The Talpiot Tomb and Bodily Resurrection
I thought I'd post something more on the tomb before it vanishes from our shared consciousness. First, some links to what's up on other blogs, then on to the subject of this post - the T. tomb and bodily resurrection.
* Mark Goodacre at the NT Gateway Weblog mentions and gives a link to an academic paper from 2003 on the Talpiot tomb by Dr. Michael S. Heiser - The Jesus Ossuary: A Critical Examination.
* Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary, one of those on Ted Koppel's after-the-tomb program - Lost Tomb of Jesus: Critical Look - mentions in his latest tomb post, that he's just visited the actual tomb site.
* Edward Cook at Ralph the Sacred River has a post on on of the assertions of the tomb show - the idea that Mary M was a "master"
* Jim West has a post on the Jesus tomb "chevron"
* Chris Brady at Targuman has a live-blog post of the Ted Koppel program "The Lost Tomb of Jesus: Critical Look"
One of the things about the show on the Jesus family tomb that impressed me wasn't historical or archaeological but theological in significance ... if Jesus' bones are left behind, does that mean there was no resurrection? The obvious answer would be yes, but one of the participants in the program, James Tabor, threw believers a bone (heh) during the Ted Koppel critique show .... he gave the opinion that a more "sophisticated" view of the resurrection was that it had not been bodily but simply spiritual (and used Paul's 1 Corinthians 15 - spiritual bodies).
I'm a little lost here ... I dislike the idea of a spiritual resurrection rather than a bodily one, but it's hard for me to explain exactly why, so I thought I'd just post a few words from others :-) ....
Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. - (Luke 24:39)
Christ's body fell by death; namely, inasmuch as the soul which was its formal perfection was separated from it. Hence, in order for it to be a true resurrection, it was necessary for the same body of Christ to be once more united with the same soul. And since the truth of the body's nature is from its form it follows that Christ's body after His Resurrection was a true body, and of the same nature as it was before ..... But Christ's body after the Resurrection was truly made up of elements, and had tangible qualities such as the nature of a human body requires, and therefore it could naturally be handled. - (Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologiae) ... and ....
For certain heretics, as Augustine relates (De Civ. Dei xiii, 22), ascribed to [glorified bodies] the subtlety whereby spiritual substances are said to be subtle: and they said that at the resurrection the body will be transformed into a spirit, and that for this reason the Apostle describes as being "spiritual" the bodies of those who rise again (1 Cor. 15:44). But this cannot be maintained. First, because a body cannot be changed into a spirit, since there is no community of matter between them. ... Hence others say that the aforesaid completeness by reason of which human bodies are said to be subtle will result from the dominion of the glorified soul (which is the form of the body) over the body, by reason of which dominion the glorified body is said to be "spiritual," as being wholly subject to the spirit." - (more from the Summa Theologiae)
Finally, something from JD Crossan that expresses what perhaps bothers me most about a "spiritual" resurrection ... the almost gnostic dualism that would divide the body and soul with the belief that the spirit is holier than matter. The tomb documentary had a quick cameo of Crossan saying that the finding of Jesus' bones would not shake his faith, and that was an interesting choice on their part. Crossan, a Jesus Seminar Fellow, has written a minority opinion that Jesus was never buried in a tomb at all - that he was likely theown in a shallow common grave with other criminals after crucifixion and then eaten by wild dogs. Though Crossan might not be surprised to have the bones of Jesus found, he ponts out elsewhere the logical conclusion of the kind of dualism Tabor expressed with his more sophisticated take on the resurrection ...
My criticism of Gnosticism would be this: one of the most fundamental decisions we have to make, going back to dear old Plato, is whether the human being is a dialectic, in the same sense as before, of body and spirit, or if somehow that spirit or soul is only temporarily, possibly even unfortunately, joined to what is either a flea bag hotel or a magnificent palace called the body. But in either case the soul is only temporarily embodied until it goes home to its true spiritual abode. I think that this is the most radical question in Western philosophy. Whichever way you come down on this question, everything else will follow. If you think that human beings are actually incarcerated, entombed spirits, that we're simply renting bodies out, then everything else will follow. But if you think along with the Bible that somehow or other the body/soul amalgam is a dialectic, that you can distinguish but not separate them, then everything else will follow differently. So Gnosticism seems to be a perfectly good, linear descendent of Platonism (I'm not certain though what Plato himself would have said), but at the heart of it is the presumption that the material world is at best irrelevant and at worst evil. Those seem to be the fundamental options. You have to pick your position from there. - link
* Mark Goodacre at the NT Gateway Weblog mentions and gives a link to an academic paper from 2003 on the Talpiot tomb by Dr. Michael S. Heiser - The Jesus Ossuary: A Critical Examination.
* Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary, one of those on Ted Koppel's after-the-tomb program - Lost Tomb of Jesus: Critical Look - mentions in his latest tomb post, that he's just visited the actual tomb site.
* Edward Cook at Ralph the Sacred River has a post on on of the assertions of the tomb show - the idea that Mary M was a "master"
* Jim West has a post on the Jesus tomb "chevron"
* Chris Brady at Targuman has a live-blog post of the Ted Koppel program "The Lost Tomb of Jesus: Critical Look"
One of the things about the show on the Jesus family tomb that impressed me wasn't historical or archaeological but theological in significance ... if Jesus' bones are left behind, does that mean there was no resurrection? The obvious answer would be yes, but one of the participants in the program, James Tabor, threw believers a bone (heh) during the Ted Koppel critique show .... he gave the opinion that a more "sophisticated" view of the resurrection was that it had not been bodily but simply spiritual (and used Paul's 1 Corinthians 15 - spiritual bodies).
I'm a little lost here ... I dislike the idea of a spiritual resurrection rather than a bodily one, but it's hard for me to explain exactly why, so I thought I'd just post a few words from others :-) ....
Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. - (Luke 24:39)
Christ's body fell by death; namely, inasmuch as the soul which was its formal perfection was separated from it. Hence, in order for it to be a true resurrection, it was necessary for the same body of Christ to be once more united with the same soul. And since the truth of the body's nature is from its form it follows that Christ's body after His Resurrection was a true body, and of the same nature as it was before ..... But Christ's body after the Resurrection was truly made up of elements, and had tangible qualities such as the nature of a human body requires, and therefore it could naturally be handled. - (Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologiae) ... and ....
For certain heretics, as Augustine relates (De Civ. Dei xiii, 22), ascribed to [glorified bodies] the subtlety whereby spiritual substances are said to be subtle: and they said that at the resurrection the body will be transformed into a spirit, and that for this reason the Apostle describes as being "spiritual" the bodies of those who rise again (1 Cor. 15:44). But this cannot be maintained. First, because a body cannot be changed into a spirit, since there is no community of matter between them. ... Hence others say that the aforesaid completeness by reason of which human bodies are said to be subtle will result from the dominion of the glorified soul (which is the form of the body) over the body, by reason of which dominion the glorified body is said to be "spiritual," as being wholly subject to the spirit." - (more from the Summa Theologiae)
Finally, something from JD Crossan that expresses what perhaps bothers me most about a "spiritual" resurrection ... the almost gnostic dualism that would divide the body and soul with the belief that the spirit is holier than matter. The tomb documentary had a quick cameo of Crossan saying that the finding of Jesus' bones would not shake his faith, and that was an interesting choice on their part. Crossan, a Jesus Seminar Fellow, has written a minority opinion that Jesus was never buried in a tomb at all - that he was likely theown in a shallow common grave with other criminals after crucifixion and then eaten by wild dogs. Though Crossan might not be surprised to have the bones of Jesus found, he ponts out elsewhere the logical conclusion of the kind of dualism Tabor expressed with his more sophisticated take on the resurrection ...
My criticism of Gnosticism would be this: one of the most fundamental decisions we have to make, going back to dear old Plato, is whether the human being is a dialectic, in the same sense as before, of body and spirit, or if somehow that spirit or soul is only temporarily, possibly even unfortunately, joined to what is either a flea bag hotel or a magnificent palace called the body. But in either case the soul is only temporarily embodied until it goes home to its true spiritual abode. I think that this is the most radical question in Western philosophy. Whichever way you come down on this question, everything else will follow. If you think that human beings are actually incarcerated, entombed spirits, that we're simply renting bodies out, then everything else will follow. But if you think along with the Bible that somehow or other the body/soul amalgam is a dialectic, that you can distinguish but not separate them, then everything else will follow differently. So Gnosticism seems to be a perfectly good, linear descendent of Platonism (I'm not certain though what Plato himself would have said), but at the heart of it is the presumption that the material world is at best irrelevant and at worst evil. Those seem to be the fundamental options. You have to pick your position from there. - link
posted by crystal | 11:13 AM
28 Comments:
The problem with proof texting is that you ignore what doesn't work for one's point of view in favor of what does.
1 Cor 15 begins with an examination of resurrection and Paul's argument in favor of resurrection is the Bodily resurrection of Jesus. In fact vs12-30 hinge our entire faith on the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
People always want to shy away form beliveing in the seemingly ridiculous, buth this is the folloy that is the wisdom of God that Paul insists lies at the heart of faith.
Some would like to reason their way out of it but God hasn't really left that option open.
Just my 2 cents.
I like your two cwnts, Cura :-)
Good post, Crystal.
I find Tabor's idea that a "spiritual resurrection" is more "sophisticated" than a bodily one annoying and insulting. There's a certain approach to studying Jesus that wants to take any hint of the supernatural out of the story or at least divorce it from physical reality -- he didn't really perform miracles, the resurrection was either a metaphor or "only spiritual," he was just a wise man, not the son of God, etc. I have no problem with people believing that, but for me that takes out what is religious and cosmic from the whole story. Really, if God exists, he can cure a leper and raise from the dead.
There is also the idea that thinking that way is more "sophisticated" -- that those of us who believe that Jesus could perform miracles are poor pathetic superstitious fools. I for one don't know if he did perform miracles, but hey, he was the son of God, he sure could have. I think I read once that Bishop Spong wrote that modern phsyics should make us rethink the Ascension, and I thought "what a simplistic moron!" As if the mystery of the whole think could now be understood because we're so scientifically advanced...
I'm sorry, I'm babbling. Good post, Crystal.
Liam,
I've met a lot of christians who do think Jesus was just a guy with some good ideas, but for me that turns christianity into a philosophy rather than a religion. It seems like if a person could get over the biggest hurdle of all - believing in a supernatural being like God - than the rest of it wouldn't be that challenging.
I guess NT Wright recently said it wasn't necessary for a christian to believe in the bodily resurrection ... saw some furor about that on different blogs with many of the bloggers agreeing with him.
The sophisticated thing ... nobody wants to be a "fool for christ", I guess :-)
I finished Borg and Crossan's book The Last Week recently, and although I think that a lot of their historical reconstruction and exegesis is good, and although they make some tremendous points about how we might want to look at the meaning of the atonment in a different way, it it is ultimately unsatisfying in the end, because it rejects the possibility of an actual, physical bodily resurrection. They vociferously deny that they are in violation of Paul's dictum "If Christ is not raised, our hope is in vain.", but it dioesn't really work for me... Try as they might, I am not convinced. Without the actual physical resurrection, I would be tempted to see Jesus as a man who laid down his life nobly, but somewhat foolishly... certainly no more different than a lot of other sages throughout history we could decide to follow.
I do, however, have to defend Crossan from the charge of Gnosticism. He rejects it wholeheartedly in his book The Birth of Christianity, insisting on seeing the body as animated by a sould rather than seeing the soul as distinct from the body. The latter he sees as cheapening of human life.
You are one prolific blogger! I get back and mean to pick up on something from before but that post is long gone in Crystal-time!
The "spiritual body" quote was the first thing that crossed my mind when I heard about this idea being controversial. If I'm remembering correctly, Paul was trying to answer the sorts of questions that would occur to anybody - "If I lost my arm in battle am I reunited with it?" "Do I get back the body I had when I was twenty or thirty?" etc. (I don't think these were the exact questions but similar.)
So if Jesus is "first born of the dead" it seems to follow well that he would have been resurrected with a spiritual body too.
Cura... Hmm... Just read your comment...
I still don't see the logic of this "controversy." OK. Let's say Jesus' resurrection was a special resurrection.
How on earth do we know what the precise mechanisms, so to speak, of physical resurrection are? The scripture certainly doesn't go into that kind of detail.
Maybe you end up with a cast off skeleton because the one that gets resurrected is, I don't know, the one you had in your prime and all the old bone cells remain behind. Maybe if you're on Fosamax you leave less of a skeleton.
And ultimately, is Christ supposed to be in heaven with a physical body while all the rest of us have spiritual bodies?
I just don't see this level of detailed discussion as getting to anything real. The resurrection, whether of a physical or spiritual body - or maybe he was physical just long enough to leave a skeleton and then turned into a spiritual body - I mean the speculative possibilities are endless because none of us have ever seen a resurrection occur. And the NT doesn't give that much detail.
When you were a kid, didn't you ever wonder why it was such a big deal that Jesus had come back from the dead when he'd already brought Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus back from death?
Jesus is resurrected in the body, but it's more than just his previous body. Otherwise, Lazarus or the daughter of Jairus would be first raised.
Jesus body is also changed somehow-- yes the wounds are still there, but the disciples do not recognize him on the road to Emmaus.
If he were just resurrected in the spirit it would make a mockery of his previous healings and raisings.
1Cor15 does not itself speak of a complete separation between spiritual/physical bodies. Paul simply says, look, it's not the same as we have now, but it is. It's a different kind of 'being', but we're still the same.
Post resurrection Jesus was both unrecognizable, and completely recognizable. He was different, but the same. He was both the Jesus who appeared in the locked room with the disciples, the JEsus who said you cannot touch me, AND the Jesus who was touched by Thomas, who ate fish on the beach.
Right from the roots of our Jewish parents, you cannot, nor should not try to separate the flesh from the spirit...both are created Good by God, both are redeemed and glorified together.
God deals in wholeness.
(these are 'quick and dirty' posts...been a hectic day and I'm running back in an hour for RCIA tonight..leading 'Vocation of Marriage' with LW)
Hi Jeff,
no, I think you're right about Crossan and gnosticism .... that quote of his that I posted shows that he is anti-gnostic, if anything. Did it not read that way?
I feel the same way about bodily resurrection - if it didn't happen, then is Jesus still God?
Paul,
I hadn't read Aquinas before I posted this, but what he says about spiritual bodies is interesting. I think he thinks that they are physical bodies but that they are "subject" to the soul ... it reminds me of The Matrix, where people (in the matrix) had the bodies of their "resideual self images" - their bodies were created by their minds - but in the case of a spiritual body, it would be soul that's driving the bus :-)
Paul,
about what you said to Cura, I can't answer for him, but for myself, it makes a difference whether Jesus (and we)are resurrected with physical or spiritual bodies.
One difference is the implication that having a spiritual body after death and in "heaven" gives ... that life here is not important, that we are really spirits locked in inferior physical bodies while we're here, that when we die, we are finally released from this bad place and this imprisonment to return in spirit form from whence we came. It's dualistic, world-hating gnosticism :-)
Hi Talmida,
I think maybe the resurrected body is still a dialectic of body and soul ... not just physical as it was when here, but not just spiritual either. I like Aquinas' take on it alot.
Cura,
thanks for this ...
you cannot, nor should not try to separate the flesh from the spirit...both are created Good by God, both are redeemed and glorified together.
That's what I wanted to believe and wanted to say, but couldn't figure out how.
Thanks for the links Crystal.
Hi David! :-)
I wonder if one loses any weight in a resurrected body. I'd hate to go through eternity with this little beer tummy.
You think everyone in Heaven will be really buff? Maybe I'll look kind of like Tom Brady.
Nah.
Probably closer to Frodo Baggins.
Who is Tom Brady?
You'll probably be punished and have to look like someone who's French :-)
Did you ever see the movie What Dreams May Come? Not a great movie, but the dead people in heaven got to look however they wanted.
Oh, sorry, Tom Brady's the quarterback for the New England Patriots. Must have blanked for a moment and thought I was on Jeff;s blog.
Not really. I was just hoping you knew. It was a test. To see how well-versed you were in male sports figures. :-)
Hey, I'd love to look like some French guys, depending on who they were. Not Gerard Depardieu, per se. Actually, when I lived in Spain, most people thought I was French. Must be that 1/16 French blood I have.
Not sure I would want everyone in Heaven to look however they wanted. You'd get a bunch of women from the 60s looking like Jackie O, the men like Steve McQueen, then the 70s blow-dry look, that awful 80s New Wave thing, etc.
I'm not sure how bodily resurrection will really work. Changed in a twinkling of an eye - but to what exactly? The ability to walk through walls, as Jesus did, that's pretty cool. You could have fun scaring the living people. It seems like it's physical, but not necessarily the physicality we know now. The molecular structure might be more fluid.
Nope, I don't care about sports, though I used to be interested in body building and martial arts in college .... that's why I liked Arnold and Chuck Morris. I was worried you were talking about one of the Brady Bunch :-)
I have no idea what heaven and resurrected bodies will be like, if there will even be an afterlife at all .. sometimes, I hoe not - I could use a rest.
On the Resurrection Body:
Nobody gets into heaven without getting maimed and scarred first. Some of us get our wounds on this side of the grave.
Remember -- Jesus was supposed to be a perfect sacrifice and without blemish -- but they had to break his body before he could be resurrected. And the wounds of his crucifixion were clearly visible on his resurrected form.
Tom Brady will enter the Kingdom with a beer belly (at least). God's idea of perfection is VERY different from ours -- otherwise -- none of us has a chance.
I have no opinion whatsoever on whether a "spiritual body" would be the kind of ethereal thing you connect with gnosticism or whether there's something physical... or as Cura asserts, it's both...
I'm thinking the idea of "both" may derive from seeing it at times apparently described more one way and at other times more another way within the NT and wanting to reconcile the various descriptions of resurrection in a logical way.
I just don't see the NT as a "Handbook on Resurrection!" I'm not convinced that piecing together and trying to make a logical, coherent whole out of the glimpses offered by the NT brings us closer to knowing anything.
A resurrection - of Jesus or of anyone - is outside the experience of all of us. St. Paul himself describes the resurrection as "foolishness" - not, of course, that he doesn't believe in it, but that it's so beyond the pale and even contradicted by our experiences of life and death.
I don't think he really wanted to write a resurrection handbook or study guide but people kept asking him questions and so he tried to answer them in his letters.
Crystal: So on the one hand, there's that gnostic version where we get some sort of spiritual body that's really really different from the bodies we have now. On the other hand, there's the "non dualistic" version where we get a "physical" body that's incorruptible, immortal, and glorified...
In each version we get bodies that are really really different from the sorts of bodies we have now and I'm not seeing what makes one less dualistic than the other.
For me, in the end, I found my own detailed speculations about the nature of ultimate reality entirely unconvincing. And I've never found anybody else's detailed accounts convincing.
It doesn't seem too much to me to suppose that none of us knows that much and that ultimate reality is more than anyone can possibly imagine or tie up and bundle with human language.
Hi David,
I'd want a better bodu, given the way mine is now :-)
What do you think of Aquinas' idea - that the resurrected body is changeable at the direction of the spirit?
Paul,
about using the NT as a handbook .... if someone's a christian, what else do they have to work with? I know - expreience too, but without the NT as a kind of template, that could be interpreted so many ways. As for Paul, I've read hardly anything of his and wouldn't use him as a handbook for anything (except that part about what love is :-)
About the dualism ... if I understand correctly, gnstics believe that the created physical world is inferior to the spiritual - they make a distiction between spirit and matter (soul and body), seeing one as good (the spirit) and one as bad (the body). Thus to say that we die and dump our physical bodies to become pure spirit seems dualistic.
The non-dualistic approach is that God didn't have a tier system ... the physical and the spiritual awere both created good and are united ... the "inferior" half (the body) won't be dumped at death.
But I'm just trying to explain the differences in the two ways of seeing it. Of course I don't know what the afterlife will be like - all I have are hopes. The thing is, though none of us knows what will happen, what we hope for says a lot about our way of looking at ourselves and God.
I would not see the Christian scriptures as a handbook or a template. Literalism is an excellent way to murder the power of scripture IMHO (actually I've never held a humble opinion in my life).
But I do see the NT as an image and metaphor bank, a finger pointing at the moon so to speak -- the philosophers msight call it "demonstrative definition" (i.e., "there it is!") and Christians might call it witness.
But images, narratives and metaphors carry meaning and an intrinsic logic as well. Two points I feel the resurrection appearances stories are trying to make: 1) The essence of who Jesus was and is -- was no longer in the tomb; and 2) whatever these appearances were -- they were more than just "seeing a ghost"
I think there is a lot more to learn from these passages. But I think this is the core.
Two points I feel the resurrection appearances stories are trying to make: 1) The essence of who Jesus was and is -- was no longer in the tomb; and 2) whatever these appearances were -- they were more than just "seeing a ghost"
That's well put, David. I agree.
Crystal and David - That's how I see it too. Looking for central themes to me makes a lot more sense than trying to tease out resurrection specifics around, for example, bones! That's what I meant by not a "handbook."
To me it's similar when people are against the theory of evolution because it's not "biblical." The Bible isn't a book trying to give all the specific details of how God created the universe and I don't know what leads people to want to read it that way.
It talks about wheat a lot too, but if I were a farmer I wouldn't try to extract how to go about planting wheat from the New Testament. I'd see what farmers had to say!
The Bible refers to a lot of things without pretending to be a "How To" or "All About" book on every subject it refers to.
Hey Crystal and all,
Lying about the name Jesus, for profit, yet again...
One problem with the many attempts to refute these theories are the assumptions that the archeology is wrong because it doesn't match the New Testament's many dubious stories and proven interpolations. Rome did not eradicate its enemies and their competing stories and philosophies to protect the truth. They were instead striving to hide the truth and impose state approved dogma through force, deception, and fear. These are not the actions of those with a love for truth and justice. This already proven history makes the New Testament and Christian traditions among the least trustworthy sources of evidence possible.
The most interesting aspect of this Jesus Tomb story revolves around the actual names on the bone boxes compared to what is being asserted in the effort to make a profit. Pay special attention to the tortured explanations of how names like Jesus, Mary, Matthew, Joseph, and others were "translated" (interpolated) from inscriptions that actually say otherwise. Most specifically, both Christians and those who are promoting this "Jesus Tomb" discovery and its associated assertions are profiting from the very same long-term process of obfuscation and meticulous misdirection.
For anyone, whether Christian leaders and adherents or James Cameron to keep a straight face while claiming that the name Jesus was one of the most common in Second Temple Israel is highly instructive. The name that is commonly translated as Joshua was very common, but the name Jesus is a very unique and narrowly targeted construction of recent centuries that simply cannot have truthfully appeared anywhere in the ancient Near East. Likewise, many are writing that Jesus is instead the english form of Joshua, as if the millions of english speaking Christians and Jews named Joshua have foreign names. Furthermore, does anyone know of any person named Joshua who would seriously assert that the English form of their name is Jesus? These deceptive assertions are beyond absurd.
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