Here in Part 2 of my book analysis of Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s controversial book, God: An Anatomy, I am going to lay the groundwork of my book analysis by highlighting what I feel are the main arguments and fundamental problems in the book. In my previous post, I simply gave the backstory that led to my reading Dr. S’s work and my decision to write about it and critique it. Also, at the end of the post, I mentioned that I thought there was a deeper issue at play regarding the reception of books like God: An Anatomy. Namely, books like this seem to be fronts on a very real “culture war” that is waged, not so much by most of the population (regardless of their political or social views), but rather by ideological zealots on both sides of the political/social spectrum. In any case, I imagine I will touch upon that deeper issue later in this book analysis series. For now, though, let’s get a handle on the book.
The Main Argument of God: An Anatomy
To get right to the point, Stavrakopoulou’s underlying argument in her book has a couple of relating parts. First, she argues that the God that is presented in both the Old and New Testaments today, and the God that has been the focus of both Judaism and Christianity over the past 2,000 years, is not really the God that was worshipped in ancient Israel. The God presented in the OT and NT is a God who is “an incorporeal, invisible, abstract principle, force or intellect, wholly beyond and distinct from the material world” (9). Such a view was popularized by ancient Greek philosophers, and it influenced the writers and scribes who produced the OT and OT. In reality (as Dr. S argues), YHWH, the actual God worshipped in ancient Israel, was understood to be distinctly male and “a supersized, muscle-bound, good-looking god, with supra-human powers, earthly passions, and a penchant for the fantastic and the monstrous” (4).
This leads us to the next part of Dr. S’s argument, that the scribes and writers of the OT that we have today purposely tried to cover up this portrayal of YHWH when they edited and essentially re-wrote their inherited writings. As Dr. S writes: “Above all, he [God] was still several centuries away from becoming the immaterial, incorporeal abstraction of later Jewish and Christian theologies. Instead, he was just like any other deity in the ancient world. He had a head, hair and a face; eyes, ears, a nose and a mouth. He had arms, hands, legs and feet, and a chest and a back. He was equipped with a heart, a tongue, teeth and genitals” (11). The original texts that show this, though, were all “subject to creative and repeated revision, addition, emendation and editing across a number of generations, reflecting the shifting ideological interests of their curators, who regarded them as sacred writings” (12).
Translation? In the ancient Near East, YHWH, the God of Israel, was just like any other god in the region. What we find in the Old Testament is a “highly ideological and frequently unreliable portrayal of the past” (14) in which the post-exilic, pro-Jerusalem writers and scribes edited the original texts to hide how YHWH was originally understood and to present Him in a different way—as the only true God, a disembodied spiritual being that was completely unlike all the other false gods of the surrounding nations.
Of course, those post-exilic writers and scribes didn’t do a good enough job. Their attempt to cover up the truth about YHWH may have fooled Jews and Christians for the past 2,000 years, but it hasn’t fooled a number of biblical scholars over the past 100-150 years who have been able to “look behind the curtain” of the obfuscating written text of the Old Testament to ascertain the “real world” of ancient Israel and “the way it really was.” Dr. S’s book, therefore, attempts to show us what belief and practice in ancient Israel really was like…and it wasn’t like what the Old Testament claims it was.
The Structure and Layout of God: An Anatomy
Given that main argument, Dr. S lays out her book into five main sections, each one named after a body part: (1) Feet and Legs, (2) Genitals, (3) Torso, (4) Arms and Hands, and (5) Head. Within each section, there are a number of chapters dealing with a variety of issues and claims that can be condensed into two general thrusts of her argument: (A) First, she gives quite a bit of good and interesting information about the myths and worship practices of the various cultures in the ANE. If you want to get a good overview of these things, this book does a good job. (B) Second, after touching upon the myths and worship practices of the various ANE cultures, Dr. S then takes the reader through a wide range of biblical texts—both from the OT and the NT—and argues that these texts, when examined under the scrutinizing eyes of today’s biblical scholar, actually present pretty much the exact same portrait of YHWH as the various ANE cultures do of their gods. Again, YHWH in ancient Israel was really no different than El, or Marduk, or any other god of the ANE.
Introductory Comments and Points of View (and what I feel are fundamental problems)
Given all that, I feel it is important to highlight a few comments Dr. S makes about herself and her viewpoint. First off, despite my using the term “ancient Near East,” Dr. S makes clear right off the bat that she will not be using that term in her book. She feels that “ancient Near East” is a “Western-centric” term that is “freighted with colonial baggage.” Simply put, she finds it offensive and instead uses “ancient southwest Asia.”
Personally, I find such a stance to be rather silly. Such hypersensitivity to words seems to be the hallmark of certain segments of Western society these days, and it borders on cultural insanity. The fact is certain terms stem from the place that is writing about the given place and topic. If the original research and writing about ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Israel and the like had come from China, we probably would be calling it the “ancient Near West”—who cares? To be quite frank, it boggles my mind that anyone who make a big deal over this.
Secondly, Dr. S makes it clear that she is an atheist and has never believed in God. Obviously, this fact does not disqualify her from being a good scholar of the Bible. Both the OT and NT were written in certain points in history by real people who were trying to convey real things in their writings. Therefore, anyone committed to understanding that historical context and having a ear for literary artistry in writing is going to be able to be a well-informed reader and interpreter of the biblical text.
That being said, though, as I’ve seen in some of the discussion surrounding Dr. S’s book (as well as in other discussions regarding biblical research and interpretation), I have found it odd that there is a general sentiment among some groups that being an atheist somehow makes one a better scholar and interpreter of the Bible. The assumption goes that if someone is an actual believing Christian, then that person isn’t going to be unbiased and objective. In fact, that person will be too afraid to wrestle with what the Bible really is saying (or more accurately, what the truth is behind the Bible) because that person’s faith is too fragile, childish, and rooted in…misogyny, patriarchy, colonialism, etc.
To be clear, Dr. S does not come right out and say this, but such things have been said, not only in discussions about her book, but in discussions about biblical scholarship in general. That is a view that I simply reject. It is just as childish and uncritical to say, “Oh, that scholar is an atheist, therefore we can reject their work outright!” as it is to say, “Oh, that scholar is a Christian (or more often than not, an Evangelical), therefore we can reject their work outright!”
To the point, I don’t care if Dr. S is a man or a woman, a Christian or an atheist. What matters to me is whether or not her claims make sense and are convincing. And I will say up front that I don’t think they are convincing, and I don’t think they make sense for two basic reasons.
First, there is the assumption that YHWH in ancient Israel was no different than any of the other gods in the ANE. To be clear, the only texts we really have about YHWH and the worship practices and beliefs of ancient Israel come from the OT, and those texts are abundantly clear that YHWH was different from the other ANE gods and that Israel’s worship was different. No one in their right mind would deny that ancient Israel shared the same kind of cultural imagery, symbolism, and language when it comes to speaking of the gods. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone to find a lot of cultural similarities on this point. That’s clear as day throughout the OT. But to say, “Despite what the texts say, we know that the OT writers were involved in covering up the truth about YHWH and worship in ancient Israel!” strikes me as conspiratorial.
And I should add that no biblical scholar (heck, no competent reader of the Bible!) would doubt that what Dr. S says about perceptions and worship practices among a portion of the ancient Israelites is true. Throughout the OT, it is abundantly clear—front and center, in fact—that throughout the history of ancient Israel, a whole lot of Israelites, both in Israel and Judah, treated YHWH as any other god. There most certainly was a great deal of syncretism in ancient Israel, from the very beginning, in fact. No one in their right mind would deny it.
The problem with Dr. S’s book, though, is that she doesn’t trust the claims made in the OT, which seem to me to be a whole lot more realistic and truer to history than her own claims. It is a whole lot more believable that in ancient Israel, there were (A) some who claimed YHWH was wholly different than the surrounding gods of the nations, and (B) some who viewed YHWH as just another god among the nations. Dr. S’s book, though, refuses to recognize such a dynamic—a dynamic that can pretty much be seen in every culture and religion throughout history. Amazingly, when it comes to ancient Israel, Dr. S says that didn’t happen. Instead (in my opinion), she presents a very uncritical and simplistic picture of the past: Ancient Israel was just another ANE pagan, polytheistic nation, and that whole monotheistic view that YHWH was in any way different didn’t come until much later. I’ll be addressing this as I go through Dr. S’s book.
Second, I think that her interpretation of many of the biblical texts she covers in her book reveals a tin ear to the literary artistry and nuance of the biblical texts. Simply put, not only does she read these texts as if they were saying the exact same thing as the texts found in other ANE pagan cultures, she also reads them with a wooden literalism. “YHWH says Jerusalem will be a footstool for His feet…therefore ancient Israelites thought He had literal feet!” We can go through every body part related to God mentioned in the OT (and, as we will see, Dr. S pretty much does), and Dr. S’s conclusion is the same: “They took that LITERALLY.” Sorry, I don’t think so. That is something I’ll address in the following posts as well.
Conclusion Thus Far
I’m sorry if these first two posts have come across a bit like George Martin and the Game of Thrones series: a whole lot of talk about dragons and how they’re going to show up, but they never seem to actually show up. But Dr. S puts forth a whole lot of stuff in her book, and I wanted to lay the groundwork on some fundamental issues that I think will help keep the rest of my analysis of her book on the rails. One of my complaints about the book is that she tends to jump from random OT passage to random OT passage, to an ANE myth, to a NT passage, and back again—nothing is presented in its actual textual context. If I could relate it to something those acquainted with the creation/evolution debate, her method of presentation strikes me as a bit like the “Gish Gallop” made popular by YECist Duane Gish, where he would jump around from random point to random point. In doing so, he would tie his debate opponent up in knots if said debate opponent tried to respond to every single claim.
To be clear, I’m not saying Dr. S is really like Duane Gish. But I am saying she does throw a whole lot of random claims out there, and they aren’t always contextualized. Therefore, as much as possible, I am going to limit myself to addressing the fundamental issues (and problems) I’ve outlined here in this second post.
One spoiler alert. Just as George Martin tends to be a bit obsessed with describing the male sex organ, there’s a section in the book that is going to be very “Game of Thrones.”
Dr. Stravrakopoulou does sound left-leaning, but isn’t it true that many historians believe that the Israelites were originally Canaanites who worshipped multiple Canaanite gods but at some point in time settled on monotheism around one god, Yahweh? The Old Testament even suggests this with references to a “council of gods” and different names for “God”, such as Elohim and Yahweh. Most modern scholars doubt the historicity of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the Exodus, the Forty Years in the Sinai, the Conquest of Canaan, and the great empires of David and Solomon. Many historians believe that worship of Yahweh alone, in Jerusalem alone, began during the reign of King Josiah.
Is there any solid evidence that there has always been one sect of people in the Levant who only worshipped Yahweh? I don’t think so.
“Oh, that scholar is an atheist, therefore we can reject their work outright!” as it is to say, “Oh, that scholar is a Christian (or more often than not, an Evangelical), therefore we can reject their work outright!”
Any atheist scholar who rejects an historical account simply because it involves supernatural aspects is not a scholar whose scholarship should be trusted as free of bias. And scholarship regarding the Resurrection by any Christian scholar who claims that he (or she) can perceive the presence of the resurrected Jesus within him should also not be trusted.
Well, that’s the issue, isn’t it? Was it (A) originally all polytheists, and (B) only centuries later monotheism? OR WITHIN ancient Israelite culture, BOTH were there at the same time? In the OT, the answer is the latter–and that really is the only textual evidence we have.
What scholars like Dr. S do is say, “Screw the text, it is like a dark curtain that prevents us from seeing the actual history. What we are going to do is amplify the parts of the OT that acknowledge polytheism, discount the monotheism bits, and just say, without any actual textual evidence, that it was all polytheism throughout most of their history. We are going to assert that the ancient Israelite worship of YHWH was absolutely the same as the other ANE cultures’ worship of their gods. There was nothing significantly different.”
I think that is really thin ice.
As for your last paragraph, basically yes.
Textual evidence is textual evidence, regardless of the source. If it is a religious document, we should neither reject it outright nor accept it outright due to our personal biases. However, if we have only one historical source, we should be cautious about accepting everything that one source says as fact. For instance, we only have ancient Hebrew sources for the existence of the biblical King David and Solomon (yes, we have archaeological evidence of a generic “King David”). Since we only have Hebrew sources for these claims, we should be cautious. However, when it comes to the Israelite kings Omri and his son Ahab, we have Assyrian sources which confirm their existence. Therefore, we can be much more confident that the biblical Omri and Ahab were real historical figures than we can the biblical David and Solomon.
“As for your last paragraph, basically yes.”
So you agree that we should ignore the New Testament scholarship of most Jesus mythicist scholars (like Robert Price) and most evangelical scholars (Michael Licona, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, Craig Evans, etc.) who believe they can perceive the resurrected Jesus “dwelling” within them?
Gary,
Yes. Most of the people there were Canaanites. But God saved a remnant of believers. There was no “Judaism” until Abraham, but that doesn’t mean there were no monotheistic believers in YHWH. The world was horrible but God always has a remnant. From Adam to Abraham to Jacob there were believers. Then when Israel became a nation under Jacob, technically, at least a people, they became His people. Not all Jews/Israelis though were faithful. But yes, the Bible lists the people who stayed true. And even some who were not part of the nation were believers as well. Now if you allow the Bible to be historical then you have the list you want.
Yes both and all kinds of researchers can be used for studying and collecting data. It’s up to the reader to decide what is real BUT the data has to be real too. Editorializing like most do doesn’t help. And atheists who do not believe in God or care about God tend to be overwhelmed with Godly topics and there for only one reason- to destroy someone’s faith and to feel validated. It is different as a Christian because it is important to us. We do care about all of it.
I’m not saying atheists can’t be good biblical scholars, but whenever I hear one say “the church INTENTIONALLY covered up XYZ,” they lose me. It just sounds like slightly more sophisticated-sounding Dan Brown conspiracy theory nonsense.
Seems to me to be a classic case of confirmation bias…she’s made a conclusion first, then cherry-picks random OT verses to support it, rather than the other way around. Bad methodology at its finest!
“Despite what the texts say, we know that the OT writers were involved in covering up the truth about YHWH and worship in ancient Israel!”
What evidence does she provide for this statement. If she can’t provide evidence, this is conspiratorial and unprofessional, as Joel states.
“Ancient Israel was just another ANE pagan, polytheistic nation, and that whole monotheistic view that YHWH was in any way different didn’t come until much later.”
But isn’t this the current consensus scholarly position? I look forward to Joel presenting good evidence that this scholarly consensus is wrong. Is there evidence outside of the Hebrew Scriptures that a monotheistic sect of Canaanites who worshipped Yahweh alone has always existed in the Levant? I want to see it. Only providing one source, such as the Hebrew Scriptures, to counter a scholarly consensus, is not going to cut it for most modern, educated people.
“Second, I think that her interpretation of many of the biblical texts she covers in her book reveals a tin ear to the literary artistry and nuance of the biblical texts. …she also reads them with a wooden literalism.”
How can anyone today know for sure the intent of an ancient author unless that author explicitly states in his text that he is speaking literally or metaphorically? Did the author(s) of Genesis really believe that the earth had a “firmament” above it upon which the stars were “hung”? When the OT authors referred to the four corners of the earth, did they believe this literally or did they know that the earth was a sphere and were simply speaking metaphorically? I say it is impossible to know.
To your last point, it comes down to two things: (1) whether or not writer, no matter when he/she has lived, be it Shakespeare, Homer, or the writer of II Samuel, is competent enough to communicate what he is intending to communicate; and (2) whether or not the reader is literarily competent to understand it. So, I think the writers of the Bible are competent and creative writers, and I think I am pretty competent in genre recognition and basic literary writing. Most people, for example, when they read something like, “YHWH has made Jerusalem a footstool for His feet,” they understand this is metaphorical, meaning He has chosen Jerusalem to be the focal point for His presence among his people; not that He has literal feet and that He is going to put them on Jerusalem.
I am not an expert in ANE literature, therefore, I cannot challenge your statement. However, as a university educated person, I can appeal to majority expert opinion on any issue about which I personally am not an expert. Does an expert consensus exist on the question of whether or not experts today can know with certainty the intent/purpose of ANE authors when they did not explicitly state they were speaking literally or metaphorically? If so, please kindly direct me to the source. If it is a respected source that states that the consensus opinion is of the entire spectrum of experts in ANE literature and not just one subsection (ie, evangelical Bible scholars) I will accept that consensus expert opinion.
I do not think a consensus exists. No one can know with “certainty.” Still, being the sentient beings we are, writers write with intent and intelligent readers can read and understand it. Not everything 100%, but familiarity with genre and writing styles goes a long way.
“Thus all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty-nine years, and he died.”
–Genesis 5:27
Do you believe that the author of this passage was speaking literally or figuratively regarding the age of Methuselah?
I believe he was basing all of the genealogies in Genesis 1-11 off of things like the Sumerian Kings List. In the verse, 969 years means 969 years, just like in Genesis 1, “one day” means “one day.” But the overall genre context of Genesis 1-11 alerts us to the fact that the writer isn’t doing literal history. He’s patterning those chapters within the genre of ANE mean. Therefore, everything in those chapters should be interpreted as being within that genre, and not in the genre of history.
My former LCMS pastor with a PhD from King’s College, London (a closet moderate in a very conservative denomination) told us in our Bible study group that anyone who believes that Methuselah lived to be 969 years old is a “biblicist” (a knuckle-dragging fundamentalist) who does not understand the nuances and complexities of ANE literature.
That ended any debate on the subject.
I came away with this conclusion: If the lay person in the pew cannot accept as literal a sentence in the Bible which talks about someone’s age, what can the lay person believe as fact when reading the Bible?? We might as well toss the Bible in the trash and just read pastor’s blog!
This is one of many issues that led to my deconversion: I would never understand the Bible without a PhD.
Of course, one can understand most of the Bible without a PhD. The problem specifically with sections like Genesis 1-11 and Revelation is that both are written in a genre that modern people are unfamiliar with. And that is where a PhD or more academic insight can help educate them in regard to what kind of genre we’re dealing with.
Interesting. Do you believe that these OT stories are literal (historical) or allegory?
–the story of Moses and the sudden exodus of hundreds of thousands if not a couple million Hebrew slaves from Egypt.
–Elijah ascending into the heavens in a whirlwind
–Jonah being swallowed by a large fish.
The guys in the Amazon forums would’ve loved this book, because the more bizarre the conspiracy theory the more many of them felt it had to be true.
CS Lewis dealt with this kind of infantile, wooden literalism in *Mere Christianity,* in this case the imagery used to describe heaven and the afterlife (harps; crowns; gold; etc.) and people who argued against heaven by saying that they didn’t want to spend an eternity playing harps. Lewis answers by saying:
“The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them.”
Lewis closed his argument by saying:
“People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.”
What is also troubling to me is that scholars such as Stavrakopoulou often seem to be blind to their own biases and presuppositions.
In his great 2005 book *Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way,* Philip Jenkins addressed the whole phenomenon of academic Christian conspiracy theories:
“Despite its dubious sources and controversial methods, the new Jesus scholarship of the 1980s and 1990s gained such a following because it told a lay audience what it wanted to hear.”
Pax.
Lee.
Hi Lee. I’m curious how CS Lewis knew as a fact that the streets of heaven will not be lined with gold and that believers will not receive crowns for their faithfulness to Christ. CS Lewis was a writer. That’s it. He was not a scholar. He was not even a theologian. Taking theological advice from CS Lewis is like taking theological advice for JK Rowling.
ACTUALLY, he was a scholar. Literature, to be specific. And proper interpretation of texts falls under the banner of literature, not necessarily theology.
“Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement.
Lewis wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. C. S. Lewis’s most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics in The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures.”
I didn’t realize that being a fellow in English literature makes you an expert in the literature of the ancient Near East. I don’t think so, Joel.
But don’t you say that in areas where one is not well-versed, one should accept scholarly consensus? Lewis is reflecting general scholarly consensus on these issues.
Is there a scholarly consensus which states that we can know as fact that these statements by Jesus and the author of Revelation were purely metaphorical; that Jesus never meant to imply that heaven literally has mansions or rooms prepared for the faithful? If so, please give me a reputable source which says so.
GARY: Hi Lee. I’m curious how CS Lewis knew as a fact that the streets of heaven will not be lined with gold and that believers will not receive crowns for their faithfulness to Christ. CS Lewis was a writer. That’s it. He was not a scholar. He was not even a theologian.
LEE: CS Lewis was, indeed a scholar. He began his studies at Oxford, taking a double first in Honours Moderations (Greek and Latin texts) and Greats (classical history and philosophy) and then staying on for an additional first in English language and literature, completing it in one year instead of the usual three. Lewis then became a fellow and tutor of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1925, a position he held until 1954. From 1954 to 1963 he was professor of medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge.
GARY: Taking theological advice from CS Lewis is like taking theological advice for JK Rowling.
LEE: Thus anything you say regarding theology I should regard as akin to taking theological advice from JK Rowling? So noted.
The truth is one doesn’t have to have an academic degree in theology to be a theologian; I have a good friend and mentor who who never actually received his PhD because of a mix-up regarding his doctoral thesis, yet Bob was asked to serve on the translation committee for the New King James Version because of his mastery of New Testament Greek. To this day he’s regarded as an academic expert in the subject despite not having those three letters after his name.
But as I just showed you, CS Lewis WAS an Oxford-trained literary scholar, thus making him qualified to speak to the whether the NT intends us to believe the streets of heaven (a spiritual dimension which necessarily exists outside the space-time universe)are literally jewel-encrusted.
I’m not a PhD in ancient literature but even I recognize metaphor, allegory, etc. when I see it scripture or other ancient texts.
Pax.
Lee.
Thanks for the reply, Lee. Do you believe that Jesus was speaking literally or metaphorically when he made this statement: “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”
“Jesus told His disciples, “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2-3).”
I suppose we non-scholars should also stop believing that Jesus is preparing a mansion/home/room for each of us in heaven. In fact, maybe heaven isn’t even a real physical place. Silly us. Maybe heaven is simply a state of mind in another dimension.
This is what modern scholarship has done to the lay person’s faith in the Bible. We cannot trust any claim of fact in the Bible, even in regards to something as simple as the characteristics of heaven, without checking with the local Bible scholar first to make sure we aren’t being fools for believing that the Bible literally means what it says. Good Christians should stop reading the Bible and instead read books by scholars who know what God really meant to say but didn’t say it clearly enough for the average Joe and Jane.
What I find really odd is that moderate Bible scholars such as my former pastor and Joel snicker at “wooden literalists” who believe the Bible literally teaches:
–a six day creation
–a worldwide flood
–a tower of Babel
–that ancient Hebrews believed that Yahweh had physical body parts, such as feet that could rest on the “stool” of Jerusalem
–a firmament upon which God hung the stars
–that the earth had four corners and rested on pillars
–millions of Hebrew slaves escaping Egypt on a dry sea bed surrounded by walls of water
–Jonah swallowed by a whale
–a heaven with mansions, golden streets, harps, and crowns
But these same experts demand that we non-experts accept as absolute, unquestioned, literal fact a handful of ancient tales of people claiming to see a walking, talking, broiled fish eating corpse.
That just makes no sense.
Ok…so you accept scholarly consensus on some things, but reject it on other things?
No, I accept expert consensus opinion on ALL issues. I even accept most majority expert positions. That is why I accept the historicity of the Empty Tomb.
I hope you are not trying to say that there is a consensus expert position that the Appearance of the Resurrected Jesus stories in Matthew, Luke, and John are all historically factual. This would be a silly. Even some moderate Christian scholars. such as Raymond Brown, state that some of the Appearance stories are obvious apologetic fabrications, created to counter skeptics’ claims that the disciples had only seen a ghost (ie, a resurrected Jesus eating broiled fish in Luke and asking people to touch him in John).
Do you believe that Jesus was speaking literally or metaphorically when he said that he was going to prepare a room or mansion for believers in heaven.
GARY: But these same experts demand that we non-experts accept as absolute, unquestioned, literal fact a handful of ancient tales of people claiming to see a walking, talking, broiled fish eating corpse.
That just makes no sense.
LEE: It actually does if you pay attention to such basic literary conventions as genre, and when you know a little about ANE literature in particular.
To be a good Christian means you cannot check your brains at the door. There’s more than a little critical thinking involved in the whole process.
Just compare the creation accounts with the resurrection narratives and you’ll notice at once the difference.
The resurrection narratives for one thing insist that these accounts are intended as actual historical accounts because they reference actual historical people, places and events; they don’t resemble the kinds of myths and legends the Greeks and Romans told, nor even the figurative stories used in Genesis to record the creation.
Can you spot the differences between Homer and Tacitus? I sure hope so. I dare say a fifth grader could.
Experts like St. Augustine were warning readers not to take certain texts of scripture too literally 1500 years ago.
So when skeptics object to Christianity because heaven obviously can’t be made of gold, like CS Lewis, I, too, am tempted to tell them to grow up and learn to read/think critically. When such critics caricature Christianity and then make fun of the caricature for obviously being false they aren’t scoring any points with thoughtful people. They just look sad and desperate.
Pax.
Lee.
Except for the fact that many Bible scholars believe that the Appearance of the Resurrected Jesus stories could be apologetical: they were not meant to be understood literally. Their purpose was to defend Christianity against first century skeptics who were saying that the disciples had only seen a ghost.
Most scholars believe that the Gospels are Greco-Roman biographies. In this genre of literature, embellishments were perfectly acceptable. You are ASSUMING that the authors meant for these stories to be understood as historical facts. My position on the Appearance stories agrees with a wide spectrum of scholarship, from liberals to moderates like Roman Catholic Raymond Brown. Your position agrees with that only the conservative sector of scholarship.
GARY: I suppose we non-scholars should also stop believing that Jesus is preparing a mansion/home/room for each of us in heaven.
LEE: Again, Jesus was employing figurative, symbolic language to make the point that in God’s family there is room for everyone. Jesus didn’t have to explain to his original hearers that he wasn’t referring to a non-physical, disembodied spiritual realm because none of them thought that to begin with, seeing as how they were all Jews, and expected to be bodily resurrected onto a physical earth with all YHWH’s faithful.
GARY: In fact, maybe heaven isn’t even a real physical place. Silly us. Maybe heaven is simply a state of mind in another dimension.
LEE: Strictly speaking heaven isn’t a “physical place,” although it is real. As I said above, heaven is God’s dimension, which necessarily exists OUTSIDE the material, space-time universe.
Christianity teaches that at the final consummation of history heaven (God’s dimension) and earth (the space-time universe, our dimension) will intersect/overlap (to borrow NT Wright’s phraseology). According to Isaiah in Isaiah 65, Paul in Romans 18 and John in Revelation 20-21, the earth and creation will be renewed. Thus the idea of disembodied souls going to a non-physical, spiritual heaven is an unfortunate by-product of mixing Platonism with Christianity. On the contrary, dead bodies will be physically resurrected into/onto a material, new heavens and new earth.
Thus “heaven” as envisaged by Jesus and the New Testament is that New Creation.
Pax.
Lee.
Seems like a C. S. Lewis quote (from “Mere Christianity”) is due here.
“It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things are not simple. They look simple, but are not. The table I am sitting at looks simple; but ask a scientist to tell you what it is really made of – all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eyes and what they do to an optic nerve and what it does to my brain – and, of course, you find that what we call “seeing a table” lands you in mysteries and complications you can hardly get to the end of. A child saying a child’s prayer looks simple. And if you are content to stop there, well and good. But if you are not – and the modern world usually is not – if you want to go and ask what is really happening – then you must be prepared for something difficult. If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly to complain that the something more is not simple.
Very often, however, this silly procedure is adopted by people who are not silly, but who, consciously or unconsciously, want to destroy Christianity. Such people put up a version of Christianity suitable for a child of six and then make that the object of their attack. When you try to explain the Christian doctrine as it is really held by an instructed adult, they then complain that you are making their heads turn round and that it is all too complicated and that if there really were a God they are sure He would have made ‘religion’ simple, because simplicity is so beautiful, etc. You must be on your guard against these people because they will change their ground every minute and only waste your time.”
Caleb, that’s an excellent quote by Lewis and highly apropos. Gary seems to want it both ways.
Pax.
Lee.
Ok, so the teachings of Christianity are complex and nuanced. One cannot read the Bible and understand what it says without extensive education, reading and studying the books of Christian scholars. The lay Christian cannot understand the Bible without extensive training and education. Let’s accept that as a fact.
Why then did Jesus say that one must have the faith of a child to believe? Children have not spent years studying the works of scholars. Children accept the sayings and teachings of the Bible literally. So which is it: simplistic faith or informed faith?
If you say informed faith, shouldn’t your children be told to wait to believe until after they have taken extensive courses in Christian theology? Why allow them to believe the very extra-ordinary claims of Christianity when they are so uninformed?
Ok. So where are the souls of the righteous dead at this moment?
GARY: Ok. So where are the souls of the righteous dead at this moment?
LEE: Opinions vary. Some theologians posit a kind of “soul sleep” until the soul is reunited with its body; NT Wright theorizes that those who die in Christ merely “sleep” in perfect peace in the presence of Christ awaiting the resurrection of the body. Scripture isn’t clear exactly what happens.
Wherever the souls of the righteous dead are, they’re awaiting the resurrection of the body.
Pax.
Lee.
So if the souls of the righteous dead are with Jesus, where is Jesus? Didn’t Jesus tell the thief on the cross that “today” you will be with me in Paradise? Is Paradise/Heaven just another dimension?
And another question: If heaven is not “up”, why did Jesus ascend into the clouds when he left the disciples for the final time? Why not just disappear like he did on the Emmaus Road.
Question for Joel: What did the Church Fathers say about heaven? Did any of them teach that heaven was non-physical; another dimension?
GARY: I hope you are not trying to say that there is a consensus expert position that the Appearance of the Resurrected Jesus stories in Matthew, Luke, and John are all historically factual. This would be a silly. Even some moderate Christian scholars. such as Raymond Brown, state that some of the Appearance stories are obvious apologetic fabrications, created to counter skeptics’ claims that the disciples had only seen a ghost (ie, a resurrected Jesus eating broiled fish in Luke and asking people to touch him in John).
LEE: As I understand it, the current consensus seems to be that the earliest Christians at least *believed* that Jesus’ body was really resurrected and were worshiping him as God very early on, by the early 2nd century at the latest (see esp. Bauckham, Hengel, Hurtado and the other “Early High Christology Club” members).
The bigger picture it seems to me, is, taking into consideration that nobody in first century, Second Temple Messianic Judaism expected Messiah to be killed by his enemies then bodily resurrected three days later (rather than at the end of time with off the faithful), how is it that Paul and the gospels all insist that this exactly what happened? Why would these people go so far off book in creating a Messiah they hoped to sell to gullible Jews and non-Jews?
Arguing over which appearance stories are/are not genuine is just deflecting from the bigger issue of, assuming the invented it all, explaining how and why the early Church invented the specific messiah they did.
Some people seem to want a resurrection of sorts without an actual empty tomb, but that wouldn’t be an actual resurrection, because in antiquity resurrection when used in regard to a dead person ALWAYS involved the dead person coming to bodily life and “standing up” again. Thus a non-bodily resurrection is an anachronism. If Jesus’ body wasn’t literally raised again, it was still dead, and as Paul says in I Corinthians 15, in that case, the show’s off.
For me, personally, I see no reason to doubt the appearance narratives; they very fact that they *don’t* recognize him is one indicator to me that they’re not fabricated, because why would the disciples or evangelists deliberately fabricate such stories that make them look naïve, foolish and ignorant?
Yet again, to get hung up on those is to miss the forest for the trees.
Pax.
Lee.
I agree with you, Lee. The majority of scholars believe that Jesus’ disciples sincerely believed that he had appeared to them. I do not believe that the disciples invented this belief. I agree that most people would not die for a lie. The big question is: Why did they believe Jesus had appeared to them? Did the disciples see, individually and in groups, a walking, talking corpse which ate food, allowed them to touch him, and stayed with them for 40 days and nights? Or, did they experience illusions (bright lights), false sightings (seeing someone in the distance and mistaking that person for Jesus), vivid dreams, trances (daytime dreams), or even hallucinations? (Hallucinations cannot be shared by multiple people, so this explanation could only be for individual appearance claims.)
Christians insist that a real physical appearance is the best explanation for the resurrected Jesus sightings, but we non-Christians find this baffling and irrational. Thousands of people in the course of human history have claimed to have seen dead people. I’m sure that most of you believe that all these claims have natural explanations, so why is it so unfathomable to you that natural explanations are the source of the resurrected Jesus sightings?
Bottom line: Tens of thousands of people have died for mistaken beliefs throughout human history. Why can’t that be the case with the Resurrection Belief? Isn’t it possible for people to be sincere about the reality of their alleged supernatural experience but at the same time be sincerely mistaken??
If the Appearance Stories in Matthew, Luke, John, and Acts are theological embellishments and the original appearance claims looked more like what is found in the Early Creed of First Corinthians 15, then it is entirely possible that ALL the appearance claims involved a bright light.
GARY: I agree with you, Lee. The majority of scholars believe that Jesus’ disciples sincerely believed that he had appeared to them. I do not believe that the disciples invented this belief. I agree that most people would not die for a lie. The big question is: Why did they believe Jesus had appeared to them? Did the disciples see, individually and in groups, a walking, talking corpse which ate food, allowed them to touch him, and stayed with them for 40 days and nights? Or, did they experience illusions (bright lights), false sightings (seeing someone in the distance and mistaking that person for Jesus), vivid dreams, trances (daytime dreams), or even hallucinations? (Hallucinations cannot be shared by multiple people, so this explanation could only be for individual appearance claims.)
Christians insist that a real physical appearance is the best explanation for the resurrected Jesus sightings, but we non-Christians find this baffling and irrational. Thousands of people in the course of human history have claimed to have seen dead people. I’m sure that most of you believe that all these claims have natural explanations, so why is it so unfathomable to you that natural explanations are the source of the resurrected Jesus sightings?
LEE: Because they had specific religious language to describe such visions or dreams which they manifestly DON’T use to describe the risen Jesus. Part of the reason they record him eating a meal is to emphasize that the being they encountered three days later was an embodied human being. Ghosts don’t eat broiled fish.
GARY: Bottom line: Tens of thousands of people have died for mistaken beliefs throughout human history. Why can’t that be the case with the Resurrection Belief? Isn’t it possible for people to be sincere about the reality of their alleged supernatural experience but at the same time be sincerely mistaken??
LEE: If the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus were all there was to the Christian story I might concede your point. But there’s more, much more, than the appearances which convinced the early Church that Jesus was bodily resurrected (his miracles; the descent of the Holy Spirit; the apostles’ teaching and miracles, etc.).
And remember, they weren’t expecting Jesus to be killed; when that happened, I guarantee that every one of them was thinking that they’d backed the wrong horse for Messiah. So they weren’t expecting to have dreams or visions of Jesus–let alone to meet him bodily resurrected, face-to-face. Since NOBODY was expecting ANYONE to be resurrected, they would’ve written off their mass hallucination of Jesus as just that, if that’s all it was. But there HAD to be more to it to convince those 500 plus Messianic Jewish people that their crucified Messiah really *was* resurrected. A mass hallucination ain’t gonna cut it. Messianic Judaism had no place for a Messiah of dreams and visions. They were expecting a this-worldly warrior-king-priest who would defeat the Romans and drive them back to Italy then reinstitute the Davidic Monarchy as reign as King in Jerusalem.
And as NT Wright says, if you’re a Messianic Jew and the founder of your movement gets killed, you don’t reinterpret his message as a purely spiritual one, you either disband and go home or find another leader.
It is only the modern skeptics’ prejudice against anything supernatural that causes you guys to insist that such things categorically *cannot* happen.
Your bias towards materialism and against the supernatural forces you to jump through hoops to explain away the bodily resurrection.
Pax.
Lee.
“Because they had specific religious language to describe such visions or dreams which they manifestly DON’T use to describe the risen Jesus.”
But what if the disciples believed that their visions/dreams/trances/illusions were real? Isn’t it possible that someone mistakes a vivid dream or an illusion for reality?
“If the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus were all there was to the Christian story I might concede your point. But there’s more, much more, than the appearances which convinced the early Church that Jesus was bodily resurrected (his miracles; the descent of the Holy Spirit; the apostles’ teaching and miracles, etc.).”
What if the alleged miracles of Jesus and those of the disciples are also theological embellishments, written for theological purposes, never intended to be read as historical facts? Do you believe that Matthew’s story of the dead being shaken alive out of their graves by an earthquake was an historical event or a theological allegory? Even evangelical NT scholar Michael Licona believes this story is an allegory. So why couldn’t all of the miracle stories be more of the same?
“But there HAD to be more to it to convince those 500 plus Messianic Jewish people that their crucified Messiah really *was* resurrected. A mass hallucination ain’t gonna cut it.”
I agree with you 100% that a mass hallucination is impossible. Hallucinations are individualized events. But we know from Virgin Mary sightings that people can see a bright light and believe that a dead person has appeared to them. Isn’t is POSSIBLE that all the alleged appearances of Jesus involved illusions (bright lights), vivid dreams, and/or hallucinations to individuals and illusions (bright lights) and false sightings (seeing a man on a hillside in the distance and everyone thinking it is Jesus) for groups of believers? I know you don’t believe these are the probable explanations for the alleged appearances of Jesus, but can you admit that they are possible? That is key.
GARY: Even evangelical NT scholar Michael Licona believes this story is an allegory. So why couldn’t all of the miracle stories be more of the same?
LEE: Because Jesus had a reputation while he alive as a miracle-worker. Most die-hard skeptic academics will at least conceded that Jesus doing miracles is one of the best-attested parts of the gospels.
GARY: But what if the disciples believed that their visions/dreams/trances/illusions were real? Isn’t it possible that someone mistakes a vivid dream or an illusion for reality?
LEE: In that case there were between 500,000-600,00 people in Jerusalem who could show them Jesus’ sealed tomb and stop the Jesus Movement in its tracks.
I could say a dream that I had of my dad was very vivid, so vivid it felt like he was right there with me therefore I think he’s still alive, but all my brother would have to do to convince me otherwise is drive out to the Pisgah Methodist Church cemetery and show me his undisturbed-after-6-years-gravesite.
That’s all it would’ve taken to convince Mary, Peter, James, John, Thomas and the rest that they were wrong. Mary actually assumed the body had been moved but then the “gardener” reveals himself to her as the resurrected Jesus; the gospels also note that the Sanhedrin tried to bribe the Roman guards into saying that Jesus’ disciples stole his body, indicating that nobody knew where it was.
No, you couldn’t sustain the belief that a vision was literal under those circumstances.
GARY: I know you don’t believe these are the probable explanations for the alleged appearances of Jesus, but can you admit that they are possible? That is key.
LEE: Theoretically possible? Yes. Probable? No. As I said, these counter-explanations require more blind faith than believing in the resurrection.
Pax.
Lee.
“Because Jesus had a reputation while he alive as a miracle-worker. Most die-hard skeptic academics will at least conceded that Jesus doing miracles is one of the best-attested parts of the gospels.”
Excellent! I agree with the majority of scholars who believe that Jesus had a reputation as a healer and miracle worker. But there are hundreds if not thousands of people alive today, belonging to many different religions, who have a reputation for healing the sick and performing miracles. The question is: Did Jesus really feed five thousand people with a few fishes and a couple loaves of bread or is this yet another example of an ANE author using big numbers to stress the importance of the central figure in his story. (See Joel’s discussion above about Methuselah.)
Did Jesus really raise Lazarus from the dead in front of a large crowd or was the author of John telling an allegorical story for theological purposes? The fact that Lazarus only appears in the Gospel of John is a clue. Not hard proof, but a clue that this story (as well as that of Doubting Thomas) may be theological inventions.
“In that case there were between 500,000-600,00 people in Jerusalem who could show them Jesus’ sealed tomb and stop the Jesus Movement in its tracks.”
Not if the tomb was empty.
“I could say a dream that I had of my dad was very vivid, so vivid it felt like he was right there with me therefore I think he’s still alive, but all my brother would have to do to convince me otherwise is drive out to the Pisgah Methodist Church cemetery and show me his undisturbed-after-6-years-gravesite.”
Not if your dad’s grave was found empty.
“the gospels also note that the Sanhedrin tried to bribe the Roman guards into saying that Jesus’ disciples stole his body, indicating that nobody knew where it was.”
Nope. If this story is historical, it would only indicate that the Roman guards and the Sanhedrin did not know where the body was. Remember, even if Matthew’s story (not told by any other Gospel author) of guards at the tomb is true, the guard’s were not posted immediately after Jesus’ body was placed in the tomb.
“No, you couldn’t sustain the belief that a vision was literal under those circumstances.”
Wrong. An empty tomb triggered false sightings, illusions, and vivid dreams of Jesus appearing to his grieving family and friends. These “appearances” gave them renewed hope and boldness of character. The fact that the tomb was empty deprived skeptics of the ability to produce a body to shut down this “resurrection hysteria”. Without a body, a supernatural explanation for its disappearance could NOT be dismissed…and that is how the Resurrected Messiah Belief survived when all other messiah movements had died with the death of the messiah pretender.
“Theoretically possible [Gary’s hypothetical, natural explanation for the Resurrection Belief]? Yes. Probable? No. As I said, these counter-explanations require more blind faith than believing in the resurrection.”
Not to non-Christians, including non-Christian theists such as Jews and Muslims. I believe your perception of what is probable on this subject is biased by your belief in other factors, such as perceived fulfilled OT prophecy. However, when one looks closely to these other factors, one sees that none of them are strong evidence. Most Jewish Bible scholars reject the claim that Jesus fulfilled even one OT prophecy. I know that Christian believe that Jewish scholars are biased but isn’t it possible that it is Christians scholars who are biased??
“And as NT Wright says, if you’re a Messianic Jew and the founder of your movement gets killed, you don’t reinterpret his message as a purely spiritual one, you either disband and go home or find another leader.
I agree that the overwhelming majority of first century Jews are not going to believe that the Jewish Messiah will be killed and then resurrected from the dead…and they didn’t! Only a very small percentage of first century Judaism believed the Resurrected Messiah story. That is why Christianity quickly became a Gentile religion. Most Jews would not convert because they believed that the evidence for Christianity’s claims was so poor. It had nothing to do with a bias against the supernatural. It was simply poor evidence.
We see sects and cults occasionally break off from most religions at some point throughout history, whether it be Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. The new sect of Christians didn’t invent the concept of “resurrection”. It was an established concept in the mother religion, Judaism. Christians just gave it a new twist. I believe that the discovery of the empty tomb is most likely what created this “twist” and kept the “Jesus is the Messiah” belief alive. All the other messiah pretenders had graves with bodies in them. Jesus’ grave was empty! Most empty graves are empty because someone or something moved the body, but Christians gave a third option: God had raised Jesus from the dead and taken him to heaven! A “raising from the dead” soon became a “resurrection from the dead”. Why? The disciples desperately wanted the New Kingdom NOW. Cognitive dissonance found a means to explain Jesus’ death and explain why the New Kingdom had not yet been established: Jesus is coming in the clouds at any moment to raise the righteous dead and to establish the Kingdom. “We WILL reign on thrones with Jesus, after all! Sell all your possessions, move to Jerusalem, pray and fast. The End is near!”
“It is only the modern skeptics’ prejudice against anything supernatural that causes you guys to insist that such things categorically *cannot* happen.”
Not true. Anyone who says he knows the supernatural does not exist is a fool. But I believe it is also foolish to believe any extra-ordinary claim without good evidence. And since there are plausible, natural explanations for the Resurrection Belief, I do not believe it is rational to jump to a supernatural conclusion as the most probable explanation.
GARY: I agree that the overwhelming majority of first century Jews are not going to believe that the Jewish Messiah will be killed and then resurrected from the dead…and they didn’t! Only a very small percentage of first century Judaism believed the Resurrected Messiah story. That is why Christianity quickly became a Gentile religion. Most Jews would not convert because they believed that the evidence for Christianity’s claims was so poor. It had nothing to do with a bias against the supernatural. It was simply poor evidence.
LEE: The Book of Acts contradicts you because it says some 5,000 Jewish pilgrims heard the apostles’ Pentecost sermon and signed on to the faith and later on Acts notes that many Temple priests became believers.
The evidence which compelled then was the resurrection; had Jesus really been dead, all anyone would’ve had to do was produce his corpse. Thus, if Jesus was really dead, but his followers somehow inexplicably mistakenly thought they’d seen him alive, all the Sanhedrin or the Romans would’ve had to do is show people his body, or later his bones in an ossuary, in the tomb. It’s extremely simple to stop the whole Jesus movement in its tracks by producing the body or the bones.
Thus the “vision” explanation takes too much faith to believe.
GARY: We see sects and cults occasionally break off from most religions at some point throughout history, whether it be Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. The new sect of Christians didn’t invent the concept of “resurrection”. It was an established concept in the mother religion, Judaism. Christians just gave it a new twist. I believe that the discovery of the empty tomb is most likely what created this “twist” and kept the “Jesus is the Messiah” belief alive. All the other messiah pretenders had graves with bodies in them. Jesus’ grave was empty! Most empty graves are empty because someone or something moved the body, but Christians gave a third option: God had raised Jesus from the dead and taken him to heaven! A “raising from the dead” soon became a “resurrection from the dead”.
LEE: Raising/resurrection; pota-to/potah-to. The word for “resurrection,” *anastasis,* can be translated “raised” but in that context could still only mean one thing, a dead body standing up alive again. A non-bodily “raising” was not an option to anyone. Either Jesus was really alive three days later or he was still dead. Those are the only two workable options. Jesus ascended to heaven as a resurrected human being, not as a dead body, less still as a spirit-being or disembodied soul; you only get the ascension *after* the resurrection.
GARY: Why? The disciples desperately wanted the New Kingdom NOW. Cognitive dissonance found a means to explain Jesus’ death and explain why the New Kingdom had not yet been established: Jesus is coming in the clouds at any moment to raise the righteous dead and to establish the Kingdom. “We WILL reign on thrones with Jesus, after all! Sell all your possessions, move to Jerusalem, pray and fast. The End is near!”
LEE: If you read Dr. Anderson’s blog from a few months ago you’ll remember why cognitive dissonance cannot explain the establishment of the Christian faith. Because, as we noted, such an option was not available to Messianic Jews; either your Messiah beats the Romans and gets crowned as King, or, like all the other contenders, he gets plastered, his movement disintegrates, and assuming you’re not dead with him, you either go home or find a replacement.
NOBODY in Jesus’ little band of some 120 people expected him to be resurrected. It’s why the male disciples tell the women they’re out of their mind for claiming to have seen him alive and actually talked to him; it’s why Thomas demanded to touch his body, especially his wounds before he could accept it. Thomas just verbalized what everyone else was thinking.
Pax.
Lee.
“The Book of Acts contradicts you because it says some 5,000 Jewish pilgrims heard the apostles’ Pentecost sermon and signed on to the faith and later on Acts notes that many Temple priests became believers.”
How do we know that the author of Acts meant this figure literally? Big numbers were used in ANE literature to reflect the importance of the character in the story. See Joel’s discussion of Methuselah.
But let’s agree that 5,000 Jews did convert on Pentecost. And let’s be generous and guess that Paul’s missionary work and that of other apostles added another 5,000 Jews to Christianity in the first century. Scholars estimate that there were 4 million Jews in the Roman Empire in the first century. What percent of 4 million is 10,000? Answer: 0.25% That is a tiny, tiny percentage. The overwhelming majority of first century Jews did not believe the Resurrection Story and it had *nothing* to do with a bias against the supernatural. It was all about poor, weak evidence.
“The evidence which compelled then was the resurrection; had Jesus really been dead, all anyone would’ve had to do was produce his corpse. Thus, if Jesus was really dead, but his followers somehow inexplicably mistakenly thought they’d seen him alive, all the Sanhedrin or the Romans would’ve had to do is show people his body, or later his bones in an ossuary, in the tomb.”
Not if the body went missing shortly after his burial. I believe that the Empty Tomb is an historical fact. And what is the most common explanation for an empty grave? Answer: Someone or something moved the body. Neither the Jews nor the Romans could disprove the Resurrection for one very simple reason: because there was no body in the grave.
“Thus the “vision” explanation takes too much faith to believe.”
Nope. If Jesus’ grave was empty there was no body to disprove the subsequent appearance claims. All that Jews and Romans could say was that the disciples had seen a ghost or that they were lying. (I personally don’t believe they were lying.)
“Raising/resurrection; pota-to/potah-to. The word for “resurrection,” *anastasis,* can be translated “raised” but in that context could still only mean one thing, a dead body standing up alive again. A non-bodily “raising” was not an option to anyone. Either Jesus was really alive three days later or he was still dead.”
An empty grave accompanied by vivid dreams, false sightings, and illusions could have led first to the belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead as had (allegedly) occurred in the Old Testament. The dead person was alive again (and would one day die again). But why didn’t Jesus stick around when he appeared to them? Why did he keep popping in and out of sight? A simple “raising” from the dead would not explain that. This oddity eventually led to the explanation that Jesus had been “resurrected” to heaven, not to his previous earthly existence, but he was soon to return to establish the Kingdom. He was simply returning from heaven for brief appearances to alert them to what was coming. It seems so obvious as a plausible explanation. I don’t understand why Christians can’t see that.
“If you read Dr. Anderson’s blog from a few months ago you’ll remember why cognitive dissonance cannot explain the establishment of the Christian faith. Because, as we noted, such an option was not available to Messianic Jews; either your Messiah beats the Romans and gets crowned as King, or, like all the other contenders, he gets plastered, his movement disintegrates, and assuming you’re not dead with him, you either go home or find a replacement.”
Yes, I read that post. I believe that Joel failed to prove his position. Here is what I said at the time:
I believe cognitive dissonance can still very well explain the development of the Resurrection Belief, notwithstanding your objections, Joel. I would bet good money that this or something like this scenario is what happened:
-The disciples were preparing to reign on thrones with Jesus the Jewish Messiah in a re-established Kingdom of Israel. They expected to defeat Rome, govern Israel, and the entire world would be at peace, according to the Jewish Scriptures. These men were fishermen, peasants, and tax collectors, yet their dreams were filled with visions of ruling a nation!
-Then, their hopes and dreams were suddenly and violently crushed with the unexpected execution of their “messiah”.
-“What happened??” they asked themselves? Where in the Jewish Scriptures does it talk about an executed messiah? We were so sure that Jesus was the real messiah, and not a pretender.” Horrific despair and depression set in.
-then days, weeks, or months later, someone, probably women, find the tomb of Jesus empty.
“Why is Jesus’ grave empty?? Maybe God raised Jesus from the dead, just like he raised people from the dead in the OT! Maybe the empty tomb means that Jesus is still alive and will soon return to us to establish the New Kingdom!
-The empty tomb has given the disciples a glimmer of hope. Their hopes and dreams are still alive! This glimmer of hope triggers vivid dreams, daytime trances, and maybe even hallucinations of Jesus, possibly first occurring with Peter. In a very vivid dream, Jesus tells Peter that he has returned from the dead, he forgives Peter’s betrayal, and appoints Peter as the new leader of their movement. He instructs Peter to preach the Gospel with boldness because he, Jesus, will return to establish the Kingdom at any moment.
-Peter’s vivid dream triggers other disciples to have vivid dreams, trances, maybe hallucinations. Then groups of disciples experience illusions (bright lights) or false sightings (seeing someone in the distance, on a hill top for instance, and believing it to be an appearance of Jesus).
-“But why does Jesus keep appearing for brief encounters but never stays??” a disciple asks. “Well, maybe he wasn’t just raised from the dead, maybe the resurrection of the dead has begun! Jesus is in Paradise collecting the righteous dead and will soon return with them to establish his kingdom. Maybe Jesus was the first fruits of the general resurrection, the rest of the righteous dead will be raised…tomorrow!!! The Kingdom is nigh! Sell everything you have, move to Jerusalem, the city of David, fast and pray. Jesus’ coming will happen any second now! We are soon to be rulers of a nation!!!
And that is how cognitive dissonance led to the Resurrection Belief without anyone ever actually seeing a flesh and bone resurrected corpse!
Joel didn’t buy this explanation because I couldn’t give any evidence. What?? I am suggesting this as a *plausible” explanation, not THE explanation. Plausible explanations for an odd event do not require evidence. The only requirement is that they not contradict any agreed upon evidence. My hypothetical explanation does not contradict any agreed upon evidence (as determined by the experts, historians). In fact, my hypothetical explanation is in full agreement with Gary Habemas’ “Minimal Facts”!
Lee: “Because they had specific religious language to describe such visions or dreams which they manifestly DON’T use to describe the risen Jesus.”
Well, this is patently false. The word is the passive form of οραω, which is an exceptionally generic term for seeing virtually anything, including visions. This is the rather standard language applied to visionary and ream-appearances in the Septuagint.
Lee: “Part of the reason they record him eating a meal is to emphasize that the being they encountered three days later was an embodied human being. Ghosts don’t eat broiled fish.”
Yes, and the reason this is a feature mentioned in only two of the four gospels was precisely to provide cover for the belief that this was a physical—and not a “spiritual”—resurrection. It is an apologetic embellishment.
There is no such thing as a “spiritual” resurrection. Resurrection, by definition, implies physicality and the overcoming of physical death.
I would slightly tweak Kipp’s statement and say this:
“Yes, and the reason this is a feature mentioned in only two of the four gospels was precisely to provide cover for the belief that the disciples had seen a real flesh and blood body, not a ghost. It is an apologetic embellishment.”
Most scholars believe that most (maybe not all) early Christians believed that Jesus had been bodily resurrected. But must one see a body to believe that a bodily resurrection has occurred? No! According to Paul, the Jews in Asia Minor did not see a body and yet they believed this story. Why did they believe? Answer: They “searched the Scriptures” and they took Paul’s word for it! So that is evidence right there that first century Jews did NOT need to see a resurrected body to believe in a bodily resurrection. The believed other people who for all we know…saw a ghost (bright light)!
The Gospel authors tell us that the disciples had trouble distinguishing between real people and ghosts.
“When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.”
And by the end of the passage, what have they realized?
By the end of the passage (in the story/tale) the disciples realize that the “ghost” is a real person.
But the fact remains that the authors of the Gospels believed that it was possible for first century Jews to confuse real people with ghosts. If an educated person today sees someone walking on top of the water on a lake, their first assumption will be that the water is very shallow in that area or that there is a submerged object. A ghost will not be high on the list of possible explanations for most modern educated people.
Ghosts were a central part of the belief system of first century peoples, Jews and non-Jews. Therefore, for non-Christians to suspect that the Resurrection Belief arose due to perceived ghost sightings (bright lights, shadows, etc.) is not irrational.
Yes. Thank you for the clarification, Gary. That was sloppy on my part.
But what should not get lost in this is that Lee’s assertion, “they had specific religious language to describe such visions or dreams which they manifestly DON’T use to describe the risen Jesus,” IS PATENTLY FALSE. There is no distinction between seeing a vision, or a ghost, or in a dream, or in the real world on the usage of the word οραω.
New Testament scholar NT Wright agrees with you, Kipp:
“The word is quite consistent with people having non-objective ‘visions’; it is equally consistent with them seeing someone in the ordinary course of human affairs.”
Source: https://lutherwasnotbornagaincom.wordpress.com/2020/12/31/nt-wright-agrees-that-the-greek-word-ophthe-can-mean-to-see-in-a-vision/
GARY: Ok, so the teachings of Christianity are complex and nuanced. One cannot read the Bible and understand what it says without extensive education, reading and studying the books of Christian scholars. The lay Christian cannot understand the Bible without extensive training and education. Let’s accept that as a fact.
LEE: Nobody but you has said that. What we’ve said is that the main storyline of scripture (the love of God manifest in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection) anyone can understand. Yet because the Bible was written over 2,000 years ago to ancient near-eastern cultures in languages no longer spoken by any but academic experts, we all need a little academic assistance from time to time to help us understand those (to us) foreign, ancient cultures.
The principal is no different than someone trying to read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; since few of us read/speak Middle English we must rely upon translations which often contain footnotes defining certain words/phrases we also might not understand.
GARY: Why then did Jesus say that one must have the faith of a child to believe? Children have not spent years studying the works of scholars. Children accept the sayings and teachings of the Bible literally. So which is it: simplistic faith or informed faith?
If you say informed faith, shouldn’t your children be told to wait to believe until after they have taken extensive courses in Christian theology? Why allow them to believe the very extra-ordinary claims of Christianity when they are so uninformed?
LEE: Jesus was calling for a simple, trusting faith like that of a child, NOT that we all check our brains at the door and stop thinking for ourselves.
As anyone knows, children ask lots of questions, and they rarely believe something without a good reason, even if they might not be consciously aware of that reason. Often, as in the case of a parent and child, the child trusts the parent, thus believes them.
Thus a childlike faith is not an unquestioning faith. The kind of faith praised by scripture is one that engages with it and asks questions of it. The NT alone is full of admonitions for Christians to cultivate their minds and think critically. In I Peter we’re told to be ready to give an answer to anyone who questions why we believe what we believe; the word translated “answer” or “reason” is the *apologia,* from which we get out word “apologetics.” To give an *apologia* means to give a rational, reasoned defense of an argument.
Paul commended the Berean Jews, not for having a blind faith, but instead for taking down their scrolls and comparing the apostles’ message with what they read in the scrolls.
Pax.
Lee.
You do realize that this is exactly what Mormon and Muslim apologists say: “Little children can believe that the teachings of the Book of Mormon/Koran are true with childlike faith but to truly understand Mormonism/Islam one must do extensive study to see and understand the complexities and nuances of the true Faith. Skeptics of Mormonism/Islam have not extensively studied our holy book so their rejection of our teachings is based on their ignorance and biases.”
Question: Must one spend years studying the complexities and nuances of each and every supernatural-based belief system on the planet to reject them?
GARY: You do realize that this is exactly what Mormon and Muslim apologists say: “Little children can believe that the teachings of the Book of Mormon/Koran are true with childlike faith but to truly understand Mormonism/Islam one must do extensive study to see and understand the complexities and nuances of the true Faith. Skeptics of Mormonism/Islam have not extensively studied our holy book so their rejection of our teachings is based on their ignorance and biases.”
LEE: Actually, what the Mormon missionaries told me was to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to confirm in my heart that the BOM is true.
And there are other texts than just the BOM you have to study as well, such *Doctrine and Covenants,* *Pearl of Great Price,* etc.
Pax.
Lee.
GARY: So if the souls of the righteous dead are with Jesus, where is Jesus? Didn’t Jesus tell the thief on the cross that “today” you will be with me in Paradise? Is Paradise/Heaven just another dimension?
LEE: Jesus is in heaven, to which he ascended after being bodily raised from the dead.
GARY: And another question: If heaven is not “up”, why did Jesus ascend into the clouds when he left the disciples for the final time? Why not just disappear like he did on the Emmaus Road.
LEE: Figurative language based out of the Old Testament. The Son of Man figure from Daniel 7 who Jesus identified with/as in the gospels is described as “coming with the clouds of heaven.” As all ancient Jews knew from their scriptures, “coming on the clods” by symbolic imagery meant to invoke YHWH or this Son of Man figure whom Daniel says was worshiped like Ancient of Days was worshiped.
Pax.
Lee.
So Jesus didn’t literally ascend into the clouds? This is figurative/symbolic language? The ascension was not a literal event?
GARY: So Jesus didn’t literally ascend into the clouds? This is figurative/symbolic language? The ascension was not a literal event?
LEE: No, Jesus acsended into heaven, but it may not have been a literal flying off up into the clouds. So the event actually happened whereas the language used to describe it was probably figurative. How else do you describe the divine Messiah acsending back to God’s dimension of heaven to a pre-20th c. people who don’t have any conception of other dimensions? You use religious language which they’re already familiar with and understand.
If I’m writing a letter to a friend and mention that I’m a member of the GOP,I don’t have to explain to him that “GOP” is an abbreviation for “Grand Old Party” and refers to the Republican Party, founded in 1856 to check the spread of slavery in the US because he already knows all of that.2,000 years from now, unless they’re an academic historian, someone reading my letter (assuming they can read 21st c. English) might not know what “GOP” meant.
Or if said “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse” and you read that 500 years from now and concluded that 21st century Americans regularly cooked and ate horses, would your conclusion be accurate?
Similarly to Paul in I Thessalonians 4:
“The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shouted order, with the voice of an archangel and the sound of God’s trumpet. The Messiah’s dead will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, will be snatched up with them among the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And in this way we shall always be with the Lord.”
Paul did not intend to claim that Jesus will return to earth literally surfing a cloud and believers will be literally sucked up into the sky to meet him. He was instead mixing his metaphors and alluding to three events: 1) Moses returning from Sinai with the Law, in which a trumpet sounds, a loud voice is heard, and after a long wait Moses descends to find out what the Israelites are doing; 2) Daniel 7, in which the persecuted people of God are vindicated by being raised up on the clouds to sit with God in glory; 3) the emperor or governor visiting or returning to a province of the Roman Empire in which the citizens would venture forth to meet him some distance from the city gates as a sign of respect. They populace would then escort him into the city.
So both of these texts use figurative language to make their point.
You can’t have it both ways: you can’t criticize scripture for being too simplistic then insist that attempts to explain it in a more critical, adult fashion are too complicated.
Pax.
Lee.
So the Ascension was not a literal event. The author was using symbolic language to describe Jesus leaving one dimension (our reality) and entering another (the spirit world)? Very good.
Maybe the same author was using symbolic language when he described an appearance to two disciples on the Emmaus Road. Maybe Jesus only appeared in their minds.
Bottom line: I don’t think anyone today can claim to know the intent of these ancient writers. They were not writing history text books. They were writings religious texts “so that you might believe”. So neither Dr. Stavrakopoulous nor Dr. Anderson can say for sure whether these ANE authors were speaking literally or figuratively. All scholars can do is guess. Yes, an educated guess, but still a guess. Anyone who tells you that he or she knows as a fact what an ancient author intended to say is not being honest with you or her/himself.
GARY: So the Ascension was not a literal event. The author was using symbolic language to describe Jesus leaving one dimension (our reality) and entering another (the spirit world)? Very good.
LEE: Gary, you misunderstood what I wrote. The ascension was a literal event but the language used to describe it may have been figurative. How do you describe trans-dimensional travel (earth to heaven) by God’s anointed Messiah to a people who haven’t even discovered the Law of Gravity yet? Especially people who already have a religious vocabulary to express just such an idea? You’d use figurative language meant to invoke ideas of YHWH and heaven they were already familiar with in their sacred scriptures. Which is what the ascension narratives in Luke-Acts do.
Pax.
Lee.
GARY: Maybe the same author was using symbolic language when he described an appearance to two disciples on the Emmaus Road. Maybe Jesus only appeared in their minds.
LEE: The writer (Luke) sort of clues us in that they aren’t hallucinating because Jesus eats a meal with them. And again, the LAST person either of them expected to see was Jesus. So what caused them to hallucinate Jesus and not Judas Maccabeus or Theudas? Why Jesus?
GARY: Bottom line: I don’t think anyone today can claim to know the intent of these ancient writers. They were not writing history text books. They were writings religious texts “so that you might believe”.
LEE: Which in itself isn’t reason to assume everything they say is a lie or a hallucination. Paul and the gospels insist that these things happened in actual space-time history, not in someone’s mind.
GARY: So neither Dr. Stavrakopoulous nor Dr. Anderson can say for sure whether these ANE authors were speaking literally or figuratively. All scholars can do is guess. Yes, an educated guess, but still a guess. Anyone who tells you that he or she knows as a fact what an ancient author intended to say is not being honest with you or her/himself.
LEE: Gary, I wasn’t there when Thomas Jefferson wrote the words: “all men are created equal.” But I’m fairly certain he intended to include women in that statement.
And as we keep saying, if you read critically, different genres of literature will alert you to their presence. I don’t have to psychic to realize that the crucifixion narratives are real history while the creation account isn’t. Just like I don’t take *Beowulf* as factual history yet do take the *Anglo-Saxon Chronicle* as factual history.
Pax.
Lee.
“The ascension was a literal event but the language used to describe it may have been figurative. How do you describe trans-dimensional travel (earth to heaven) by God’s anointed Messiah to a people who haven’t even discovered the Law of Gravity yet?”
So you know as fact that Jesus did not literally ascend into the clouds; Jesus instantaneously moved from one dimension to another? Would you please quote *one* Church Father who held this view?
” The writer (Luke) sort of clues us in that they aren’t hallucinating because Jesus eats a meal with them. And again, the LAST person either of them expected to see was Jesus. So what caused them to hallucinate Jesus and not Judas Maccabeus or Theudas? Why Jesus?”
I’ve already said *multiple* times that two or more people cannot have the same hallucination. Why do you keep repeating this straw man?
Isn’t it possible that the entire Emmaus Road appearance story is a theological invention, never meant to be understood literally, just as “Matthew’s” story of dead saints being shaken back to life out of their graves was not meant to be taken literally (at least according to evangelical NT scholar Michael Licona). It seems to me that you (and many moderate and liberal Christians) arbitrarily choose when to believe a Bible story literally and when to believe it is an allegory.
GARY: Not if the body went missing shortly after his burial. I believe that the Empty Tomb is an historical fact. And what is the most common explanation for an empty grave? Answer: Someone or something moved the body. Neither the Jews nor the Romans could disprove the Resurrection for one very simple reason: because there was no body in the grave
LEE: Then who or what moved the body? You don’t think the disciples moved it. So did the Jewish establishment or the Romans move it? Who moved it? Where was/is it?
You don’t really think God translated (which is which is the technical term for what you’re suggesting here) it to heaven, so what happened to it? Show me the body!
GARY: An empty grave accompanied by vivid dreams, false sightings, and illusions could have led first to the belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead as had (allegedly) occurred in the Old Testament. The dead person was alive again (and would one day die again). But why didn’t Jesus stick around when he appeared to them? Why did he keep popping in and out of sight? A simple “raising” from the dead would not explain that.
No. In the gospel narratives EVERYBODY at first *assumes* or tries to insist, that someone else has moved the body; Mary and the other women assume the authorities have moved it; the Sanhedrin tries to bribe the guards into saying the disciples moved it by stealing it.
LEE: Gary, a raising from the dead this was, but a “simple” raising from the dead, this was *not.* I can’t explain why Jesus doesn’t stay put in the gospels but I can tell you if the disciples were seeing visions they were really odd, quirky visions, not at all like what any of them could’ve or would’ve expected beforehand. Why didn’t they have visions of Jesus and his victorious army riding into Jerusalem? THAT’S what they were all expecting, so why not hallucinate that? Aren’t people most likely to hallucinate something they’re familiar with or already expecting?
Anyway, the gospel resurrection accounts weren’t written primarily to convince 21st c. skeptics that Christianity is true.
GARY: This oddity eventually led to the explanation that Jesus had been “resurrected” to heaven, not to his previous earthly existence, but he was soon to return to establish the Kingdom. He was simply returning from heaven for brief appearances to alert them to what was coming. It seems so obvious as a plausible explanation. I don’t understand why Christians can’t see that.
LEE: Because a resurrection to heaven isn’t a resurrection. A resurrection necessarily involves a dead body coming back to life ON EARTH. Jesus was resurrected ON EARTH and only then ascended to heaven. You’re trying to collapse the two events into one which won’t work. What you’re arguing for is a “translation* or *assumption* to heaven, such as happened to Enoch, or the Blessed Virgin if you’re Roman Catholic. It isn’t a resurrection.
And because Paul ties Jesus’ PAST bodily resurrection to our own FUTURE bodily resurrection, insisting you don’t get the latter without the former; and as he insists in numerous places, all of space-time creation is to be redeemed, not just human bodies, although human bodies are most certainly the center-piece of that new creation.
You’re trying to come up with a Platonic, Docetic or Gnostic counter-explanation to disprove the resurrection; it’s been tried and found unworkable. Platonism doesn’t want a resurrection because the space-time universe is a cheap, flawed copy of ultimate spiritual reality and the body is the prison of the soul; Docetism doesn’t believe in a real resurrection because Jesus wasn’t an embodied human being in the first place, his body, hence his resurrection, was just an illusion; Gnosticism believes the space-time universe and esp. the human body are downright evil and Jesus, as a sprit-being came to show other Gnostics how to spiritually transform out of their physical bodies out of the space-time universe.
You’re trying desperately to get an empty tomb without an actual resurrection and it just comes across as futile to me.
Pax.
Lee.
I don’t think either one of us is going to change our views on which explanation is more plausible for the Resurrection Belief, a literal bodily resurrection or a mistaken belief based on a combination of illusions, vivid dreams and false sightings.
You believe that my position is due to a bias against the supernatural. You believe that my anti-supernatural bias prevents me from thinking rationally on this issue. The problem is that I would bet good money that most non-Christian theists in the world will agree that my scenario is *much* more probable than yours. What do you think? If you don’t believe me, go online and ask 10 Jewish bloggers and 10 Muslim bloggers which scenario they believe to be the more probable explanation for the Resurrection Belief.
Many Christians believe that everyone else (atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus) are biased against the evidence for the Resurrection, but isn’t it possible that Christians have their own biases??
I have a question for you, Lee: Do you perceive the presence of Jesus Christ within you?
GARY: I have a question for you, Lee: Do you perceive the presence of Jesus Christ within you?
LEE: This again?
Yes. I do. But I wouldn’t use it as evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
Pax.
Lee.
But can you see why non-Christians might see this as a source for a probable bias? If you can perceive the presence of the spirit of a first century person living within you, it has to influence your objectivity regarding the historical evidence for this same dead man’s alleged resurrection, don’t you think? You may not recognize the bias, but most people will believe it at least affects your views subconsciously.
Imagine if I claimed that the spirit of Jimmy Hoffa lives within me, telling me in a still small voice that he never died; he is hiding out somewhere. How objective do you think I could be about any evidence which indicates that Jimmy is dead?
No one is saying that and you’re going down the road of silly and stupid argumentation.
Do you perceive the presence of Jesus Christ within you, Joel? If so, share this with non-Christian friends and associates and see what they say.
You may feel my Jimmy Hoffa comparison is laughable but I guarantee that the overwhelming majority of non-Christians, theists and non-theists, will say the comparison is valid. If you don’t believe me, ask some of your non-Christian friends, family, and co-workers.
No, it’s not a good comparison.
GARY: You believe that my position is due to a bias against the supernatural. You believe that my anti-supernatural bias prevents me from thinking rationally on this issue.
LEE: None of you seem willing to concede that the simplest solution in this case, may just be that Jesus really was bodily resurrected. You cannot even think about considering this because of your dogmatic prior commitment to skepticism. Therefore you have to put forward all manner of wildly improbable scenarios to explain the empty tomb.
GARY: The problem is that I would bet good money that most non-Christian theists in the world will agree that my scenario is *much* more probable than yours. What do you think? If you don’t believe me, go online and ask 10 Jewish bloggers and 10 Muslim bloggers which scenario they believe to be the more probable explanation for the Resurrection Belief.
LEE: Gary, in my 10 years or so in the old Amazon.com Religion Forums before they shut them down, I heard every alternative theory known to ,modern skeptics and a few new ones.
None of them were persuasive to me; most of them reeked of desperation: a desperate attempt to maintain their skepticism despite persuasive evidence to the contrary.
You’re at least willing to concede that Jesus was a real person and that his disciples really believed he was raised. That already puts you ahead of most of them.
Pax.
Lee.
.
“None of you seem willing to concede that the simplest solution in this case, may just be that Jesus really was bodily resurrected. You cannot even think about considering this because of your dogmatic prior commitment to skepticism. Therefore you have to put forward all manner of wildly improbable scenarios to explain the empty tomb.”
I am willing to admit that I have a bias against the supernatural. It isn’t that I *know* that the supernatural does not exist, but I see no good evidence that the supernatural currently operates in our universe. But why would other theists (Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc.) favor a natural explanation for the Resurrection Belief? It can’t be because they have a bias against the supernatural.
GARY: I am willing to admit that I have a bias against the supernatural. It isn’t that I *know* that the supernatural does not exist, but I see no good evidence that the supernatural currently operates in our universe. But why would other theists (Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc.) favor a natural explanation for the Resurrection Belief? It can’t be because they have a bias against the supernatural.
LEE: Because if Jesus really *was* bodily resurrected, it means Christianity is true, thus faiths such as Islam and Hinduism are necessarily false.
Hinduism emphasizes freedom from the material world through purification of desires and elimination of personal identity. Brahmin, in Hinduism the uncreated, eternal, infinite, transcendent, and all-embracing principle, may or may not have the attributes of god. It also teaches reincarnation and in Hinduism the soul is immortal, not the body.
On the other end of the spectrum, Christianity argues for a transcendent God who created the space-time universe and that Jesus;’ bodily resurrection inaugurated a new creation whereby all of the created space-time universe will be redeemed/perfected and humans will live on earth with God in resurrected bodies.
Islam, the new kid on the block, argues that Judaism and Christianity corrupted the true faith of God. In Islam, Jesus was a prophet of God, no more, and not even the last or greatest prophet. Further, in Islamic theology Jesus, as a prophet of Allah cannot be killed, thus there’s no need for a resurrection.
So if what Christianity says about Jesus’ resurrection is true, it necessarily negates other faith’s views of ultimate reality.
Pax.
Lee.
I agree with you, Lee. If what Christianity says about Jesus’ alleged resurrection is true, all other religious belief systems are negated. However, to convince most educated non-Christians of the historicity of the Resurrection, Christians are going to need to provide better evidence than disputed 2,000 year old eyewitness testimony and the subjective perception that his spirit lives somewhere within your body.
GARY: I agree with you, Lee. If what Christianity says about Jesus’ alleged resurrection is true, all other religious belief systems are negated. However, to convince most educated non-Christians of the historicity of the Resurrection, Christians are going to need to provide better evidence than disputed 2,000 year old eyewitness testimony and the subjective perception that his spirit lives somewhere within your body.
LEE: No Christian apologist worth his/her salt would use the subjective indwelling of the Holy Spirit as objective evidence that the resurrection actually happened. As you often do, you’re overly simplifying apologetics. Nowhere do CS Lewis, Lee Strobel, or Francis Collins say in any of their conversion accounts that the argument that the Holy Spirit lives within Christian believers had anything to do with convincing them that the resurrection was a real event..
Pax.
Lee.
GARY: So you know as fact that Jesus did not literally ascend into the clouds; Jesus instantaneously moved from one dimension to another? Would you please quote *one* Church Father who held this view?
LEE: Gary, you know as well as I do that I can’t cite any church fathers who said that Jesus moved from one dimension to another, but to a man they all believed the ascension was a historical event.
Addressing the ascension, NT Wright says:
“Basically, heaven and earth in biblical cosmology are not two different locations within the same continuum of space or matter. They are two different dimensions of God’s good creation. And the point about heaven is twofold. First, heaven relates to earth tangentially so that the one who is in heaven can be present simultaneously anywhere and everywhere on earth: the ascension therefore means that Jesus is available, accessible, without people having to travel to a particular spot on the earth to find him. Second, heaven is, as it were, the control room for earth; it is the CEO’s office, the place from which instructions are given. ‘All authority is given to me,’ said Jesus at the end of Matthew’s gospel, ‘in heaven and on earth.’ . . . ”
“The mystery of the ascension is of course just that, a mystery. It demands that we think what is, to many today, almost unthinkable: that when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same space-time continuum or about a nonphysical world contrasted with a physical one but about two different kinds of what we call space, two different kinds of what we call matter, and also quite possibly (thought this does not necessarily follow from the other two) two different kinds of what we call time. We post-Enlightenment Westerners are such wretched flatlanders.”
Obviously no early father would’ve explained the ascension the way Wright does, but I think Wright is spot on.
He might equally have said “Modern skeptics are such wretched flatlanders.”
Pax.
Lee.
Is it possible, Lee, that Wright and other modernists are simply redefining an ancient concept to make it more palatable to educated minds in the 21st century? If the Early Church Fathers, who Christians allege had some contact with the apostles of Jesus, believed that heaven was a physical location beyond the stars, why should Christians today invent a new definition of this place?
GARY: Is it possible, Lee, that Wright and other modernists are simply redefining an ancient concept to make it more palatable to educated minds in the 21st century?
LEE: No. Because church fathers like Augustine warned us not to take certain things too literally in the Bible.
GARY: If the Early Church Fathers, who Christians allege had some contact with the apostles of Jesus, believed that heaven was a physical location beyond the stars, why should Christians today invent a new definition of this place?
LEE: Please cite a church father (or an apostle!) who actually taught this.
Coming as most of the early fathers did from a Hellenistic background, I doubt that any of them thought of heaven as having spatio-temporal characteristics at all.
God is not physical, therefore heaven cannot be physical, either.
Wright’s definition of heaven as another dimension is the one Paul would’ve used if Koine Gk had had the vocabulary for such a concept.
Again, you object to Christianity for being overly simplistic (a physical heaven somewhere “up there” in the sky), the when we explain that such a literalistic interpretation is a mistake and not what the early Christians intended, you accuse of us making things too complicated by putting words in the ancients’ mouths.
Christianity cannot win either way.
Pax.
Lee.
“No doubt it is not seemly for me to boast. Nevertheless, I will come to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2 I know a man in Christ about fourteen years ago (whether he was in the body I cannot tell, or whether he was out of the body I cannot tell, God knows) who was taken up into the third heaven. 3 And I know the same man (whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God knows), 4 how he was taken up into Paradise and heard words not to be spoken, which no man can utter. 5 Of this man I will boast. Of myself I will not boast, unless it be of my infirmities. 6 And yet if I chose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth.”
“taken UP into the third heaven”
But I guess Paul didn’t really mean “up”…
GARY: But I guess Paul didn’t really mean “up”…
LEE: Heaven–God’s realm–necessarily exists outside the space-time continuum, thus directions such as “up” have no relevance. Again, Paul was using human language to describe the indescribable.
Thus to insist that because Paul described being “taken up” into heaven it therefore proves Paul thought of heaven as somewhere above the earth in the space-time universe makes you sound like one of those readers CS Lewis wanted to tell to “grow up” and learn to read like an adult.
Pax.
Lee.
“For thoughtful Christians, all of this raises the question, “What did the early church believe about heaven?” The answer draws together both divine communion and human reunion.
For the apostles, heaven-as-divine-communion was a given. Indeed, in the New Testament the word “heaven” is often used to stand for God himself (Luke 15:21; Matt. 21:25, 23:22; John 3:27).
But heaven was a place, too. As Jesus had promised, “I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3-4). And this place was not simple, but rather a complicated space with rooms or levels (an idea the great Italian poet Dante Alighieri would expand upon to unforgettable effect over a millennium later). In 2 Corinthians 12:2-4, the Apostle Paul pulls perhaps the biggest tease of the Bible when he tells of being lifted up into “the third heaven,” where he experienced “things so astounding” that, to the great disappointment of his readers ever since, “they cannot be told” (New Living Bible).
Not only was heaven a place, it was populated. Especially during the centuries of Roman persecution, Christians looked forward to communing after death not only with God, but with each other.
The earliest evidence of this trend is The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity, an account of two Christian women killed in Carthage (in North Africa) around 202 or 203. This book records a dream Perpetua had in prison just before she and her companions were thrown to the wild beasts. In the dream Perpetua saw her sickly brother, Dinocrates, who had died at the age of 7, in heaven drinking from the fountain of life. In the same book, other soon-to-be-martyred Roman captives envisioned themselves after death joyously rejoining their fellow martyrs in a garden paradise.”
Source: https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2008/august/how-early-church-saw-heaven.html
This (Christian) source states that early Christians DID believe that heaven was a literal physical place with mansions, rooms, and other physical features. By the time of Augustine, this view receded to a more metaphysical perception of heaven. But the fact remains, the EARLIEST Christians believed that heaven is UP and that it is a real, physical place.
Please stop.
GARY: This (Christian) source states that early Christians DID believe that heaven was a literal physical place with mansions, rooms, and other physical features. By the time of Augustine, this view receded to a more metaphysical perception of heaven. But the fact remains, the EARLIEST Christians believed that heaven is UP and that it is a real, physical place.
LEE: I surfed this article a couple of hours ago. It isn’t proof that Augustine or anyone else thought of heaven as a place you could go the same way you can go to California.
We’ve been over how Jesus’ statement that in his Father’s house were many mansions wasn’t intended as a description of a literal house. None one in antiquity ever read it that way.
Pax.
Lee.
In approximately 330 BCE Alexander the Great conquered the Jewish nation. With his conquest, Greek culture and Greek thinking (philosophy) began seeping into Second Temple Judaism. A religion which formerly held no view of an afterlife, soon adopted a (Greek-like) afterlife. Jews began to worship Yahweh using a Greek translation of Hebrew Scriptures in their worship services. Greek philosophy even influenced the ancient Hebrew concept of God: Descriptions of Yahweh became less anthropomorphic and more metaphysical.
In the first century CE, a new Jewish sect, Christianity, adopted this same “pagan” Greek philosophy. .
And this Pagan Greek philosophy continues to influence modern Christianity. All vestiges of an anthropomorphic God are gone. He does not sit on a throne. He does not live in a “place” with golden streets or gates of pearls. No, God is not “out there”, at the edge of the universe. God is ubiquitous. He is everywhere. Heaven is just empty space in another dimension.
Dear lay Christian: Stop dreaming of walking streets paved with gold; living in a mansion; having a crown with stars; and reconnecting with your loved ones who have died before you. Jesus and the authors of the Bible were speaking figuratively. They didn’t really mean what they said. Your dead loved ones are not waiting for you in a literal, physical place called “heaven”. Their souls are in soul sleep, floating around aimlessly in another dimension. When you die, you will end up “asleep” in the same void; the same dimension free of any physicality! Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?
Hmm Maybe Dr. Stavrakopoulous is on to something…
Evidence that Greek philosophy radically changed early Christianity”
“About AD 200, apocalyptic expectations seem to have reached unusual levels. Montanism spread outside Asia Minor and found converts throughout the Roman Empire, including Tertullian, a North African lawyer and theologian. Apocalyptic prophets, some including bishops, roused their flocks with visions of the imminent End and led them into the desert to meet Christ returning on the clouds. In response to these disastrous errors, a nonapocalyptic version of millennialism, the “sabbatical millennium,” emerged. This argument, recorded about AD 110 in the Epistle of Barnabas, held that because God had created the world in six days and rested on the seventh (Genesis 1) and because 1,000 years is a day in God’s sight (Psalm 89/90), the world must labour 6,000 years before the sabbatical millennium of peace, abundance, and joyful rest for the Lord’s weary would begin. It offered a quiescent alternative to the radical millennialism of the apocalyptic prophets, and it would become more plausible with the passing of each failed apocalyptic episode.
…The influence of Greek thought upon Christian theology offered church leaders an alternative to the millenarian worldview. The theology of Origen, the great 3rd-century Alexandrian Christian thinker, emphasized the manifestation of the kingdom in the soul of the believer rather than in the world, a significant shift from the historical toward the metaphysical or the spiritual. The association of apocalyptic millenarianism with the Montanist heresy and other troubling antiauthoritarian beliefs and practices discredited it, especially among the clerical supporters of the “monarchical episcopacy” of the 3rd century, who laid the groundwork for the revolutionary notion in Christianity of a sacred empire. This strain of antimillennial political theology climaxed with the conversion of Constantine the Great and the adoption of Christianity as the favoured, and eventually sole, religion of the empire. The theologians of the imperial period either ignored millennial doctrines or in some cases—e.g., Eusebius, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine—violently attacked them as carnal, Judaizing, and crude forms of belief.
Source:https://www.britannica.com/topic/eschatology/The-early-church
This evidence demonstrates that for the first 200 years of Christianity, Christians took Jesus words literally, But after 200 years and he hadn’t returned, “sophisticated” Christian apologists, beginning with Origen, used Greek philosophy to re-interpret Jesus’ literal words into something allegorical. And modern apologists continue to use Greek philosophy today to make the teachings of Jesus more palatable to the non-Christian world.
What specific words are you referring to?
“Immediately after the distress of those days
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[b]
30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[d] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[e] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: 44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
Ha….really. Any evidence of early Christians promoting the cutting off of limbs?
These are just a sampling of the literal words Jesus said which apologists over two millennia have allegorized with Greek philosophy.
Let’s focus on the hell part of that statement.
If I were given two options only: cut off a limb from my body or go to hell where the fire is never quenched (eternal burning, suffering), I will choose cutting off my limb. That is how important Jesus believed it was for people to do what God said to avoid his eternal wrath.
GARY: And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: 44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
LEE: So you (and other ancient writers) can use hyperbole but Jesus can’t?
Where in the New Testament does it tell us that we’re supposed to interpret everything Jesus said literally? I have Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic Bibles at home and haven’t noticed that verse in any of them.
Pax.
Lee.
Good afternoon, Lee.
I’m not claiming to know whether or not Jesus was speaking literally in the above passages. NO ONE knows for certain what Jesus meant. What I am claiming is that experts (see the article above) state that a significant percentage of the earliest Christians believed Jesus was speaking literally. That is my point. For 200 years, Christian bishops were calling upon lay Christians to sell all they had; to fast and pray without ceasing, because the End was very near.
” All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.” Acts chapter 4
This is what apocalyptic religious cults and sects do. They tell their followers to abandon all personal possessions; to move in together and form a commune; to fast and pray; waiting for the “End” which is sure to occur any second now.
“[Prior to 200 CE] Apocalyptic prophets, some including bishops, roused their flocks with visions of the imminent End and led them into the desert to meet Christ returning on the clouds. In response to these disastrous errors, a non-apocalyptic version of millennialism, the “sabbatical millennium,” emerged.”
So it wasn’t just the post-Pentecost Jerusalem church that got caught up in apocalyptic hysteria! This was an empire wide phenomenon. But by circa 200 CE, educated “sophisticated” Christians, such as Origen, realized that the Jesus movement was developing a serious image problem. Romans, Greeks, and Jews considered Christians “wack-os” because of their apocalyptic behavior. No one was going to take Christianity seriously if educated Christians did not tone things down and re-interpret Jesus’ very clear, unmistakable apocalyptic teachings. So that is what Origen did. He and his “sophisticated” Christian contemporaries reforumlated Christian teaching to make it less antagonistic to Rome and less “wack-o”. Instead of preaching “The End is near, sell everything; move into our commune; fast and pray”; the new and improved Christianity “emphasized the manifestation of the kingdom in the SOUL of the believer rather than in the world, a significant shift from the historical toward the metaphysical or the spiritual (the predominant Greek view of the world). Jesus’ very literal, very physical, apocalyptic *Jewish* message was transformed into an internalized, metaphysical *Greek* message. And educated, sophisticated Christian apologists (many with PhD’s in Greek philosophy) have been spinning the more respectable Greek version of Jesus ever since.
Gary, an Encyclopedia Britannica article above does not constitute anything like “evidence” for Christianity’s being corrupted by Hellenistic paganism.
The evidence is that the Palestinian Judaism of Jesus resisted significant Hellenization.
True, Judaism translated its scriptures into GK so they could be widely read throughout the Diaspora, but that in itself doesn’t constitute significant Hellenization.
Judaism continued to insist that there was only one omnipotent, eternal, uncreated God, and that the universe had been created ex nihilo from nothing. Unlike the Greek Gods who were created into a universe which itself was eternal.
Furthermore, Judaism had no concept of an eternal soul separate and apart from the physical body.
And how is bodily resurrection into new heavens on a new earth anything like the disembodied Platonic existence yearned for by Plato? Even there, not everybody in ancient Greece or Rome was a Platonist; for the average Greek death was the end with no afterlife of any kind; at best the most you could hope for was to come back as a shade or ghost, but you were still technically dead.
If you want to see how Hellenization impacted Judaism read Philo of Alexandria. However Philo was an Alexandrian Diaspora Jewish philosopher, not a Palestinian Jewish rabbi. He was the outlier, not mainstream.
Hellenistic ideas didn’t start to significantly infiltrate the early church until long after the New Testament was written, and even then, in mainstream Christianity they’re tame compared to Christian Gnosticism, which was Platonism on steroids. Gnosticism is what you get when you mix Christianity with Platonism.
GARY: Dear lay Christian: Stop dreaming of walking streets paved with gold; living in a mansion; having a crown with stars; and reconnecting with your loved ones who have died before you. Jesus and the authors of the Bible were speaking figuratively. They didn’t really mean what they said. Your dead loved ones are not waiting for you in a literal, physical place called “heaven”. Their souls are in soul sleep, floating around aimlessly in another dimension. When you die, you will end up “asleep” in the same void; the same dimension free of any physicality! Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?
LEE: I probably know between 800-1,000 “lay Christians” and off the top of my head can’t think of any of them who actually believe they’re going to walk on gold streets in heaven wearing a literal golden crown.
Most are sophisticated enough to understand figurative language when they read it. They moved on from their fundamentalist literalism long ago.
Pax.
Lee.
The scholars of this article say that the Hellenization of Christianity started with Origen in the third century. Hellenization doesn’t mean that ALL Jewish aspects of Christianity were swept away, just that Greek thought and philosophical principles strongly influenced and reinterpreted some of Jesus’ original teachings, in particular his teachings about “the Kingdom”.
Bottom line, Lee: These aren’t my ideas or claims. I am presenting scholarly positions which Joel’s conservative Christian reading audience may or may not have ever been exposed to.
GARY: Bottom line, Lee: These aren’t my ideas or claims. I am presenting scholarly positions which Joel’s conservative Christian reading audience may or may not have ever been exposed to
LEE: You seem to think most of us who read Dr. Anderson’s blog are Bible-bangin’ Pentecostals who believe Mark 16:18 commands believers to handle snakes as a test of faith.
In my experience it’s the former fundamentalists-turned-skeptics who tend to be unaware that Christianity is not and never has been monoform in its expression and has interacted with other philosophical-worldview systems, like Hellenism
Pax.
Lee.
The idea that only (knuckle-dragging) fundamentalists read the passage “in my Father’s house are many mansions” as literal is false. Read what Barnes Bible Commentary has to say on this passage:
?In my Father’s house – Most interpreters understand this of heaven, as the special dwelling-place or palace of God; but it may include the universe, as the abode of the omnipresent God.”
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/john/14-2.htm
“Most means “an overwhelming majority of”. So the overwhelming majority of Bible translators understand Jesus to have said that heaven is a literal “abode” or dwelling place. Your metaphysical view, Lee, appears to be a small minority view, at least according to this particular Christian Bible commentary.
GARY: Rev. Albert Barnes (1798-1870), whose commentary you apparently randomly selected because it agrees with your point, wrote that particular commentary around 1870. It may indeed have reflected the mainstream Evangelical position of 1870 (or it may not. Theologians like Disciples of Christ co-founder Alexander Campbell (1787-1866) did not interpret such passages the way Barnes apparently did.) however it would probably not do so in 2023.
Regardless, randomly citing ONE commentary from 1870 hardly speaks to what the majority of modern Evangelicals believe about heaven today.
Give us some credit for being a little more sophisticated and well-read.
Pax.
Lee.
I don’t really care what the majority of modern Evangelicals believe. Lee. My entire point here is what the EARLIEST Christians believed about the Second Coming and other teachings of Jesus. And scholars say that the earliest Christians believed Jesus literally meant what he literally said. Modern evangelicals have been bamboozled by sophisticated reinterpretations of what Jesus “really meant to say”, by modern evangelical/conservative Protestant scholars trained in Greek philosophy. Did you know that the number one advanced degree among modern Christian apologists is “philosophy”…GREEK philosophy!
Why?
Because smart apologists know that without sophisticated (Greek) philosophical arguments, Christianity looks really naive and silly to educated non-Christians.
Don’t bother telling me (again) that it is me being a fundamentalist, Lee, when in reality it is *you* pushing a pagan Greek version of Jesus’ teachings to save face. Jesus must be rolling in his grave.
Please stop. You don’t really know what you’re talking about.
“Please stop. You don’t really know what you’re talking about.”
What is up with you, Joel?? You may not like my position, but I am on topic (Should we take the Bible literally?) You whine like crazy when other blog authors cut you off/ban you, but when you don’t like skepticism of your own posts, you want to shut people down. Stop. Please.
You have full reign on my blog. I have never told you to stop commenting. Please grant the same access to me.
No, you are literally displaying ignorance of the apocalyptic language in the NT and how the early Church interpreted those passages.
Lee, you tell us that educated Christians like yourself can differentiate which passages in Christian Scripture are historical and which are allegorical. Please read the following two passages from the Gospel of Matthew and tell us: Are both passages historical? Are both passages allegorical? Is one passage historical and one passage allegorical? (If so, which one?) Or, are both passages allegorical (non-historical)? Please tell us which literary tools you use to make your decisions. Thank you!
Passage 1: “So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.””
Passage 2: ” At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. 53 After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.”
Here’s one 19th c. theologian who did not interpret “heaven” as a literal mansion in the sky, Alexander Campbell (1787-1866), one of the founders of the Disciples of Christ:
“The Bible begins with the generation of the heavens and the earth; but the Christian revelation ends with the regeneration, or new creation of the heavens and the earth. This the ancient promise of God confirmed to us by the Christian Apostles. The present elements are to be changed by fire. The old or antediluvian earth was purified by water; but the present earth is reserved for fire, with all the works of man that are upon it. It shall be converted into a lake of liquid fire. But the dead in Christ will have been regenerated in body before the old earth is regenerated by fire. The bodies of the saints will be as homogeneous with the new earth and heavens as their present bodies are with the present heavens and earth. God re-creates, regenerates, but annihilates nothing; and, therefore, the present earth is not to be annihilated. The best description we can give of this regeneration is in the words of one who had a vision of it on the island of Patmos. He describes it as far as it is connected with the New Jerusalem, which is to stand upon the new earth, under the canopy of the new heaven.” (*The Christian System,* p. 311)
No Hellenism in sight.
Pax.
Lee.
It doesn’t matter what Christians in the nineteenth century or the twenty-first century believe, Lee. I only care what the apostles and earliest Christians believed. And all evidence points to the fact that the earliest Christians, including Paul, believed that Jesus was coming back during *their* lifetimes (“this generation”).
So you, Joel, and other “sophisticated” Christians can believe whatever you want. What matters to me is what the original Christians believed. And there is no indication whatsoever that the original Christians believed that heaven was a non-physical other dimension where the invisible souls of the righteous dead float around in a state of soul sleep. That kind of Greek nonsense wasn’t invented until several hundred years later. Why? To explain away the fact that Jesus hadn’t returned like he promised!
Again, you just don’t know what you’re talking about.
“Most [lay Christians] are sophisticated enough to understand figurative language when they read it.
Yes, in particular when they have been reading the books of Christian scholars and apologists for the last 1,800 years, many of whom have PhD’s in (Greek) philosophy. Origen and every educated Christian apologist since him realizes how silly and ignorant Jesus looks to the educated non-Christian world if Christians were to preach that Jesus actually meant what he said.
GARY: Yes, in particular when they have been reading the books of Christian scholars and apologists for the last 1,800 years, many of whom have PhD’s in (Greek) philosophy. Origen and every educated Christian apologist since him realizes how silly and ignorant Jesus looks to the educated non-Christian world if Christians were to preach that Jesus actually meant what he said.
LEE: Love your neighbor as yourself. Do to others what you’d have done to you. Love your enemies. Turn the other cheek and don’t repay evil for evil.
You’re right. Ludicrous!
Pax.
Lee.
Wait, wait, wait! I am a BIG fan of Jesus. He was one of the greatest humanists of all time. But even the best of human beings are not perfect. His apocalyptic teachings were delusional, silly, and ignorant.
“Early Christians, trying to make sense of accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and the writings of his first followers in the 1st century, formulated their views of the afterlife in this Greek and Roman philosophical context. Plato provided the idea of souls ascending into heaven, but the texts that would become the Christian scriptures (the New Testament) emphasized a physical, bodily resurrection – most importantly in their claim that Christianity’s founder was himself resurrected in the body and ascended physically to heaven. If Jesus dwelled in heaven, with New Testament texts indicating his followers would join him there, the radical hope of Christianity needed not a Platonic realm of rational thought, but a physical place – a material heaven. Aristotle’s view of the universe, with its outermost sphere of the stars, gave Christians the conceptual framework to locate heaven on a map.
Yet the creation account in Genesis introduces confusion because it speaks of the heavens in two different ways. First, it describes God creating the heavens and Earth. But then it goes on to describe God creating a ‘firmament’ by dividing waters below from waters above. Reconciling the discrepancy was Basil of Caesarea, the 4th-century Cappadocian writer and bishop. The first of these heavens was the starry heaven and the dwelling of the virtuous dead, Basil explained, whereas the second was only the airy heaven, or sky.
Basil’s arguments pushed heaven from the clouds to the stars, but the final step in the invention of heaven went even further, placing the Christian heaven in a location beyond the stars.”
Source: https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/2019/08/17/the-structure-of-heaven-and-earth-how-ancient-cosmology-shaped-everyones-theology/
“Basil’s arguments pushed heaven from the clouds to the stars”
There is evidence in the Book of Acts that “in the clouds” was the original Christian location for heaven: “When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.”
Yes, dear Readers, the historical evidence clearly indicates that early Christians believed that heaven was a physical location in the clouds. The earliest Christians believed it was a real physical place. They did not believe it was a void or other dimension. A few centuries later, Christians pushed heaven out to the stars, and eventually out beyond the stars. The idea that heaven is NOT beyond the stars came about after Copernicus discovered heliocentricity, shattering into pieces Christianity’s established cosmic view. But once again, Greek philosophy stepped in to save the day for them! To spare them having to find another physical location, sophisticated Christians chose a bullet-proof, unfalsifiable new concept: Heaven is in another dimension!
Gary, I’ve no doubt that the fathers like Basil equated heaven with the stars, but that’s different from arguing that Basil actually believed heaven was located just left of Beta Reticuli.
Especially since the orthodox teaching was resurrection into new heavens onto a new earth.
And just fyi, here’s an interesting quote from Clement of Alexandria:
“Those who are particular about words, and devote their time to them, miss the point of the whole picture.” (Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, Bk. II, Ch. 1, AD 150-215).
Methinks perhaps you may be missing the point of the whole picture obsessing over individual words.
In the meantime look up the four types of interpretation of scripture practiced by the early church fathers
Pax.
Lee.
GARY: I don’t really care what the majority of modern Evangelicals believe. Lee. My entire point here is what the EARLIEST Christians believed about the Second Coming and other teachings of Jesus. And scholars say that the earliest Christians believed Jesus literally meant what he literally said.
LEE: So when Jesus said: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry” in John 6:35
Gary, man, please cite me ONE church father who insisted that Jesus LITERALLY meant he was a loaf of divine Wonder Bread!
Pax.
Lee.
GARY: Wait, wait, wait! I am a BIG fan of Jesus. He was one of the greatest humanists of all time. But even the best of human beings are not perfect. His apocalyptic teachings were delusional, silly, and ignorant.
LEE: If you mistakenly think (like Albert Schweitzer and a few others) that Jesus was prophesying the end of the word, maybe. But he wasn’t.
That argument totally misunderstands ancient Jewish apocalyptic, which routinely used figurative language (the moon turning to blood, the stars falling from the sky) to imbue current historical events with their cosmic significance. Such as the destruction of the Temple prophesied in Matthew 24 and Mark 13, which becomes clear if you read the entire chapter carefully from the beginning.
Pax.
Lee.
Please read the following two passages from the Gospel of Matthew and tell us: Are both passages historical? Are both passages allegorical? Is one passage historical and one passage allegorical? (If so, which one?) Or, are both passages allegorical (non-historical)?Please tell us which literary tools you use to make your decisions. Thank you!
Passage 1: “So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.””
Passage 2: ” At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. 53 After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.”
Once again, you have completely deviated from the actual post and are trolling to get material for your own blog.
Yes. You are afraid to answer the question, aren’t you, Joel? It is the same question that got Michael Licona fired from his faculty position at an evangelical institution. If you refuse to answer the question, it shows just how very weak your position is. The truth is, moderate and liberal Christians like yourself pick and choose which Bible passages to believe literally and which to believe allegorically primarily based on one factor: which position maintains the social respectability and believability of this ancient belief.
No, I’m just not interested in your little games. But what am I? Moderate? Liberal? Evangelical? Conservative? Over the years, you’ve thrown all those labels at me. lol…
Sorry, I’m just not interested in trying to reason with someone who insists on reading the entire Bible with the exact same wooden-literalism all the way through. You’re like Ken Ham, who says, “If you don’t believe in Adam and Eve, then how can you believe the resurrection claims?” The answer is simple: Because I know how to read.
Wrong. You know I don’t read everything in the Bible as literal. You are attempting to silence me by labeling me as an uninformed, ignorant, fundamentalist, a common tactic used by Christian apologists against skeptics whenever the skeptic has backed the apologist into a corner. You are backed in a corner, Joel, and you know it! To avoid answering my question, you are using the same tactic used by the Emperor’s tailors. They didn’t convince the people of the existence of invisible cloth with evidence. They convinced the people of the existence of invisible cloth by intimidating them into silence: “If you don’t see what I say is true, it is because you are too stupid and uninformed to see it.”
You have not provided one shred of evidence that you know as fact the intent of ANY ancient author, whether it be the author(s) of Genesis or the author of Matthew. You simply insist that we accept your expert opinion as fact. Sorry, university educated people do not accept one expert’s personal opinion as fact.
I do not read ancient texts with wooden literalism. When Homer talked about cyclops, he was speaking figuratively. And when a Bible author states that Jesus is going to tell his disciples a parable, I accept that the story is an allegory. And when Jesus spoke of being the “bread of life” and the “door”, I understand that he was speaking metaphorically. But when the author of Matthew tells us that dead saints were shaken out of their graves to walk the streets of a major Roman city, how do you or anyone else know that he was speaking literally or figuratively? We don’t. And the same is true of other stories in the Gospels of people seeing a walking, talking, broiled fish eating corpse. These stories could all be allegories; stories invented for theological purposes. But you can’t admit that, can you, Joel?
Dear Reader: It is a simple question: Is the author of Matthew’s story of dead saints shaken back to life out of their graves by an earthquake an allegory or a literal, historically accurate account? Can Dr. Anderson tell us? If Dr. Anderson says yes, it is an allegory, then he needs to explain why the appearance of a resurrected Jesus stories told in the Gospels are not also allegories.
If he refuses to answer, Dr. Anderson has confirmed he is backed into a corner.
I’ll bite.
The account in Matthew has a definite apocalyptic vibe to it and that genre uses figurative imagery to imbue historical events with their greater, cosmic significance.
On the other hand, however, Matthew also takes pains to note that there were eyewitnesses to this event, which wouldn’t be the case if it were meant to be taken as purely apocalyptic. The Temple’s torn curtain is narrated in the other gospels’ passion narratives as a historical event thus arguing for this episode being purely figurative would require Matthew to switch genres from historical narrative to apocalyptic imagery in mid-sentence with no clear grammatical marker that he was switching genres. And anyway, apocalyptic usually looks *forward,* such as the destruction of temple prophesied in Matthew 24, whereas unlike apocalyptic literature, Matthew 27 looks *backwards.*
And the episode is part of one long sentence, with each event in the sentence liked by the word “and” (“The tombs also were opened. *And* many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised”).
Matthew clearly connects this episode with the earthquake and tomb-opening of Jesus in the next chapter, though Matthew has these deceased saints being raised *after* Jesus’ resurrection. And when he says “many” this doesn’t have to mean hundreds or thousands, especially, as seems likely, these “saints” were deceased members of the Jesus Movement; there wouldn’t be more than a handful of such people anyway.
The fact that the resurrections of these saints are tied to Jesus resurrection, which is itself very clearly intended to be interpreted as a real historical event, in the same way Lazarus’ raising was a historical event pointing forward to Jesus’ own historical resurrection, makes me think the passage was intended as actual history. I respect Mike Licona and his view that the episode isn’t a literal event and I might change my mind but I think a decent case for Matthew 27 being a historical event can me made.
To which you’ll probably object that if it really happened why is Matthew the only source to mention it? To which I’d say there are lots of “one-off” accounts of events in history that only appear in one solitary historical source. If we automatically ruled out any event that wasn’t multiply attested historically we’d lose a lot of important material.
Pax.
Lee.
Thank you for your response, Lee. Correct me if I am wrong, but you appear to be saying that it is impossible to know for sure if “Matthew’s” Dead Saints Shaken Out of Their Tombs story was intended as an allegory or as an historical fact. I agree. It might be either.
And I believe that the following biblical stories *may* also have been allegorical in intent:
–the Six Day Creation
–the Worldwide Flood
–the age of Methuselah
–the Tower of Babel
–the Slaughter of the Canaanites
–the Slaughter of the Midianite mothers and little boys
–Jonah in the belly of a great fish
–Elijah caught up to heaven in a whirlwind
–a resurrected Jesus eating broiled fish
–a resurrected Jesus allowing women disciples to touch his feet in the Garden
–a resurrected Jesus appearing on a mountain in Galilee, a mountain near Bethany, and on the seashore of Lake Tiberius.
So, I do *not* read everything in the Bible with wooden-literalism, as Joel claims. I accept that ancient writers often used allegories and metaphors. Can Lee and Joel accept that possibly ALL the stories in the above list are allegories, or do they insist that the stories of people seeing a walking, talking first century corpse could *not* be allegorical/metaphorical??
NT Wright expresses my views pretty succinctly in his *The Resurrection of the Son of God*, p. 636 (after an examination of the Matthew 27 passage):
“Some stories are so odd that they may just have happened. This may be one of them, but in historical terms there is no way of finding out.”
As for myself, I can accept that *some* of the episodes on your list might be allegorical or at least figurative, such as the creation narrative, Methuselah and the Tower of Babel.
But I see no reason for example, to categorize the resurrection appearances of Jesus as allegorical or figurative, for all of the reasons I’ve shared with you over the past several years in this forum. But I’ll go over them again just briefly:
I’m curious why you think Jesus eating broiled fish is allegorical. What was the allegory intended to say? What hidden moral, political or religious message was this episode intended to convey?
Because as I keep insisting, nobody in Jesus’ early band of followers expected Jesus to die–let alone survive that death either by being bodily resurrected, less still as some kind of disembodied spirit. Because in their minds–and this is crucial to remember–a dead Messiah was a FALSE Messiah! In that case your dead “messiah” would still be dead, and you as his followers (assuming you weren’t dead with him) would either find another Messiah or disperse and go home. You would NOT see visions of him somehow alive or receive warm and fuzzy feelings that he was somehow still with you in your hearts. Israel’s bondage to Rome was real and this-worldly thus its deliverance from said bondage had to be this-worldly. There was nothing allegorical about Theudas or Bar Kochba and their armed rebellions against Rome. After their ignominious defeat by the Romans, nobody claimed to see visions of either one.
So there’s no context for the disciples hallucinating Jesus, either alive or as a ghost. That the resurrection narrative in Luke has Jesus reassure them that he isn’t a ghost is primarily, I think, to reassure pagan readers that that wasn’t really an option, because spirits don’t eat.
And again, Messianic Jews did not interpret Messiah in figurative or allegorical terms: they were literally expecting a real person to defeat Rome, cleanse or restore the Temple, and then reestablish the Davidic Monarchy and reign as priest-king from Jerusalem. There were no allegorical Messianic Jews: all of this was supposed to occur in real space-time history. If it didn’t, went the conventional theological wisdom, it wasn’t the REAL Messiah.
As for the women, their presence indicates these stories aren’t made up because nobody inventing a resurrection would have women be the first witnesses to it, literal or allegorical. And the stories of the women do not read as if they’re intended to be understood allegorically. What deeper hidden truth was their touching Jesus’ feet meant to convey?
Besides which, pagan critics like Celsus in the 180s understood the resurrection claim to be of a LITERAL resurrection witnessed by real, human women, because he makes fun of it and argues it can’t be true because what civilized thinking Roman wants a bodily resurrection, let alone one of a dead criminal peasant and heralded by women?
No, Messianic Jesus movements don’t think allegorically. The resurrection appearances of Jesus are clearly grounded in real, space-time history, references actual living people, and do not use figurative or allegorical language.
Pax.
Lee.
Good morning, Lee.
“I’m curious why you think Jesus eating broiled fish is allegorical. What was the allegory intended to say? What hidden moral, political or religious message was this episode intended to convey?”
Roman Catholic NT scholar Raymond Brown, among others, believed that the story of the resurrected Jesus appearing to his disciples and subsequently eating broiled fish with them is an apologetic invention by the author of Luke/Acts to counter the claim by first century skeptics that the disciples had only seen a ghost. In the same appearance, the resurrected Jesus even says, “Look. I’m not a ghost!” (paraphrase)
“In that case your dead “messiah” would still be dead, and you as his followers (assuming you weren’t dead with him) would either find another Messiah or disperse and go home. You would NOT see visions of him somehow alive or receive warm and fuzzy feelings that he was somehow still with you in your hearts.”
Unless the body of your messiah pretender was missing! A missing body was the trigger for illusions, false sightings, vivid dreams, and hallucinations. Without a body, skeptics could not prove your messiah pretender was still dead.
“As for the women, their presence indicates these stories aren’t made up because nobody inventing a resurrection would have women be the first witnesses to it, literal or allegorical.”
It is certainly possible that women found the grave empty as stated in the original Gospel of Mark. There are no Jesus appearances to women in this Gospel. Therefore the appearances to women in the latter Gospels may well be more theological embellishments.
“pagan critics like Celsus in the 180s understood the resurrection claim to be of a LITERAL resurrection witnessed by real, human women, because he makes fun of it and argues it can’t be true because what civilized thinking Roman wants a bodily resurrection, let alone one of a dead criminal peasant and heralded by women?”
I have never said that the earliest Christians did not believe that Jesus had been literally, bodily, resurrected. I am simply suggesting that the stories in Matthew, Luke, and John of a walking, talking corpse appearing to people, letting them touch him, eating broiled fish, cooking fish on a seashore, MAY be theological embellishments.
The original Jesus appearances MAY have only involved people seeing bright lights.
GARY: Unless the body of your messiah pretender was missing! A missing body was the trigger for illusions, false sightings, vivid dreams, and hallucinations. Without a body, skeptics could not prove your messiah pretender was still dead.
LEE: Gary, you’re seeing this through the lens of a modern evangelical-turned-skeptic.
You have to view it through the eyes of a first century, Second Temple Palestinian Messianic Jew.
All a missing body would imply to Jesus’ disciples was that his body had been stolen or moved to another burial location–which is exactly what Mary Magdalene assumes in John’s account. It would not trigger visions or hallucinations of him still alive because that scenario wasn’t on anyone’s radar.
As the Emmaus pilgrims demonstrate by their testimony, the fact that Jesus was killed proved that he WASN’T the Messiah after all. He was a dead pretender with delusions of grandeur.
When the women claimed that he was raised from the dead, the one thing NOBODY says is: “Aha! Yes! That obviously explains it.” No, the men disciples basically tell the women they’re out of their minds for saying the tomb’s empty and they’ve seen him alive.
You seem to stuck in the assumption that his disciples expected Jesus to die and somehow survive his death (which he obviously didn’t) and were so convinced ahead of time that he would that it caused them to stubbornly cling to that idea in the face of the actual evidence. But as I keep trying to get you to see, they weren’t expecting either a death or a resurrection. They were expecting Jesus to gather his army and make war on Caesarea Philippi, driving the Romans back to Italy, then set up his monarchy in Jerusalem. THAT is what they would’ve hallucinated or seen visions of–Jesus enthroned in Jerusalem while Pilate, Herod and Caiaphas groveled at his feet because THAT is what they all expected to happen.
THAT is why Peter draws his sword when he sees Judas leading the Temple guards to arrest Jesus; he was thinking that now, at long last, the final messianic battle would begin.
GARY: It is certainly possible that women found the grave empty as stated in the original Gospel of Mark. There are no Jesus appearances to women in this Gospel. Therefore the appearances to women in the latter Gospels may well be more theological embellishments.
LEE; Gary, you’re missing an important point here: the women at the empty tomb and/or their encounters with the resurrected Jesus are not later embellishments because nobody faking a resurrection would purposely invent women witnesses, because to do so could damage their credibility. And, indeed, we see Celsus one hundred and some-years later criticizing the gospels for just that reason (among many others)–insisting that the first witnesses to the resurrection were a group of hysterical women.
So the disciples wouldn’t deliberately embellish details that were calculated to damage their credibility.
GARY: I have never said that the earliest Christians did not believe that Jesus had been literally, bodily, resurrected. I am simply suggesting that the stories in Matthew, Luke, and John of a walking, talking corpse appearing to people, letting them touch him, eating broiled fish, cooking fish on a seashore, MAY be theological embellishments.
LEE: If he really WAS resurrected and did those things there would be no need for such embellishments. But a resurrected Jesus who comes out of his tomb and appears to and talks to no one is kind of anticlimactic. If he didn’t do or say precisely what the appearance narratives record it must have been something very similar. The appearances read exactly like what could’ve happened to a group of frightened, confused, dispirited disciples about ready to pack it in and go home, a group of people not expecting any of what followed.
Pax.
Lee.
Lee: “The appearances read exactly like what could’ve happened to a group of frightened, confused, dispirited disciples about ready to pack it in and go home, a group of people not expecting any of what followed.”
No, if one reads the Gospels in chronological order: Mark –> Matthew/Luke –> John, one sees continual expansion/enlargement (embellishment?) of the story. It isn’t just skeptics who say this. If you read Roman Catholic NT scholar Raymond Brown’s two volume masterwork, “The Death of the Messiah”, he says this too.
According to the author of Acts, Paul (a first century Jew) only saw was a bright light and believed that the bodily resurrected Jesus had appeared to him. He never claimed to see an actual body. In addition, according to Paul, some first century Jews in Asia Minor believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, not because they saw his body, but because they took Paul’s word for it. Therefore, it is entirely possible for first century Jews to see a bright light or hear about a bright light and believe that a bodily resurrected body has made an appearance.
It is therefore entirely possible that the original “Jesus appearances” all involved sightings of bright lights; it is possible that the stories in the Gospels are theological/literary embellishments. You may not believe this is probable, but what matters is if it is POSSIBLE.
“All a missing body would imply to Jesus’ disciples was that his body had been stolen or moved to another burial location–which is exactly what Mary Magdalene assumes in John’s account. It would not trigger visions or hallucinations of him still alive because that scenario wasn’t on anyone’s radar.”
If you were a first century Jew who had been following an apocalyptic Jewish preacher for 3 years, believing that he was the promised messiah, and then he suddenly dies. You would ask yourself: “How is this possible? The Messiah is not supposed to die!” If you have a grave with a body, you know that this man was not the Messiah. But if you have an EMPTY grave, then there are other possibilities: “Maybe God has raised him from the dead!” And after time, “raised from the dead” became “resurrected from the dead”. I know you don’t believe this is a probable scenario, but what I or you believe is most probable is irrelevant. What matters is if it is POSSIBLE. And if it is possible, to non-Christians, including theistic Jews, this scenario if far more probable than a literal resurrection. Ask modern Jews if you don’t believe me. Ask Rabbi Singer:
There were MANY messianic movements in the 1st century. Every one of them ended in the killing of the supposed messianic leader. Every one of them fizzled and died once the leader was killed. Why? Because the killing of the leader essentially told the followers, “Nope! He wasn’t the messiah!”
But then for some reason, something different happened with Jesus’ messianic movement. And, as Lee points out and as the Gospels relate, Jesus’ followers assumed he wasn’t the messiah either after his death. But then something happened.
You need to seriously contemplate that. You can’t dismiss it so easily.
Jesus was the only messiah pretender in history with an empty grave!
Yes.
Pax
Lee.
GARY: I know you don’t believe this is a probable scenario, but what I or you believe is most probable is irrelevant. What matters is if it is POSSIBLE. And if it is possible, to non-Christians, including theistic Jews, this scenario if far more probable than a literal resurrection.
LEE: I know the Orthodox Jewish position on resurrection is a bodily resurrection.
With respect, Rabbi Singer (I’m guessing a modern Reformed Jew? No yarmulke or prayer shawl.) misunderstands I Corinthians chapter 15. When Paul contrasts the “natural” physical body with the “spiritual” resurrected body, he isn’t talking about two different kinds of bodies, one physical, the other not. Paul was an orthodox Messianic Jewish Pharisee before his conversion and the Pharisees held to a physical bodily resurrection.
I Corinthians 15 has been mistranslated in many modern versions. The word typically translated “natural” or “physical,” is the GK word *psychikon,* from the root word for “soul.” But in GK *psyche* or “soul” did not refer to a disembodied spirit, but denotes what you might term “ordinary human life.” *Pneumatikon* on the other hand, typically translated “soul,” refers to a body powered or indwelt by the Holy Spirit. So what Paul is contrasting is our present human bodies, subject to decay and death and our sinful human nature with our future resurrection bodies–still physical bodies–powered by the Holy Spirit.
The translators of the Roman Catholic *Jerusalem Bible* understood the subtleties and have translated I Cor. 15:44-ff accordingly:
” . . . the thing that is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is sown is weak but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it EMBODIES the SOUL, when it is raised it EMBODIES the SPIRIT.
“If the SOUL has its own EMBODIMENT, so does the SPIRIT have its own EMBODIMENT. The first man, Adam, as scripture says, became a LIVING SOUL; but the last Adam has become a LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT. That is, the first one with the SOUL, not the SPIRIT, and after that, the one with the SPIRIT.”
When I Corinthians says “I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” the GK word translated “flesh and blood” is *sarx,* which doesn’t actually refer to a physical body, but to our fallen human nature. The word for body is *soma,* which Paul always uses when he’s referring to a human body.
Besides which, Rabbi Singer either ignored or isn’t aware of the fact that in Romans chapter 8, Paul TWICE specifically connects Jesus; bodily resurrection with the REDEMPTION of our PHYSICAL BODIES (*soma* not *sarx*):
“And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” (Rom. 8:11, NIV)
“Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.” (Rom. 8:23, NIV)
Thus the Rabbi’s argument that Paul didn’t understand Jesus to have been raised with an actual, flesh-and-blood body is untenable based on the various texts. So contrary to Rabbi Singer’s argument, the exact REVERSE occurred: Paul and the gospels all begin with a bodily resurrection, and then, by the 120s-150s the Gnostics have married Christianity to an extreme form of Platonism to argue AGAINST a literal, human Jesus thus against a literal, bodily resurrection. It actually began near the end of the first century, with Docetic evangelists leaving the Ephesian Church who argued that Jesus wasn’t a real, embodied human being, which the author of I and II John condemns, referring to these people as antichrists.
As for there being no resurrection account in Mark, Mark 16 ends with an empty tomb, which certainly IMPLIES a resurrection. You don’t really need Jesus appearing to anyone to get that idea. And the early Church fathers were aware of the multiple endings of Mark and weren’t bothered by it.
Thus, while these alternative explanations may satisfy Rabbi Singer, they don’t satisfy anyone who has actually done a deep-dive into the texts involved, such as, say NT Wright.
I recommend his *The Resurrection of the Son of God,* esp. here, pp. 348-351. In this 800+ page work Wright engages all of the relevant counter-arguments. Unlike, say., Bart Ehrman, who barely gives Wright’s book a nod.
Pax.
Lee.
Gary, with respect, Rabbi Singer has it backwards. Both Paul and the gospels presuppose an embodied Jesus bodily raised from the dead. It’s only as you get into the late 1st-early 2nd century that you get Groups like the Docetics and Gnostics trying to spiritualize everything because of their belief that the human body was evil.
The good Rabbi does not have a nuanced enough understanding of Paul’s arguments in I Cor. 15. The word *psychikon* normally translated “natural” or “physical” is from the GK word *psyche* or “soul”; however in GK “soul” didn’t refer to a disembodied spirit or immaterial consciousness but instead characterized “ordinary human life.” While the word *pneumatikon,* usually translated “spiritual,” referred to a body filled with or empowered by The Holy Spirit.
Thus Paul isn’t contrasting physical bodies with immaterial ones, but contrasting our current physical bodies driven by our fallen sinful natures to our future, resurrection bodies—still physical—powered directly by God’s Holy Spirit.
The Roman Catholic translators of the Jerusalem Bible Readers Edition, understood this, and translated I Cor.15:44-ff accordingly:
” . . . the thing that is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; the thing that is sown is weak but what is raised is powerful; when it is sown it EMBODIES the SOUL, when it is raised it EMBODIES the SPIRIT.
“If the SOUL has its own EMBODIMENT, so does the SPIRIT have its own EMBODIMENT. The first man, Adam, as scripture says, became a LIVING SOUL; but the last Adam has become a LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT. That is, the first one with the SOUL, not the SPIRIT, and after that, the one with the SPIRIT.”
And when Paul says in vs. 50, “I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” the word translated “flesh and blood” isn’t the for a human body, which would be the GK word soma, but instead is the word sarx, which refers to fallen human nature. When Paul wants to talk about a human body, alive, dead, or resurrected, he always uses soma.
As in Romans 8, which Rabbi Singer seems to have missed, in which Paul in TWO PLACES ties Jesus’ bodily resurrection to our own BODILY RESURRECTION:
“And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies [soma] because of[e] his Spirit who lives in you.” (Rom. 8:11, NIV)
“Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies [soma].” (Rom. 8:23, NIV)
As for there being no resurrection account in Mark 16, the text ends with an EMPTY TOMB and testimony of the angel that Jesus has been raised. You don’t really need the appearances to catch the gist of the passage.
Pax.
Lee.
Might I recommend NT Wright’s *The Resurrection of the Son of God,* esp. pp. 348-351. In this book Wright examines all of the arguments for and against the resurrection.
Pax.
Lee.
Yes, I’ve read it cover to cover and reviewed it on my blog.
https://lutherwasnotbornagaincom.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/a-laymans-review-of-nt-wrights-the-resurrection-of-the-son-of-god-part-1-was-the-christian-movement-unique-in-history/
Wright’s primary argument is NOT that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts nor that we can be certain that the appearance stories are historically factual, (he admits elsewhere that neither he nor anyone else knows who wrote the Gospels), but because no first century Jew or Roman would believe in a bodily resurrection of one person without seeing an actual resurrected body.
The problem with his argument is that the Bible itself contradicts his position! The author of Acts states that all Paul saw in his Jesus appearance experience on the Damascus Road was a bright light. He never claims to have seen an actual resurrected *body*. In addition, Paul’s Jewish converts in Asia Minor believed by taking Paul at his word and by searching the Scriptures. They too never saw a resurrected body! This is proof that first century Jews could believe in a bodily resurrection of one person without ever seeing a resurrected *body*!
GARY: Yes, I’ve read it cover to cover and reviewed it on my blog.
LEE: Are there just those seven parts? Forgive me, but you don’t really deal with much of the meat of the book (unless there are more parts I didn’t see).
GARY: Wright’s primary argument is NOT that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts . . .
LEE: True. And I’ve never said that it is..
GARY: . . . nor that we can be certain that the appearance stories are historically factual, (he admits elsewhere that neither he nor anyone else knows who wrote the Gospels) . . .
LEE: Who wrote them, and whether they are factual are two entirely different questions. Even if I conceded that they are anonymous that in itself doesn’t necessarily invalidate them as ficticious.
GARY: , but because no first century Jew or Roman would believe in a bodily resurrection of one person without seeing an actual resurrected body.
LEE: Wright’s overarching question in TROTSOG is, “So what did happen on Easter morning? This historical question, which is the central theme of the present book is closely related to the question of why Christianity began and how it took the shape it did.”
GARY: The problem with his argument is that the Bible itself contradicts his position! The author of Acts states that all Paul saw in his Jesus appearance experience on the Damascus Road was a bright light. He never claims to have seen an actual resurrected *body*.
LEE: Actually none of the recountings of Saul’s conversion experience says that he “saw” a light they way one would “see” a modern streetlight or a star in the sky; what the various texts says is that:
“Suddenly a light from heaven FLASHED AROUND me.” (Acts 9:3)
“Suddenly about midday a strong light from heaven SHONE ALL AROUND me.” (Acts 22:6)
“At midday on the road . . . a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, SHONE AROUND ME and my traveling companions.” (Acts 26.12)
Luke may be telling these stories the way he does to draw parallels with the pagan Syrian official Heliodorus in II Maccabees 3 who was on his way to plunder the Temple treasury when he was stopped in his tracks and brought low by God by being flogged by two “men” and kicked by a horse sent by God, and/or the call of OT prophets who are dazzled by God’s brilliance and fall on their faces.
But as Wright says on p. 393:
“But the historical conclusion from their [Luke’s accounts of the conversion] juxtaposition cannot be that Paul did not after all see Jesus (which neither of them say), or that he ‘saw’ Jesus only with his mind or heart (which, again, neither of them say). You can put apples and pears together and make a fruit salad; you cannot make a pork pie. Paul says he saw Jesus, and that remains our primary historical datum.”
GARY: In addition, Paul’s Jewish converts in Asia Minor believed by taking Paul at his word and by searching the Scriptures. They too never saw a resurrected body! This is proof that first century Jews could believe in a bodily resurrection of one person without ever seeing a resurrected *body*!
LEE: You’re woefully simplifying this episode, as there was much more going on in this episode.
Oh, and see my above critique of Rabbi Singer.
Pax.
Lee.
But the historical conclusion from their [Luke’s accounts of the conversion] juxtaposition cannot be that Paul did not after all see Jesus (which neither of them say), or that he ‘saw’ Jesus only with his mind or heart (which, again, neither of them say). You can put apples and pears together and make a fruit salad; you cannot make a pork pie. Paul says he saw Jesus, and that remains our primary historical datum,”
Please provide a statement by Paul in which he describes seeing a resurrected BODY.
What kind of things do YOUR eyes normally see? I’m guessing material, physical things?
We have evidence of Christians today seeing a bright light and believing it to be an appearance of a dead person. (See the Youtube video of the Virgin Mary sightings of Knock, Ireland). If it can happen today, it could have happened 20 centuries ago.
GARY: We have evidence of Christians today seeing a bright light and believing it to be an appearance of a dead person. (See the Youtube video of the Virgin Mary sightings of Knock, Ireland). If it can happen today, it could have happened 20 centuries ago.
LEE: Marian apparitions and the resurrected Jesus are different types of encounters.
From my reading of Marian encounters, they sometimes take the form of bright lights, discs in the sky, or luminous figures. I can’t think of one I’ve read about in which the Blessed Virgin, when appearing as a figure, could actually be touched. Or ate a meal.
There’s a reason they call these appearances of the Blessed Virgin APPARITIONS. An “apparition” is defined as: a ghost or ghostlike image of a person.
Big difference between an apparition and resurrected human being.
And as I said earlier, it would take more than talking lights (a voice accompanied the light which shone all around Saul and his travelling companions) to convince a Shammaite Pharisee like Saul of Tarsus that a would-be messiah who was executed by the Romans as a common religious terrorist, was actually alive, raised from the dead, and was in fact the Messiah.
Ancient Judaism had language to describe visions and apparitions, which Paul and the gospels manifestly DO NOT use to described the resurrected Jesus. Paul says he *saw* him; I explained from NT Wright (are you sure you read the whole book?) some possible reasons Luke might’ve described Paul’s vision the ways he did. Regardless, In I Corinthians 15 Paul insists that Jesus appeared to him exactly the way he appeared to Peter, the other disciples, and Jesus’ half-brother James.
You’re trying to Put Paul’s conversion in a straightjacket based solely on the way Luke condenses and edits this event to make different apologetic/theological points to different readers/audiences.
Pax.
Lee.
GARY: In addition, Paul’s Jewish converts in Asia Minor believed by taking Paul at his word and by searching the Scriptures. They too never saw a resurrected body! This is proof that first century Jews could believe in a bodily resurrection of one person without ever seeing a resurrected *body*!
LEE: You’re woefully simplifying this episode, as there was much more going on in this episode.
Gary: Did (some) Jews in Asia Minor believe Paul that one man (Jesus) had been resurrected from the dead? According to Paul, yes. Did they see the resurrected body of Jesus to believe this? No. They simply took Paul’s word for it (and “searched the Scriptures”). Therefore, if Paul is telling us the truth, this is evidence that first century Jews could be convinced to believe that one individual had been bodily resurrected *without* ever seeing a resurrected body!
Therefore, it is entirely plausible that a few disciples THOUGHT Jesus had appeared to them (in reality they experienced vivid dreams, visions, false sightings, illusions) and they then convinced other (Jewish) disciples to believe their stories. An empty tomb prevented Jews and other skeptics from proving them wrong by producing a body.
Fact: The Bible itself gives evidence that first century Jews did not need to see a literal body to believe a body had been resurrected!
Their acceptance of Christ as Lord wasn’t just a matter of them “taking Paul’s word” regarding the resurrection. They experienced the move of the Spirit. They received the Spirit–not just some emotional reaction.
Yes, yes, yes. Now we are getting somewhere! The true reason why early Christians (and many Christians today) believed was not because of objective evidence. It was because of their subjective experiences with a ghost (spirit).
This is why discussing historical evidence with Christians is usually a waste of time. At the end of the day, Christians will always pull out their subjective mystical experiences as evidence for this ancient tale’s validity.
Question: Are subjective personal perceptions of a ghost (spirit) reliable evidence for universal truth claims?
All evidence, because it is evaluated by human beings, is always subjective to a degree. That’s not the issue. Everything you have said–every argument you’ve made–is based on your subjective experience. Rather, the issue is, “Is the claim TRUE? Did it happen?” The reason you reject the claims in the NT really ISN’T because you are “being objective” and it’s not “objective evidence.” The reason is because you, in your subjective experience, are choosing to not believe the testimony of those who are making historical claims. That’s it. And that’s why it’s also a “waste of time” discussing historical evidence with “evangelical atheists” like you–you are letting your subjective experience and biases color your evaluation of the historical claims. It’s that simple.
Ghosts are not real, Joel. The ghost you feel inside you…is you!
The Holy Spirit is not a “ghost.” Again, your subjective biases are showing.
GARY: Gary: Did (some) Jews in Asia Minor believe Paul that one man (Jesus) had been resurrected from the dead? According to Paul, yes. Did they see the resurrected body of Jesus to believe this? No. They simply took Paul’s word for it (and “searched the Scriptures”). Therefore, if Paul is telling us the truth, this is evidence that first century Jews could be convinced to believe that one individual had been bodily resurrected *without* ever seeing a resurrected body!
LEE: Again, this is an over-simplification of what actually happened. Luke summarizes Paul’s general evangelistic strategy in Acts 17 by saying, “As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead.”
Paul didn’t have to convince them of the truth of bodily resurrection, because as second Temple Jews they already took that as a given; what he had to do was show them from the Law and the Prophets how the Messiah had to be resurrected first, ahead of everyone else.
Which was likely easier for him to do for a variety of reasons, not least of all his own background as a (probably) Shammaite Pharisee who started off violently opposed to the Jesus Movement but then converted. And with Paul’s background it would take more than a weird talking light to convince him Yeshua was the Messiah. He could share with them what convinced him as a die-hard Pharisee to accept Jesus as Messiah. What Luke is doing is condensing that down into a few brief sentences, but there was undoubtedly much more to it than that.
So these Bereans had the testimony of eyewitnesses such as Saul/Paul who’d seen Jesus alive; that undoubtedly smoothed the way.
Whereas all the earliest disciples had was 500+ years of teaching behind them that Messiah would deliver Israel from bondage and reign as a second David. Nobody was expecting Jesus to die let alone be resurrected. Nothing could’ve prepared these people for Jesus’ resurrection, not even an empty tomb by itself (Wright shoots this argument down really quickly).
Pax.
Lee.
“They [Paul’s first century Jewish converts] experienced the move of the Spirit. They received the Spirit–not just some emotional reaction.”
People were convinced a resurrection had occurred by the “moving” of an invisible spirit?? Wow. Who needs actual evidence, then?
No amount of objective evidence will ever convince you that Jesus is still dead, Joel, as long as you believe that his spirit lives somewhere within you, “moving” you to believe that his dead corpse was reanimated and transformed 20 centuries ago. Such thinking is irrational and delusional. It is impossible to have a rational conversation with you. Good bye.
GARY: People were convinced a resurrection had occurred by the “moving” of an invisible spirit?? Wow. Who needs actual evidence, then?
No amount of objective evidence will ever convince you that Jesus is still dead, Joel, as long as you believe that his spirit lives somewhere within you, “moving” you to believe that his dead corpse was reanimated and transformed 20 centuries ago. Such thinking is irrational and delusional. It is impossible to have a rational conversation with you. Good bye.
LEE: I can’t speak for Dr. Anderson, but as for myself, what continues to convince me is the OBJECTIVE evidence coupled WITH the subjective evidence of the Spirit. Thus it isn’t either-or, but both/and.
Pax.
Lee.
How certain are you, Lee, that the presence you perceive within you is the resurrected Jesus? Are you 100% certain?
GARY: How certain are you, Lee, that the presence you perceive within you is the resurrected Jesus? Are you 100% certain?
LEE: You keep coming back to this over and over.
To be precise the “presence” I feel within me is the Holy Spirit, not the resurrected Jesus. I feel the Holy Spirit BECAUSE of the resurrected Jesus.
But I’m not sure 100% certainty on something as subjective as the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is even possible, or necessary.
Why?
As I keep saying, I’m persuaded by much more than the subjective indwelling of the Spirit.
REASON leads me to have FAITH.
Lee.
When I am in the presence of my wife, I am 100% certain of her presence. I can see her, hear her, and touch her. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever.
You admit that you do not have the same certainty about the presence of Jesus. You admit that it is possible that you are mistaken. You admit that it is possible that your mind is playing tricks on you. And if Jesus does not dwell within you as the Christian holy book promises, then your entire belief system is false, correct?
Is it rational to believe that an invisible, inaudible, untouchable spirit is present within you when even you admit that you are not 100% certain of its reality? No.
So why should anyone trust your “research” on the historicity of the alleged resurrection of this same first century man with such irrational thinking?
Please stop. This thread is too long. Feel free to comment on the actual content in the other recent posts
Yes, I will stop discussing the historical evidence for the alleged resurrection of Jesus with people who believe an invisible, inaudible, untouchable spirit “moves” them to believe it is true. It is a futile conversation.
Thank you for the discussion, Joel.
GARY: Yes, I will stop discussing the historical evidence for the alleged resurrection of Jesus with people who believe an invisible, inaudible, untouchable spirit “moves” them to believe it is true.
LEE: This not a real argument anyone in these forums has ever made.
We have provided you with historical evidence ad nauseum (NT Wright provided you with over 800 pages, most of which you skipped over in your blog review), which you reject out of hand.
GARY: It is a futile conversation.
LEE: On at least this we agree. I feel Dr. Anderson’s frustration.
It is futile because you are unwilling to abandon the caricatured version of Christianity you were programmed to accept for the real, much more accurate, nuanced, grown-up version. You object that fundamentalism is too silly and simplistic for any adult to believe, then when we provide you with nuanced arguments for a more robust faith you claim it’s too complicated and contradicts what the ignorant orthodox masses have uncritically accepted for centuries (I think you know a lot about what you THINK we’re supposed to believe but not much about what we actually DO believe).
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
Pax.
Lee.
What are you talking about, Lee?? Joel said this:
“Their [Paul’s Jewish converts in Asia Minor] acceptance of Christ as Lord wasn’t just a matter of them “taking Paul’s word” regarding the resurrection. They experienced the move of the Spirit. They received the Spirit–not just some emotional reaction.”
In other words, Joel is saying that these first century Jews believed in the historicity of the Resurrection, not because they saw a resurrected body, but because one guy told them he saw a resurrected body and because of the “moving” (convincing) of a spirit (the Holy Spirit).
You said above that no first century Jew would believe in the bodily resurrection of one person unless they had seen the resurrected body with their own eyes. The fact that these Asia Minor Jews did believe, without seeing a resurrected body, is ABSOLUTE proof that your argument is wrong! And Joel’s statement that an invisible spirit magically “moved’ (convinced) these people that the Resurrection was an historical fact, is absolute proof why skeptics should not debate Christians on the Resurrection: Christians’ perception of an inner spirit/ghost who moves/convinces them of secret truths will trump historical evidence each and every time! How can it not??
Irrational, irrational, irrational. And if you don’t believe me, ask Rabbi Singer above! Listening to or feeling a “moving” from a ghost/spirit is irrational.
SMH…no. That isn’t what I was saying. Please stop blathering on about a topic that has zero to do with the OP.
Please, restrain yourself. Read the two most recent posts and feel free to comment on them.
Gary, go back and read my critique of Rabbi Singer. The good Rabbi has skipped a few very important points in his analysis.
As for this:
“You said above that no first century Jew would believe in the bodily resurrection of one person unless they had seen the resurrected body with their own eyes. The fact that these Asia Minor Jews did believe, without seeing a resurrected body, is ABSOLUTE proof that your argument is wrong! And Joel’s statement that an invisible spirit magically “moved’ (convinced) these people that the Resurrection was an historical fact, is absolute proof why skeptics should not debate Christians on the Resurrection: Christians’ perception of an inner spirit/ghost who moves/convinces them of secret truths will trump historical evidence each and every time! How can it not??”
It is an overly simplistic caricature of what I said. If you’re interested in responding to arguments I’m actually making, great. If not, just say you can’t or won’t deal with them, but please don’t try to dumb down my arguments. It just makes you look desperate.
Pax.
Lee.
GARY: When I am in the presence of my wife, I am 100% certain of her presence. I can see her, hear her, and touch her. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever.
LEE: When your wife brings you a cup of tea or coffee, can you be 100% CERTAIN she hasn’t put poison in it to try to kill you? If not, is it really RATIONAL to stay married to a person whom you cannot be 100% certain isn’t trying to kill you?
GARY: Is it rational to believe that an invisible, inaudible, untouchable spirit is present within you when even you admit that you are not 100% certain of its reality? No.
So why should anyone trust your “research” on the historicity of the alleged resurrection of this same first century man with such irrational thinking?
LEE: For one thing, belief in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit isn’t “irrational.” If I believed in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit based upon no evidence whatsoever it would be irrational. But I actually have evidence which persuades me that it IS rational to believe the Holy Spirit indwells me. It isn’t the kind of evidence you can replicate in a lab, but then neither is the evidence for your–probably unconscious–acceptance that your wife would not ever not try to poison you.
The fact is that you and every other skeptic on the planet take certain things on faith every single day without even consciously thinking about them.
Pax.
Lee..