physical and denies that physical resurrections are possible). The most parsimonious and most historically plausible scenario is that Paul was referring to the normal Roman practice of dumping crucified criminals in a lime pit.

In 1968, an ossuary (or bone box) was found in a tomb north of Jerusalem, inscribed with the name Johanan. It contained the remains of a man who had been crucified. Among the bones, there was a heel bone with an iron nail through it. The leg bones had both been broken - one was a clean fracture, but the other was smashed into pieces. This ossuary is a remarkable archaeological confirmation of the accuracy of the Bible’s account of how Jesus was crucified.
http://www.facingthechallenge.org/crucified.php

After the Bar Kokhba revolt was crushed in 136 AD the Romans built a temple to Venus at the site Christians at the time believed to be the burial place of Jesus.

After Emperor Constantine ended persecution of Christians the temple was destroyed, and a church was built. That church has been damaged and rebuilt several times. It is currently the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Archaeological excavations have indicated that during the first century AD the area where the church stands was used as a burial place.