Outlined Arguments for Jesus' Bodily Resurrection Appearances
Outlined Arguments for Jesus' Bodily Resurrection Appearances
The predominant Jewish view in the First Century CE is that of bodily resurrection, so this forms a helpful backdrop for our discussion.
Paul placed himself squarely in this traditional Jewish position by identifying with the Pharisees (3:4–6), a group that held to a bodily resurrection.5
NT Wright has shown in hundreds of pages of painstaking research that the chief terms for resurrection always signify a bodily event. In fact, for hundreds of years before and after Jesus, until about 200 CE, regardless of whether pagans, Jews, or Christians used the terms, they always indicated bodily occurrences.6
As argued by Robert Gundry, the term “body” in the New Testament and other Jewish literature, and for Paul in particular, clearly refers to a physical organism. This is especially true of Paul's view of Jesus' resurrection appearances.7
In eleven centuries before and after Jesus, with one possible exception that is still quite unlikely, “spiritual body” never means an “immaterial body.”8
Paul answers the question by using a term in 3:11 (cf. also 1 Cor. 15:12) that signifies being raised out from the realm of the dead, specifically indicating that his body would be raised. In 3:20–21, he asserts that Jesus would transform the believer's body to be like Jesus' glorious body (cf. also Rom. 8:11).
Paul's sociology also indicates bodily resurrection. He always refers to the resurrection of the dead in the plural, indicating a corporate event; believers would be raised together. And the realm of resurrection is the transformed earth (Rom. 8:18–23). These are very difficult concepts for glorified spirits!
Paul reports group appearances of Jesus (1 Cor. 15:4–7; cf. the creedal statement in Acts 13:30–31), which are more indicative of bodily events.
Every Gospel resurrection account clearly describes a bodily appearance of Jesus, including the continuity of crucifixion scars and the offer to inspect his body.
An empty tomb strongly implies bodily appearances.
