Gary & Rhinestone's Thread on Burial and Resurrection of Christ

[Adrift]

And sadly your rage against me and your intense desire to shut me up shows just how brainwashed you are by your cult. This is why I speak out against your fear-based, superstitious belief system. It makes sane people think and act like nut cases.

Gary, you are the nut. You're the one in the straightjacket screaming at the orderlies that you're sane while they drag you to the padded room. Look at yourself. You peddle quack pseudo-medicine for a living, conning innocent victims of their hard cold cash for placebos. You spent years as a Christian convinced that God ordered the murder of children, and was perfectly fine with it. You created a blog to document your barely coherent rants against a God that you now say you don't believe exists. You actually formulate your arguments based on the lunatic ravings of a conspiracy nut website filled with articles about lizard people, ancient astronauts and psychic phenomena. You constantly contradict yourself, and say some of the most patently ridiculous things every time you go into one of your soapbox sermons that you preach to an imaginary audience of fans. You're not right, man.

[Meh Gerbil]

Gary, you are the nut. You're the one in the straightjacket screaming at the orderlies that you're sane while they drag you to the padded room. Look at yourself. You peddle quack pseudo-medicine for a living, conning innocent victims of their hard cold cash for placebos. You spent years as a Christian convinced that God ordered the murder of children, and was perfectly fine with it. You created a blog to document your barely coherent rants against a God that you now say you don't believe exists. You actually formulate your arguments based on the lunatic ravings of a conspiracy nut website filled with articles about lizard people, ancient astronauts and psychic phenomena. You constantly contradict yourself, and say some of the most patently ridiculous things every time you go into one of your soapbox sermons that you preach to an imaginary audience of fans. You're not right, man.

If I should ever appear about ready to cross Adrift please re-direct me to this post.
Thanks.

[One Bad Pig]

Adrift never raves.

Only to Green JelloJelly songs.

[Adrift]

A mass grave is still a grave, friends. Being buried in a mass grave (hole in the ground) is still "buried".

There is nothing in Paul's statements in his epistles that conflict with the likely possibility that early Christians believed that Jesus had been resurrected from a mass grave of recently executed Roman criminals---all based on alleged appearances after his burial in this unmarked, mass grave to prominent male members of the early Church.

The reality of the bodily Resurrection of Jesus all hinges on the veracity of the alleged post-death appearances. And since tens of thousands of people, throughout history and in many cultures, have claimed to have seen their recently departed loved one appear to them "in the flesh", the claims of early Christians living two thousand years ago, in a very superstitious, primitive culture, of seeing a resurrected Jesus, should be evaluated with the same level of scrutiny that we evaluate "dead-family/friend-sightings" today: very implausible, and most likely a psychological trick of the grieving mind.

Paul was trained as a Pharisee under Gamaliel, one of the greatest religious teachers of his period. Pharisees strongly held that the body needed to be properly buried in order to be resurrected at the end times. That's why ossuaries (bone boxes), and stone hewn tombs were so popular in the 1st century (especially in Jerusalem). It was to prevent the body from being destroyed by the elements and wild animals. Allowing one's corpse to be eaten by crows and wild dogs (as Crossan and Ehrman argues) would have been unthinkable. It's why, as Craig Evans explains, the imagery in Jeremiah 7:30-33 would have been so striking as punishment.

And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away.

No, there is no way that Paul, trained as a Pharisee, would have thought that a body thrown into a pit with some dirt kicked on top, and exposed to packs of wild dogs, was anything like burial.

[Adrift]

Only to Green JelloJelly songs.

They're that band with the song about the Three Little Pigs, right? No wonder you're outies.

[Juice]

Regardless of the character of Carrier, he had the relevant post where all of this material is gathered. It was convenient to use. The other scholars that write on this stuff don't have blogposts on it so I have to go to Google Books and scroll down and link the exact page which gets cumbersome. His mythicist position is entirely irrelevant to this argument. He's not the only one who puts forth this view by the way.

And Paul is not consistent in his use of terminology. He changes it based on who he's talking to. So if your whole case relies on how to specifically interpret Phil 3:21 so be it.

If the earthly tent/body is destroyed we become "naked" but don't have to worry because there's a spiritual body waiting for us in heaven to be "clothed" in. That is a very reasonable interpretation of the text given what he says about two different bodies in 1 Cor 15:40 and 15:44.

Except 2 Cor 5:1 says no such thing. You are still reading Josephus into this. All we really get from Paul here in 2 Cor 5:1-4 is the notion there are two states. One of being clothed (the eternal) and one of being unclothed.

Paul cites Hosea 13:14 here which is a reference to Sheol and Sheol was the place where disembodied spirits dwelled, not physical bodies.

Irrelevant.

1. He uses the literal Greek words for "flesh and blood" not "corruptibility of mankind."

2. The literal substance of "flesh and blood" makes perfect sense in the context of which Paul is speaking.

3. It is irrelevant if the phrase is used as a euphemism in other areas because it does not follow that he's using it the same way in 1 Cor 15:50.

At least you acknowledge it was a euphemism used elsewhere.

4. Therefore, you can't rule out the literal rendering.

Of course I can if an obvious euphemism is being employed and a literal reading is nonsensical.

http://lexiconcordance.com/greek/2666.html. This means Paul imagined the thing "swallowed" will disappear, it will be destroyed.

Death and mortality will disappear. Mortality is the thing that will be swallowed up. This happens only when immortality is put on

2. In verse 42 he says that "the body that is sown is perishable." Then in verse 50 he says the "perishable cannot inherit the imperishable."
The "sown body" won't receive imperishability by putting something on over it. The "perishable" is swallowed up or destroyed and replaced by the "imperishable." Therefore, the earthly body is not resurrected. It dies and rots while we receive a new spiritual/heavenly body.

The person will be changed and since Paul already states in verse 40 and 44 there are two different types of bodies (He actually goes out his way to distinguish the two) this makes the "two body" hypothesis entirely plausible.

Plausible sure. But a better explanation of the data than the single body hypothesis? Not even close.

He combines his Jewish background with the Hellenistic ideas of his readers. For Paul, the resurrection had to involve some type of "body."
But it's clear that the resurrected body would not be like that of the mortal Adam, but that of the glorified Christ - 1 Cor 15:45-49. So it's
not incoherent at all actually.

This isn't just Carrier's thesis. This is actually a mainstream scholarly view. Adela Yarbro Collins, John J. Collins, Geza Vermes, James Tabor, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, George Nickelsburg, Maurice Casey, Peter Lampe, Murray J. Harris, Paula Fredriksen, Dale Martin, Joost Holleman, H.J. de Jonge, and Bart Ehrman all argue something similar.

Since Paul only says the Risen Christ was experienced through "visions/revelations", never in a more "physical" way - (he actually equates the appearances without distinction), the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that Jesus was physically resurrected.

youyou who bears the burden of proof here. In the end, all you seem to be able to muster is a few strained interpretations of Paul read through the lens of Josephus writing forty years later.

[Gary]

You claimed that your "theory" was no different from Crossan's and Ehrman's. Remember? Crossan and Ehrman do not believe that Jesus had a proper burial. They believe that he was either left on the cross, or thrown into a shallow pit where soldiers might have thrown a bit of dirt on him, and then left his body to be devoured by wild dogs. That's certainly not what Paul meant by "burial".

And you can prove that?

First of all, Paul didn't say "a burial". He said, "was buried".

If my dog digs a hole in my back yard, puts a bone in there, and covers it up...the bone was BURIED. You don't need a funeral service for something to be "buried".

[Cow Poke]

First of all, Paul didn't say "a burial". He said, "was buried".

[One Bad Pig]

They're that band with the song about the Three Little Pigs, right? No wonder you're outies.

Yes, but I was thinking of a different song on the album.

[One Bad Pig]

And you can prove that?

First of all, Paul didn't say "a burial". He said, "was buried".

If my dog digs a hole in my back yard, puts a bone in there, and covers it up...the bone was BURIED. You don't need a funeral service for something to be "buried".

I'm guessing you deliberately ignored Adrift's follow-up post? You're doing that whole "reading a newspaper" thing again.

[Gary]

Gary, you are the nut. You're the one in the straightjacket screaming at the orderlies that you're sane while they drag you to the padded room. Look at yourself. You peddle quack pseudo-medicine for a living, conning innocent victims of their hard cold cash for placebos. You spent years as a Christian convinced that God ordered the murder of children, and was perfectly fine with it. You created a blog to document your barely coherent rants against a God that you now say you don't believe exists. You actually formulate your arguments based on the lunatic ravings of a conspiracy nut website filled with articles about lizard people, ancient astronauts and psychic phenomena. You constantly contradict yourself, and say some of the most patently ridiculous things every time you go into one of your soapbox sermons that you preach to an imaginary audience of fans. You're not right, man.

Not read. Comment ignored.

[Adrift]

Not read. Comment ignored.

Here's a tip. You don't have to tell me when you're ignoring my posts. That's sort of the whole point of ignoring them.

[Gary]

Paul was trained as a Pharisee under Gamaliel, one of the greatest religious teachers of his period. Pharisees strongly held that the body needed to be properly buried in order to be resurrected at the end times. That's why ossuaries (bone boxes), and stone hewn tombs were so popular in the 1st century (especially in Jerusalem). It was to prevent the body from being destroyed by the elements and wild animals. Allowing one's corpse to be eaten by crows and wild dogs (as Crossan and Ehrman argues) would have been unthinkable. It's why, as Craig Evans explains, the imagery in Jeremiah 7:30-33 would have been so striking as punishment.

And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away.

No, there is no way that Paul, trained as a Pharisee, would have thought that a body thrown into a pit with some dirt kicked on top, and exposed to packs of wild dogs, was anything like burial.

Assumptions.

Tens of thousands of Jews were crucified in the first century yet archeologists have only found ONE of these crucified persons in an ossuary? Where are the rest of them??? Answer: Most likely in common graves dug by the Romans. Do you believe that first century Jews believed that all these devout Jews who died fighting for Jewish independence would not rise in the final resurrection??? If so, please give your source.

Yes, proper burial was and is very important to Jews. But when your country is being occupied by a brutal foreign, pagan force, your Jewish sensitivities about proper burial aren't going to be a high priority on the Occupier's priority list. Historical evidence regarding Pilate is strong evidence of this. In most cases, the bodies of Jews who were crucified were tossed into a common grave and covered over. The entire purpose of crucifixion was a painful humiliation and a warning to other potential trouble-makers. Denying a proper burial to the executed person was part of the humiliation and stigma of being crucified.

It is certainly possible that some of Jesus' disciples watched what happened to his body after it was taken down from the cross and witnessed it being buried in a common grave with the bodies of other criminals, and THAT is how the tradition of "a burial" began.

[Gary]

Here's a tip. You don't have to tell me when you're ignoring my posts. That's sort of the whole point of ignoring them.

I do it because I know it annoys you.

:)

[Adrift]

Assumptions.

Tens of thousands of Jews were crucified in the first century yet archeologists have only found ONE of these crucified persons in an ossuary? Where are the rest of them??? Answer: Most likely in common graves dug by the Romans. Do you believe that first century Jews believed that all these devout Jews who died fighting for Jewish independence would not rise in the final resurrection??? If so, please give your source.

Yes, proper burial was and is very important to Jews. But when your country is being occupied by a brutal foreign, pagan force, your Jewish sensitivities about proper burial aren't going to be a high priority on the Occupier's priority list. Historical evidence regarding Pilate is strong evidence of this. In most cases, the bodies of Jews who were crucified were tossed into a common grave and covered over. The entire purpose of crucifixion was a painful humiliation and a warning to other potential trouble-makers. Denying a proper burial to the executed person was part of the humiliation and stigma of being crucified.

It is certainly possible that some of Jesus' disciples watched what happened to his body after it was taken down from the cross and witnessed it being buried in a common grave with the bodies of other criminals, and THAT is how the tradition of "a burial" began.