Tag: Wright: Christian Origins and the Question of God

Darn it. I mixed up the numbering of my response to Wright series and left out “3”. So let this one be #3, even if it’s only an indirect response.

The gospels failed to settle the argument

The mere fact that John’s gospel presents Jesus as a palpable body, one that could be felt by Thomas, did not necessarily “prove” to ancient readers that Jesus was physical flesh and blood. I listed some of the different accounts of spirits in my previous (#5 response) post that showed they could in several cases eat and drink, wear clothes, touch and be touched, etc.

In the gospel of Luke the author chose to have Jesus explain to his disciples that a spirit does not have flesh and bones, “as you see that I have”. Yet the Greek word for “have” can also have the sense of “be” or “am”. Accordingly Marcionite Christians read this passage to mean that Jesus was telling his disciples to touch him and see that he really was a spirit body, without physical flesh and bones. Riley (1995) p.65 citing Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 4.43.7

The different meanings of “body”

Yet it is also true that many ancients found the idea absolutely repulsive that very same flesh and blood which one had inhabited before death would be reinhabited after death. Many of us today are probably more sheltered from the reality of death than were many who lived in earlier days, and the ugly reality that this idea suggested probably sprang to mind more naturally than it does for some of us. So how did the early Christians interpret the gospel narratives of Jesus appearing in a recognizable “body“?

Before looking at different Christian views, a look at how pagans among whom they lived used the word:

Virgil used the word “corpora” (the equivalent of the Greek σωμα), what we would take for a corporeal body, to refer to dead souls in the Aeneid VI, 303-308. Describing the people in or entering into Hades (and Latin specialists kindly excuse my schoolboy level attempts at translation):

[Charon] . . . ferruginea subvectat corpora cymba,
matres atque viri, defunctaque corpora vita
magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae
impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum:

[Charon] carries over the bodies in his reddish-dark boat
mothers and men, deceased (yet) living bodies
great hearted heroes, boys and unmarried girls
youths placed on funeral pyres before their parents’ eyes

Of course it would be preferable for us to translate ‘corpora’ as ‘souls’ in this context given our cultural understanding of what is meant. The point is the word for “body” (Latin corpora or Greek soma) can be understood in ancient parlance as a synonym for “soul” or “spirit” or “ghost”.

Wright (p.43) dismisses Virgil’s use of “corpora” to describe the dead as “occasional”, and in fact irrelevant to his argument because to Virgil these bodies were without their former power and strength, and are elsewhere described as mere shadowy forms. He misses the point. Even “mere shadowy forms” were still “bodies” in the ancient schema.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:44 of our bodies:

It is sown a soulish body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a soulish body, and there is a spiritual body.

σπειρεται σωμα ψυχικον, εγειρεται σωμα πνευματικον ει εστιν σωμα ψυχικον και πνευματικον

English Bibles usually translate the word ψυχικον “natural” or “physical”. The Latin equivalent would be “animale”. It refers to the essence that “animates” the body, “the animating life sustaining force in man and animals”. It is the root of our word “psychic”. Paul here contrasts it with the “spiritual” or “pneumatic” body. Stong’s Concordance contrasts it with “spiritual/pneumatic” above and “physical/phusikos” below, which pertained to the animals.

Gregory Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, p.62f, writes that unless the original passage is translated “soulish body” readers will miss the focus of the ancient arguments over the verse’s interpretation. Tertullian debated with other Christians who interpreted 1 Cor.15:44 to mean that it was the “soul” that was called the “soulish body” and that it was this soul (soulish body) that was resurrected, while the flesh remained behind in decay. The soulish body (soul) was said to be changed to a spiritual body when it was filled with the spirit at the resurrection.

Unfortunately for Tertullian he had one arm tied behind his back in his debate. Both he and his opponents accepted the belief that the soul was itself a corporeal substance. Otherwise it could not be tormented with physical pain in hell. (Riley, p.62)

We know from Paul, Polycarp, Justin, Tertullian and Origen that many Christians did indeed believe that the physical body was not resurrected, or that the resurrection pertained to “the soulish body”. To counter this widespread “heresy” church fathers like Irenaeus and Athenagoras put themselves through intellectual contortions to explain how a physical body could simultaneously be a spiritual body when resurrected. Irenaeus “explained” that the fleshly body was a spiritual body by virtue of being possessed by the Spirit. Athenagoras was even “clearer”: while we have flesh, it will not seem as if we have flesh, because we shall be heavenly spirits. (Adv. Haer. 5.7.2 and Legatio 31 in Riley, p.64)

Conclusion

That the word “body” and the term “resurrection of the body” ramained ambiguous into the fifth century, capable of being interpreted either as “flesh” or “spirit-soul”, we have the complaint of Jerome:

We believe, say they, in the resurrection of the body. This confession, if only it be sincere, is free from objection. But as there are bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial and as thin air and the æther are both according to their natures called bodies, they use the word body instead of the word flesh in order that an orthodox person hearing them say body may take them to mean flesh while a heretic will understand that they mean spirit.

He wanted them to use the unambiguous expression “resurrection of the flesh”.

The resurrection of the body, bodily resurrection, was not so black and white a concept when Christianity was born and established itself as it is to many Christians today.

apols for posting this before serious proof-reading — ongoing editing under way . . . (9th May)

Continuing from previous post:

Wright argues that the narratives of the resurrection appearances in our canonical gospels are based on traditions that were set and hardened well before the gospels came to be written. Discussed one in previous post and attached comments. One more to go:

• I will include here Wright’s reasons for thinking it noteworthy that the gospel authors did not describe the resurrected Jesus as a shining resplendent star or such — this fact supposedly demonstrates that the early “traditions” were based on some real historical experience

One reason Jesus does not appear as anything other than a normal human after his resurrection in two of the gospels is because these gospels reflect the popular literature of the period by concluding with a series of dramatic recognition scenes at the end of their stories. It was a popular trope for novelists to conclude their stories of adventure with their long lost (and thought to be dead) hero appearing at the end, with his or her associates only gradually come to recognize their loved one through a series of recognition scenes. Homer’s Odysseus was only recognized by his former nurse when she, like Thomas in the gospel, placed her hands in his old wounds. But the pattern is repeated many times in other popular literature, too.

Luke does this first with the unrecognized and then flash in the pan appearance with the Emmaus disciples; and then finally in full bodily presence before the rest of the disciples. But even then they need to be shown ways to prove that it really is Jesus. Ditto in the gospel of John. Mary does not recognize him at first. It takes time and the speaking of her name before she can. Again Jesus has to show them the clues (his wounds) to prove that he really is Jesus. Scars, birthmarks, wounds were common clues to eventually identify the long lost hero in popular stories.

Another reason is specific to Luke’s gospel. Luke is using his narrative to address (counter) the claims of docetic views that rejected the humanity/fleshiness of Jesus. This is evident from the earliest chapters when he traced Jesus’ genealogy right back to Adam, the first human. Luke’s Jesus contrasts a spirit body with a body of flesh and bones. John’s Jesus does not make this contrast, but only shows his body, with its wounds, to identify himself as their earlier leader, Jesus himself, who has come back from the dead. This was discussed in my second post in this series. Additional novelistic motifs in the gospel of John were discussed previously in yet another post.

The fact that two of the gospels describe Jesus as appearing like a mortal after his resurrection is consistent with the novelistic or storytelling motifs and theological interests that shaped their authors’ world.

The gospel of Mark had no resurrection appearance. A missing corpse was another way for ancient literature to alert readers to a resurrection of some sort. Matthew’s gospel does not describe his appearance or body at all.

Wright argues that if the gospel authors made up the story of Jesus being resurrected from the dead they would not have told it the way they did. In fact, this appears to be a regular argument of Wright’s. If it were not true, they would not have written it like that. One is tempted to respond that such an argument really testifies to Wright’s lack of imagination or diligence in seeking to understand, through natural (as opposed to supernatural) scholarly constructs, the texts as we have them. A miracle, he concludes, offers the best “explanatory power” for the origins of Christianity. I suspect he can only get away with such claims because of the “force field” effect of writing hundreds and hundreds of pages alluding to scholarly arguments. The sheer weight of the reading may well bludgeon some less familiar with the arguments into assuming all these pages must really knock natural explanations for the rise of Christianity on the head. The purpose of this mini-series of posts is to expose the emptiness of just a few of the points Wright makes in the midst of his pages of digressions and elaborations of colour and multitudes of footnotes.

Wright claims that if the gospel authors made up the story of Jesus’ resurrection appearances they would have described him more like a shining star, a figure of glorified splendour like the angelic and worship-worthy figures in the Book of Daniel.

So Wright’s argument is based on his ability to read the minds of the authors. No matter that the many ancient authors who did describe living re-appearances of the dead described them as having the same appearance as when they were alive. Wright is confident that the biblical authors would never have written about the living appearances of the dead the way nonbiblical authors did. The nonbiblical authors wrote fiction, so if the biblical authors did write anything resembling pagan depictions of the living-dead, it must be because they were recording facts, and not fiction.

But, Wright argues, they did not write anything truly resembling pagan depictions of the dead-now-appearing-to-be-living, because the pagan bodies did not fit the same description of Jesus’ body. Even though both the pagan bodies and Jesus’ body could pass through material objects, could speak and eat, wear clothes and display their wounds, feel human emotions and care for the living, even (in at least one famous pagan story) be returned to flesh and blood bodily life, Wright insists there can be no legitimate comparison.

One reason he gives is that educated ancients did not believe in the historical truth of their stories. Well, yes, need one even have to raise the obvious? They didn’t believe the Christian story either!

Another reason he gives is that despite some similarities between the pagan and biblical narratives, there are also some differences. Well, there are differences among the various pagan stories, too. Without differences there would only be one story, not lots — by definition we could never have many stories around this idea unless there were differences. Here are some of the variations:

1. Most remain as shadowy bodies unable to be grasped (Aeneid, Odyssey) — the gospel of Luke is possibly attempting to go one better and set Jesus apart from these by having him demonstrate his flesh bones body-ness (even though he can still go through walls)
2. But even pagans had stories of their exceptions who indeed did return from dead in their physical flesh and blood bodies (Alcestis) — Wright says there is no comparison with Jesus here because Jesus was to live forever and Alcestis died again. Of course this is special pleading. The fact is that there is a direct comparison to be made, regardless of the subsequent fates of the characters.
3. Others cower in fear at material swords (Odysseus holding the dead at bay with his sword)
4. Others take no notice of swords (Aeneas is told he is wasting his time using his sword)
5. Some can only scream in whispers
6. And others can speak quite normally
7. Most appear just as they did when alive
8. Yet others can or do appear as another person entirely (Astrabacus appeared as Ariston)
9. One ancient historian, Herodotus, even recorded an account of a dead hero, Astrabacus, returning to embrace and have sex with a living woman, and leave behind a part of his head-gear as a momento of the event. And there was a time when Romans sacrificed young girls so their souls could serve dead soldiers sexually.
10. Some wrote that the dead were brought back up from Hades (Hercules rescued Alcestis)
11. One ancient theologian wrote that Jesus went down to Hades to preach to the spirits and then returned with escorting angels to go up to heaven (The Gospel of Peter)
12. Another wrote that some were raised by a word, others by a touch, others after some days in a tomb, one by touching the bones of a dead prophet, another after three rounds of body to body massage. (The various old and new testament biblical stories)
13. Some wrote that many were persuaded that the dead reappeared to a mortal witness at dawn, and commanded that witness to go and report to others (Romulus, Jesus)
14. Some departed dead reappeared in recognizable form with their first words being, “Peace, Take courage, Don’t be afraid.” (Scipio Africanus, Jesus)
15. The dead would reappear to pass on instructions to the living (Romulus, Scipio, Patroclus, Samuel, Jesus)
16. Many of them showed off their mortal wounds (Clytemnestra, Eurydice, Hector, Jesus)

The variations we see in the Jesus narrative are all part and parcel of the constellation of mutations of the same basic idea. To make a special case for the unique features of just one of the above characters is pedantic nonsense and special pleading.

Virgil, Euripides, Herodotus and Homer speak of the dead, though “spirit”, still having the form and even feelings of their fleshly bodies. They wore clothes, they could eat and drink, they could play board games, they could inflict pain and death with weapons and their hands on the living, they could feel pain and be seriously threatened by the swords of the living, and they could even have sex both with each other and the living. (See Gregory Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, p.50ff)

The fact that Jesus is depicted by one or two of the evangelists as having a palpable as opposed to shadowy body is not a common portrayal of the returned dead, but it is not unique either.

Virgil argued with Homer over the latter’s portrayal of Odysseus being able to hold departed souls at bay with his sword. Virgil said that was a nonsense in his Aeneid. Aeneas was reminded by his companions that was silly to even try to threaten souls that way. In a similar dialogue with other narratives, Luke and perhaps John, decided to prove that their resurrected hero surpassed the pagan dead by being touchable — without stinking or looking like a zombie (if indeed the authors really did imagine him truly physical — not all early Christians interpreted Luke’s gospel that way) — yet still with all the other attributes of spirit (being able to pass through walls, turn invisible, live forever and travel to heaven).

Conclusion

By narrating a reappearance of Jesus after his death in a bodily form the evangelists are not struck by historical reality, but merely following the conventions of the times.

Revised May 8 2008

Continuing from a previous post:

Wright argues that the narratives of the resurrection appearances in our canonical gospels are based on traditions that were set and hardened well before the gospels came to be written. Discussed one in previous post and attached comments. Two more to go:

• the different gospel accounts do not betray any textual or narrative interdependence
• I will include here Wright’s reasons for thinking it noteworthy that the gospel authors did not describe the resurrected Jesus as a shining resplendent star or such — this fact supposedly demonstrates that the early “traditions” were based on some real historical experience

Textual and narrative interdependence

(Following I use Matthew and Mark interchangeably as both the authors of the gospels and as the titles of the gospels attributed to them.)

Matthew clearly used (either copying directly or re-writing) the narrative of Mark. It is said that Matthew repeats about 600 of Mark’s 661 verses. Mark has no resurrection appearance, but that does not hide the fact that Matthew’s resurrection appearance scenes grew out of Matthew’s use and knowledge of Mark.

How Matthew built on Mark’s narrative for the resurrection appearances:

Mark created a narrative in which:

• Jesus was reported as arranging to see his disciples, after his resurrection, in Galilee.
• This message was conveyed through a mysterious “young man”,
• who instructed the women at the tomb to pass it on to the disciples.
• These women had come to anoint the corpse of Jesus even though it belatedly dawned on them that they would not be able to enter the tomb with its massive stone obstructing its entrance.
• And when these women heard the message from the young man, they were said to have run off immediately without even telling the disciples after all.
• They were said to have been too fearful to say a word to anyone. And that is where the original text of Mark’s gospel ends.
• See Mark 16:1-8.

Matthew then, after reading Mark, wrote a revised narrative:

• Like Mark, he wrote that Jesus would see his disciples, after his resurrection, in Galilee.
• But this message was made more authoritative by being conveyed, not by a mere young man whom readers might wonder if he was an angel or not, but by an unambiguous angel who came down from heaven and with superstrength rolled aside the massive stone from the tomb’s entrance
• As in Mark, this angel instructed the women to pass the message on to the disciples
• But Mark’s nonsense of the women coming to anoint a body when they knew they could not enter the tomb is removed by Matthew. Matthew re-writes the more sensible account that the women merely came to see the tomb.
• And when these women heard the message from the angel, they were said to have run off immediately — just as Mark also said —
• but unlike Mark’s account, they ran off to tell the disciples after all. Matthew had added to Mark’s Fear the emotion of “great Joy” to drive the women to break through the silence barrier and not remain silent after all.
• See Matthew 28:1-8.

So Matthew followed Mark’s script with a few modifications up to verse 8. At the critical verse 8 (not that the original gospels were written in our verse numberings of course) Matthew essentially copied Mark’s final verse but added a twist to it. The women ran off not only with Mark’s fear, but with fear tinged with a dash of joy. And, contra Mark, they ran off to tell the disciples, as commanded by the angel.

But having twisted Mark’s tail thus, how was Matthew to narrate that meeting? Mark’s original gospel ended at verse 8. The closest Mark offered for a resurrection appearance was the account in an earlier chapter of Jesus’ transfiguration on a mountain.

Matthew began by having Jesus make his first resurrection appearance to the women mourners who had come to see his tomb. But he was clearly floundering. He had no model on which to draw. Only Mark’s narrative where the young man had told the women that the disciples could see Jesus in Galilee. So what does Matthew narrate? Matthew’s Jesus zaps down to the women as they flee from the tomb. The women stop, look and listen. Even hold Jesus by the feet. And Jesus proceeds to utter his first words as a resurrected saviour. They are verbatim what Mark’s young man and Matthew’s angel had already told the women. “Go and tell my disciples they can see me in Galilee.” Yes. We have read that already. Matthew is clearly at a loss here. He is floundering when left to his own imagination.

Next, Matthew finally has that long awaited contact between the disciples and Jesus in Galilee. Again Matthew’s creative imagination is limited. The best he can offer readers is a Moses-like departure on a mountain top. He charges his successors to carry on the good work, just as Moses charged his successor Joshua to do likewise. And it is all done on a mountain top — the same topography where Jesus had earlier been transfigured, and where Moses spent his final moments.

Matthew is grasping at his bland unimaginative straws. All he knew was that he had to do better than end is gospel the same way Mark had ended his. If Mark had more subtle themes to convey with his ending of the women fleeing dumb in fear, they were wasted on Matthew. Matthew re-wrote Mark to give it a more positive ending:

• The women were not so stupid as to come to the tomb to anoint a body when they knew they couldn’t enter the tomb. They came to just visit the tomb, as mourners do.
• No mysterious “young man” was there to deliver a message to these women. None other than an angel came down. He was so unambiguous that the tomb guards fainted on the spot at the sight of him.
• And the women did not run like scared, um, girls, at the sight of him, too scared to say a word to anyone. No, they ran with fear and joy to tell the disciples!

Mark and Matthew share the same characters, the same scene, the same words, the same setting and narrative point of view or vision (camera angle) of events. That last point, the camera angle, is a vital key to establishing a Matthew-Mark interdependence. Authors without any contact would most likely imagine different points of view from which to portray a common event — the mind and/or experience of one of the women, or of a disciple who saw the women, or of someone who first saw or heard from the women, etc.

Matthew owes his resurrection appearance narrative to Mark. From Mark he derived the setting and the words and the characters. When other gospel authors disagreed with both Matthew and Mark, their disagreements were on theological and literary (not eyewitness) source grounds, as already discussed.

The textual and narrative ties between the resurrection appearances in Luke and John

The narratives of the resurrected Jesus appearing to his disciples in Luke and John share the same structure:

1. Jesus appearance to the disciples takes place in Jerusalem, not Galilee
2. Jesus appears suddenly in the midst of the disciples
3. Jesus shows his body (hands and side/feet)
4. Disciples react with joy to the appearance
5. Immediately after appearing to the disciples, Jesus speaks to them with identical words: “And said [historical present in both gospels] to them, ‘Peace with you'”
6. At the appearance Jesus presents his body as a verification [– verification that he is risen, in Luke who may well have been expressing an anti-docetic or anti-Marcionite agenda here; verification that he is indeed Jesus, in John –] and uses very similar wording: “When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet” in Luke; “When he had said this, he showed them his hands and side” in John.
7. In both gospels the authors are said to be in fear. In Luke, however, it is fear that they are seeing a ghost when they see Jesus; in the more anti-semitic John, they are hiding in fear of the Jews.
8. Both gospels speak of the disbelief of the disciples. In John the disbelief is a theological issue, and is packed into his discussion of Thomas and the need of all believers to have faith; in Luke, with a different theological agenda, the disbelief is a narrative colouring — they were confused when they saw unexpectedly Jesus, and finally were so overcome with joy that they could scarcely believe that what they were seeing was really happening.

(Adapted, with significant modification of point 6, from Matson’s In Dialogue With Another Gospel (pp. 422-424)

Matson discusses many more verbal and stylistic similarities between Luke and John’s resurrection appearance accounts.

Written sources for the Emmaus narrative in Luke

I have already discussed Luke’s use of Genesis and Judges in his construction of the Emmaus Road encounter with the resurrected Jesus. See points 6 to 10 in the Emmaus post. What follows is adapted from Matson, pp. 410-421.

But there are other indications in the text that Luke’s Emmaus narrative has been edited from other text. (I suspect that the final redactor/author of Luke-Acts has re-worked an earlier Luke, also discussed in other posts here.) The dramatic climax of the story, when the two who had just been with Jesus run off to tell the disciples of their experience, collapses into anti-climax when they completely fail to tell of their experience and instead bring in an entirely new thought nowhere before hinted at, that Jesus had appeared to Peter. Readers are left wondering how and when that could have happened, and are also left with a bland taste in place of savouring a narrative climax.

The author of the gospel was normally capable of much better than this. Indeed, his structure of staged steps to the final appearance of Jesus demonstrates his literary competence: moving from an empty tomb and confusion, then to a meeting and confusion and a mere glimpse of recognition; and finally to the full bodily appearance before all. If this is how a Jesus really did show himself and if the narrative is read as history instead of narrative drama, it reads as if he is having a joking game of hide-and-seek before revealing his resurrected self. A bit like a playfully teasing ghost?

The (final) author has awkwardly inserted the message of the appearance to Peter into an existing narrative. He was probably attempting to give life to the claim in 1 Corinthians 15 that Peter had been the first to see Jesus. (That tradition or passage in 1 Corinthians may well be a later pastoral insertion and not original to Paul anyway. If so, this would tie in with the final redactor of Luke-Acts himself giving narrative form to several Pastoralist ideas.)

Another textual anomaly in the Emmaus account is its tension against an earlier passage where the author claimed the disciples scoffed at the reports of the women about the angels at the empty tomb (24:11). Luke 24:24 in the Emmaus story contradicts that, saying that several of the disciples did pay enough attention to the women to go and investigate. Note that this is scarcely a reference only to Peter running to the tomb. Peter ran alone in Luke. In the Emmaus narrative several of the disciples took the women seriously.

While the Emmaus narrative is woven with Lukan wording and style, the evidence suggests that Luke was struggling with an earlier written story. He did not have eyewitness reports and traditions to help him piece what he wanted to say all into a seamless whole.

Conclusion

So when Wright says that the different gospel accounts do not betray any textual or narrative interdependence, he is “overstating” the case. One may disagree with some of the specifics of the arguments for narrative interdependence, and dispute the interpretation of some of the above passages. But it is misleading to insist that there is no evidence for such interdependence among the gospels in their resurrection appearance accounts.

There are clear structural and verbal links between the gospels in these narratives, and where there are differences, they are readily explained by the larger theological interest of the authors.

One more post to go to finish this mini-series . . . .