What we know about he early church comes basically from epistles written from about 40 to 60 AD. These epistles say nothing explicitly about anybody seeing an empty grave, or about anybody interacting with a former corpse walking on earth. They do speak of a resurrection, but since they do not refer to these specific things, the resurrection of which they speak could easily be a spiritual resurrection in which the body remained in the ground. Later writings, such as the gospels, add in those features, but they are not there in the earliest record. When somebody back reads those ideas into the epistles, he is asserting something that is not there.
Please provide evidence that any first century group held the conception of a 'spiritual body' in this manner, for this sounds like later dualistic ideas and does not fit the first century as far as I am aware.
Sure. In
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible the entry on Resurrection says:
The view expressed in the [Dead Sea] Scrolls accord in general with those attributed by Josephus (Antiq. XVIII.i.5; War II.viii.11) to the Essenes, with whom, indeed, the Qumran sectaries may be identical...They held that although bodies were perishable, souls endured and mounted upward, the good to the realm of bliss, the evil to be consigned to a place of torment. This view is expressed also in Wisd. Sol. 3:1ff.; 5:16; Jub. 25; while something of the same kind--though without the reference to ultimate judgment--appears in Eccl. 12:7 ('the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it'). The latter statement, it may be added, reproduces to a nicety the Iranian doctrine in the funeral inscription of Antiochus I of Commagene [ruled 69-36 BC in Commagene, a territory at the nape of Turkey and Syria], to the effect that the body will rest in the tomb 'through immeasurable time,' after the soul, 'beloved of God, has been sent to the heavenly throne of Zeus Oromasdes'. [Gaster, The Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, as cited by Carrier,
here.]
Paul envisioned a resurrected Christ and a Christ-in-us as part and parcell, like his Jewish heritage taught him from descriptions of the working of God in the OT.
...or he could have envisioned a different resurrection like other first century Jews (see above) or like his Gentile acquaintances.
'The Pharisees' was not a monolithic block of dogma.
Exactly. So some Pharisees (such as Paul) might have adopted a two body view of the resurrection. They were not monolithic, after all.
Paul agreed with the traditionalists on almost everything, but suddenly you would insist THIS innovation?
Uh no, I mentioned several things that Paul differed with the Pharisees on. Why do you pretend it is only this point I mention?
Because we ignore ancilliary evidence on Paul when it is inconvenient to us?
No sir, I don't give the book of Acts much weight, because the evidence shows it was written later and is not reliable.
In particular, it has been observed that the speeches in Acts sound much alike, and appear to be saying the same thing as the writer of the book. Hence, "Luke" is probably not recording what they actually said, but what he wants them to say, or what he thinks they would have said in that situation. So when I see "Luke" say that Paul said something, that does not have near as much weight to me as what Paul actually wrote. And, if we go by what Paul wrote, he was not a dogmatic Pharisee.
And even Acts, in chapter 15, makes it clear Paul strongly disputed with Pharisee Christians.
Read that last part again. He is saying nothing is the equal of Christ, nothing as important. He is not disavowing his whole heritage as you seem to imply. In fact his list reeks of pride, going so far as to identify himself of the tribe of Benjamin.
Read the first verses again. Paul is specifically referring to his Pharisee background.
At any rate, Philippians 3 is the only place where Paul writes of his Pharisee background, and it certainly is not a ringing endorsement that whatever the Pharisee leaders believe, then that is what Paul believes. But for some reason, some people here choose to say that was Paul's attitude on some points (but only when the argument is convenient for them).
As I explained earlier, Paul being of the diaspora is irrelevant. There were High Priests in Jerusalem with Greek names; there were sages of the Pharisees in the diaspora. The Talmud itself stems partially from Babylonia. Hellenistai speaking Greek as their first language were living in Judaea. It is silly to think Paul more likely to imbibe foreign ideas in the diaspora while Jerusalem itself had been under pervasive Greek influence for centuries, in fact this tension between traditionalists and Hellenistai was the precipitating cause of the Hasmonaean Civil War that brought Rome into Jewish affairs. We see similar Jewish groups accross the board as Philo and Josephus can attest (with the exception of the Essenes who seem to cluster by themselves).
I disagree. The fact that Paul walked in Gentile circles is relevant to the question of whether he may have had some Gentile leaning views.
The Amish are again an obfuscation to the thread and are completely inapplicable, as first century Jews would ALL be the equivalent of those living in Intercourse.
Ah, so all first century Jews would be like the Amish in Intercourse, exposed to Gentile ideas. Interesting. And as the Amish in Intercourse are affected by that exposure, perhaps some Jews were too.
Relevance? His theology is still very much rooted in Jewish thought and quotes Jewish scripture. To suddenly assume he completely threw this out the window, what he had been studying and living his whole life, beggars belief. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and there simply is none here to support the contention that he negated his Pharisaic heritage. He extends the circumcision to the heart (actually a Pharisaic idea), he partakes in the sacrifice of God in the form of His blood (akin to the Rabbinical understanding of Passover as making Israel and God one flesh) and many Pharisees obviously accepted Jesus as the Messiah - arguably Phariseeism is the 2nd Temple Jewish School most akin to Christianity and Paul himself is an example of a leading Pharisee doing so.
Citation? Besides it is no digression, but the centrepoint of your whole argument why you would exclude Paul as an early source on the Resurrection.
The influence of the Gentiles on Paul's thought is well known. Richard Carrier has a substantial outline of the evidence in the Historical Jesus, including this footnote:
46. Popular philosophy’s influence on Paul: Stephen Finlan, The Apostle Paul and the Pauline Tradition (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), pp. 26-28; and Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), along with the debate between Engberg-Pedersen, John Levison and John Barclay in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (2011), pp. 406-43, which collectively only confirms the influence of pagan philosophies, debating only to what extent Paul modified their ideas by combining them with Jewish ones (to create something new and different, the very definition of syncretism). 47. Francis Gerald Downing, Cynics and Christian Origins (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1992); and Francis Gerald Downing, Cynics, Paul and the Pauline Churches (London: Routledge, 1998); and L.E. Vaage, ‘Jewish Scripture, Q and the Historical Jesus: A Cynic Way with the Word?’, in The Sayings Source Q and the Historical Jesus (ed. A. Lindemann; Leuven: University Press, 2001), pp. 479-95; all in light of, e.g., Strauss, Four Portraits, One Jesus, pp. 366-68; and William Arnal, The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Contemporary Identity (London: Equinox, 2005), pp. 17-25 (who makes the quite correct point that being influenced by Cynicism does not make someone a Cynic, much less non-Jewish, and therefore most criticisms of the Cynic-influence hypothesis are based on fallacious black-and-white thinking that has no place in serious scholarship); see also William Arnal, Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflicts and the Setting of Q (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001), pp. 52-59 (whose criticism is not against there having been Cynic influence, but against certain implausible theories that have been built on this premise). On Cynicism in general: William Desmond, Cynics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008); and William Desmond, The Greek Praise of Poverty: Origins of Ancient Cynicism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). On what ‘Cynic influence’ looked like in other movements, useful for finding and understanding the same influence within Christianity and Judaism: James Francis, Subversive Virtue: Asceticism and Authority in the Second-Century Pagan World (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995)
Paul was a Pharisee. They believed in the Written and the Oral Torah. Pharisees strongly supported resurrection of the dead in some form. You are confusing them with Sadducees here.
Huh? I told you that the Torah says nothing substantial about Heaven or Hell, but that later Jewish writers show openness to the idea. You say that I am confused, because later Jewish writers show openness to the idea.
Wait, what?
The first part of my claim still stands. The Torah does not address Heaven or Hell in any significant way. You insist that Paul would not deviate from the Torah. If so, then Paul has no need for either Heaven or Hell.
Excuse me? Citation? I am very well versed in the works of Flavius Josephus, from whence is this statement derived?
For Josephus's views on the resurrection see Gaster, op. cit.
Mark says He was risen. Thus it is mentioned, as does the other gospels. Thus there is agreement, all say he was Risen. If you find a common kernel in multiple accounts, this tends to be in the original - as per my examples of the Alexander Romances. That circumstantial events differ a bit has no bearing on that all agree on the singular event around which the narrative is built.
No, Mark 16:1-8 does not say he was risen. It says an unindentified man at the grave claimed this. Later gospels say he was risen.
Carrier is a proponent of a extreme minority view of a mythic Christ, which has been completely discarded by the vast majority of historians as completely unsound. I meant a citation from a reliable historian, not the lunatic fringe. Carrier is to first century history as Young Earth Creation is to Biology. If you would use such dubious sources, you will have to show your work, as his conclusions are not widely accepted nor his hypotheses seen as legitimate by his Academic peers.
Wow, where do I begin.
First you are "poisoning the well". You are saying because a writer made a mistake, you won't trust him on anything.
Second, all ideas begin small. Copernicus was in the minority when he suggested the earth orbited the sun. Carrier has written an extremely well documented book to make his point. The fact that many (biased) people have not yet accepted it does not make him wrong.
And third, getting back to the subject, if you think there is a substantial Christian record of the church between 64 AD and 95 AD, show me where. I have given you my source backing my claim.
