Resurrection II

I'll start with the first Biblical reference to Resurrection historically. It comes from Paul's Letter to the Corinthians. Paul wrote in the 50s, 20 years after Jesus. The earliest Gospel Mark comes from the year 70, Matthew and Luke the 80s-90s, and John around 90/100, a full seventy years after Jesus' death.

The backdrop to this part of Paul's Letter is that the Corinthians being Gentile pagans do not believe (or have questions) about the resurrection, particularly whether Jesus' resurrection has any relation to theirs. Also in the backdrop is the increasing distance between the worlds of matter and spirit in Greek philosophy and religion---part of the move to Causal State-Stage in Axial Age--resurrection then would have almost surely hit the Corinthians as a gross concept, mixing spirit and matter in that Hebraic way.

Hence Paul's whole emphasis in the Letter on the folly of the Cross, the weakness of the way of Christian discipleship versus the powerful way of the world. Death is the doorway, only then does Resurrection make sense. Only if Christ is the first of many.

So in Ch.15:3 Paul says, "I handed on to you what I turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter...."

The key word is appeared. He appeared to Peter, the Twelve, to 500 brothers and sisters, and lastly to Paul. In all references Paul uses appeared. The word appeared is more literally translated as "was revealed to". Jesus was revealed to Peter, the disciples, the apostles.

Now this story does not line up well with the resurrection stories in the Gospels. In the Gospel traditions it is the women who are either told the news and/or see Jesus first. Paul says Jesus appeared first to Peter (Cephas).

Now the other key element is that Paul is handing on to the Church what he received. The word "hand over" is literally tradition (traditio). The phrase "in accordance with the scriptures" is key as I showed in the last post. 20 years in (and earlier if Paul is getting it from others) they have already created theological meaning. This is what John Dominic Crossan calls "prophecy fulfilled" versus "history remembered." The Hebrew Bible passages themselves did not refer to Jesus in any way. They are we understand today written for their own day. But that does not mean Christians could not later re-interpret them for their contexts guided by the Spirit (God it would be assumed is always revealing). The problem becomes when prophecy fulfilled and later made into the world of narrative becomes identified with historical reporting and theological supersession of Judaism. And thence to the gas chambers.

The number of days....3. On the third day, not after 3 days. Friday he's killed (day 1), Sat. (day2) and "rises" on Sunday (day 3). Not by the Roman counting of 24 hours past the execution date (Friday afternoon as it were).

Prophecy being fulfilled is not prophecy in the sense of fortune telling or predicting the future, but relaying a/the word of God. And that prophecy is fulfilled retroactively--hence human time conceptions are already out here. Which should make us suspicious of taking on the third day literally.

Check out this passage from the Prophet Hosea (8th c. BCE):

Come let us return to the Lord;
for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
for he has struck down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him. (6:1-2)

Is that in accordance with the Scriptures? Note the parallelism of Hebraic poetry. Elements paralleled are emphasized. He has torn, he will heal/he has struck down, he will bind up.
After 2 days revive (Sat./Sunday), on the third day (Sunday) he will raise us up.

Is that what Paul meant? The two days/on the third day has a meaning of very soon in Hebraic thought. Paul believed strongly that he was living at the end of time--did he have this in the back of his mind. Was the very soon to be the coming "raise up" to heaven so that we might live before God?

And what of appeared? What does being revealed to or appeared mean? Paul has no mention of a corpse revived out of a grave, no empty tomb, no hands in the side, no eating fish or walking through walls.

There are later accounts in the Book of Acts about Paul falling off his horse and hearing a voice, seeing a light, but those are the creation of Luke (author of Acts) not Paul himself. He makes no such mention only that he had an experience of the Risen Christ. Again no explication of what that experience entailed.

As I will argue in later posts, I think the empty tomb, apparitions and so forth are later theological-narrative placements--which all originally stem from the author Mark. Note the tradition: he was killed, buried, and rose.

Burial does not automatically mean empty tomb. More importantly there is reason to doubt even the claim of burial. [See John Dominic Crossan's Who Killed Jesus for these ideas] There is another possibility from what we know of Roman executions--the bodies were left to rot on the crosses and be eaten by the vultures/dogs. This was part of the Roman brutality of wiping a man's name out, his memory--no tomb, no sarcophagus, no inscription. Total annihilation in the face of the Roman imperial counter-god, idol of death. The other way to do this was to feed people to the lions as a spectacle, something the Romans knew full well.

Jewish law (Deuteronomy) stated that a body was not to be left hanging upon a tree else the land would be violated and made impure. But as Crossan shows there is no clear evidence that practice was actually followed. It is not impossible that a family member could have pleaded/bribed an official to get a relative's body down from a cross. But the outsider Jesus movement would not have had such contacts one would suppose. Hence the creation of the figure of Joseph of Arimathea--is he or isn't he a member of the Sanhedrin? is he or isn't he a disciple of Jesus? Watch how the Gospels play with his image. The story doesn't make a lot of sense.

And yet the tradition says he was buried. So I don't know. The tradition is quite early and comes not from Paul but precedes him so that should be taken into account as well.

Theologically I think the notion that Jesus' body was eaten by the birds and left to total dismemberment is better. In the sense that he gave up everything to God and to creation, like a Buddhist monk in Tibet who are left to be eaten by the vultures. Also it more fully expresses the true hope and radical faith of resurrection against the imperial powers of godliness and the folly of the Cross to see his body as so totally devoured.

None of which still tells us what the appearance/revelation of Jesus to these people was. In the ancient Greek world gods were climbing and descending the cosmology all the time. Heaven was then depicted as above the sky although it was becoming increasingly way above the key even in a different realm by Paul's day.

We no longer live in a three-storied universe: hell, earth, and heaven. So the notion of being raised up doesn't make a whole lotta sense by today's standards. Resurrection could but flying up not so much.

I'll continue this exploration, but again some part of must always be mystery. Even however the meaning of what they are trying to convey is more difficult than other parts of the New Testament, seems to me.