Paul and Jesus

12. Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones is usually understood to be metaphorical, symbolizing the national regeneration of the people of Israel from Exile (Ezekiel 37:1–14). Isaiah 26:19 is sometimes cited as an early reference to a general resurrection but properly translated it says, “Your dead shall live, my carcass shall arise,” so the referents are unclear and the context suggests a symbolic rather than a literal meaning. There are a number of “near death” references, but in each case they refer to escaping death by being rescued from Sheol (Jonah 2:2–6; Psalms 88:1–6). For a thorough discussion of these and related passages in the Hebrew Bible see Segal, Life After Death, pp. 255–61.

13. Unfortunately this passage has often been mistranslated with a Christian slant, now made immortal by the chorus of Handel’s Messiah: “I know that my Redeemer lives,” referring to Christ. What Job is saying has nothing to do with his own hope in life after death or resurrection, but quite the opposite. He says plainly that he wishes that after his flesh has decayed, if his case is permanently inscribed with an iron pen on a rock, someone would come along, read it, and vindicate him.

14. See Josephus, Jewish War 2.119–66.

15. The classic discussion of the differences between the two approaches to death, that of Socrates and Jesus, is the groundbreaking lecture by Oscar Cullman, now published in Immortality and Resurrection: Death in the Western World: Two Conflicting Currents of Thought, edited by Krister Stendahl (New York: Macmillan, 1965).

16. Jewish War 2.163, translation by H. St. J. Thackeray, Josephus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927).

17. Celsus, On the True Doctrine, translated by Joseph Hoffmann (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 110.

18. N. T. Wright’s assertion that the Revised Standard Version and most other modern translations have mistranslated the Greek words psuchikos and pneumatikos as “physical” and “spiritual” is not convincing. See Craig A. Evans and N. T. Wright, Jesus, the Final Days: What Really Happened? edited by Troy A. Miller (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), pp. 86–89. Wright insists that the resurrection body, according to Paul, though transformed, glorified, and immortal, is nonetheless a material body, but with significant new properties. He calls it “transphysicality.” It is certainly correct that Paul’s idea of a spiritual body is nothing like a ghost or disembodied spirit, but it is hardly material or physical, any more than God or the angels are “material” in Paul’s thinking. The Greek word pneumatikos, related to the noun “spirit” or “wind” (pneuma), is precisely the opposite of the material. For a “body” to have substantiality does not mean it has to be “material.” What Wright misses is Paul’s analogy of the body as old and new clothing, with death as the “naked” state. It is not that the old clothing is somehow transformed into a new heavenly garb, but that the old is discarded, returns to dust, and the “unclothed” ones who have died (Paul prefers “fallen asleep”) awaken and put on new immortal clothing. See N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), pp. 312–61, for his complete argument.

19. The verb “to see” here is passive and literally means “he was seen,” in the sense of sighted by this or that person.

20. Mark 6:14–29; Jewish Antiquities 18.116–19.

21. See http://www.haaretz.com/magazine/week-s-end/in-three-days-you-shall-live-1.218552 for the main news story published in Israel’s leading newspaper, Haaretz.

22. Israel Knohl, Messiahs and Resurrection in ‘The Gabriel Revelation’ (London: Continuum, 2009), has published the most complete study with text, translation, and commentary. I am following here his main line of interpretation.

23. Jewish War 2.57–59.

CHAPTER 3: READING THE GOSPELS IN THE LIGHT OF PAUL

1. Evans and Wright, in Jesus, the Final Days, attempt to argue on historical grounds that the conclusion that Jesus emerged from the tomb bodily is the only rational explanation of our evidence. The debate by William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann, Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment, edited by Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), rehearses in a fairly exhaustive manner the standard arguments pro and con.