Re: Jesus was a spirit

At 05:22 AM 10/20/2005, steven@bowness.demon.co.uk wrote:
>janmatch@earthlink.net wrote:
><skip>
> > Indeed, among the pagans, resurrection was deemed impossible.
>
>CARR - Nope. Some people believed Nero had returned from the dead, not to
>mention Alcesist ...."

2#2#2# "....I am pleased now to note (7/22/03) that some of these very
criticisms have been laid against Porter's essay by none other than N. T.
Wright in his latest mega-volume, The Resurrection of the Son of God. As I
noted when I read Porter's essay, most of what he offers is not even
relevant to resurrection, only proving that there was a Greco-Roman concept
of afterlife with variable ideas attached to it.

The story of the returned woman (whose name is Alcestis) Wright also agrees
seems to be a revivification, but also adds, having provided several
examples, that "intelligent pagans contemporary with early Christianity
knew about such stories, and dismissed them as mythic fictions." [67]
Readers of this story "would not have thought of the story as in any way
realistic." The example is, after all, from a play, and as Wright puts it,
"One might as well invoke the Ring cycle as evidence of marital and family
customs among the nineteenth-century German bourgeoisie."

Excerpted from:
Addendum: Some New Criticisms A reader in New Zealand recently alerted me
to a couple of essays that seek to dispute the core premise that
resurrection in Judaism could only be conceived of as physical.
Surprisingly neither essay deals with the essential background doctrine of
the <http://www.tektonics.org/af/baptismneed.html>Semitic Totality Concept
-- under which physical resurrection would be necessary for any sort of
real life or afterlife -- or Perkins' thorough study, or Gundry's landmark
soma study, though as it happens neither essay disputes that Paul and the
NT teach a physical resurrection.

The first essay appears in a book titled Resurrection and is written by
Stanley Porter, whose work we have appreciated often on the subject of
rhetoric in the NT. Porter steps into a new realm here and posits that the
Jewish concept of resurrection may have had origins in the Greco-Roman
world (and here, his lack of notice of Semitic Totality is rather
poignant). It is his contention however that -- despite the Greek disdain
for the material -- the Greeks "did have a significant tradition of bodily
resurrection" while there was also a "fairly large stream of Jewish
tradition that did not entertain a bodily resurrection." [53]

Porter does interact with some of the cites from later Jewish literature
above, but is compelled to devalue them by rather questionable means. 4
Ezra is dismissed because allegedly, bodily resurrection is "strongly
implied" but "not explicitly outlined, especially as there appears to be a
dichotomous view that separates bodies and souls." [64] Why the latter is
of any relevance is difficult to see. Semitic Totality would see the body
and spirit (not soul) as properly belonging together, not necessarily
inseparable. Beyond that it is hard to see how much more explicit Porter
wants things to be. 2 Baruch 50:2 is noted, but Bauckham is quoted as
saying that it appeals not to resurrection in terms of resuscitation of the
corpse, but "asserts a raising in the exact form, not necessarily to be
read as 'concerned with the material identity of the body.'" [65] To this
we say, what of it? It remains physical resurrection. Jews of later
periods, and we today what with a cremation debate ongoing, may discuss
whether the body raised need be materially identical to the original. As it
stands our bodies shed cells constantly, and the ancients could see that
their bodies changed and surely asked questions about how one with a
missing leg would be resurrected. As a close Porter waves off this data as
later than 70 AD, but it is hard to see how Jewish beliefs in the afterlife
could undergo any radical change in just a few and from much earlier
concepts. (Porter excuses away Daniel 12:2 for example by dating Daniel to
the Hellenistic period!)

Porter then attempts to dig resurrection out of Greco-Roman sources, but
after giving several examples of beliefs concerning merely the afterlife
(rewards and punishment, or survival of the spirit) and reincarnation,
Porter ends up with no actual example of resurrection from the classical
Greek writers and thinkers, and from the mystery religions pulls out the
story of <http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/dionysus.html>Dionysus being
torn up by the Titans (note what our classical scholar said there about
this story being unlikely to be known by Palestinian Jews), a story of Isis
which credits her with the power to raise others from the dead (using
indeed the word anastasis), and the example of Mithraism (!) which by his
own description does not even teach bodily restoration! (As an aside,
Porter bewilderingly uses a grossly outdated source from 1925 for his data
on Mithraism!) Other than this Porter offers an example from Euripides of a
character in a play who dies, and whose husband goes through hell and high
water so to speak to get her back -- which he does, physically indeed,
though by completely unspecified means. Porter admits that this is no clear
resurrection (as he supposes the woman died again later), but rather a
revivification. And this we are to take as a "significant tradition"! It is
rather better to say that Porter has overstated his case, and has done so
without consideration of a very significant part of the paradigm -- Semitic
Totality.

I am pleased now to note (7/22/03) that some of these very criticisms have
been laid against Porter's essay by none other than N. T. Wright in his
latest mega-volume, The Resurrection of the Son of God. As I noted when I
read Porter's essay, most of what he offers is not even relevant to
resurrection, only proving that there was a Greco-Roman concept of
afterlife with variable ideas attached to it. The story of the returned
woman (whose name is Alcestis) Wright also agrees seems to be a
revivification, but also adds, having provided several examples, that
"intelligent pagans contemporary with early Christianity knew about such
stories, and dismissed them as mythic fictions." [67] Readers of this story
"would not have thought of the story as in any way realistic." The example
is, after all, from a play, and as Wright puts it, "One might as well
invoke the Ring cycle as evidence of marital and family customs among the
nineteenth-century German bourgeoisie."

A shorter but just as overstated case may be found in O'Collins' The Easter
Jesus [102ff]. O'Collins suggests that resurrection "may possibly have come
from Persian religious thought into Judaism", though scholars of this field
are divided on the subject and a common philosophical view of Totality is
the more likely reason for the resemblance (see
<http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/zoroaster.html>here, especially Zaehner's
note). O'Collins notes Baruch 50:2, but somehow considers contradictory
points in Baruch 51 which speak of the just as "transformed into the
splendour of angels" or the "splendour of glory". He also jumps in the same
sentence to an arbitrary conclusion about the writer of Wisdom of Solomon:
"He stresses the spiritual elements of the after-life and -- to say the
least -- leaves unclear the fate of the body. Here we seem to meet belief
in life after death involving no body at all." (Emphasis added.) How does
one jump from "unclear" to "no" so easily? In the end O'Collins provides no
substantial evidence for his closing claim that there was no unique Jewish
view of resurrection.

[snip] MORE: http://www.tektonics.org/lp/physrez.html
Received on Thu Oct 20 10:42:02 2005