Jesus goes to Somerset

It frustrating to see that someone can easily invent things about Jesus or Jesus' life and that the story can take public proportions, it's stupid actually. Whoever came with this story and promoted it doesn't really care about Christianity or what Christians might think when reading the story. It's a huge lack of respect toward religion and it's also immature. After reading all this I wouldn't be surprised to hear new things on Jesus resurrection...

I did say resuscitation was "technically" what happened to Lazarus, as that is the word which has been used in a number of books on the subject of resurrection in order to distinguish what happened to Lazarus from what happened to Jesus. The point is that Jesus raised a number of folks from the dead - they all died again, in time. Those raisings echo raisings from the OT (eg Elisha in 2 Ki.4), which were all truly raisings from death, but those who were raised were returned to this life, rather than the next. They all died again. In the case of Lazarus, the delay between burial and raising is deliberate: Jews believed that the soul left the body after 3 days, so 4 days in the tomb proved he was properly dead. And Jesus raised him. But he was not raised with a resurrection body, he was returned to this life, and in time did die again.

Yes, it was as miraculous as the resurrection of Jesus. But it wasn't the same as the resurrection of Jesus. What happened to him was unique - so far. Paul's reflections in 1 Cor.15 suggest that what happened to Jesus was the prototype for what will happen to us.

Tony, I am slightly puzzled why you classify Lazarus' "comeback" as a resuscitation, rather than a resurrection. A definition of resuscitation depends on the length of time someone is clinically dead, not on the nature of the body when it is clearly alive again. Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. Perhaps I am splitting hairs, but it is as miraculous to my mind as the resurrection of Jesus.

Anyway, to come back to my original point. Catherine: which miracles, if any, are you willing to accept? If you can accept some of them, then why can't you - in principle - accept them all?

It is a common argument that the original resurrection traditions were all about appearances (which by implication were 'spiritual'), and that the empty tomb stories only came in much later (ie Mark, writing possibly in the 60s or even later). On closer examination, this simply doesn't hold water.

In the first place, it is true that Paul's argument in 1 Cor. 15:3f does not mention the empty tomb. Of course it doesn't. It isn't about where Jesus was buried, but about a sequence of appearances to reputable witnesses as evidence for the resurrection, a sequence which culminates in the appearance to Paul. To have deviated from that sequence would have diverted the rhetoric and interrupted the flow of the argument. In any case, the empty tomb was irrelevant to the readership of the letter: to suggest that the body was no longer where it was put is inviting examination of the evidence (as indeed the list of appearances to "some of whom are still alive" suggests "If you don't believe me, ask them"); to a congregation decades later and hundreds of miles away it would be nonsense.

The same argument applies to the Gospel traditions of the empty tomb: they are clearly developed and added to by the successive writers, but that does not mean they invented the story. The rhetorical logic of the tradition suggests it is early, probably as early as Paul's (clearly Aramaic-structured) tradition. See JDG Dunn "Jesus Remembered" for a very good exposition of the strength and reliability of oral tradition.

As to "natural" and "spiritual" bodies, well, this is common mistranslation. The Greek doesn't mean the resurrection body is made of spirit. The so-called "natural body" is the "soma psychikos" where "psyche" = "soul"; the "spiritual body" is the "soma pneumatikos", where "pneuma" = "spirit"; however, the form ending in "-ikos" does not mean "made of" ("body made of spirit" would be "soma pneumatinos") but "animated by". So Paul's description of the nature of the resurrection body refers to a new body animated by spirit rather than soul. It makes no comment about the substance of the body, other than to suggest that it is new. In the case of the Risen Jesus, clearly it was not the same body as that which was taken down from the cross - that would be resuscitation rather than resurrection (which technically is what Jesus did to Lazarus, the widow's son, etc - they would die again, in time). Whatever the new body was, it took up and transformed the original - as you say, Jesus was able to appear in different places widely separated by time and space.

The problem for us, in understanding the resurrection, is two-fold. In the first place, we have received the Semitic Greek of the NT through a filter of early church theology and interpretation, in which it has become distorted by concepts such as the Greek "immortality of the soul" - we miss the fact that in no case in biblical or intertestamental writings did the Greek "anastasis" mean anything other than resurrection of the body; it never meant a spiritual survival. In the second place, the resurrection is a historical problem because it is an event without analogy. Historical method doesn't like that.

Nevertheless, as I have argued, the available evidence makes it more probable that Jesus was raised; none of the alternative explanations adequately explains all the evidence.

“Redefining the resurrection as a spiritual rather than physical event is nonsense, because what it is describing is not resurrection.”

The earliest report of the resurrection and comment on it comes from Paul who does not distinguish in any way between the appearance of Jesus to him and the appearances to the disciples. No mention of an empty tomb here. (1Cor 15:3-8 and 1 Cor 9:1)

Do you believe that Jesus still has the same physical body that he had on the cross? If yes, how can he be present in various places across the world at the same time? If no, at what point did his resurrected physical body become a spiritual body?

When Paul talks about the resurrection of the dead. He talks of our bodies being “sown a natural body,” but ”raised a spiritual body”. (1Cor 15:44) So is it really nonsense to talk about a spiritual resurrection?

Catherine

If God can perform any miracle he likes, then God has a lot to answer for!

If God could feed the children of Israel with manna and feed 5,000 with a few loaves and fishes and then chooses to let millions die of starvation in Africa, what does this say about God?

If God could calm a storm and still the waves but allows a tsunami to devastate the coastal areas of Asia with huge loss of life, what does this say about God?

If God could raise people from the dead but stands back and watches a child die in excruciating pain over several months, what does this say about God?

If God can answer a minister’s prayer for an empty parking space when the minister arrives late for a meeting and cure the senior steward’s cold, but ignores the prayers of the holocaust victims and of those massacred during the genocide in Rwanda, what does that say about God?

The traditional defence that suffering is not due to God but to Adam’s disobedience really doesn’t hold water. If God has foreknowledge, then he knew exactly what the consequences would be when he planted the forbidden tree in the garden and gave Adam and Eve both free will and enquiring minds. According to this doctrine, he even planned the punishment to be inflicted on all generations of humans before he even created Adam and Eve. What’s the evidence for this? - He created carnivores before humans, in the full knowledge that death was bound to be part of the world.

Is God so vindictive that he is still punishing innocent children for what the first humans did thousands of years ago? Is he so arbitrary that he’ll help someone to find lost keys but turn his back on some one who is increasingly losing his memory, personality, dignity and sense of identity as he descends into Alzheimer’s disease?

Once we declare that God can do anything (and prevent anything) - even suspending the laws of nature - and also foresees everything, we open up a whole can of worms by asserting that everything (including suffering and evil) is planned, willed or allowed by God.

Catherine

... on what you mean by the category of miracles. I have heard it argued that the so-called nature miracles couldn't have happened, because God wouldn't break the laws of nature. On the same grounds, the resurrection is redefined as a spiritual rather than physical event. I wonder if that is what your minister friend is arguing. If so, you and she are talking at cross-purposes, largely because you mean different things by resurrection. Personally, I think such a redefinition is nonsense, because what it is describing is not resurrection.

The old local preachers' theology book "Doing Theology", so notorious 30-40 years ago, did argue that there were some things God can't do - it said he can't create a 3-sided square. My retort was that he did, and called it a triangle - the illustration was nonsense. In the case in hand, I think it would be inconsistent to argue that God could do certain miracles but not others, but if the miracles were defined differently, it isn't the logic that is disconnected, but perhaps the definitions.

As far as Mark and the resurrection are concerned, he had no resurrection narratives, but that is not to say that he didn't believe in the resurrection: he reports Jesus' predicting the resurrection (Mk.8:31-9; Mk.9:30-32; Mk.10:32-34) and predicting a post-resurrection meeting with the disciples (Mk.14:27-31). Folk have speculated for centuries as to why he didn't tell the story - ideas have ranged from a lost/mutilated ending, being replaced later by the so-called longer endings, to deliberate omission, which leads to the question why. One possibility is that Mark was much more interested in the significance of the death than the significance of the resurrection. Well, when we get there, we can find him and ask him...

Yes - it is disconnected logic. At least, it clearly is in my mind.

Maybe we are talking at cross purposes here. As you point out, there are different ways to read the bible and various reasons why you might suppose a story to lack historical veracity. But once you accept, say, the resurrection as a fact, then it is rather hard to dismiss other events as unlikely on the basis of their essential impossibility. If God can raise a man from the dead, then he can presumably do anything. I agree that you might dismiss stories for other reasons.

My friend stated that she did not believe that God could calm a storm. She did believe in the resurrection of Jesus. I know many people with views like this.

Incidentally, as you point out, a resurrection of any kind would be big news, but Mark's original version apparently had no resurrection stories.

"...once you accept that Jesus was raised from the dead, then you can accept any of the miracles, I think."

As I said, all things are possible to God. The God who can create the universe and raise the dead could calm a storm or make the sun stand still. Whether or not he actually DID is a different question. To understand that, we need to spend a bit more time trying to read the Bible through the eyes of its authors, rather than through our own preconceptions of what it must mean. That has been a scholarly endeavour since the Early Church Fathers, not without its controversy and failure. Debates about myth and midrash have happened all over the place, along with accusations of heresy and lack of faith, etc. But sometimes we have to accept that what was written was not a straight historical account, but given a theological spin so as to point out the deeper meaning to the eyes of faith.

For example, the resurrections of the holy dead in Mt.27:52f - did it happen, or not? Tom Wright defends the historicity of the event, as part of his technique of critical realism, but I have to say I'm not persuaded. They were raised when Jesus died, but didn't go into the city to witness until after his resurrection? Sorry, but I can't escape the image of a bunch of ex-dead people sitting in a corner of the graveyard waiting until Jesus got up, or perhaps finding a quiet pub somewhere... Isn't it a bit strange that this account is only in Matthew? Wouldn't any kind of resurrection be remarkable enough to become more widely known, and part of more than one thread of tradition? I have to conclude that this is part of Matthew's story-telling technique, a midrashic embellishment to illustrate the significance of the death of Jesus. Am I saying that it COULD not have happened? Well, God could certainly have done it, but I don't think he did.

Is this 'disconnect logic'? Or is it simply a more sensitive approach to the text, trying to hear what Matthew wanted me to hear? If I were orchestrating a piece of music, I wouldn't expect to use the woodwind section in the same way as I'd use the brass section. When I read a report on the science of climate change, I don't read it in the same way as a Tom Clancy thriller, or a Shakespeare sonnet. That's why I compare the Bible to an orchestral score. I don't know your minister friend's reasons for not accepting that Jesus stilled of the storm, but I suggest that far from 'disconnect logic' she's trying to be intelligent and sensitive to he different voices in the Bible, so as to hear the real message.

Tony. If I understand, you believe in the resurrection of Jesus because it is the only reasonable explanation of the events which followed. You admit that a man rising from the dead is sufficiently implausible that it only happened once in human history. I am assuming - although I may be wrong - that you would consider his resurrection to result from God's intervention such that laws of physics, chemistry etc were temporarily suspended or reversed or some such ie it is what we might classify as a miracle.

His resurrection is not the only miraculous event associated with Jesus. According to the gospels he raised three people from the dead himself. He was born of a virgin, he turned water into wine, he healed numerous sick including driving demons into a heard of pigs and he calmed a storm when it threatened to overturn the disciples' boat. If true, these things would, I think, be classified as miracles in the sense that they cannot ordinarily occur. According to extra-gospel traditions, the disciples pulled a statistically improbable sample of fish out of a lake and the animals in the stable bowed before him at his birth - again somewhat miraculous occurrences.

I am happy to accept that the bible is not pure fact or history but needs to be understood in different ways. Jesus was clearly an extraordinary character and it is likely that stories grew up around him which were not true. Regarding the fish story - it unlikely to be true because it is hard to know how the disciples would have realized that they had made such an extraordinary catch. One might also ask why God would want them to do this, although, of course, we always told that God is inscrutable.

Nonetheless, once you accept that Jesus was raised from the dead, then you can accept any of the miracles, I think. You have reasons for believing that the resurrection is one of the miracles which actually happened and you may have reasons for believing that a different miracle did not occur. For example, someone may reasonably conclude that the virgin birth is more likely a story which arose from a mistranslation of an old testament text than a true fact. Nonetheless, you can no longer dismiss a miracle because it simply isn't possible.

Yet, I hear this attitude again and again. I thought I detected it in Spartacus's post although I may well have misread his mind here. But I certainly know people who take this view: I am sophisticated human who understands science and statistics and the like and obviously I am not naive enough to really believe that Jesus was born of a virgin or turned water into wine; however, I do - of course- believe in the resurrection. I know a methodist minister who believes in the resurrection but tells me that she simply does not believe that Jesus could have calmed the storm.

This sort of disconnect of logic is very puzzling to me.

"But I know people who agree with you on this but claim to believe other things in the bible - perhaps things which are more central to Christianity - which are equally improbable."

I believe that Jesus was actually raised from the dead. Historical event. Fact. Not just a story, not a myth to explain the resolution of the disciples' bereavement process, etc, etc - this is something that really happened. And, yes, it is absolutely central to Christianity - no resurrection, no Christianity (at least, not anything that could be reasonably connected with the original version).

Now, my reasons for believing that are not just 'cos the Bible says it happened. My reasons are that nothing else explains the fallout from the event - all the traditions that fuel the biblical narrative and reflection, the practice of the first Christians in meeting on the first day of the week, the transformation of the disciples, the fact that the disciples would not have derived the idea or expectation of Jesus' resurrection to account for whatever happened to them if it wasn't a real meeting with the risen Jesus, etc. I've spent a lot of time digging very deeply into this, and I am convinced by a rigorous examination of the evidence that it happened. Really.

People do not rise from the dead. I've conducted lots of funerals in the last 30 years or so, and none of them have... er ... failed. I have also had arguments with various folk that resurrection cannot in fact happen because of certain irreversible changes which happen at the cellular level in the event of death. Fine. But the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is compelling. It isn't about scientific proof, because we don't have that kind of evidence; it's about historical probability. I have to say, since I know of no other resurrection leaving the sme kind of fallout, that this event is unique - and historians don't like unique, they can't cope with it, they like analogous events. So the resurrection of Jesus is highly implausible. But it happened.

The point is that the Bible is not a uniform text, dictated by God, so that every verse contains the same kind of truth. Some of it is historical, some poetic, some theological pondering, some actively doubting, some legend, some myth - all true in different ways. So the task of the biblical interpreter is a bit like the conductor reading a full orchestral score, trying to hear the part that a given section or instrument is playing so as to weave it into the full effect of the whole. Some voices do clash and disagree, but that's OK - over a period of centuries or even millennia we'd expect the revelation of God to grow. And it did - the Gospel writers clearly had a different view of God from the writers(s) of the Pentateuch. Trying to hear a uniform voice from the Bible is like trying to play a Beethoven symphony on a solo instrument. Listening to all the parts of the Bible together, in all their richness and diversity - now that's amazing. And we do hear the voice of God.

It isn't about reconciling different views, but hearing the whole, including harmonies and dissonances.

All things are possible to God (Mt.19:26). Even the highly implausible.

Spartacus - I don't know what all your beliefs are but I am always puzzled by people who say things like this.

Of course it is hard to believe that one fish every kind was pulled out of the lake - at least it is statistically incredibly improbable. But I know people who agree with you on this but claim to believe other things in the bible - perhaps things which are more central to Christianity - which are equally improbable.

How can these views be reconciled?

Actually, I am very relaxed about this sort of stuff. It is fairly amusing, acts as a conversation starter, and really doesn't do Christianity any harm. Is it true? Of course not. Does it matter? Not really.

The story about the fish is a lovely one though. Legend has it that there were 153 different species of fish in the lake at that period, and the catch brought in by the disciples contained one of every kind. Hard to believe of course, but a fine illustration of how the gospel is for all kinds of people.

Then there's the one about the animals in the barn at midnight on Christmas eve. Apparently, on the stroke of twelve, if you happen to peek in, they all kneel.

Nonsense of course, but it still makes me wonder...

On the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme this morning, the discussion contained the assertion that the 153 fish landed in Jn.21:11 is a Pythagorean number, thereby proving that Jesus was in possession of knowledge and wisdom which he learned in England (from the Druids? who had learned it from Greek traders?).

Well, no. I can't comment on the Pythagorean nature of the number (Grade 6 O-level maths, 1970 - now very rusty...), but I am astonished by the false logic used in this argument. In the first place, Jesus didn't say how many fish there were - that is a detail provided by the author of the Gospel. It is a triangular number, and so yes, it could have something to do with Pythagorean philosophy. But that may have a lot more to do with John's context - it is traditionally believed that the Gospel was written in Ephesus, a Hellenistic city presumably full of all sorts of Greek philosophical teachers, including Pythagoreans. Nothing at all to do with Jesus of Nazareth.

In the second place, arguing that 153 is triangular is therefore to do with Pythagoras and therefore its meaning is mathematical is jumping to conclusions. A sum may have only one correct answer, but that number may be the correct answer to more than one sum. 2+2 has one correct answer - 4; but 4 is also 8 divided by 2, or 3+1, etc. In this case, arguing that 153 must be understood in terms of its maths may be a step too far. It might refer to the number of converts in the Ephesian congregation; if triangulation is a symbol of completeness, it may be a symbol of the whole number of those who will be saved because Jesus has been raised. And so on. It's a number - choose your interpretation, because we have no way of knowing what it meant to John's original readers.

In short, this whole argument is nonsense. There is no evidence at all for a journey by the boy Jesus to Britain. Any education he was able to obtain can be explained in the context of Galilean Judaism. This is speculation, designed to sell books to the gullible, no more.

It reminds me of the poll a year or two ago - something like 60% of people in the UK believe in God, but 90% believe Jesus was the Son of God. That's at least 30% who are seriously confused....

Britain became the centre of learning around the 5th-6th C's, and the launchpad of Christian mission into Northern Europe. That was due to Celtic Christianity, more than anything else. When Jesus was walking around in Galilee, the Britons were still painting themselves blue (when the weather wasn't making them blue...) and hadn't yet been invaded by Rome. This whole theses is nothing more than legend, and none of it is new. Decades ago, there was a novel called "The Hidden Years" by John Oxenham, including a trip to Glastonbury by the boy Jesus - it's all fiction, with absolutely no basis in anything resembling real evidence. The author argues that it is not impossible, as traders from the Eastern Mediterranean came trading in tin from Cornwall - fine, but arguing that something is possible is a long way from arguing that it is probable, much less verifiable. As I recall, the tin-traders were Phoenicians, not Hebrews.

Why do people read this rubbish? Because anything which can be portrayed as a 'new exclusive' piece of tradition or evidence which goes behind the tradition church story is potentially subversive, and people like that. Even when (like Dan Brown's writings) they are openly offered as fiction.

This reminds me of that article from a year or so ago about archaeologists finding a first century tomb with the caskets of people named 'Jesus' and 'Mary' and their children.

Surely, the papers (and Hollywood director James Cameron) cried, it has to be them?

Erm no. It would be like finding a tomb with the names John and Sarah today.

I agree with Herbert. Why do people cling to this bilge, and yet come out with statements like "I don't believe in Jesus"?

Dan Brown has a lot to answer for.