IX. Bodily Nature of Resurrection

IX. Bodily Nature of Resurrection

1. AGREE

A. Allison: Allison argues that there is “no good evidence” that Paul or early Christianity believed in a nonbodily or nonphysical resurrection.

B. Alston: Provides a defense of bodily appearances of Jesus. Alston makes the modest assertion that “we can accept that Jesus appeared to [the disciples] in bodily form” and that “New Testament criticism has not shown that it is not reasonable to believe this.”

C. Barnett: Says Paul understands resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 as “that event by which dead persons are now alive again,” and that this is the language used in that chapter. Barnett affirms that Jesus was seen and touched by several people over forty days. Both Peter and Paul insist that “God raised him physically from the dead.” In 1 Cor 15:44, Paul isn’t denying bodily resurrection but “contrasting” mortal with immortal existence. The words “flesh and blood” are used in the New Testament of the “lack of insight or power.” Paul’s two main points are continuity and transformation, even “transformed continuity.”

D. Barth (via Torrance): The last time Torrance visited Barth in Sweden, Barth told him to “mark well, bodily resurrection.”

E. Bloesch: Holds that Jesus was raised bodily in some sense, although transformed. This is indicated by the “substantial identity between the old and new bodies of Jesus.” With other saints, Samuel returned from the grave wrapped in a robe. So too Elijah and Moses, the transfiguration saints, “were definitely in bodily form, for Peter even wished to make booths for them,” and the deceased saints in Rev 6:11 and 7:9 are depicted wearing robes.

F. Brown: Brown says that “bodily resurrection” is “a reality on which I think all the pertinent New Testament writers would agree.” But there are still differences on “the material properties” of Jesus’s body, such as Paul’s notion of a spiritual body. Brown speaks of bodily indications like the empty tomb, emphasizing continuity with the earthly body of Jesus.

G. Clark: Clark on John: “The corporeal connotations of Jesus’ resurrection in the Fourth Gospel are very strong.”

H. Coakley: Coakley seems to agree on the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

I. Craig: In two essays, Craig responds to two chief reasons for denying that Paul held to a physical resurrection body. (1) Paul’s resurrection appearance was nonphysical, and it was the same as the disciples’ appearances. (2) Paul taught that the believers’ resurrection body will be spiritual in nature. Craig provides many strong points against these objections along the way. These include Jesus’s appearance to Paul and Paul’s use of sōma, especially in 1 Cor 15:50. Craig also defends the Gospel accounts and notes that “a considerable number” of New Testament scholars defend bodily resurrection. His conclusions are then summarized.

J. Cranfield: Firmly supports a position of bodily resurrection and rejects two views that suggest nothing happened to Jesus’s body: (1) the body was still in the tomb, and (2) Jesus’s body was exactly the same (i.e., not glorified or transformed).

K. Davis: After presenting three types of sight, Davis argues that the disciples saw Jesus in a normal or fairly normal way. Such is the straightforward reading of the New Testament texts. And there is “massive physical detail” to support such a claim. Davis says he feels “no sense of embarrassment” in holding that a camera could have photographed the risen Jesus. Davis also addresses six arguments against his thesis. One of Davis’s major charges is that only a physical body could do the types of things Jesus is reported to have done. When Paul discusses a spiritual body, it nonetheless includes “corporeality.” There is a unified message of the resurrection in the New Testament. Davis gives two arguments in favor of his position: (1) The earliest church interpreted resurrection appearances in physical terms and as being seen using ordinary vision. (2) The presence of theology or apologetic doesn’t negate a text’s accuracy. In his review of my debate with Flew, Davis says we need to answer the objection that Jesus was raised in a less than physical way. He suggests that one should argue “strongly” for the empty tomb and appearances that were physical in nature. He gives four possible views regarding Jesus’s resurrection body. Those who hold to some form of a spiritual resurrection view “almost never explain exactly what they mean.” The key to Davis’s bodily resurrection view is to establish two items—continuity and change. Answering the objection that Paul taught a spiritual view, which Davis handles by dividing New Testament texts into “physical” and “spiritual” passages, he points out that the same Gospel texts that teach the most physical view of resurrection also clearly include spiritual motifs. Davis concludes that the bodily resurrection model is best because (1) it explains the empty tomb and why Jesus could be touched (!), (2) Jesus was the same person before and after the resurrection, and (3) his body was transformed. Elsewhere, Davis adds more on the empty tomb as a major indicator of bodily resurrection. He also explains more regarding bodily resurrection as the New Testament model. Davis chides reductionists for interpreting New Testament texts according to their own “Jesus is risen but not literally” views without regard for textual meanings, which Davis calls “the most grotesque aspect” of their theory. He concludes that bodily resurrection makes the most sense of the New Testament, prominent Jewish views, and the meaning of anastasis.

L. Dawe: Says the resurrection teaching in the New Testament features “both continuity and discontinuity.” The New Testament describes the new state as bodily. “The word ‘spiritual’ is not an adjective to characterize nonmaterial,” and the “realm of the Spirit is still bodily.”

M. Eckstein: Eckstein notes that Jesus’s resurrection provides help and hope for believers. He adds, “The physical nature of Jesus’ resurrection from the grave contradicts all reductionist misunderstandings of continuation after death.”

N. Ehrman: States that the disciples’ belief in a bodily resurrection is a “historical fact.”

O. Evans: Evans notes some general reasons (context, Paul, etc.) to believe that the notion was bodily.

P. Fackre: “The bold physicality [of the NT] makes us wince.”

Q. Fitzmyer: “The primitive kerygma . . . would have to mean ‘raised bodily.’” Fitzmyer notes some curiosities regarding Jesus having been raised bodily since, for example, Jesus is “never portrayed [as] inhabiting the earth, not even for forty days,” indicating that Jesus “appeared from ‘glory.’” Fitzmyer notes differences between physical and spiritual bodies. In spite of comments about Jesus appearing from heaven and all the appearances basically being the same, Fitzmyer nevertheless says that the kerygma indicates that Jesus was raised “in some bodily form.”

R. Geisler: In The Battle for the Resurrection, Geisler discusses denials of physical resurrection (chapters 5–6), critiques of spiritual body positions (chapter 7), reasons for a physical resurrection (chapter 8), and lessons to be learned (chapter 9). He states that the molecules of Jesus’s resurrected body aren’t necessarily the same, and the evangelical debate here “is of no real consequence.” He provides almost the same case (and order of material) on a smaller scale in another work.

S. Gundry: Says standard Judaism expected bliss in an intermediate state. Paul agrees with this. For Paul, the resurrection body was physical. Gundry concludes from Paul’s view in 1 Corinthians 15 and elsewhere that the “resurrection of Christ was and the resurrection of Christians will be physical in nature. Anything less than that undercuts Paul’s ultimate intention.” Bynum notes that Gundry’s “careful philological research” makes the “psychomatic unity” position “untenable.” Further, Gundry argues that ōphthē refers more to earthly, physical sight than heavenly sight. Still, the word can’t be made to prove either physical or nonphysical sight. The meaning of anastasis and egeirō in the linguistic context of buried and raised points to “the raising of a formerly supine corpse to the standing posture of a live body.” He also notes Paul was a Pharisee, and we know from Josephus that they believed in “physical resurrection” of the body. Paul didn’t teach the nonphysicality of the resurrection body, but that it was raised by God’s Spirit. He means our “present mortal body” can’t become immortal.

T. Hagner: “The tangibility of the body of Jesus, whose resurrection is prototypical, is important.”

U. Harris: Harris notes that the Gospel narratives give “little doubt” that people truly believed that they saw Jesus.

V. Jensen: For Jensen, “Christianity stands or falls by the physical resurrection of Jesus.”

W. Kretzmann: Argues that Collins has not proven her thesis about Mark on either the empty tomb or the heavenly nature of the appearances and argues that Mark’s “notion of resurrection generally seems clearly physical.”

X. Ladd: Says Paul only knows of a bodily resurrection. The issue is the same throughout the rest of the New Testament, as there is nothing about a resurrection of Jesus’s spirit. Moreover, Jesus would not have been considered the Messiah had the body remained in the tomb.

Y. Lincoln: Says for John, bodily resurrection is “an essential feature of his identity.”

Z. Lüdemann: Incredibly, Lüdemann says he does “not question the physical nature of Jesus’ appearance from heaven” and that Paul argues believers will have transformed bodies like those of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul “develops his idea of a bodily resurrection.” In other words, this was Paul’s teaching.

AA. Mathewson: Mathewson addresses Jesus’s bodily resurrection positively.

AB. Neill and Wright: These two note that the early believers not only thought Jesus rose bodily, but Jesus had also conquered death. The implications of this were not just for Jesus but all of creation.

AC. Oden: Argues for the bodily resurrection of Jesus and believers, holding to bodily continuity: “The same Jesus who died was raised.” Jesus could eat, but his body was also changed.

AD. Olson: Says the foundation to his application of the resurrection to ecology and other topics is “Jesus’ corporeal body.” Later he adds that the body was both continuous and discontinuous with what we know about bodies (e.g., Jesus’s could go through walls).

AE. Osborne: Provides four arguments versus what he calls “the corporeal view.” (1) The view is late. (2) Paul equates all appearances with his vision. (3) The appearances are mythological or legendary. (4) There are no parallels in history, so “it is impossible to assimilate it.” (Note: it is difficult to see how argument 3 fits at all, and argument 4 appears to belong to a different category.) Osborne then answers these objections, albeit too briefly. Nevertheless, he concludes, “The evidence in fact, strongly suggests from the beginning a physical resurrection.”

AF. Pamment: She is primarily concerned with understanding Paul’s meaning in 1 Cor 15:44. This is a word study of Paul’s relevant words, such as body, soul, flesh, and spirit. When discussing man’s spirit, Pamment says Paul “means that which determines a man’s disposition or action.” On 1 Cor 15:50, she writes, “The body does inherit the kingdom of God when it is transformed, presumably materially transformed,” but Paul is not specific on the nature of a glorified body. Life in God’s kingdom will be bodily according to Paul. But strangely enough, Pamment goes on to say that Paul must face the problem of personal continuity because he doesn’t accept “continuing existence” immediately after death. Paul perhaps even took what she terms the “physicalist” position: that “the original atoms of the natural body link pre- and post-mortem existence.”

AG. Perkins: Says the term resurrection does “carry with it some sense of bodily transformation.”

AH. Peterson: After Jesus’s resurrection, David Peterson says Jesus “could be seen and heard and touched,” and a “radical transformation of his body had occurred.”

AI. Purves: Notes the New Testament does not teach bodiless resurrection or resurrection of the soul. Instead, the “resurrected Jesus was and is an embodied person.”

AJ. Sider: For Paul, Sider says the spiritual body does not refer to some “non-material substance,” but rather it refers to the whole of an individual that is led by God’s Spirit. Sider states 1 Cor 15:44 doesn’t contrast “a material body and a form of some non-material, ethereal substance.” Paul teaches both “genuine bodily continuity” as well as “significant discontinuity,” and thus a “genuine, significant transformation.” First Corinthians 15:50 only “indirectly” says anything about Paul’s view of the resurrection body. Rather, Paul means that it is beyond what “man can accomplish.” Sider concludes that, in addition to continuity and discontinuity, Paul taught that “[Jesus’s] resurrection was presumably a bodily resurrection.”

AK. Stanley: Stanley states 1 Cor 15:35–38 “leaves no doubt as to Paul’s belief in a bodily resurrection.”

AL. Staudinger: The bodily nature of Jesus is further indicated by the empty tomb.

AM. Talbert: For Luke, “the ultimate victory over death is understood in corporeal terms” due to the empty tomb and bodily appearances.

AN. Thrall: Thrall even acknowledges that if there is no naturalistic explanation for the empty tomb, “then we have a piece of historical evidence which would count in favor of the objectivity of the resurrection appearances.”

AO. Torrance: “Everything depends on the resurrection of the body, otherwise all we have is a Ghost for a Saviour.” Torrance speaks regularly of bodily resurrection such as “the physical identity of the risen Jesus.”

AP. Williams: Says if the tomb is empty, “then that must be what is met when Jesus is met.”

AQ. Witherington: For Paul, “the body was an essential part of human personality.” Paul’s understanding of God’s future kingdom was one that “involved embodied existence.” First Corinthians 6:14 is “clear that resurrection involves a body,” although Witherington notes “the old body was not necessarily involved.” Believers would be raised the same way. Ultimately there will be a “lasting form of newness in the flesh.” In 1 Cor 15:12, he notes the “word nekron here does not merely mean death or the grave, but surely refers to dead persons or corpses.” Scholars have always argued continuity or discontinuity concerning Paul’s view of the resurrection body, but in all cases it is in an embodied form. In the Gospels and in Paul’s writings, the physicality of Jesus is described in multiple ways, and “by the criterion of multiple attestation there is a high likelihood that this motif goes back to the earliest oral accounts about the encounters with Jesus after his death.” Similar to Wright, Witherington notes that the “best explanation” is that something happened to Jesus’s body.

AR. Wright: Wright’s key reason for writing his massive work on the resurrection was to argue that the notion of bodily resurrection, especially for earliest Christianity, is “historically grounded,” and to argue otherwise is “plain wrong.” For pre-Christian Judaism, “resurrection meant embodiment.” Jews believed that martyrs would be “reembodied, raised to life in God’s new world.” “The whole mainline Judaeo-Christian tradition insists that in this new world people will have bodies. Whatever else will be true of them, they will still be physical.” Our bodies, however, “may not be exactly the same as the present ones.” There will be “both continuity and discontinuity.” There is no evidence that when Jews used the term resurrection during this time, they meant anything other than a body being raised. The word could be used as a metaphor, “but without losing the literal reference to the concrete event of dead bodies coming to life. This must be borne in mind.” The early church thought Jesus had been raised “bodily” from the dead. The evidence points to what the evangelists say happened. Bodily resurrection is the best explanation that fits with the available evidence. The hope of a bodily resurrection by early Christians has its roots in Jewish views with no pagan precedent. On the Gospels, he argues: (1) the resurrection appearances are unlike visions; (2) Jesus is both physical and “transphysical” (going through locked doors); and (3) the appearances stopped. Wright thinks that the appearance traditions in Luke and John “go back to genuine early memories.” It is often thought that Paul believed in a spiritual resurrection. But Wright says we must factor in Paul’s “Pharisaic background.” Paul was saying that Jesus’s body was “changed, not abandoned,” and that God’s kingdom will be what we “might call a ‘noncorruptible physicality.’” On 1 Cor 15:50, he says Paul meant that our physical bodies cannot continue in eternity as they are. Paul is referring to real, physical bodies. Though it was Jesus’s body, it was “transformed into the new mode of physicality.” Paul’s view of the resurrection is very similar to that depicted in the Gospels. Wright hypothesizes that if someone suggested to Paul whether Jesus’s body could still be in the tomb, “he wouldn’t just have disagreed; he would have suggested that you didn’t understand what the relevant words meant,” because resurrection has to do “with re-embodiment, with a new physical existence.”

AS. Yamauchi: Offers a very effective and detailed response concerning the Jews getting the idea of bodily resurrection from the Persians.

2. DISAGREE

A. General Comments

1. Akenson: Akenson argues for a spiritual resurrection in what appears to be three parts: (1) Paul does not say Jesus arose bodily. (2) Acts 9 and 1 Corinthians 15 provide evidence for a spiritual resurrection. (3) Paul argues for a spiritual resurrection, as is consistent with Hebrew texts. “Nowhere in his writings does Saul indicate a belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus.” Akenson says Saul indicates a spiritual resurrection (1 Cor 15:44–50). “He concludes his argument by asserting the incompatibility of a physical resurrection with the triumph of righteousness.” Yet it remains a real event that ultimately produced “the Christship of Jesus.”

2. Casey: Casey contends that Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead or leave an empty tomb behind. Jesus predicted resurrection in terms that did not imply bodily resurrection or an empty tomb. After the crucifixion, the bereaved followers, including Simeon the Rock and some other members of the Twelve as well as Jesus’s brother Jacob, had visions that they interpreted as resurrection appearances. The appearances were based on Jesus’s predictions and Scripture, and they were not dependent on the empty tomb. Casey argues that visions were normal in that culture, which could make the disciples more likely to experience bereavement visions. Casey notes some differences between bereavement visions and apocalyptic visions, but bereavement visions are much simpler.

3. Collins: Collins also says that Paul doesn’t teach “the revival of [Jesus’s] corpse.” In the future resurrection, the physical body just decays. Collins thinks Mark taught a “more heavenly type” of appearance.

4. Conzelmann: Conzelmann holds that the idea of resurrection comes from Persian religions before Judaism.

5. Funk: Funk emphasizes Paul’s notion, where “the appearances tend to be more ethereal, linked less and less to the notion of the resuscitation of a corpse.”

6. Gillman: Gillman takes a similar position to Conzelmann. But Yamauchi argues forcefully that such a connection commits numerous factual and dating errors.

7. Küng: Jesus wasn’t raised bodily if the meaning of this term is “corpse.”

8. Morgan: Morgan says that the idea of the resurrection of the flesh “remains an absurdity.”

B. Corinthian or Platonic Problem with Bodily Resurrection

1. Borg and Crossan: Though Borg and Crossan argue for spiritual language and a spiritual body by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, they state that Paul is combating a belief of the immortality of the soul and is “insisting throughout that resurrection is about bodies, not about disembodied immortal souls.”

2. Crossan and Reed: They note that Paul did not accept the Platonic view that the soul of Jesus rose with God, which was the position of those in Corinth. They wonder why Paul didn’t “leave two options for Christian faith: the resurrection of the body or the immortality of the soul?”

3. Lampe: Lampe provides some helpful comments connecting anthropology regarding the Jewish world and its Greco-Roman counterpart before analyzing these relationships to resurrection.

C. Paul Believed in a Heavenly Body

1. General Comments

A) Carrier: Carrier argues that Paul did not state that belief in a “fleshly resurrection” was “necessary.” Paul did not hold to a bodily resurrection like the Pharisees because, when he became a Christian, he converted his view. Plus, Paul does not use rabbinic responses that argue for a bodily resurrection. Carrier notes Epiphanius’s use of 1 Corinthians 15 in denying the resurrection. Regarding Phil 3:19–21, Carrier notes that it seems Paul has in mind an actual transformation of our old bodies into new ones and wants to push for an understanding that emphasizes an exchange rather than a transformation. Carrier finds that Paul only uses two types of arguments. One of them is Scripture, and the other is his own visionary experience. Interestingly, Carrier notes that Paul would likely have checked on at least some of the evidence (though it is not clear what evidence Paul would be looking into).

3. ARGUMENTS

A. Arguments for a Bodily Resurrection

1. 1 Corinthians 9:1

A) Normal Language (heoraka) for Sight

(1) Wright: Wright argues that Paul’s language of “seeing” (heoraka; 1 Cor 9:1) is meant to be viewed in the context of normal sight.

2. 1 Corinthians 15

A) General Comments

(1) Allison: Allison argues that there is “no good evidence” that Paul or early Christianity believed in a nonbodily or nonphysical resurrection. He says Jub. 23:30–31 is the only possible exception.

(2) Ehrman: Says Paul believed Jesus was buried and bodily raised (1 Corinthians 15) and that the resurrection was not in the heavenly realm.

B) Relationship between 1 Corinthians 9 and 1 Corinthians 15

(1) Wright: While acknowledging that ōphthē has multiple meanings, he believes that the proximity of 1 Corinthians 15 (ōphthē) to 9:1 (heoraka) is consistent with normal sight.

C) Part of a Sequence That Had an End

(1) Craig: Craig notes that the resurrection appearances ceased after a short initial period.

(2) Crusemann: Says Luke notes that the appearances stopped at the ascension, but Paul understood himself to be the last in the series.

(3) Dunn: Although not in relation to a bodily resurrection discussion, Dunn agrees the appearances came to an end. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, makes “the almost explicit inference” that he was the last one to be given an appearance of the risen Jesus. Accordingly, with the end of the appearances, “there would be no grounds for the appointment of other apostolic witnesses.” He makes similar arguments elsewhere.

(4) Wenham: Although not in relation to a bodily resurrection discussion, Wenham agrees the appearances came to an end.

(5) Wright: Wright argues that this was not an ongoing spiritual event, but Paul claims it ended with him.

D) Public Event with Witnesses

(1) Wright: Says 1 Cor 15:1–11 “clearly speaks of a public event for which there is evidence in the form of witnesses who saw something and can be interrogated.” For Wright, this undermines the argument that Paul was referring to some sort of inner conviction.

E) Buried and Raised Language

(1) Wenham: Based on Paul’s language of “buried” and “raised,” Wenham says it is “most unlikely” that Paul was referring to anything other than a bodily resurrection.

(2) Wright: Wright argues that the mention of the burial indicates that the readers will assume that the raising of Jesus referenced the body and, accordingly, left an empty tomb.

F) Paul’s Pharisaic Background

(1) Wenham: In addition to Paul’s language, Wenham claims Paul’s background as a Pharisaic Jew indicates his belief in a physical resurrection.

G) 1 Corinthians 15 as a Whole and as a Response to the Church at Corinth

(1) General Comments

(a) Borg and Crossan: While Borg and Crossan argue for spiritual language and a spiritual body by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, they make the following comment regarding Paul’s response to those in Corinth who thought resurrection was immortality: “He answers his own question in stages, insisting throughout that resurrection is about bodies, not about disembodied immortal souls. At the same time, he also insists that the resurrected body is not simply the predeath body brought back to life.” Note, however, their comment that for Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 “the resurrected body—including the body of Jesus—is a spiritual body: raised imperishable, raised in glory, raised in power. . . . The risen Christ is a life-giving spirit.”

(b) Hurtado: In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul “intended to assert the reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the future bodily resurrection of believers, in answer to objections and/or a radical redefinition of resurrection that seemed to him to amount to a denial of it.”

(2) Sown, Death, and Raised Language (1 Cor 15:36–58)

(a) Crossan and Reed: These two say “Paul’s answer [in 1 Cor 15:36–58] holds alike to continuity and discontinuity.” They translate 1 Cor 15:44 as, “It is sown a soul-body, it is raised a Spirit-body” and that a spiritual body is a “body transfigured by divine empowerment.” For Paul, a spiritual body is “not just a square circle, but the normal human body transformed by the Spirit of God.”

(b) Ware: James Ware challenges the position of those who think that Paul’s language of being sown and raised reflects a discontinuity and indicates Paul was not thinking of the resurrection in “straightforward bodily terms.” Ware contends that this goes against the context. He then makes several crucial observations: (1) First Corinthians 15:36–49 has the perishable body as its subject. Ware finds this to be a “basic observation,” which is “commonly ignored” but “has profound exegetical implications.” (2) In 15:50–58, it is again the body that is the subject of the resurrecting. (3) For the body to change, the body needs to continue to exist. (4) Contrary to Engberg-Pederson, Paul gives no clues to inform the reader that he is using change in a technical way. (5) Referring to 1 Cor 15:44–46 (sōma and pneuma), Ware provides a technical discussion regarding psychikos and that it refers to the source of the body’s life rather than the body’s composition. Ware provides several examples from ancient history that support his argument (4 Macc., Aristotle, Epictetus, and Plutarch). Ware concludes that the way in which Paul presents the argument, its structure, its syntax, and the meaning of the words is inconsistent with a nonbodily notion of resurrection. Rather, what it actually demonstrates is “the mainstream Jewish concept of the resurrection of the body” and “indicates that Paul would understand Jesus’ resurrection as the revivification of his crucified and entombed body.”

(c) Wright: Wright writes several pages on this issue.

(3) Neither Nonbodily Resurrection nor a Luminated Body

(a) Wright: Paul does not speak of a nonbodily resurrection, nor does he present an illuminated resurrection body (i.e., light). Note also Wright’s fourth point.

H) Conclusions

(1) Wright: Wright notes that the connection of the believer’s resurrection with that of Jesus and Paul’s argument for bodily resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 create “an unanswerable case” that when Paul reports seeing Jesus in v. 8, Paul saw Jesus as one who was raised bodily from the dead.

3. Resurrection Language

A) Resurrection Only Meant Bodily Resurrection

(1) See also: “Bodily Language of Resurrection” in section 6 of this chapter.

(2) Crossan and Reed: Although not referring directly to anastasis, Crossan and Reed argue there was “only one meaning” for Paul regarding resurrection, and that was the “general bodily resurrection,” which was to occur at the end of time. This is similar to Wright below.

(3) Wright: Says the word resurrection, for both Jews and gentiles, most often referred to a possible future but also a concrete event whereby all of the dead would come back to full, bodily life. He makes this argument elsewhere, noting also that there was language for ghosts and visions (and that language was not resurrection). The word anastasis was not used to refer to nonbodily afterlife. It was not used to refer to the soul moving from a living body and then going somewhere else (e.g., another body).

4. Bodily Resurrection Appearances in the Gospels

A) Bodily Resurrection Is Unanimously Presumed

(1) Craig: For Craig, the Gospels confirm that the resurrection was “physical and bodily.” The agreement between these accounts is especially “impressive” because they contain different independent traditions that each attest to the bodily nature of the appearances. He adds that it is also important to consider that these accounts would have been written during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses, who could have provided a check against legend.

(2) Eckstein: Eckstein notes Luke’s uniqueness in connecting the teaching of the resurrected Jesus “explicitly to the truth and reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.”

(3) Purves: Purves argues that the accounts emphasize a bodily resurrection.

(4) Tabor: “What the gospels claim about Jesus is that the tomb was empty, and that his dead body was revived to life—wounds and all. He was not a phantom or a ghost.” On the other hand, Tabor believes that Paul argues for a spiritual resurrection and links his experience to that of the disciples in 1 Corinthians 15.

5. The Empty Tomb Supports Bodily Resurrection

A) See also: “Empty Tomb” (section 1) in chapter 4.

B) Davis: For Davis, the empty tomb is among the “strongest” considerations for believing Jesus was raised bodily.

C) Polkinghorne: “The emphasis on the prospect of a redemption of cosmic scope is surely reinforced by the message of the empty tomb. Its implication is that the Lord’s risen and glorified body is the transmuted form of his dead body.”

D) Purves: Purves argues that the empty tomb is an empirical argument for the bodily resurrection.

6. Differences between Ascension, Vindication, Resuscitation, and Resurrection

A) Not Ascension

(1) Allison: “The ascent of a soul to heaven and its vindication were not the same as resurrection from the dead.” He notes Jub. 23:30–31 as the only possible exception.

(2) Wright: Wright notes that people in the ancient world were familiar with all sorts of alleged strange phenomenon. “They had language for this, and it wasn’t resurrection.”

B) Not Resuscitation

(1) Ehrman: Ehrman notes that 1 Kgs 17:17–24; Mark 5:21–43; John 11:1–44 are examples of resuscitation and not resurrection, and he notes that this “is not what the disciples believed about Jesus. The reason is clear. They believed Jesus had come back from the dead—but he was not still living among them as one of them.” Jesus was now with God.

7. The Christian’s Present “Embodied” Purpose

A) See also: “Present Emphasis” (section 12.C) in chapter 10.

B) Wright: “If we’re heading for a timeless, bodiless eternity, then what’s the fuss about putting things right in the present world? But if what matters is the newly embodied life after life after death, then the presently embodied life before death can at least be seen . . . as the essential, vital time, place, and matter into which God’s future purposes have already broken into the resurrection of Jesus and in which those future purposes are now to be further anticipated through the mission of the church.” Wright goes on to stress that we can enjoy part of the future kingdom in the present, as well as participate in bringing that kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Wright argues that the church’s mission would be “radically different” if it were to “save souls for a disembodied heaven.” Embodied afterlife addresses the problem of evil in the present. The New Testament does not argue that the future kingdom will come because creation is inherently bad or was a mistake, but rather, creation will be redeemed along with humanity.

8. Paul’s Theology Regarding the Future Resurrection

A) See also: “Jewish View on Resurrection” (section 4.C) in this chapter.

B) Craig: The teachings in Paul’s Letters would be “difficult to explain” if there was no bodily resurrection; for example, Paul’s teaching that believers will have a resurrection body (sōma) like that of Jesus without Jesus having been resurrected bodily. Accordingly, visions alone are insufficient to account for Paul’s theology.

C) Wright: Notes Christians believed that Jesus’s bodily resurrection was the “prototype for that of others.” Of the Christians, Paul is the “clearest spokesman for this view.” Wright refers to 1 Cor 12:12–28; John 11:25; 1 Pet 1:3–5; and Rev 2:10, among other texts.

9. Continuous and Discontinuous Nature of the Resurrected Body

A) See also: “Continuity and Discontinuity” (section 10.D) in chapter 10.

B) 1 Corinthians 15 Seed Language

(1) Crossan and Reed: As noted above, Crossan and Reed find there is both continuity and discontinuity regarding Paul’s thinking. They translate 1 Cor 15:44 as “it is sown a soul-body, it is raised a Spirit-body” and that a spiritual body is a “body transfigured by divine empowerment.”

(2) Davis: Davis thinks Paul’s view on the resurrection “requires” the empty tomb “because of his simile of the plant growing from the seed.”

(3) Lampe: Lampe argues that Paul’s use of the word “spiritual” in 1 Cor 15:44 does not include anything about its “material or energetic structure,” but rather, it “emphasizes that God’s Spirit is the only force that creates the new body.” The spiritual body will “transcend the earthly body in the same way that a beautiful, intricate plant transcends the plain seed of grain from which it grows.”

(4) Wright: Similar to Crossan and Reed, Paul argues for both discontinuity and continuity. Wright explains that “the plant is not the same thing as the seed, and yet it is delivered from it by the creator’s power.”

C) Jesus’s Resurrection Body

(1) Green: Joel Green notes that Paul affirms in 1 Corinthians 15 that what happens to Jesus’s body will also happen to ours and that we will be “transformed.”

(2) Polkinghorne: Briefly notes the continuity and discontinuity of the resurrection. “The risen Christ has a body, still carrying the scars of the passion, but it possesses wholly new properties, so that he appears and disappears within locked rooms.”

(3) Purves: Says these accounts are evidence of bodily resurrection and indicate that our resurrection body is in “some manner continuous” with the body that died.

D) New Testament View of Resurrection Is Uniquely (Trans)Physical

(1) Craig: Craig argues that the resurrection body will be transformed such that it will be a proper body for renewed creation.

(2) Green: Joel Green notes that Paul affirms in 1 Corinthians 15 that our present bodies are unsuitable and so they need to be transformed. So Paul presents them with “the promise of the transformation,” with Jesus’s resurrection being the promise of the believer’s resurrection.

(3) Lampe: “In summary, God’s salvation, including the raising of the dead, grasps more than just parts of a human being, than just a soul or a spirit. It grasps the entire person and subjects this person to a transforming and newly creating act called ‘resurrection.’ Consequently, the resurrected person will have bodily existence.”

(4) Segal: Segal makes some comments regarding doubting Thomas that could be understood with respect to transphysicality.

(5) Wright: Wright makes several comments on this point, especially the “transphysicality” of the resurrection body. From the beginning, the Christian belief held that the resurrected body will be a “transformed body” with new characteristics.

E) Resurrection Body in General

(1) Eckstein: Eckstein notes that there is continuity while also discontinuity. Jesus is not “restricted” by the same things that currently limit humans. “Then, as the resurrected, they will live in reconciled continuity with their complex bodily existence and in liberating discontinuity with their vulnerable and transient body, that is, they will live in fullness.” Eckstein also notes that the “reality of the comprehensive resurrection of Jesus assures those who believe in him concerning their own hope of resurrection; and the physical nature of Jesus’ resurrection from the grave contradicts all reductionist misunderstandings of continuation of after death.”

(2) Green: Joel Green notes that Paul affirms in 1 Corinthians 15 that the present body is unsuited for eternal life and must be transformed. This transformation will occur when Jesus returns. These factors infuse the present life with meaning.

(3) Lampe: Lampe refers to the spiritual body as something that is “unnatural” because it is capable of something beyond the possibilities inherent in the present creation. It will be part of a new creation with new possibilities. Lampe continues and notes that, for Paul, this resurrection body will transcend its current state in a way similar to that of a seed transcending itself.

(4) Russell: Russell notes three areas of continuity (physicality, reign of God in the church, and personal identity) and three areas of discontinuity (encounters with Jesus are not resuscitation, sin not possible, general revelation will not be resuscitation).

(5) Welker: “This body represents the essential marks of personal identity in such complexity and fullness that, on one hand, its recognition can become much more complicated than the recognition of a merely biological body. On the other hand, this transfigured body can open many more routes of recognition, community, and identification than a merely natural body.”

10. Theological Arguments

A) Hagner: Hagner points out that Jesus’s bodily resurrection is an important prototype of the future and coming kingdom.

B) Lincoln: Lincoln uses an argument from the analogy of Jesus’s body as the temple for bodily resurrection. Lincoln notes that the realized eschatology of John implies “the present experience of eternal life is, therefore, an anticipation of—but not a substitute for—the physical resurrection. This means that eternal life for humans . . . cannot be viewed as divorced from physical life, and so existing on some totally separate ‘spiritual’ level.”

B. Arguments against Bodily Resurrection

1. 1 Corinthians 15

A) Borg and Crossan: Though Paul’s conviction was that Jesus was really resurrected, “real need not mean a transformed corpse whom others would have seen had they been there.” These two think that Paul obviously thought the appearances continued and that one should not think the “experiences stopped with him.”

B) Tabor: Tabor argues that although Paul uses the word “resurrection,” he really means “something akin to an apparition or vision.” Tabor thinks that Paul’s report of seeing Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15 “was clearly ‘visionary,’ with those of the original founders—possibly implying that their experiences were much like his.” He also believes Paul argues for a spiritual resurrection and links his experience to that of the disciples in 1 Corinthians 15.

C) Ware: James Ware provides and summarizes the views of various scholars, including Grass and Collins, as arguing against Paul’s account of a physical resurrection and a later development of the empty tomb accounts. (Ware does not believe this himself.)

2. The Corinthians’ Problem with the Resurrection

A) Crossan and Reed: They note that Paul did not accept the Platonic view for Jesus regarding the soul of Jesus rising with God, which was the position of those in Corinth.

3. Bodily Gospel Appearances Are Anti-Docetic Apologetics

A) Craig: Craig notes that this objection is sometimes raised.

4. Physical Resurrection Was Not Envisioned in Hebrew Texts

A) Akenson: Citing Enoch (Gen 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kgs 2:1–11), Akenson believes Paul’s understanding of spiritual resurrection “resonates nicely with ancient Hebrew texts.” Akenson thinks that Paul would not debase this incredible “spiritual event” by associating “it with tales of shrouds and revivified corpses.” Akenson does not find any accounts of a bodily resurrected messiah in ancient Jewish writings.

5. 1 Corinthians 15 Seed Language

A) Carrier: Carrier argues that the seed language refers to a seed body that dies, sprouts, and then “has a different body” and enters “into a different realm of existence.” Carrier thinks Paul “surely” wanted people to understand that the outer part of a person is like a shell that is discarded, while the inner man will be that which is raised. This is what happened to Jesus and what will happen to the body of believers. Carrier thinks Paul is arguing here for zero continuity between the body that died and the one that was raised. First Corinthians 15:44–54 demonstrates, for Carrier, that the Gospels’ focus on physicality can be rejected as “polemical invention.”

6. Discontinuity Only

A) Carrier: Carrier thinks Paul is arguing here for zero continuity between the body that died and the one that raised. Earlier, Carrier noted that Paul was explicit to “deny continuity” between the two bodies. Referring to other Jewish views, Carrier seems to indicate that there is continuity of the bodies, but the natural law affecting those bodies will change.

C. Objections to Arguments against Bodily Resurrection

1. Regarding the Corinthian and Platonic Problem

A) See also: “Justice and Judgment” (section 4) in chapter 10.

B) Craig: Craig argues that the resurrection body will be transformed such that it will be a proper body for renewed creation.

C) Crossan and Reed: Crossan and Reed note that the resurrection was primarily about the “justice of God” and should not be understood to be just about survival or “heavenly evacuation.” They point out that an immortal soul was not enough to transform a world afflicted by evil. The Jewish argument was that “divine justice was necessarily about transfigured bodies upon a transfigured earth.”

D) Lampe: “In summary, God’s salvation, including the raising of the dead, grasps . . . the entire person and subjects this person to a transforming and newly creating act called ‘resurrection.’ Consequently, the resurrected person will have bodily existence.”

2. Arguments against the Bodily Gospel Appearances Being Anti-docetic

A) Craig: Craig argues that Paul’s writings do not combat docetism and reflect an early belief of a bodily resurrection. Craig also thinks that an apologetic against docetism would have been “counterproductive” to Paul’s arguments against those in Corinth. He then provides several arguments as to why the Gospel accounts are not merely apologetic responses to docetism: (1) Docetism was the response to bodily resurrection, not the other way around. (2) Docetism was primarily concerned with the incarnation, not resurrection. (3) The Gospels predate docetism. (4) If the appearances are apologetics against docetism, they “do not evince the rigor” of such an apologetic. A final point is that “had visionary experiences been original, then Docetism would not have presented any threat vis-à-vis the appearances.”

4. JEWISH AND GRECO-ROMAN VIEWS OF RESURRECTION

A. General Comments

1. Bauckham: He notes that some scholars emphasize there were a variety of views about life after death in Second Temple Judaism. Bauckham thinks this is a mistake and that there is consistency among the texts. Differences between the Jewish view and Jesus is that Jesus’s resurrection occurred before the resurrection of others and before the end of the age, while the Jewish view “was never purely individualistic” and involved the entire cosmos. Bauckham offers some comments on the view of resurrection as coming late in ancient Jewish thought.

2. Bolt: Bolt identifies a development in Greek thinking on afterlife that occurs in three stages: (1) shadow type existence, (2) Hades, and (3) Orphism along with other mystery religions pointing toward astral immortality. He also notes two philosophical views of death in Greco-Roman thought: (1) death as nothingness (Epicureans and Stoics), and (2) death as the soul changing locations (Platonism). For pagans, Bolt notes that there are two exceptions for those who actually entered the realm of the dead and returned (Alcestis and Eurydice), but then points out that anything resembling a resurrection proper was considered impossible. He then goes on to list several references.

3. Brown: Comments that bodily resurrection was not the only view in Judaism.

4. Casey: Summarizes the Jewish view as one that doesn’t necessarily need empty tombs.

5. Clifford and Johnson: Summarize the various aspects of Old Testament views regarding the afterlife, including resurrection.

6. Cohn-Sherbok: The central aim of his article is to argue that when Jesus answered the Sadducees regarding the resurrection of the dead, “Jesus was not a skilled casuist in the style of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Jesus’s argument was not based on any rabbinic rules “and is thus defective from a rabbinic point of view.” Along the way, Cohn-Sherbok’s argument indirectly shows the early Jewish teaching of bodily resurrection.

7. Collins: Collins states that resurrection in the Jewish writings consists of a future event that was collective (rather than individual). Christianity was different because it states that an individual was raised in the present.

8. Craig: Notes two primary differences between the Jewish view of resurrection and Jesus’s resurrection: (1) Jewish resurrection was eschatological, not within actual history; (2) Jewish resurrection was, in general, “not the resurrection of an isolated individual.”

9. Cranfield: Says that, indicative of the general Jewish position, the earliest believers of Jesus were not expecting Jesus to be raised before the general resurrection.

10. Crossan: Crossan agrees with Craig that an individual resurrection was not expected in Judaism and that the general resurrection started or was initiated with Jesus.

11. Goergen: Notes that there were various understandings of the afterlife in first-century Judaism, including bodily and spiritual.

12. Harvey: Anthony Harvey surveys some of the senses of resurrection in the Old Testament and other Jewish views.

13. Holleman: Notes that the differences between Jesus’s resurrection and the idea of a general resurrection at the end of time “are substantial.” In addition to Jesus being raised individually shortly after being crucified, Jesus was resurrected into heaven while the general resurrection “was to take place on earth.”

14. Hoover: Says resurrection of the body is hardly ever mentioned in the Old Testament. Notes that “the idea of resurrection was embraced by some forms of Judaism during the Hellenistic period (200 BC–AD 200).”

15. Küng: Says that the Jewish expectation was for the general resurrection of everyone at the end of time. Jesus’s resurrection thus signals that the process has started and is a promise of hope.

16. Ladd: Ladd comments on the emerging view of a blessed afterlife in the Old Testament. He provides several views of the final state in Judaism, but he notes that the resurrection of the body predominates. However, Jesus’s presentation of his messiahship was not what first-century Jews (including his own disciples) expected.

17. Lehmann: Says Israel’s views of resurrection developed late, and it “was unknown in the Old Testament before the third century B.C.”

18. Lindars: Lindars comments upon the various Jewish views of resurrection.

19. Lorenzen: Lorenzen provides details on resurrection in the ancient world, especially among Jews.

20. Moule: On the discontinuity between Jesus’s resurrection and Jewish views, he doesn’t think the Old Testament could have “generated” belief in Jesus’s resurrection. He emphatically points out that no individuals were expected to be resurrected before the general resurrection. Such a new teaching would be “preposterous” and would require an explanation. This is why Moule finds neither Cupitt’s nor Bultmann’s explanations to be convincing.

21. Muddiman: His comments are seemingly aimed in context at an early Pesch-type position. He questions how Christian faith arose in the first place, especially considering (1) typical Jewish thought maintained a general resurrection at the last day (not individual), and other similar ideas were available to Jews, like exaltation or ascension (e.g., Elijah), and (2) Jesus does not appear in an eschatological sense at all—he appears normally.

22. O’Collins: Says the idea of resurrection could have come into Judaism from Persian religion. In the late Jewish period, there was a diversity of thought on the resurrection and who would be raised: Israelites only (1 Enoch 83–90), righteous and unrighteous, both Israelites and non-Israelites (2 Macc.), all men raised to judgment, and no resurrection at all.

23. Oden: Oden gives a brief overview of Jewish views of the afterlife, resurrection, and immortality.

24. Pannenberg: Says Jewish expectation was not for an individual to be raised before the general resurrection. Early Christians appear to have interpreted this event as the beginning of the end of the ages.

25. Porter: Challenges F. F. Bruce on the Greek and Jewish views of resurrection. Porter contends that the Greeks did hold bodily resurrection and Jews did present nonbodily resurrection views. Early Greeks believed in bodily transformation. (Is this resurrection of the body?) Porter says that “Jewish writers did not appear to entertain a bodily resurrection” until New Testament times. This “does not” lead to the view that “Paul simply adopted this conception,” because it was found in a number of ancient writers. Still, Christian ideas developed in a world where Greek ideas already existed.

26. Segal: Segal stresses that the rabbis believed resurrection to be “absolutely central to their faith.” However, the resurrection was “totally unknown” in the Old Testament until much later. There were a variety of views in Jewish thought. Immortality of the soul entered Jewish thought as well. Segal apparently disagrees with Cohn-Sherbok’s view regarding Jesus’s argument with the Sadducees concerning resurrection.

27. Torrance: Also notes that the Jews were not expecting a resurrection before the general resurrection.

28. Wedderburn: States that in Jewish thought, there is no indication of an individual resurrection but only a general resurrection at the end of the ages. The first Christian teachings “ran counter to all Jewish expectations.”

29. Wright: Wright provides a thorough overview of pagan and Jewish views of afterlife. Wright stresses how shocking Jesus’s resurrection would have sounded to the surrounding culture, especially a Jewish culture that did not expect an individual’s resurrection before the general resurrection. Contrary to what we are sometimes told, there was “a spectrum of beliefs” about life after death among both the Greeks and the Jews in the first century AD. Some Greeks and Romans believed that life just ended at death, but “most” (like Homer) believed in “a continuing, shadowy existence in Hades.” There were also the Platonists and mystery religions. Some thought necromancy was a way to engage the dead. They all agreed that there was no bodily resurrection. For Judaism, explicit Old Testament statements on bodily resurrection “are extremely rare.” The Sadducees (according to Josephus) denied the afterlife, and Philo argued rather like Plato. “Christianity was born into a world where one of its central tenets, resurrection, was universally recognized as false. . . . Except, of course, by Judaism.” “The early Christian hope for bodily resurrection is clearly Jewish in origin, there being no possible pagan precedent.” “There was a spectrum of belief about life after death in first-century Judaism.”

30. Yamauchi: Notes that many scholars hold that Jews were influenced by Zoroastrians regarding judgment, resurrection, heaven, and hell. But a “major problem” is that our information about their eschatological views is derived “almost entirely from the Bundahishn, which is a ninth-century A.D. Pahlai writing. We are, in fact, lacking any religious texts from the crucial Parthian era (250 B.C. to A.D. 225).” Two other problems are that there is not strong data to suggest that Cyrus was a Zoroastrian, nor does Zoroastrianism connect resurrection to Zoroaster. Further, there are significant differences between their conceptions of resurrection. The best solution is to understand resurrection as an “inner-Jewish development” instead of utilizing later Persian sources.

B. Paul’s View on Resurrection

1. Bodily

A) Borg and Crossan: They note that Paul’s emphasis in 1 Corinthians 15 is about physical bodies being resurrected. Resurrection does not refer to immortal souls.

B) Ehrman: Ehrman emphasizes that Paul stressed Jesus’s resurrection was bodily. Ehrman notes that the Corinthians appeared to hold to the idea of a disembodied existence, whereas Paul did not.

C) Hurtado: Hurtado points out that Paul argues for a bodily resurrection of Jesus and believers.

D) Ware: James Ware writes that several scholars place Paul’s view within mainstream Judaism regarding bodily resurrection. Others take a view that Paul was referring to heavenly glory. Still others take some sort of combination view.

E) Wright: Says Paul is one of the “clearest spokesmen” for the bodily resurrection view.

C. Jewish View on Resurrection

1. Ancient Judaism Was Concerned about the “Afterlife”

A) Bauckham: Bauckham points out that Isa 26:19 and 1 Enoch 22 “very probably” point to an idea of resurrection that “almost certainly” predates the second century BCE. However, we cannot be sure when Jewish views on the afterlife first began. Bauckham’s focus, however, is on whether it is in continuity with Jewish Scripture.

B) Crusemann: Says resurrection was not a later development in Judaism. “Already in the later years of the kings the might of the Israelite God over death is epigraphically indicated.”

C) Dunn: Dunn refers to the practice of secondary burial (i.e., ossuaries), which is based upon the Jewish belief of physical resurrection. It was also a distinctively Jewish practice.

D) Wright: Wright argues contrary to the idea that the Old Testament has little to say on the subject, but that when the resurrection appeared, it did so “as a re-expression of the ancient Israelite worldview under new and different circumstances.”

2. Jewish Notions of a Bodily Resurrection

A) General Comments

(1) Allison: Allison notes many Jewish texts that affirm bodily resurrection. These include Gen 5:24; 2 Kgs 2:11; Isa 26:19; Ezek 37:5–6, 13; Dan 12:2; Sib. Or. 4:181–182; Matt 27:53; 4 Ezra 7:32; 2 Bar. 50:2.

(2) Callahan: “The earliest mention of what seems to be widespread resurrection of the body is found in Daniel 12:2.” In this text, both bodily resurrection and God’s justice are implied. Callahan considers Daniel 12 to be the earliest reference with inferences of physical resurrection and judgment.

(3) Carrier: Carrier contends that the rabbis did not think the resurrected body would be different but that the natural laws and our environment would change (e.g., death is abolished). He also reminds the reader that in the Old Testament, the idea that one can survive in a disembodied state is present in 1 Samuel 28 regarding the incident with the witch of Endor. Yet, the possibility of (experiencing) disembodied life is different from a resurrected life (cf. Phil 1:21–23).

(4) Crossan and Reed: These two point out that the Jewish view of bodily resurrection would have seemed entirely foreign to pagan thought. God’s justice is an important component for not just bodily resurrection, but also cosmic transformation. Resurrection includes the ideas that (1) creation is ultimately good, but the world is no longer perfect. (2) There will be an ultimate judgment of good and bad (vindication and condemnation).(3) Transformation is given to God’s faithful. On the view of resurrection in 2 Macc.: “Biologically crude but theologically clear.”

(5) Dunn: In Jerusalem and throughout Israel, Dunn states that a claim of a raised body would have been considered to be something that happened to a previously dead body. This helps explain later polemics that the disciples stole the body.

(6) Meier: Says there are two passages (J.W. 2.8.14; Ant. 18.1.3) in which Josephus clearly states that the Pharisees believe in the immortality of the soul. Josephus also notes that the Pharisees hold to the resurrection. These views are in contrast to the Sadducees. Meier examines this latter text in considerable detail regarding the historical reliability of this pericope (criteria: discontinuity and coherence) as well as Jesus’s comments on the general resurrection. Meier contends that this event is historical and that the Sadducees questioned resurrection.

(7) Wright: A summary of Wright’s view is that the resurrection is present in the Old Testament in a form that was relevant to them. Though Ezekiel 37 has an “allegorical character,” it was still understood as a prediction for a future bodily resurrection.

B) Versus Zoroastrianism or Canaanite Influence on the Resurrection Idea

(1) Wright: Wright argues that this view has been “regularly refuted” and provides about four arguments against it. He also provides some arguments against this view while noting some considerations with respect to Hosea.

(2) Yamauchi: See Yamauchi’s comments above (section 4.A). He does not find that Zoroastrianism influenced Jewish notions of resurrection.

D. Gentile View on Resurrection

1. Bodily Resurrection

A) General Comments

(1) Crossan and Reed: These two identify how strange the concept of a bodily resurrection would have seemed to the pagan world.

(2) Porter: See Porter’s comments above where he argues that the Greeks did hold to bodily resurrection (section 4.A). He notes that early Greeks believed in bodily transformation. (Is this resurrection of the body?)

(3) Wright: Wright provides a thorough overview of pagan views of the afterlife.

B) Homer

(1) Wright: Wright views Homer as somewhat analogous to the Old Testament for the gentiles. Homer could be considered the pagan’s Old Testament. Homer’s view on bodily resurrection is that it doesn’t happen.

C) Plato

(1) Crossan and Reed: They compare and discuss some aspects of Platonic thought as it relates to bodily resurrection.

(2) Wright: If Wright considers Homer as the pagan Old Testament, then Plato is its New Testament. Wright offers several comments on Plato’s thought (e.g., immortality of the soul).

5. FAILED JEWISH MESSIANIC FIGURES

A. Allison: Allison highlights the fact that after other Jewish messianic figures (including Zevi) failed, their movements suffered greatly.

B. Elliott: Elliott says that without the belief of Jesus’s resurrection, Christianity would “have generally died out just as the other Messianic groups had disappeared.”

C. Grant: Grant argues that without the appearances of Jesus, the disciples would have done “just as other Messianic sects [and] faded away when their leaders had vanished.”

D. Tabor: Tabor points out that we would expect “chaos, confusion, and disintegration” of a group when their leader has been publicly killed. Indeed, he points out that Josephus discusses about a dozen failed messianic movements that ultimately came to nothing. Tabor then asks, If this happened with the disciples, then “how was it that the movement survived at all?” He then notes that the Jesus movement must have been different. He finds three reasons for the survival of the Jesus movement: (1) James became the anchor of the movement. (2) The cause of Jesus (and John the Baptist) remained. (3) Jesus (and John) preached that the end of the ages was near.

E. Wright: Wright emphasizes the point that in the centuries just before and after Jesus, there were other messianic movements (like Judas the Galilean, Simon bar-Giora, and Simeon ben-Kosiba). However, after their deaths, none of their followers claimed their leader was raised from the dead.

6. BODILY LANGUAGE OF RESURRECTION

A. Bird: Bird asks why would the early Christians refer to a vision as a resurrection? He presents several possibilities for Jesus’s appearances: ghost; apparition; angel; his spirit had been exalted to heaven, translated to the bosom of Abraham, or morphed into an astral being; transported to God’s throne on a fiery chariot. Bird says the word resurrection “would have generated a whole host of confusing corollaries.” The reason it would have created challenges was precisely because the “Jewish and Christian language of resurrection does not fit well as a visionary experience.” He then references Isa 26:16; Dan 12:2; Sib. Or. 4:181–82; 2 Bar. 50:2; Ag. Ap. 2.218; LAB 3:10; m. Sotah 9.15; T. Jud. 25:1; Smyrn. 3.1; Justin, Dial. 80.5. The language of resurrection or being raised from the dead “means literally the standing up of dead bodies and not the appearance of someone who died.” Bird adds that “the vocabulary of ‘resurrection’ is clearly a mismatch for the phenomenon of visionary experiences or hallucinations.” The same is true for grief visions.

B. Cook: John Granger Cook’s recent large monograph argues that the idea of resurrection meant bodily until around the second century AD.

C. Crossley: Crossley appears to agree with Bird but notes that things like this tell us simply that “Paul believed that there was a bodily resurrection.”

D. Dunn: “The very early formulation, ‘he appeared (ōpthē),’ indicates by its passive form the assumption/impression that there was something to be seen. [The apostles] did not, as it were, create what they saw by their act of seeing.”

E. Gundry: Says the meaning of anastasis and egeirō in the context of buried and raised points to “the raising of a formerly supine corpse to the standing posture of a live body.” Gundry argues that ōphthē refers more to earthly, physical sight than heavenly sight. Still, the word can’t be made to prove either physical or nonphysical sight.

F. Ware: James Ware provides some helpful comments regarding the resurrection language in 1 Corinthians 15.

G. Wright: Says the Greek word for resurrection most often, for both Jews and gentiles, pointed to a possible future, concrete event whereby all of the dead would come back to full, bodily life. Wright emphasizes that it “did not denote the passage of the soul into the life beyond or below, or even the migration of the soul into a different body.” He makes these arguments elsewhere, noting also that there was language for ghosts and visions (and that language was not that of resurrection). “The word heoraka, ‘I have seen,’ is a normal word for ordinary sight. It does not imply that this was a subjective ‘vision’ or a private revelation.” Wright doesn’t think “much can be made either way,” since ōphthē “could be used for either a private vision or a public, and very ordinary and matter of fact, ‘appearance’ of somebody.”

7. VIEW PAUL WAS DISPUTING IN 1 CORINTHIANS 15

A. Barth: Gerhard Barth presents four major positions on the view against which Paul was arguing in 1 Cor 15:1: (1) Skeptics who held to annihilation (held by Bengel). (2) Those who expected Christ to return so quickly that death is ignored (held by Schweitzer, Schlatter). (3) Those who believed in the immortality of the soul, not the resurrection of the body (held by Lietzmann, Bousset, K. Barth). (4) Those who believed that they were already enjoying the perfected life of heaven (held by Bultmann, Kasemann, Bornkamm, Kummel, Schniewind, Schmithals). The last position is the most popular among recent exegetes but seems to be difficult in light of 15:18 and 30–32, since it seems to address those who have no future hope. Gerhard Barth proposes a modification of the last view. Part 7 of his work summarizes the theme that the church in Corinth had an overly realized eschatology, which is why Paul was required to offer a response. Although he doesn’t take the more traditional view 3 above, Gerhard Barth’s position seems to hold at least one similar point. By correcting the Corinthians’ overly zealous realized eschatology, Paul is still asserting his position of Jewish resurrection. Perhaps, as per the above conclusion, it is simply the occasion for him to present his own view? If so, then couldn’t Barth almost be modifying view 3 instead of supporting view 4?

B. Borg and Crossan: Borg and Crossan contend that the Corinthians thought that resurrection meant the same thing as immortality of the soul, which is why Paul had to correct them.

C. Carrier: Carrier contends that the Corinthians were likely questioning how the resurrection would or could happen.

D. Conzelmann: Conzelmann opposes the traditional view that Paul was confronting the immortality of the soul with resurrection of the body because Paul’s emphasis is not on the bodily nature of resurrection.

E. Crossan and Reed: Crossan and Reed understand the Corinthians’ confusion regarding the resurrection as stemming from Plato’s influence. As Platonists, they would have interpreted resurrection in those terms and thus as the soul’s immortality, or they would have dismissed it entirely.

F. Ehrman: Ehrman believes that the Corinthians appeared to hold to the idea of a disembodied existence, whereas Paul did not.

G. Gundry: Gundry observes the “sudden rise in the frequency of soma” in 1 and 2 Corinthians and Romans, and believes it is because the Corinthians instigated this rise by minimizing or ignoring the body. Gundry thinks the Corinthians were denying “a future resurrection of believers.”

H. Harris: Harris mentions the debate and says Paul had two responses: the resurrection of believers is future, and it involves a body.

I. Holleman: Holleman considers a variety of proposals: (1) The Corinthians didn’t believe in life after death. (2) The resurrection had already happened. (3) The Corinthians could not accept a bodily resurrection. (4) Paul misunderstood their view. Ultimately, the Corinthians accepted dualism and believed in immortality of the soul, so bodily resurrection was “impossible and unnecessary.”

J. Horsley: Finds similarities between Philo and some of the ideas Paul seems to be addressing in Corinth. Horsley concludes that the Corinthians were devoted to Sophia rather than Jesus as the Christ. “Christ . . . is regarded as a teacher of divine Sophia. . . . They have reached the highest spiritual status . . . perfect and spiritual. . . . Insofar as they possessed the divine Sophia they possessed all things, and believed that all things were possible for them.” As a result, they rejected resurrection of the body because the body was a “burden” to the soul and was “the antithesis to their liberation from bodily and earthly realities, a threat to their heavenly immortality, and the loss of their intimate relation with Sophia and the perfection thus attained.”

K. Keck: Keck says the text “suggests that some had restricted the resurrection to Jesus alone . . . but not for mortals like themselves.”

L. Lampe: Lampe contends that Paul was faced with anthropological issues that were common in the ancient world. While Jewish people typically held to a “holistic view,” the Greco-Roman view of man had various distinctions. The Corinthians believed that in their baptism, their souls became immortalized. Paul’s response was to stress the entirety of each individual, including the body. Lampe also makes some comments as to how this addresses the whole issue related to spiritual gifts as well as the Holy Spirit.

M. Lüdemann: The problem in Corinth was “most likely” because of bodily resurrection. He considers the possibility of Gnosticism and suggests Paul seems to be a bit incorrect about the Corinthians’ position.

N. O’Collins: He notes a few options: The Corinthians (1) maintained the Greek view of immortality of the soul, (2) denied the afterlife, (3) believed they had already achieved resurrection through baptism, or (4) held that resurrection applied only to those who were alive. O’Collins does not think we can be overly confident about any of them.

O. Roetzel: Roetzel thinks Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians was directed either at those who said they were already raised from the dead in this life and no longer in need of future resurrection, or those who took the Greek view and were repulsed by the concept of the resurrection of the body.

P. Sanders: Paul’s converts were worried not about Jesus’s resurrection but about their own resurrection. They “probably” held to the common view that the material world (e.g., body) is evil but souls were immortal.

Q. Segal: Segal says that Paul opposed the immortality of the soul held by the Greeks. Paul’s concept of a spiritual body is a “complete contradiction in terms for anyone in a Platonic system.”

R. Sider: Sider apparently thinks that the Greeks’ form-versus-matter distinction “was foreign to Paul’s thinking.”

S. Stanley: Says the problem was those who thought they already had experienced the resurrection.

T. Stuhlmacher: He contends that some in Corinth had trouble with the resurrection of the body because they took the common view of Greek anthropology. For Paul, this was virtually a denial of the resurrection.

U. Wedderburn: Wedderburn argues that it is “universally agreed” that Paul is responding to some of the Corinthians’ concern that there is no resurrection of the dead. Some suggestions as to the issue: (1) Paul’s hearers rejected the resurrection of the body but accepted the immortality of the soul. He later calls this option “the common view.” (2) Another “very popular” view is that they thought the resurrection had already taken place. (3) A slightly different version of this is that the resurrection took place, but the dead don’t share in this. (4) They thought those who died have missed out on salvation. Wedderburn doesn’t think that any of these alone are fully adequate. He notes some other possibilities. He thinks, however, that it is very difficult to know the original issue and concludes that Paul both misunderstood and misrepresented the Corinthian position.

V. Wright: Wright argues more broadly that the Corinthians denied a bodily resurrection because the wider pagan culture knew that the dead, and their bodies, stayed dead.

8. NEW TESTAMENT DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN RESURRECTION APPEARANCES AND VISIONS

A. Various Scholars: Various scholars have noted the difference between resurrection appearances and visions articulated in the New Testament.

B. Fuller: Luke didn’t consider Paul to be either an apostle or one who had had a true resurrection appearance like the earlier ones, but rather, a conversion vision!

9. PARTIAL BODY RESURRECTION VIEWS

A. Avis: Similar to Lorenzen, Avis draws up the parameters for the nature of the appearances. It was not merely a resuscitation, nor was it merely a revival of Jesus’s spirit, for this would be no different than what would be perceived to happen to others in the ancient world. The appearances need to be the flip side of the cross.

B. Fuller: In responding to a scholar who says that Paul didn’t think that Jesus was raised bodily, Fuller intriguingly states the “Achilles heel” of the issue is Phil 3:21, which references a glorious body.

C. Lorenzen: “Paul tries to avoid two extremes.” Lorenzen claims the first is that the resurrection body was “naked” and, second, that the resurrection body has “a natural continuity inherent to one’s earthly body.”

D. O’Collins: States the key contrast is continuity and transformation; “it is this mortal body which must experience the transforming change of resurrection.” He adds that it is a powerful and radical transformation. “Paul refers to the whole man, the bodily person in his entirety,” so that we should say, “‘I am a body,’ rather than, ‘I have a body.’”

E. Robinson: Paul “emphasizes change within the continuity of corporeality” according to 1 Cor 15:40, 43, 48, 54. James Robinson notes the apparent progression from “the visualization of the resurrected Christ as a luminous heavenly body to envisioning him as a gloriously disembodied spirit—against which the resurrection of the same fleshly body emerged as an orthodox apologetic.”

F. Sanders: Says although everyone will have a body, each will be “transformed: not a physical but a spiritual body.” Paul and Luke “opposed the idea that Jesus was a resuscitated corpse” and “denied that the risen Lord was simply resuscitated.” Still, Paul could have said Jesus was raised as a spirit, but he specifically said “spiritual body.”

G. Segal: Segal stresses the notion of sōma pneumatikon for Paul and that Paul thought the body would not be fleshly but could exist bodily. Segal’s view is complex and not entirely clear. He indicates that Paul believed that something would have happened to the body but Segal questions the reliability of the empty tomb. Segal never seems to provide an ultimate conclusion for his views on the burial, empty tomb, or whether the resurrection occurred. The Gospels, however, are emphatically bodily. Segal sees Paul as arguing toward a view of resurrection bodies like those of angels.

10. LUMINOUS APPEARaNCES

A. General Comments

1. Funk: Funk makes this move by, in part, citing James Robinson as an authority here and dating the gnostic sources that teach the luminous view to closer to the end of the first century. But there are even gnostic strands in Paul and Acts for Funk. Funk holds that “the earliest reports of Jesus’ appearances were of luminous apparitions—a blinding light surrounding an indistinct figure” that could also contain auditory components. The earlier appearance accounts were of luminous visions that developed over time into bodily descriptions. The appearances could have continued for an extended period of time.

2. Robinson: There is, for James Robinson, an apparent progression from witnessing Jesus’s luminous body to a bodiless spirit, which is against the orthodox bodily view.

B. On a Generally Gnostic Understanding of the Resurrection

1. Barker: Says gnostic interpretations of Jesus go back to his original teachings. Margaret Barker hypothesizes and defends the view that Jesus’s baptism was the point where he had a mystical experience and became the Son of God and Messiah, which “is described as his resurrection.” She says this is most supported in “early” gnostic texts.

2. Hearon: In a review of Gregory Riley, Hearon comments that his view of the physical resurrection of Jesus is that it “was a late development.” “These conclusions suggest an earlier date for the Gospel of Thomas than is generally assigned.” Hearon thinks Riley’s work is “well-written and well-argued . . . a significant contribution to the study of the Thomas traditions.”

3. Lüdemann: From a recent study of Nag Hammadi gnostic texts like Rheginos, Lüdemann concludes that resurrection was not understood “physically but symbolically.”

4. Pagles: Argues that early Christianity was varied and that all the Gospels circulated together since the canon wasn’t decided until the end of the second century. So various views of Jesus’s death and resurrection are possible. For orthodoxy, the resurrection appearances were used to legitimize their leaders to the exclusion of others. Orthodoxy triumphed over gnostic Christianity. Thus Jesus’s teachings could be interpreted either way. Gnosticism is a possible alternative to Christianity.

5. Riley: Says early Christianity possessed “a variety of conceptions of the afterlife” and most did not involve resurrection of the flesh. The majority of interpretations of Jesus’s resurrection appearances were a gnostic, Platonic, or spiritual approach gradually moving toward a bodily resurrection view “in defense of the real humanity of Jesus.” John’s “Doubting Thomas pericope” shows that the author was aware of the Gos. Thom., which had to be at some phase of completion at that point, which is evidence for the prior existence of a Thomas community. Further, all the “Thomas documents” hold to the “denigration of the body and their denial of physical resurrection.”

6. Robinson: James Robinson presented a notable article that was then ultimately responded to by Craig and others (see below for responses).

7. Wedderburn: He holds that gnostics, who were condemned as un-orthodox, were closer to Paul’s view on the resurrection body than later Christians who took a strong bodily view.

C. Critiques

1. Alsup: Objects on the grounds that this reasoning is mostly motivated by Paul’s Damascus experience. It “cannot be argued satisfactorily that this [radiance] tradition had anything to do with gospel traditions,” outside of some “remote” connection to the transfiguration story, and did not “influence the Gospel appearance accounts.

2. Craig: Craig gives a helpful summary of various issues at the end of his response article. He describes James Robinson’s argument, including three trajectories and subpoints. Craig also responds to the historicity of the Acts accounts of Paul’s resurrection appearance. He says Robinson is wrong that luminous bodies can’t be physical, because Paul’s own example in 1 Corinthians 15 is of luminous heavenly bodies like the sun, moon, and stars that are obviously also physical, as is the brightness of Moses’s face in 2 Cor 3:7, 12. Robinson’s “decisive counter-example” is of Jesus’s transfiguration, where there was luminosity without immateriality. Craig notes that John’s vision of Jesus in Revelation 1 is not a resurrection appearance. So too 2 Pet 1:16–17 is not a description of Peter’s resurrection appearance, but thinking so is a “double standard to result from Robinson’s apologetic zeal.” Robinson’s treatment of gnostic resurrection sources demonstrates what these later sources believed. In fact, the gnostic texts often refer to a “luminous human bodily form.” From the context, Craig apparently means that there is almost always a luminous form (even if it is not solid) like in gnostic texts such as Ap. John 1:30–2:9; Pistis Sophia 1:4; Wisdom of Jesus Christ 90:14–92:2 (citing Robinson’s Nag Hammadi translation). He says the only possible exception “which suggest a bodiless radiance” is the Letter of Peter to Philip 134:10–13 from Nag Hammadi, “and even that text is not unequivocal.” In the Nag Hammadi Acts Pet. 12 Apos. 2:10–24; 9:13–23; and the Ap. Jas. 2:7–39, there is no luminosity at all. Some Gnostic texts present Jesus’s fleshly resurrection body, like the Treat. Res. 47:2–12 and Gos. Phil. 57:18–19. Craig’s conclusion: Robinson’s thesis “collapses” for lack of evidence.

3. Habermas: Holds there are several strategies in the “gnostic resurrection thesis” that need to be exposed and critiqued: (1) As O’Collins says, these theses frequently mix very late texts with earlier New Testament references as if they are all on equal grounds. For example, Funk mixes New Testament references to Jesus’s appearances with very late texts like the Gos. Pet. and the Gos. Heb. Riley uses “Thomas” sources like the Gos. Thom., Book of Thomas (from Nag Hammadi), and Acts of Thomas. (2) The deck is often stacked against the “bodily” view by importing references to the resurrection of the “flesh” and repeated references to “mere resuscitation” and the like. Riley frames his treatment at the outset by contrasting “spiritual resurrection” with the “mundane restoration of corpses.” Funk contrasts Paul’s “ethereal” view with “the resuscitation of a corpse.” (3) When attempting to support positions like luminous appearances, there is a frequent picking and choosing from texts in the Gospels and Acts that are useful for the position. This includes emphasizing nonresurrection texts, like Stephen’s martyrdom vision in Acts and John’s Patmos vision in Revelation 1. (4) Although her point is difficult, Bynum seems to dispute the idea that the resurrection of the flesh view arose about AD 200 to counter gnostic teachings.

4. McDonald: Against James Robinson’s thesis, McDonald contends that (1) finding evidence for Gnosticism in the first century is difficult. (2) McDonald agrees with O’Collins’s objection regarding “scholarly retrojection.” (3) The luminosity approach may simply be a “convention” to indicate that Jesus is transcendent or divine. (4) Revelation 1:13–16 is not properly a resurrection appearance in the same way as the others. (5) The texts don’t emphasize the apocalyptic element, although it is there, but instead focus on Jesus.

5. Meier: After speaking about the importance of 1 Cor 15:11 and the early Christian leaders having a common, core message, Meier argues that there is nothing like this for those arguing a gnostic thesis.

6. O’Collins: Says James Robinson’s gnostic trajectory “looks more like scholarly retrojection, or reading later documents too far back into earlier history.” The evidence is “almost” exclusively from later sources, and the sources are themselves unreliable. All of Robinson’s data come from gnostic sources (and so his argument begs the question) when the opposite could actually be the case; the gnostic sources could have reacted to the Gospels. Even if the initial appearances were luminous, this doesn’t mean they couldn’t be bodily. O’Collins notes that the New Testament differentiates between resurrection appearances and visions. A critique of Koester and Robinson on luminous appearances is also presented. O’Collins denies that the three Acts accounts of Paul’s conversion are “a reliable paradigm” for other appearance experiences.

11. COMPARING RESURRECTION APPEARANCES AND NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES

A. General Comments

1. Carnley: Carnley suggests that O’Collins take more seriously Hick’s suggestion about near-death experiences (NDEs). Carnley apparently thinks that this possibility is some extension of Strauss’s subjective vision theory.

2. O’Collins: Says Hick and later Carnley charge that perhaps resurrection appearances are similar to NDEs and grief visions. There are many differences between resurrection appearances and NDEs according to O’Collins: (1) resurrection witnesses were not in a near-death situation; (2) NDEs don’t happen to groups; (3) the three Acts accounts aren’t good examples, and light plays virtually no role in other resurrection appearances; (4) New Testament visions (Stephen, John in Revelation 1, etc.) aren’t usually normally thought of as resurrection appearances (at least not major ones). His conclusion: Hick’s proposal is “even less plausible” than O’Collins thought before. (Note: Why not mention the more obvious and major difference that Jesus was biologically dead, while NDErs are not?) Concerning grief visions and resurrection appearances, O’Collins responds that they are not close for several reasons: (1) Grief visions happen to individuals, not groups; (2) grief visions don’t change lives; (3) almost half of grief visions continue for many years, but resurrection appearances stop. His conclusion: Hick’s proposal is “not” “particularly appropriate or illuminating.” O’Collins says the possibility of other analogies to resurrection appearances could also be explored: (1) biblical incidents, (2) post–New Testament Christian experiences, (3) “wider religious experience.” O’Collins also provides similar criticisms of Hick’s two proposals elsewhere.

B. Ancient Near-Death Experiences

1. Plato

A) Wright: Wright notes a type of NDE in Plato’s Myth of Er.

2. Plutarch

A) Wright: Wright points out a possible type of NDE in Plutarch’s De sera numinis vindicta 563e–568a. Aridaeus also recounts an experience that could be construed as an NDE.

12. DUALISM OR PHYSICALISM AND RESURRECTION

A. Brown: Warren Brown points out that that “there is nothing in these [scriptural] teachings that would necessitate belief in an ontologically distinct soul.”

B. Davis: Davis defends dualism in chapter 4 in his book, and in chapter 5 he defends physicalism. Thus, he finds both consistent with the idea of resurrection, but in a nuanced way.

C. Green: Joel Green does not think the New Testament is “as dualistic as the traditions of Christian theology and biblical interpretation have taught us to think, though enough conceptual glossolalia exists among New Testament witnesses for us to see how a dualist reading of human nature has developed among Christians.” Green finds that “the most pressing evidence in Paul for a body-soul dualism is found in 2 Cor 5:1–10, especially vv. 2–3.”

D. Linke: “In sum, we could in principle experience joy without remembering our former existence, and we could undergo pain even when we are not able to preserve characteristics of our former personality. We may enjoy a consciousness oriented around an ‘I’ that is freed from concrete characteristics.”

E. Murphy: “Philosophers see dualism as no longer tenable; the neurosciences have completed the Darwinian revolution, bringing the entire human being under the purview of the natural sciences.” Referring to Malcolm Jeeves’s chapter in the same work as her own essay, Murphy points out that Jeeves highlights the fact that science cannot prove dualism false, nor can it prove physicalism true (although Jeeves argues for physicalism). Murphy also states that “all recent advances in neurobiological understanding of cognition, emotion, and action, as well as progress in certain forms of cognitive science, are the product of a physicalist understanding of human nature.” Murphy adds, “If there is life after death, it depends on bodily resurrection alone, and resurrection understood in (what I take to be) its original sense as resurrection of the whole person from death, not as the restoration of bodily existence to a surviving immortal soul, as it has been for so many years in both Christian and Jewish thought.” “Recognition of our essential physicality emphasizes our unity with the rest of nature, and suggests that we are not saved out of this cosmos, but as part of it. That is, it leads us to expect that the entire cosmos will be transformed or re-created in the same way we humans are.”

Notes

Dale C. Allison, Resurrecting Jesus: The Earliest Christian Tradition and Its Interpreters (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 317.

William P. Alston, “Biblical Criticism and the Resurrection,” in The Resurrection: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Resurrection of Jesus, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 148–83.

Alston, 179.

Paul Barnett, Peter Jensen, and David Peterson, Resurrection: Truth and Reality (Sydney: Aquila, 1994), 22.

Barnett, Jensen, and Peterson, 28.

Barnett, Jensen, and Peterson, 29.

Barnett, Jensen, and Peterson, 32.

Barnett, Jensen, and Peterson, 33.

Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), xi.

Donald G. Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, vol. 2, Life, Ministry, and Hope (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), 185.

Bloesch, 187.

Raymond Edward Brown, A Risen Christ in Eastertime: Essays on the Gospel Narratives of the Resurrection (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1991), 53.

Raymond E. Brown, “The Resurrection of Jesus,” in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland Edmund Murphy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 1374–75.

Wayne Royce Clark, “Jesus, Lazarus, and Others: Resuscitation or Resurrection?,” Religion in Life 49, no. 2 (1980): 233.

Sarah Coakley, “Biblical Criticism and the Resurrection: Response to Alston,” in Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, Resurrection, 184, 187.

William Lane Craig, “The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus,” in Studies of History and Tradition in the Four Gospels, in vol. 1 of Gospel Perspectives, ed. R. T. France and David Wenham (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981), 47–74; William Lane Craig, “On Doubts about the Resurrection,” Modern Theology 6, no. 1 (1989): 53–75.

Craig, “On Doubts about the Resurrection,” 64–65 for several reasons versus this thesis.

Craig, “Bodily Resurrection of Jesus,” 50–70; Craig, “On Doubts about the Resurrection,”64– 67.

C. E. B. Cranfield, “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Expository Times 101, no. 6 (1990): 170.

Stephen T. Davis, “‘Seeing’ the Risen Jesus,” in Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, Resurrection, 126–47.

Davis, “‘Seeing’ the Risen Jesus,” 130; Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 23.

Davis, “‘Seeing’ the Risen Jesus,” 141.

Davis, 128, 142, 148; Davis, Risen Indeed, 24.

Davis, “‘Seeing’ the Risen Jesus,” 130–40.

Davis, 134.

Davis, 139; Davis, Risen Indeed, 51–57.

Davis, “‘Seeing’ the Risen Jesus,” 139.

Davis, 142–43.

Davis, 144–46.

Stephen T. Davis, review of Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, by Gary R. Habermas and Antony Flew, Faith and Philosophy 6, no. 2 (1989): 230.

Stephen T. Davis, “Was Jesus Raised Bodily?,” Christian Scholar’s Review 14, no. 2 (1985): 141; Davis, Risen Indeed, 44–45.

Davis, “Was Jesus Raised Bodily?,” 142.

Davis, 144–45.

Davis, 145–50.

Davis, Risen Indeed, 59–61, 82–83.

Davis, “Was Jesus Raised Bodily?,” 57–59.

Davis, 150–51.

Davis, 151–52.

Donald G. Dawe, Jesus: The Death and Resurrection of God (Atlanta: Knox, 1985), 112.

Dawe, 113.

Hans-Joachim Eckstein, “Bodily Resurrection in Luke,” in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, ed. Ted Peters, Robert J. Russell, and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 123.

Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 133, 168–69, 176–78, 181. Cf. 206–10.

Craig A. Evans, “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidence Right,” in How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature. A Response to Bart D. Ehrman, ed. Michael F. Bird (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 91–93.

Gabriel J. Fackre, “I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body,” Interpretation 46, no. 1 (1992): 44.

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ According to the New Testament,” The Month 20, no. 11 (1987): 409.

Fitzmyer, 408–9.

Fitzmyer, 409.

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Ascension of Christ and Pentecost,” Theological Studies 45, no. 3 (1984): 423.

Norman L. Geisler, “The Significance of Christ’s Physical Resurrection,” Bibliotheca Sacra 146 (1989): 174–75.

Norman L. Geisler, The Battle for the Resurrection (Nashville: Nelson, 1989).

Robert Gundry, Sōma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 29 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 148.

Gundry, 149, 152, 154.

Gundry, 164, 175–77.

Gundry, 182.

Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 5–6.

Robert Gundry, “Trimming the Debate,” in Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann, ed. Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 116.

Gundry, 117.

Gundry, 118.

Gundry, 122.

Donald A. Hagner, “Gospel, Kingdom, and Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels,” in Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament, ed. Richard N. Longenecker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 119.

Murray J. Harris, Raised Immortal: Resurrection and Immortality in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 60.

Barnett, Jensen, and Peterson, Resurrection: Truth and Reality, 37.

Norman Kretzmann, “Resurrection Resurrected: Comments on the Paper of Adela Yarbro Collins,” in Hermes and Athena: Biblical Exegesis and Philosophical Theology, ed. Eleonore Stump and Thomas P. Flint, University of Notre Dame Studies in the Philosophy of Religion 7 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 149.

George Eldon Ladd, I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 106.

Ladd, 146–47.

Andrew T. Lincoln, “‘I Am the Resurrection and the Life’: The Resurrection Message of the Fourth Gospel,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 126.

Gerd Lüdemann, “Closing Responses,” in Copan and Tacelli, Jesus’ Resurrection, 151.

Lüdemann, 152.

Steven D. Mathewson, Risen: Fifty Reasons Why the Resurrection Changed Everything (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 35–36.

Stephen Neill and N. T. Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861–1986, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 309.

Thomas C. Oden, The Word of Life, vol. 2 of Systematic Theology (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1989), 478–79. See also 464.

Roger E. Olson, “Resurrection, Cosmic Liberation, and Christian Earth Keeping,” Ex Auditu 9 (1993): 123.

Olson, 129.

Grant R. Osborne, The Resurrection Narratives: A Redactional Study (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 278–79.

Osborne, 279.

Osborne, 292.

Margaret Pamment, “Raised a Spiritual Body: Bodily Resurrection According to Paul,” New Blackfriars 66 (1985): 372.

Pamment, 373.

Pamment, 380–81.

Pamment, 382.

Pamment, 383–85.

Pamment, 386.

Pheme Perkins, Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1984), 85.

Barnett, Jensen, and Peterson, Resurrection: Truth and Reality, 17.

Andrew Purves, The Resurrection of Ministry: Serving in the Hope of the Risen Lord (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2010), 40. See also 76, 86, 93.

Ronald J. Sider, “The Pauline Conception of the Resurrection Body in I Corinthians XV.35–54,” New Testament Studies 21, no. 3 (1975): 434.

Sider, 435.

Sider, 435. Cf. 437–38.

Sider, 436.

Sider, 437–38.

David M. Stanley, “‘To Know Him and the Power of His Resurrection’ (Phil. 3:19): The New Testament Witness to the Central Mystery of Faith,” in How Could We Sorrow? Essays on the Resurrection, ed. Michael W. Higgins (Waterloo: University of St. Jerome’s College Press, 1989), 24.

Hugo Staudinger, “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ as Saving Event and as ‘Object’ of Historical Research,” Scottish Journal of Theology 36, no. 3 (1983): 322.

Charles H. Talbert, “The Place of the Resurrection in the Theology of Luke,” Interpretation 46, no. 1 (January 1992): 24, with further details on 25, like, “Angels do not eat.”

Margaret E. Thrall, “Resurrection Traditions and Christian Apologetic,” The Thomist 43, no. 2 (1979): 203.

Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, 87.

Torrance, 164. See also xi, 25–26, 171.

Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1982), 106.

Ben Witherington III, The Paul Quest: The Renewed Search for the Jew of Tarsus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 18. Cf. 138.

Witherington, 51.

Witherington, 148.

Witherington, 150.

Witherington, 154.

Witherington, 212. Cf. 210–13.

Ben Witherington III, “Resurrection Redux,” in Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan, ed. Paul Copan (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 133.

Witherington, 134.

Witherington, 135.

Witherington, 136.

N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), xvii.

N. T. Wright, “Christian Origins and the Resurrection of Jesus: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Problem,” Sewanee Theological Review 41, no. 2 (1998): 111.

Wright, “Christian Origins,” 117; N. T. Wright, “The Resurrection of Resurrection,” Bible Review 16, no. 4 (2000): 10.

N. T. Wright, Who Was Jesus? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 61. See also 63.

Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 120.

Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus, 115; N. T. Wright, “Early Traditions and the Origin of Christianity,” Sewanee Theological Review 41, no. 2 (1998): 134.

Wright, “Early Traditions,” 125, 134.

Wright, “Early Traditions,” 137; N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1999), 146.

Wright, “Early Traditions,” 140.

Wright, “Resurrection of Resurrection,” 63.

Wright, Challenge of Jesus, 146–47.

Wright, “Early Traditions,” 125; Wright, Challenge of Jesus, 140.

Wright, “Early Traditions,” 126–27.

Wright, 129.

Wright, Challenge of Jesus, 143–44.

Wright, “Early Traditions,” 130.

Wright, 131.

Wright, “Early Traditions,” 131, see also 135; Wright, Challenge of Jesus, 146.

N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 50.

Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife in the Ancient Near East,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 40–42, 47–49.

Donald Harman Akenson, Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 176–83.

Akenson, 177.

Akenson, 178.

Akenson, 176.

Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of His Life and Teaching (London: Continuum, 2010), 496–97.

Casey, 490–97, 508.

Casey, 456, 473, 496–97. On why the empty tomb was invented, see 476, 487.

Casey, 488–90.

Casey, 493. See also 490.

Adela Yarbro Collins, ed., “The Empty Tomb and Resurrection According to Mark,” in The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 124.

Collins, 126.

Collins, 147–48.

Hans Conzelmann, First Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 261.

Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 268. Cf. 259, 273.

Neil Gillman, The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2000), 96.

Yamauchi, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife,” 40–42, 47–49.

Hans Küng, Eternal Life? Life after Death as a Medical, Philosophical and Theological Problem, trans. Edward Quinn (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 111.

Robert Morgan, “Flesh Is Precious: The Significance of Luke 24.36–43,” in Resurrection: Essays in Honour of Leslie Houlden, ed. Stephen Barton and Graham Stanton (London: SPCK, 1994), 17–19.

Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary behind the Church’s Conservative Icon (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 150. See also 151.

John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom. A New Vision of Paul’s Words and World (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 344.

Peter Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 104–6.

Richard C. Carrier, “The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty Tomb,” in The Empty Tomb: Jesus beyond the Grave, ed. Robert M. Price and Jeffery Jay Lowder (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005), 147. See also 148.

Carrier, 116–18.

Carrier, 204nn65–66.

Carrier, 119.

Carrier, 120. See also 151.

Carrier, 120.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 382–83. See also 317–18.

Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 317.

Allison, 325n500.

Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York: HarperOne, 2012), 257–58.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 383. See also 317–18.

William Lane Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?,” in Jesus Under Fire, ed. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 157.

Frank Crusemann, “Scripture and Resurrection,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrectio, 101.

James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 136.

Dunn, 137.

James D. G. Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, vol. 2 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 374.

David Wenham, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 371.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 383. See also 317–18.

Wright, 383.

Wenham, Paul, 369. Regarding the views of the Pharisees, Wenham is citing the work of Lapide, Resurrection of Jesus, 130.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 321.

Wenham, Paul, 369.

Borg and Crossan, The First Paul, 150.

Borg and Crossan, 151.

Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 547–48.

Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 343.

James Ware, “The Resurrection of Jesus in the Pre-Pauline Formula of 1 Cor 15.3–5,” New Testament Studies 60, no. 4 (2014): 486.

Ware, 486.

Ware, 486–87.

Ware, 487. See also 488.

Ware, 488.

Ware, 488–89.

Ware, 489.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 340–56.

Wright, 383.

Wright, 383.

Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 342. See also 343.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, xix.

Wright, 31, 71, 82–84, 201–6, 215, 273, 314, 350–74, 414, 477. See also N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 58. See also 62.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 83–84.

Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?,” 158.

Craig, 158.

Craig, 154–55.

Eckstein, “Bodily Resurrection in Luke,” 117. Cf 119–20 where Eckstein indicates aspects of incorporeality.

Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 76.

James D. Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 232.

Tabor, 232, 262–64, 311.

Stephen T. Davis, Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 59.

John Polkinghorne, “Eschatological Credibility: Emergent and Teleological Processes,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 49.

Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 93.

Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 325.

Allison, 325n500.

Wright, Surprised by Hope, 58. See also 62.

Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 205.

Wright, Surprised by Hope, 197.

Wright, 204–5.

Wright, 211.

Wright, 204.

Wright, 259.

Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?,” 157–58.

N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, vol. 1 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 460, 462.

Wright, 460–61.

Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 343.

Davis, Risen Indeed, 76.

Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” 108–9.

Lampe, 105–12.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 341.

Joel B. Green, “‘Bodies—That Is, Human Lives’: A Re-examination of Human Nature in the Bible,” in Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature, ed. Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 170.

Polkinghorne, “Eschatological Credibility,” 50.

Polkinghorne, 49.

Purves, Resurrection of Ministry, 72.

Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?,” 157.

J. Green, “‘Bodies,” 170.

Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” 105.

Alan F. Segal, Life after Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 456–57.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 477–79. See also 230, 256, 273, 426, 450, 551, 606, 609.

Wright, Surprised by Hope, 43. See also 44. Cf. 55–56.

Eckstein, “Bodily Resurrection in Luke,” 116–23.

Eckstein, 123.

Eckstein, 123.

J. Green, “‘Bodies,” 170.

Green, 170–71.

Green, 171.

Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” 106.

Lampe, 105–12.

Robert John Russell, “Bodily Resurrection, Eschatology, and Scientific Cosmology,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 25.

Michael Welker, “Theological Realism and Eschatological Symbol Systems,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 38; see also Jeffrey P. Schloss, “From Evolution to Eschatology,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 68–71.

Donald A. Hagner, “Gospel, Kingdom, and Resurrection in the Synoptic Gospels,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 119.

Andrew T. Lincoln, “‘I Am the Resurrection and the Life’: The Resurrection Message of the Fourth Gospel,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 126–27.

Lincoln, 128.

Borg and Crossan, First Paul, 150.

Borg and Crossan, 150.

Tabor, Jesus Dynasty, 232.

Tabor, 232.

Tabor, 232, 262–64, 311.

Ware, “Pre-Pauline Formula,” 477–79.

Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 344.

Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?,” 158, 174n45 referring to Carnley.

Akenson, Saint Saul, 178.

Akenson, 179.

Akenson, 187.

Carrier, “Spiritual Body,” 127.

Carrier, 147. See also 133.

Carrier, 134.

Carrier, 135.

Carrier, 134.

Carrier, 117–18.

Carrier, 115. See also 117.

Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?,” 157.

Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 344–45.

Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” 105.

Craig, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?,” 158.

Craig, 174n45.

Craig, 174n45.

Richard Bauckham, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife in Second Temple Judaism,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 93.

Richard Bauckham, “God Who Raised the Dead: The Resurrection of Jesus and Early Christian Faith in God,” in The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, ed. Paul Avis (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1993), 149–50.

Bauckham, 139.

Peter G. Bolt, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife in the Greco-Roman World,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 66.

Bolt, 67–68.

Bolt, 74. See also 71–73.

Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 2 vols., Anchor Bible Reference Library (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1994), 1374.

Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, 466–73.

Ross Clifford and Philip Johnson, The Cross Is Not Enough: Living as Witnesses to the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 253–71.

Dan Cohn-Sherbok, “Jesus’ Defence of the Resurrection of the Dead,” JSNT 11 (1981): 64.

Cohn-Sherbok, 72. Cf. 65.

Cohn-Sherbok, 71.

Collins, “Empty Tomb,” 144–45. Similarly, 146.

Craig, “On Doubts about the Resurrection,” 69.

Cranfield, “Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” 170.

Crossan in Copan, Real Jesus, 46.

Donald Goergen, The Death and Resurrection of Jesus, vol. 2 of A Theology of Jesus (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1988), 150.

Anthony Harvey, “‘They Discussed among Themselves What This “Rising from the Dead” Could Mean’ (Mark 9.10),” in Barton and Stanton, Resurrection, 69–78.

Joost Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia: A Tradition-Historical Study of Paul’s Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 144–45.

Roy W. Hoover, “A Contest between Orthodoxy and Veracity,” in Copan and Tacelli, Jesus’ Resurrection, 139–40.

Küng, Eternal Life?, 108.

Ladd, Resurrection of Jesus, chap. 4.

Ladd, chap. 5.

Ladd, chap. 6, esp. 71–72.

Paul Lehmann, “The Politics of Easter: A Political Celebration of Easter,” Dialog 19 (1980): 38.

Barnabas Lindars, “The Resurrection and the Empty Tomb,” in Avis, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 121–24, 129.

Thorwald Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship: Interpretive Models, Biblical Reflections, Theological Consequences (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 117–19.

C. F. D. Moule, “The Resurrection: A Disagreement: A Correspondence with C. F. D. Moule,” in Don Cupitt, Explorations in Theology 6 (London: SCM, 1979), 28.

Moule, 28.

Moule, 31.

Moule, 33–34.

John Muddiman, “I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body,” in Barton and Stanton, Resurrection, 133.

Gerald O’Collins, The Easter Jesus, 2nd ed. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1980), 104–5.

Oden, Word of Life, 473–74.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 2:350.

Stanley E. Porter, “Resurrection, the Greeks and the New Testament,” in Resurrection, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs, JSNTSup 186 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1999), 53.

Porter, 70.

Porter, 80.

Porter, 81.

Alan F. Segal, “Life after Death: The Social Sources,” in Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, Resurrection, 91.

Segal, 90–91, 124.

Segal, 91, 102.

Segal, 105.

Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection, 176. Cf. 17.

A. J. M. Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 46.

Wedderburn, 115.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 32–84 (pagan), 85–128 (Jewish). See also 129–206 for postbiblical views of resurrection.

Wright, 83. See also Wright, Surprised by Hope, 45.

Wright, “Resurrection of Resurrection,” 63n1.

Wright, 10.

Wright, 63.

Borg and Wright, Meaning of Jesus, 112; Wright, Challenge of Jesus, 133–37.

Yamauchi, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife,” 47.

Yamauchi, 47–48.

Yamauchi, 48.

Yamauchi, 49.

Borg and Crossan, First Paul, 150.

Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 176. See also 133, 137, 177–78. Cf. 206–10. See also Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, 257–58.

Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 295–96.

Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 547–48.

Ware, “Pre-Pauline Formula,” 485.

Wright, New Testament and the People of God, 460–61.

Richard Bauckham, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife in Second Temple Judaism,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 83.

Crusemann, “Scripture and Resurrection,” 100.

James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, vol. 1 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 834–35.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 86–87. See also 99.

Allison, Resurrecting Jesus, 314–15.

Tim Callahan, Secret Origins of the Bible (Altadena, CA: Millennium, 2002), 326.

Carrier, “Spiritual Body,” 115. See also 117.

Carrier, 107.

Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 133.

Crossan and Reed, 135.

Crossan and Reed, 133–35, 174, 342. See also 344–45.

Crossan and Reed, 135.

Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 836.

John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 5 vols., Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1991–2016), 3:323.

Meier, 3:411–44.

Meier, 3:443.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 121–28, 200–206.

Wright, 120.

Wright, 124–25, 127.

Wright, 126–27.

Yamauchi, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife,” 39–42, 47–49.

Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 133.

Porter, “Resurrection,” 53.

Porter, 70.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 32–84.

Wright, 32, 53, 77–84.

Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 341–42. Cf. 296.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 47–49, 53, 77–84.

Dale C. Allison, The End of the Ages Has Come: An Early Interpretation of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 165.

J. K. Elliott, “The First Easter,” History Today 29, no. 4 (1979): 210.

Michael Grant, Saint Peter: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1994), 89.

Tabor, Jesus Dynasty, 243.

Tabor, 244.

Wright, “Christian Origins,” 115–16, 122.

Michael F. Bird and James G. Crossley, How Did Christianity Begin? A Believer and Non-Believer Examine the Evidence (London: SPCK, 2008), 45, 47.

Bird and Crossley, 45. Cf. 67–68.

Bird and Crossley, 46.

Bird and Crossley, 46.

Bird and Crossley, 47.

John Granger Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 410 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018).

Bird and Crossley, 52. Cf. 58.

Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 872.

Gundry, “Trimming the Debate,” 118.

Gundry, 116.

Gundry, 117.

J. Ware, “Pre-Pauline Formula,” 492–97.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, xix.

Wright, 83–84.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 31, 71, 82–84, 201–6, 215, 273, 314, 350–74, 414, 477. See also Wright, Surprised by Hope, 58. See also 62.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 382.

Wright, 382. See also 323.

Gerhard Barth, “Zur Frage nach der in 1 Korinther 15 bekämpften Auferstehungsleugnung,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 83, no. 3–4 (1992): 187–201.

Borg and Crossan, First Paul, 150.

Carrier, “Spiritual Body,” 117.

Conzelmann, First Corinthians, 262.

Crossan and Reed, In Search of Paul, 341–42. Cf. 296.

Ehrman, New Testament, 295–96.

Gundry, Sōma in Biblical Theology, 50.

Gundry, “Trimming the Debate,” 120.

Murray J. Harris, “Resurrection and Immortality in the Pauline Corpus,” in Longenecker, Life in the Face of Death, 153.

Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia, 35–40, 203.

Richard A Horsley, “How Can Some of You Say That There Is No Resurrection of the Dead: Spiritual Elitism in Corinth,” NovT 20, no. 3 (1978): 221, 223.

Horsley, 229.

Horsley, 230.

Horsley, 231.

Leander E. Keck, Who Is Jesus? History in Perfect Tense (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000), 129n42.

Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body,” 103–5.

Lüdemann, “Closing Responses,” 152. See also 151.

Lüdemann, 152.

O’Collins, Easter Jesus, 107–8.

Calvin J. Roetzel, “‘As Dying, and Behold We Live’: Death and Resurrection in Paul’s Theology,” Interpretation 46, no. 1 (1992): 7. Cf. 18.

E. P. Sanders, “But Did It Happen?,” The Spectator 276 (1996): 16.

Alan F. Segal, “Paul’s Thinking about Resurrection in Its Jewish Context,” New Testament Studies 44, no. 3 (1998): 415.

Segal, 418.

Sider, “Resurrection Body,” 430–31.

Stanley, “Power of His Resurrection,” 23.

Peter Stuhlmacher, “The Resurrection of Jesus and the Resurrection of the Dead,” trans. Jonathan M. Whitlock, Ex Auditu 9 (1993): 53.

Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection, 229.

Wedderburn, 230–31.

Wedderburn, 238.

Wedderburn, 231–32.

Wedderburn, 232.

Wedderburn, 233.

Wedderburn, 233–40.

Wedderburn, 240.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 316, 330–31.

Elliott, “First Easter,” 219; Fergus Kerr, “Paul’s Experience: Sighting or Theophany?,” New Blackfriars 58 (1977): 310; Wright, Challenge of Jesus, 146; Gerald O’Collins, Interpreting Jesus (London: Chapman, 1983), 125; Gerald O’Collins, What Are They Saying about the Resurrection? (New York: Paulist, 1978), 60; O’Collins, Easter Jesus, 16; Staudinger, “Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” 321; Barnett, Jensen, and Peterson, Resurrection: Truth and Reality, 22; Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 277 (including that Paul’s visions were unimportant to him).

Reginald H. Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 45. See also 32.

Paul Avis, “The Resurrection of Jesus: Asking the Right Questions,” in Avis, Resurrection of Jesus Christ, 13–15.

Reginald H. Fuller, “John 20:19–23,” Interpretation 32, no. 2 (1978): 101.

Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, 178–79.

O’Collins, Easter Jesus, 113.

O’Collins, 112.

James M. Robinson, “Jesus from Easter to Valentinus (or to the Apostles’ Creed),” Journal of Biblical Literature 101, no. 1 (1982): 7.

Robinson, 20.

E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (New York: Penguin, 1993), 277.

Sanders, 278.

Sanders, 280.

Segal, Life after Death, 412, 415, 432, 433.

Segal, 429, 430–33, 446–51. Cf. 406.

Segal, 442, 447, 456–57, 459.

Segal, 415, 432, 439.

Funk, Honest to Jesus, 269.

Funk, 270.

Funk, 267.

Funk, 260, 273.

Funk, 271.

J. M. Robinson, “Jesus from Easter to Valentinus,” 20.

Margaret Barker, The Risen Lord: The Jesus of History as the Christ of Faith (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996).

Margaret Barker, “Resurrection: Reflections on a New Approach,” in Porter, Hayes, and Tombs, Resurrection, 102–3.

Barker, 102.

Holly Hearon, review of Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy, by Gregory J. Riley, Interpretation 51 (1997): 98.

Lüdemann, “Closing Responses,” 160.

Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), xxii–xxiii.

Pagels, 84–90 (Jesus’s death), 3–7 (resurrection), 12–13, 31 (gnostics).

Pagels, 10–11, 30–32, 56.

Pagels, 29, 32, 56, 170–71, 179–81.

Pagels, 177–78.

Pagels, 180–81.

Gregory J. Riley, “Doubting Thomas: Controversy between the Communities of Thomas and John” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1990). See also Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).

J. M. Robinson, “Jesus from Easter to Valentinus,” 5–37.

Wedderburn, Beyond Resurrection, 111, 117–21. Cf. 184.

John E. Alsup, The Post-Resurrection Appearance Stories of the Gospel Tradition: A History-of-Tradition Analysis with Text-Synopsis, Calwer Theologische Monographien 5 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1975), 55–56.

Alsup, 267.

William Lane Craig, “From Easter to Valentinus and the Apostles’ Creed Once More: A Critical Examination of James Robinson’s Proposed Resurrection Appearance Trajectories,” JSNT 52 (1993): 38–39.

Craig, 19–23.

Craig, 25–26, 30.

Craig, 26.

Craig, 26–27.

Craig, 27–28.

Craig, 31.

Craig, 34.

Craig, 35.

Craig, “From Easter to Valentinus,” 35–38.

Craig, 37–38.

Funk, Honest to Jesus, 265.

Gregory J. Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, 68, 177.

Riley, 9–10, 177, 179.

Riley, 8.

Funk, Honest to Jesus, 268. Cf. 259, 273.

Funk, 259–60, 263–64, 273–74.

Funk, 267–69.

Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 43. Cf. 21, 26.

James Ian Hamilton McDonald, The Resurrection: Narrative and Belief (London: SPCK, 1989), 19.

Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:118.

Gerald O’Collins, “Luminous Appearances of the Risen Christ,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1984): 248.

Gerald O’Collins, “The Resurrection of Jesus: Some Current Questions,” America 153 (1985): 423.

O’Collins, “Luminous Appearances,” 254.

O’Collins, 249.

O’Collins, 251.

Gerald O’Collins, Jesus Risen: An Historical, Fundamental and Systematic Examination of Christ’s Resurrection (New York: Paulist, 1987), 113–14, 210–16.

Gerald O’Collins, “The Risen Jesus: Analogies and Presence,” in Porter, Hayes, and Tombs, Resurrection, 200–201.

Peter Carnley, “Response to Gerald O’Collins,” in Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, Resurrection, 32.

Carnley, 37.

Gerald O’Collins, “The Resurrection: The State of the Questions,” in Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, Resurrection, 10–13.

O’Collins, “Risen Jesus,” 199–206.

O’Collins, 206–9.

O’Collins, 210.

O’Collins, “State of the Questions,” 11–13.

Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 65, 78.

Wright, 75n237.

Warren S. Brown, “Conclusion: Reconciling Scientific and Biblical Portraits of Human Nature,” in Brown, Murphy, and Malony, Whatever Happened to the Soul?, 224.

Davis, Risen Indeed, chaps. 4–5.

J. Green, “‘Bodies,” 173.

Green, 171.

Detlef B. Linke, “God Gives the Memory: Neuroscience and Resurrection,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 185–87.

Nancey Murphy, “Human Nature: Historical, Scientific, and Religious Issues,” in Brown, Murphy, and Malony, Whatever Happened to the Soul?, 24.

Murphy, 27.

Nancey Murphy, “The Resurrection Body and Personal Identity: Possibilities and Limits of Eschatological Knowledge,” in Peters, Russell, and Welker, Resurrection, 203. She notes the work of Sir John Eccles as the exception.

Murphy, 203.

Murphy, 203–4.

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