Here’s how to fold a $50 note if you want to inject a bit of intrigue into the process…
I realise that this isn’t particularly theological… but hey it’s only 30 seconds! Coming up soon: Pondering what happens between death & future resurrection…
Men 2 Boyz
Well last night my bro-in-law and I played a sweet gig at the local pub – the Greyhound (2-time winner of “third cleanest pub in high street, beeston”). It was an open-mic night, so we got up there, I borrowed a guitar, my bro-in-law pulled out a carefully concealed harmonica, and we wowed the crowd with our own distinctive version of a song called “Holy Grail”. There were at least 6 people in the crowd – IF NOT MORE. So anyway, I probably should come up with a stage name now, so that people don’t confuse the hilarious and provocative antics of my stage persona with the insightful theological musings of my blog persona. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.
Book Review: In the Footsteps of Paul
In the Footsteps of Paul is a photographic gift-book that follows the story of Acts, illustrating its locations alongside parts of its text. I noticed that James K gave it a positive review on his blog, so was looking forward to it when Thomas Nelson sent me a copy. Overall, I like the book – and I’ll try to sum up why that is, as well as mention a couple of shortcomings.
There are two things that really work well about this book:
Firstly, the photographs are excellent. I’d heard of Ken Duncan before, but I don’t think I’d particularly taken notice of his photography. He really does have an eye for a good picture – and the multitude of good photos in this book make it perfect to leave on the coffee table and flip through when you have time to sit down. Some of the photos are of scenery, some are of archaeological sites, some are of early Christian artwork in the relevant locations… all attempt to find something in the location that draws attention to the action in the book of Acts in some illuminating way.
Secondly, I like the idea of pursuing the storyline of Acts – it gives direction and continuity to the masses of pictures, and means that it can be read through from beginning to end in a way that makes good sense. The book makes me interested in the locations and interested in the text of Acts – so for those reasons alone, I’m glad to have it.
I think there are also a couple of shortcomings – one about the genre and one about the explanations/quotations:
Firstly, the genre of the book is a somewhat awkward one: It attempts to provide both an illumination of Paul’s world, and a Christian pilgrimage that celebrates the legacy of Paul… But can those things be combined? If one is trying to celebrate Paul’s Christian legacy, one will inevitably be looking for direct links to Paul himself – and so the most common words in the book are “Paul would have” – Paul would have gone here, or seen this, or passed through this passage, or sat in this seat… This made me a little bit uncomfortable, as I would personally have been happier with a simple illumination of the world that Acts describes, without being bothered about the buzz of thinking that Paul himself might have actually touched/seen/walked in that exact location. At times, this search for a “Paul buzz” results in some comments that are really pushing it: So on p49 we see a picture of a stone seat, with the claim: “Peter and Paul both would have sat in this chair, which was Saint Peter’s chair.” Hmmmm…
Secondly, I felt that the quotations from famous Christians didn’t really add much – in fact I found they distracted me from following the movement of Acts itself. And some of the explanations were a bit off. For example, we are told on p113 that the temple of Apollo in Corinth was built in the fourth century BC. I’ve never heard this dating before – as far as I’m aware, it was built in the 6th century BCE – so this slip up made me wonder if any other facts were off too.
But in the end, this is a photo-book, and as such, it really does excell. It’s a great book to have on the coffee table, and to inspire you to come back again to the book of Acts, and hear it afresh.
Did Christians in Corinth deny the resurrection because of a preference for the immortality of the soul?
It is important to consider which views of the plight of the dead may have been influential in Roman Corinth – particularly for those who had yearnings for Roman respectability. One obvious parallel is Josephus, who, it seems, consciously attempted to present Jewish conceptions of the afterlife in a way that would make sense and appeal to his Greek-reading Roman readership.
It is worth noting that, although Josephus generally highlighted a dualism between body and soul (with the soul being immortal)[1], he apparently did not consider the idea of future inhabitation of new bodies to be inaccessible to his readership.
Josephus’ presentation of the views of the Pharisees in this regard (two posts ago) are evocative of the reception of both Pythagoras and Socrates, in allowing for the return of the soul to an earthly body. Elledge cites Poseidonius’ summary of Pythagorean teachings:
For the teaching of Pythagoras is strong among them…, that the souls of men are immortal… and after an ordained number of years they come to life again…, as the soul enters into a different body.[2]
Similarly, Socrates is presented by Plato as holding that “the living come to life again from among the dead, a concept that Elledge identifies as “an ancient tradition of palingenesis“[3] – or reincarnation.
Josephus himself puts forward the view that virtuous souls will return to human bodies:
Do you not know, then, that (as for) those who exit from life in accordance with the law of nature and repay the obligation received from God, when the one who has given (it) chooses to receive (it), theirs is eternal fame, their houses and families are secured, their souls remain pure and obedient, having been allotted (by God) the holiest region of heaven, from which as the revolution of the ages they return again to inhabit undefiled bodies.[4]
This reminds of similar wording in the Wisdom of Solomon:
I was a good child, receiving a good soul [psuchēs… agathēs], or rather, being good, I came into an undefiled body [sōma amianton].[5]
It seems that the idea of a soul entering a body was not necessarily objectionable in a “Jewish Hellenistic” context, so long as it was a body fit to receive a pure soul. Such a possibility also appears to be the case in Seneca’s (notably, first century Roman) Stoicism. Elledge points to Seneca’s conception of future bodily restoration following a cosmic conflagration: In the future,
when the time shall come in which the world extinguishes itself in order to be renewed, these things will destroy themselves by their own powers, and stars will clash with stars and whatever now shines forth from the (current) order (of the world) will burn, as all matter blazes in a single fire – us too. When it will seem good to God to set these things in motion once again, as all things are falling, we who are blessed souls and who have been allotted eternal things shall be turned again to our former elements as a small appendage to this vast ruin.[6]
It should not be immediately assumed, then, that philosophically-inclined inhabitants of first-century Roman Corinth would have found the idea of the future enlivening of “our former elements” utterly inaccessible. Bruce Winter is too sweeping when he claims:
[R]esurrection would have been a complete enigma to the first-century Gentile who believed in the immortality of the soul and the cessation of the body’s senses at death.[7]
It may be that alongside a denial of “the resurrection of the dead” in Corinth was a belief in the immortality of the soul, but this is by no means the only possibility. It may be that the Corinthians considered themselves to have entered immortality already. Indeed, one conception of “immortality” in the first century was that of a present divine quality of existence. Epicurus insists that this quality will be borne by those who practise his ways:
But you [the follower of Epicurus' ways] will live as a god [theos] among humans [en anthrōpois]. For a person living amidst immortal [athanatois] goods is nothing like a mortal [thnētō] being.[8]
The fact that Plutarch refers to Epicureans as those who call themselves immortal/imperishable indicates that such a concept of qualitative immortality was alive in the first century:
What great pleasure [hēdonēs] belongs to these people [the Epicureans], and what blessing they enjoy, rejoicing about their lack of suffering and grief and pain! Therefore, is it not fitting, on account of these things, also to think and to speak as they do speak, calling themselves immortal [or 'imperishable': aphthartous] and equal to gods [isotheous]…![9]
Indeed, the Epicurean “rejoicing” in personal immortality went hand-in-hand with their lack of hope for the dead….
Anyway, given that this whole little series is getting the silence treatment (apart from Steph, to whom I am grateful for a most-pleasing comment!), I will wrap up my thoughts here… To sum up: Ummm… oh my brain’s fried – go read the whole lot again and make your own summary 
[1] Elledge draws attention to this: “The majority of Josephus’ comments on immortality present a dualistic anthropology. This anthropology preserves the immortality of the soul by accentuating the mortality of the physical body.” Elledge (2006) 128; emphasis original
[2] Cited in Elledge (2006) 104
[3] Elledge (2006) 107; emphasis original
[4] War 3.372-76 (not my own translation, for once!)
[5] 8:19-20
[6] Cited in Elledge (2006) 112; emphasis mine.
[7] Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK, Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001) 104.
[8] Letter to Menoeceus, 135
[9] Against Epicurean Happiness, 1091b-c
Did Greeks believe in the immortality of the soul?
Although Plato certainly held to the immortality of the soul (as opposed to the body), it seems noteworthy that the two main Greek philosophical schools of the time of Paul - the Epicureans and the Stoics (whom Paul had addressed in Athens) – both believed in the mortality of the soul.
The Epicureans appear to have believed, following Epicurus himself, that the soul was extinguished with the death of the body. This is because the soul itself was corporeal, being intermixed with the bodily parts in such a way that post-mortal survival was impossible. On the corporeality of the soul, Epicurus writes:
So those who say that the soul [psuchēn] is incorporeal [asōmaton] are speaking vainly.[1]
Lucretius, writing in Rome in the first century BCE, similarly argues:
Therefore the soul [animi] is necessarily of a corporeal [corpoream] nature, as it labours under the impact of corporeal spears.[2]
Intermixed with our members and entire body is the power of the soul and of the spirit.[3]
Epicurus consequently reasons about death:
Therefore death [thanatos], the most fearsome of evils, is nothing to us, seeing as when we exist, death is not present; and when death is present, we do not exist. So death is nothing to those who are living or to those who have died, seeing as for the one, it is nothing, and for the other, they are nothing.[4]
And again, Lucretius concurs:
Death, therefore, is nothing to us – of no concern at all, if we understand that the soul [animi] has a mortal nature.[5]
Stoicism similarly appears to have held to the non-eternality of the soul, although this did not necessarily mean immediate extinguishment upon the death of the body. Like the Epicureans, they held that the soul could not be usefully thought of as independently incorporeal, given that it was inextricably linked to sensation and activity – characteristics of the corporeal. Sextus Empiricus reports:
For according to them [the Stoics] the incorporeal [asōmaton] is not such that it can either act or suffer.[6]
Plutarch reports:
And the proof he [the Stoic Chrysippus] uses that the soul [psuchēn] is generated [gegonenai] – and generated after the body – is mainly that the manner and character of the children bears a resemblance to their parents.[7]
Eusebius elucidates a Stoic conception of the afterlife:
They [Stoics] say that the soul [psuchēn] is both generated [genētēn] and mortal [phthartēn]. But it is not immediately destroyed upon being separated from the body. Rather it remains for some time by itself – that of the diligent remains until the dissolution of all things by fire; and that of the foolish remains only for a limited time. About the endurance of the soul they say this: That we ourselves remain as souls which have been separated from the body and have been changed into the lesser substance of the soul; whereas the souls of irrational beings are destroyed along with their bodies.[8]
It would certainly be too simplistic, then, to claim that a “Greek” notion of the afterlife in the first century generally involved the liberation of the incorporeal soul into utopian immortality. It is consequentially unhelpful to say that the resurrection-denial in Corinth simply involved a clash of “Jewish” and “Greek” views about the afterlife – particularly when you throw in the fact that Corinth was a Roman colony.
[1] Letter to Herodotus, 67
[2] 3.175-6
[3] 3.275
[4] Letter to Menoeceus, 125
[5] 3.830
[6] Against the Professors, 8.263
[7] On Stoic Self-Contradictions 1053d
[8] Evangelical Preparation, 15.20.6
Did early Judaism believe in the bodily resurrection of the dead?
It seems to me that we could say this: Early Judaism did not involve a common orthodoxy concerning the bodily resurrection of the dead. Alongside beliefs in bodily resurrection (exhibited in 2 Maccabees, for example), was a range of beliefs about the immortality of the soul and the nature of the afterlife.
The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides evidence a Jewish belief in immortality of the soul:
For souls [psuchai] remain unharmed in those who have perished. For the spirit [pneuma] is God’s loan to mortals [thnētoisi], and his image. For we have a body from the earth; and then after we are released to earth again, we are dust [konis]. But the air receives the spirit.[1]
The soul [psuchē] is immortal [athanatos] and ageless, living forever.[2]
Likewise, the Wisdom of Solomon envisages the afterlife as involving immortal souls:
They [that is, the immortal souls of the once-persecuted righteous] will judge the nations [krinousin ethnē], and rule over peoples [kratēsousi laōn], and the Lord will rule [basileusei] over them for eternity.[3]
I was a good child, receiving a good soul [psuchēs… agathēs], or rather, being good, I came into an undefiled body [sōma amianton].[4]
The Epistle of Enoch looks ahead to the blessed survival of good souls after death:
I swear to you: I understand this mystery [mustērion]…. That goodness and joy and honour have been prepared and written down for the souls of those who have died [apothanontōn] while godly [eusebōn].[5]
Similarly, Josephus appears to hold to the immortality of the soul, as opposed to the temporality of the body:
For [in the act of sex] the soul [psuchēs] is divided, departing to another place; for it suffers [kakopathei] when being implanted in bodies [sōmasi] and similarly at death when it is divided from them. Therefore purifications for all of these things are commanded.[6]
According to Josephus, even the Pharisees, like the Essenes, held to a Greek-like idea of an immortal soul for all people. Unlike the Essenes, they held that good souls would also receive new bodies:
For this is their doctrine [that is, the Essenes]: That bodies [sōmata] are mortal [phtharta], and their material is not permanent; but that souls [psuchas] are immortal [athanatous] and endure forever; and that they come out of thin air, so that they are bound to their bodies as to a prison, drawn in by a certain natural [phusikē] enticement; but being released from their fleshly bonds [tōn kata sarka desmōn], as set free from a long slavery, they then rejoice and rise upwards. And this is similar to the opinions of the Greeks who hold that good souls have a dwelling beyond the ocean.[7]
[The Pharisees say that] every soul [psuchēn] is immortal [aphtharton], but that only those of good people are removed into another body [sōma]; while those of the simple are subjected to everlasting punishment.[8]
The Psalms of Solomon, arguably representative of Pharisaic thought, only once refer to resurrection, and there the reference is not unambiguously to a bodily experience:
The destruction [apōleia] of the sinner is forever [eis ton aiōna] and such a person will not be remembered when God visits the righteous. This is the fate of sinners forever; but those who fear the Lord will be raised [anastēsontai] to eternal life [zōēn aiōnion]. And their life will be in the light of the Lord, and it will not go out.[9]
In contrast, Paul appears to hold that even those who belong to Christ lack immortality until they experience bodily resurrection. The reason seems to be that Paul’s conception of the future/afterlife has become utterly Christocentric: Until Christ’s cosmic vindication is completed with his appearance and judgement of death, it is inconceivable that those who belong to Christ will pre-empt the sharing of his immortal exaltation. Rather, they must follow in his footsteps and, at his appearing, share his bodily glory:
But each in its own order: Christ the firstfruits, then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ. (1 Cor 15:23)
And just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, so also we will bear the image of the one of heaven. (1 Cor 15:49)
For this mortality must be clothed with immortality (1 Cor 15:53)
[1] Sentences, 105-108
[2] Sentences, 115
[3] Wisdom of Solomon 3:8
[4] Wisdom of Solomon 8:19-20
[5] 1 Enoch 103:1-3
[6] Against Apion, II, 203
[7] Jewish War: BJ II, 154-155.
[8] Jewish War: BJ II, 164.
[9] PsSol 3:11-12.
Primary Sources Online
Perhaps, like me, you find that locating primary sources in their original languages is a bit hit & miss. Here are three online locations I use, which are pretty good. If you know of any similar resources worth sharing, let us know…
Perseus Digital Library: This has a good amount of Greek & Roman stuff, English translations, and some interesting archaeological artefacts/site descriptions.
Online Critical Pseudepigrapha: I’ve been using this today, translating some bits n pieces from 1 Enoch. It’s very easy to use, and comes with critical apparatus.
Universite Catholique de Louvain: This has LOADS of ancient Greek texts, as well as French translations. They ain’t pretty, but they are numerous.
1 Corinthians in a sentence
Those in Corinth who consider the foolish (4:10), the defrauded (6:7-8), the obligated (7:5), the weak (8:7), the enslaved (9:19), the restricted (10:23), the subject (11:3), the unimpressive (12:15), the restrained (14:28), and the dead (15:12) – that is, the cruciform – to have no portion with God have fundamentally misunderstood the God who raises the dead.
The Gabriel Revelation and Jewish Expectations
I’m doing a lot of thinking about pre-Christian Jewish considerations of afterlife/immortality/resurrection at the moment. There was clearly a variety of beliefs about post-mortal vindication in early Judasim, and I’ve reluctantly decided to look into the so-called “Gabriel Revelation” to see if that adds anything.
I’ve always wondered: Why did Jesus and Paul think that the Scriptures predicted a resurrection on the third day??? I just don’t think that the hints in Hosea etc are sufficient – I think there must have been some sort of traditional development that employed the idea of vindication/judgement/climax after “three days”… and perhaps the Gabriel Revelation provides some evidence that this sort of motif was in use just prior to Jesus – which would be a pleasingly enlightening find!
But oh dear… Israel Knohl really seems to draw some silly conclusions from this possibility in this Time article:
This, in turn,[that is, the possibility that Judaism had begun to explore the idea of a three-day resurrection before Jesus was born] undermines one of the strongest literary arguments employed by Christians over centuries to support the historicity of the Resurrection (in which they believe on faith): the specificity and novelty of the idea that the Messiah would die on a Friday and rise on a Sunday. Who could make such stuff up? But, as Knohl told TIME, maybe the Christians had a model to work from. The idea of a “dying and rising messiah appears in some Jewish texts, but until now, everyone thought that was the impact of Christianity on Judaism,” he says. “But for the first time, we have proof that it was the other way around. The concept was there before Jesus.” If so, he goes on, “this should shake our basic view of Christianity. … What happens in the New Testament [could have been] adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”
Since when is the novelty of a three-day resurrection “one of the strongest literary arguments employed by Christians over centuries to support the historicity of the Resurrection”? On the contrary – I would say that the intended credibility of the early Christian message depended on previously existing Jewish traditions of expected vindication. But despite his misdirected apologetic approach, I have decided to buy Knohl’s book, just on the off-chance the text of the Gabriel Revelation itself helps illuminate the world of the 1st century BCE just a little more… we will see…
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