Originally posted by seanD
View Post
Jesus' divine proclamations:
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[b] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Jesus ascending to heaven
Luke 24:50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. 51 While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.
Jesus getting past (or through?) locked doors.
19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews,[c] Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you."
Jesus providing food:
6 He said to them, "Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish.
And of course the author of Matthew has the dead saints walking around:
Matthew 27:52 The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, 53 and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
Do these count as the "fantastic "mythology" we would expect of an ancient world?" or not, seanD. You tell me, and we can work on from there.
We also see at least the theology of spectacle in 1 Peter 3:19-20.
1 Peter 3:19 in which[c] he went and proclaimed[d] to the spirits in prison, 20 because[e] they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.
The later Christian apocryphal works, like the gospel of Peter and the gospel of Bartholomew, also understood the necessity of the resurrection spectacle and followed patterns we would expect of Christian fictional works. And this is even more so if these were based off of hallucinations, as mentioned earlier. Proving he was resurrected flesh didn't negate the spectacle we see in Luke, or the angel ascending out of heaven and terrifying the guards that we see in Matthew.
I take your point about proving he was resurrected flesh. If Jesus was physically resurrected it is reasonable that he would want to establish that. However, it is also reasonable to suppose that the early Christians would want to establish that too, and so might be tempted to embellish the narrative to make that clear. The fact is that we do not know either way.
Comment