Loading...This will be my final post on the early Christian understandings of the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body. I have tried to show that Paul believed that Jesus’ actual body came out of the tomb, but as a spiritual, immortal body – completely transformed; other Christians, including groups of Gnostics, maintained that Jesus’ spirit lived on even though his body decomposed and ceased to exist (like all other bodies) In this final post I deal with another extreme in the opposite direction, one found already in the New Testament, possibly in order to oppose the idea that Jesus was raised only in spirit but not in body. Again, this is an extract from my forthcoming book How Jesus Became God.
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The Raising of the Mortal Body
We don’t know how early such full-blown Gnostic views came to expression in the Christian movement; they were certainly in place by the middle of the second century, and possibly earlier. But there were tendencies toward such views already in the New Testament period. If my reconstruction of the events in Corinth stated above are correct, then already in the 50s there were believers in Jesus who would have been open to the view that Jesus’ spirit, not his physical body, was raised from the dead. Further evidence that there were some Christians who held that view can be found in the fact that some of the later Gospel traditions go to some lengths in order to counter it.
In Luke’s Gospel, for example, written possibly around 80-85 CE, when Jesus is raised the disciples have trouble believing that it is really him, in the body – even when they see him. This is explicitly stated in Luke 24:36: “While they were saying these things, Jesus himself stood in their midst said to them, ‘Peace by with you.’ They were startled and afraid, and thought that they were seeing a spirit” (sometimes translated “ghost”). Jesus rebukes them and tells them to feel his body to show it is real: “Look at my hands and my feet, to see it is I. Handle me and see – for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (24:39). They still have trouble believing it, and so he asks them for something to eat. They give him a piece of broiled fish, and he eats it before their very eyes.
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Which would be the greatest miracle: (a) Jesus resurrected as a spirit, (b) Jesus resurrected with a ‘spiritual body’, (c) Jesus resurrected with his pre-crucifixion body, or (d) Jesus resurrected with his post-crucifixion body?
I suppose if he came alive again in any form it would be an equally great miracle.
Bart, What to you think Paul was trying to stress in the verse…born of a woman, born under the law. Do you believe this to be polemical in any way?
Yup, I talk about it in my new book How Jesus Became God. It’s a bet tricky though and takes more explaining that a quick comment here would do! (But yes, he did want to stress “born of a woman”!)
Ok, thanks, I will it.
“What made them believe that Jesus had been bodily raised from the dead? Something did. And I think we know what it was. Some of Jesus’ followers had visions of him after he had been crucified.”
A common argument is that visions of a deceased person would not by themselves have convinced people of the ancient world that he/she had been raised bodily from the dead. Belief in spirits was common, so such visions would have been taken as evidence that the deceased was actually *dead*, not *alive*. What are your thoughts on this argument? It does seem like there needs to be additional factors to explain why the disciples came to believe Jesus was resurrected, rather than that they were simply encountering his spirit.
I’ve never heard the argument before. In the disciples’ visions, in any case, it appears that Jesus could be seen, heard, and touched — so they appear to have taken him to be alive bodily.
Yes, and it was widely accept in those days that dead bodies could be and often were RESURRECTED. Even Herod Antipas thought Jesus was the John the Baptist returned from the grave, post corpus delicti.
You assume that the original disciples claimed to have touched a body.
All we have are stories written decades later, by anonymous authors, all of whom the majority of scholars doubt were eyewitnesses or even the associates of eyewitnesses. If the Early Creed represents the earliest testimony of the alleged appearances, not one word is said about anyone seeing a body, let alone, touching a body. Therefore, it is entirely possible that every witness on the list saw…a bright light…and believed it to be an appearance of Jesus.
You have developed quite the ability to make these topics interesting to everyday people who are non-scholars. That is not an easy task!
Again, thank you for your blog. We know you put a lot of effort into it when you are also very busy with other things. The $40,000 or so you have raised so far is no small number and will make a big difference. But with that said, I’m trying very hard to get people join. The more money the better!
Thanks!!
How would Luke or any Christian who accepts his view of Jesus’ resurrected body explain his sudden appearances and disappearances into thin air? Had Jesus visited Hogwarts, perhaps?
Something like that. Apparently resurrected bodies are pretty amazing.
It’s interesting that all four Gospels acknowledge that some of Jesus’ own disciples had trouble accepting the resurrection story: Matt. 28:17, Mark 16:8, 11, 14, Luke 24:11, 37, 41, John 20:24-29. If the only “evidence” of his resurrection was visions of Jesus experienced by some of the disciples this is easily understandable. Thus the need to introduce some confirmatory stories, although the accounts do not match up with each other. Odd that the most important event in human history should only be recorded for future generations in these sketchy and inconsistent stories.
Bart,
“The mortal, perishable body will be transformed into something else, an immortal, imperishable, spiritual body.” > that makes sense for the bodies of those people who will be ALIVE at the Second Coming. But why would the corpses have to be reconstructed (since most have been turned to dust a long time ago or have been burned, etc)? Those bodies have ceased to exist so why recreate them only to them completely transform them into something else? That seems an unnecessary step. Why wouldn’t the spirit of the dead be immediately raised into NEW ‘spiritual’ bodies?
And Paul does not describe ‘the risen Christ’ as having walked out of a tomb, does he?
Readers who have not been exposed to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on resurrection might find it interesting to see how all of this was finally synthesized into dogma. The following was extracted from the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia:
All shall rise from the dead in their own, in their entire, and in immortal bodies; but the good shall rise to the resurrection of life, the wicked to the resurrection of Judgment.
These three characteristics, identity, entirety, and immortality, will be common to the risen bodies of the just and the wicked. But the bodies of the saints shall be distinguished by four transcendent endowments, often called qualities.
• The first is “impassibility”, which shall place them beyond the reach of pain and inconvenience. The Scholastics call this quality impassibility’, not incorruption, so as to mark it as a peculiarity of the glorified body; the bodies of the damned will be incorruptible indeed, but not impassible; they shall be subject to heat and cold, and all manner of pain.
• The next quality is “brightness”, or “glory”, by which the bodies of the saints shall shine like the sun. All the bodies of the saints shall be equally impassible, but they shall be endowed with different degrees of glory.
• The third quality is that of “agility”, by which the body shall be freed from its slowness of motion, and endowed with the capability of moving with the utmost facility and quickness wherever the soul pleases.
• The fourth quality is “subtility”, by which the body becomes subject to the absolute dominion of the soul. We see this quality exemplified in the fact that Christ passed through material objects.
I find it interesting that “the bodies of the damned will be incorruptible indeed, but not impassible; they shall be subject to heat and cold, and all manner of pain” so that they can still be punished for their previous transgressions. So the way I read this, you are stuck with your old wretched worn out body but if you make it to sainthood, you become impassable and immune to pain and suffering and you become luminous and can zip to wherever you want to go and pass through material things. But what about the Just? Do they become impassible as well as incorruptible along with the Saints? Or do they still feel heat and cold and all manner of pain?
I agree. Corporeal visions. I met a woman who described in detail how her dead relative came back and visited her and her husband – Not a dream and everything was physical. Do I think it really happened? No. But they had that experience and it was real to them. They were religious but not fundamentalists. I have met others that saw ghosts, aliens, spirits, etc, that they saw and had physical touch with. Again I don’t believe it happened save in their ‘world’. The apparitions at Fatima are a good example. Check out the birth of Mormonism. Joseph Smith had original followers, some who even split from him, that on their deathbeds still vowed they had seen supernatural beings, angels, whatever in groups with him. Maybe all of these people were outright lying. That would be easier than having to admit that the human mind can manufacture things, and even share them in groups. I frankly do believe that. Jesus raising from the dead is no big deal in that context, and no proof of anything Deific. No more than the faulty records called the Word of God are Divine.
Delusional episodes are common to humans in all eras and ages.
Visions, individual or collective, explain the resurrection story very well.
“Paul’s stress that it was a different kind of body – one made of spirit instead of flesh and blood – came to be de-emphasized with the passing of time.”
Fascinating post, particularly that paragraph. Can’t wait for the rest of the book! 3 Corinthians was the first thing that came to my mind as a Christian writing particularly emphasizing the “fleshiness” of Jesus. It’s interesting to me that Paul’s view of the spiritual resurrected body is found in 1 Corinthians. Was there something going on between the two books not unlike 1 and 2 Thessalonians, where a forger writes in the name of Paul to “clarify” Paul’s theology?
One big difference is that unlike 2 Thess in relation to 1 Thess, the author of 3 Cor. did not model his writing on 1 Cor. But there are a a lot of parallels.
Ok so Paul is saying its a different kind of body, but its the same body transformed into a spirit?
It’s a physical body transformed into a spiritual body.
Bart, I really don’t want to annoy you too much with this but could you just explain (here or in a separate post) what you believe Paul meant when he said that he was longing for ‘his current tent to be destroyed’ and for ‘being away from this body’ so he could finally ‘be with the Lord’? Doesn’t that sound like leaving the current body BEHIND and ‘migrating’ to a new one?
I think Paul believed that in the interim between the time Christ ascended and returned believers who died would be given a temporary body in heaven; when he returned, they would return to their original bodies, glorified (thus 1 Thess 4 and 1 Cor 15).
Bart, why would you think he believed in ‘the dead having temporary bodies in Heaven’ though? Didn’t the Jews at the time believe that the souls/spirits of the dead went to ‘sleep’ in the underworld/Sheol where they would ‘wait’ for God to call them back?
As I’ve said: we’ve had this disagreement before! I understand your position!
Contraction is terms. Clarifies NOTHING!
Regarding visions, were dreams regarded as visions? or was this a separate type of vision? I am also assuming that sleep in these times would not have been as comfortable for the lower classes as it is today and a lot of sleep deprivation with all of it’s side effects might have been mistaken for actual real sightings of people ie hallucinations. sorry about the bad grammar as I am lower class and English ;o)
Yes, visions and dreams were understood to be virtually the same thing — unlike how we think of them today.
Hi Bart,
Sorry to labour the point but if we don’t know what the earliest Christians thought about the body, what is the evidence that they, including those who had the post crucifixion visions, didn’t understand it as a spiritual resurrection rather than a bodily one (whether in the Pauline way or the interpretation in Luke and John)? Couldn’t they have seen it as just a spiritual return of Jesus and over time the story was changed to become a physical resurrection? After all, we don’t know for sure who had the visions of the resurrected Jesus; Peter? Mary Magdalene? James? Others? and what they made of their experience. We’re relying on Paul and the gospel writers interpretation which could be a completely false picture.
Thanks again for all the time you devote to the blog by the way!
We do have some ideas what they thought about the body; and I guess the way we know what they thought is simply from what they wrote and how they wrote it.
Good questions, jon. Why couldn’t the disciples, for example, have gone back to Galilee, crushed and sad, where then one of them became convinced that “No, Jesus did not fail! They might have killed his body but his soul/spirit was resurrected into a new, spiritual, perfect body! He won after all! And so will we!”?
Later on people, for various reasons, misunderstood this and thought that the disciples believed that Jesus had actually been physically raised from the dead, walking out of a tomb etc. But not even Paul claimed that! And in the original ending of the Gospel of Mark it sounds more like an allegory: “Why do you come visit a corpse? Jesus is not in the corpse anymore! His spirit/soul has been raised into a new, heavenly body!”
Also, a ‘spiritual resurrection’ does not mean a ‘ghostly existence without a body of some sort’. That’s a mistake most people make when trying to imagine a ‘spiritual resurrection’. But Paul speaks about a ‘spiritual body’, so he imagined some weird kind of ‘body’, yet there is no indication in Paul that he thought that the original corpse was needed for this!
A) Jesus did die on the cross but had a Near Death Experience and came back to life and was able to eat food.
B) What happened to Lazarus? These are the bookends Lazarus’ resurrection and Jesus’ resurrection.
If Jesus wanted to make a BIG POINT about resurrected bodies, he would have told us with the Lazarus resurrection. Because he did not, Paul is possibly hoping and lying, again.
C) If we look at the field of Magic (two books come to mind: Magical Use of Thought Forms: A Proven System of Mental & Spiritual Empowerment by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and J. H. Brennan and Jesus the Magician by Morton Smith) and stories of Jewish Golems, the thought form can get denser and denser, refined and more refined. Can the magical resurrected body become the eternal one?
Let’s answer that question. In the book Infinite Mind by Valerie V. Hunt, in the book Journey of the Souls by Michael Newton, in the book Old Souls: Compelling Evidence from Children Who Remember Past Lives by Tom Shroder, we know the consciousness entity, “the self” survives the death of the incarnate body. So, we all have a body in the sense that we have a consciousness entity.
Why in the world would the consciousness entity of a human being be older than our biological species Homo Sapiens Sapiens? Answer: which came first, the consciousness entity or the incarnate body?
When the Sun explodes and there is no more human beings on Earth, or on the Moon, or on Mars; or, if humans go extinct, will the consciousness entities not be able to incarnate anymore?
The Talmud says Jesus of Nazareth knew Egyptian Magic. Other rabbis knew magic and performed high magical acts. No matter how closed some modern ears are to this, Magic IS a fact of life.
Did Paul know Egyptian Magic. Well, somewhere I read that yes, he had a tattoo like Jesus did.
Rabbi Eliezer said to them, “But is that not the case that Ben Stada [Jesus] brought magic marks from Egypt in the scratches on his flesh?”
Did Paul know Egyptian Magic? Well, somewhere I read that yes, he had a tattoo like Jesus did.
Here it is: From now on, let no one make troubles for me; for I bear the marks of Jesus on my body. Galations 6:17
If “the marks” is not synonymous with “the scars,” then marks are specific designs.
Paul and Josephus were whipped during their adult lives. At least one of them was whipped 40 – 1 times. Paul may be referring to the scars of his apostolic labors, for Jesus had scars for his labors when he was whipped.
Because ‘Lazarus’ was JAMES. He may not have been invented until well after Paul wrote his letters.
Lazarus was James and James was Lazarus.
Now, you’re getting a bit like Ralph Ellis.
For tonight I’m only entertaining James was Judas and possibly Stephen. There is no reason to make Lazarus James also. Please consider making your case instead of simply stating James was ‘Lazarus’ the brother of Mary and Martha. I grew up listening to Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” gospel double LP. On it, is a song, “Mary Don’t You Weep.”
How would you describe Jesus’ physical appearance? Brown eyes, dark hair, dark skin? I saw an altar at a friend’s house and the pictures and images of Jesus, Mary and the angels look like Europeans. It occured to me that the colonizers and missionaries used these images to indoctrinate the natives that Europeans are a superior race because they look like the images in the altar. I also remembered visiting a Chinese Catholic church and all the images look like Chinese maybe to get more converts.
Probably something like Palestinians today, more than Europeans or blue-eyed California boys….
This is a rather old post so forgive me for prying at it 8 years too late. I’m trying to understand more about first century Jewish interpretations of the body and its relation to something like a spirit or soul.
I recall you saying in the comboxes of one of your recent posts (Did the Disciples See Jesus Raised from the Dead?) the following in response to my question of why the disciples took the visions to entail a bodily Jesus instead of an ephemeral ghostly one:
“Because ancient Jews did not believe in “living creatures” who did not have bodies. If a person was alive, it was necessarily in the body.”
The Gospel accounts seem to show, however, that a postmortem appearance of someone didn’t necessarily entail a bodily appearance, hence the narrative insistence that Jesus was of flesh and not merely a ghost.
Yes — these accountw were written by later gentile Christians who had not been raised in Jewish circles with Jewish ways of thinking.