Greek Resurrection Beliefs & the Success of Christianity

[MrMacSon]

Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity, 2009, by Dag Øistein Endsjø, Palgrave Macmillan

This book examines the relationship between the breakthrough of Christianity in antiquity and the belief in the resurrection of the flesh. Traditionally, Greek religion entailed a strong and enduring conviction that immortality always had to include both a body of flesh and a soul. Both mythical and historical persons were also believed to have been resurrected from the dead and become physically immortal. The Christian belief in the resurrection of the flesh evolved only gradually, beginning with Paul, who simply denied it. But the more popular Christianity became among the Greeks, the stronger the emphasis became on the resurrection of the flesh; and the more Christianity stressed physical incorruptibility, the more Greeks left their ancient beliefs for this new religion. As such, the traditional Greek longing for immortal flesh can be seen as an important catalyst for the success of Christianity.
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[MrMacSon]

In ancient Greek religion a number of men and women were made physically immortal as they were resurrected from the dead. Asclepius was killed by Zeus, only to be resurrected and transformed into a major deity. Achilles, after being killed, was snatched from his funeral pyre by his divine mother Thetis and resurrected, brought to an immortal existence in either Leuce, Elysian plains or the Islands of the Blessed. Memnon, who was killed by Achilles, seems to have received a similar fate. Alcmene, Castor, Heracles, and Melicertes, were also among the figures sometimes considered to have been resurrected to physical immortality. According to Herodotus's Histories, the seventh century BC sage Aristeas of Proconnesus was first found dead, after which his body disappeared from a locked room. Later he found not only to have been resurrected but to have gained immortality.

Many other figures, like a great part of those who fought in the Trojan and Theban wars, Menelaus, and the historical pugilist Cleomedes of Astupalaea, were also believed to have been made physically immortal, but without having died in the first place. Indeed, in Greek religion, immortality originally always included an eternal union of body and soul ... traditional Greek believers maintained the conviction that certain individuals were resurrected from the dead and made physically immortal and that, for the rest of us, we could only look forward to an existence as disembodied and dead souls.[11]

This traditional religious belief in physical immortality was [however] generally denied by the Greek philosophers. Writing his Lives of Illustrious Men (Parallel Lives) in the first century CE, the Middle Platonic philosopher Plutarch's chapter on Romulus gave an account of the mysterious disappearance and subsequent deification of this first king of Rome, comparing it to traditional Greek beliefs such as the resurrection and physical immortalization of Alcmene and Aristeas the Proconnesian, "for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's work-shop, and his friends coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton." Plutarch openly scorned such beliefs held in traditional ancient Greek religion, writing, "many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal."

The parallel between these traditional beliefs and the later resurrection of Jesus was not lost on the early Christians, as Justin Martyr argued: "when we say ... Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus." (1 Apol. 21).

There is, however, no belief in a general resurrection in ancient Greek religion, as the Greeks held that not even the gods were able to recreate flesh that had been lost to decay, fire or consumption. The notion of a general resurrection of the dead was therefore apparently quite preposterous to the Greeks. This is made clear in Paul's Areopagus discourse [Acts 17:16-34]¹. After having first told about the resurrection of Jesus, which makes the Athenians interested to hear more, Paul goes on, relating how this event relates to a general resurrection of the dead:

• "Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, `We shall hear you again concerning this.'"[Acts 17:30-32]¹

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrect ... k_religion

1. According to Acts of the Apostles, while he was waiting for his companions Silas and Timothy to arrive, Paul was distressed to see Athens full of idols .. So Paul went to the synagogue and the Agora (Greek: εν τη αγορα, marketplace) on a number of occasions ('daily'), to preach about 'the resurrection of Jesus'.

The sermon addresses five main issues:

• Introduction: Discussion of the ignorance of pagan worship (verses 23-24)
• The one Creator God being the object of worship (25-26)
• God's relationship to humanity (26-27)
• Idols of gold, silver and stone as objects of false worship (28-29)
• Conclusion: Time to end the ignorance (30-31)

This sermon illustrates the beginnings of the attempts to explain the nature of Christ and an early step on the path that led to the development of Christology.

Paul begins his address by emphasizing the need to know God, rather than worshiping the unknown:

• "As I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship — and this is what I am going to proclaim to you."

[Giuseppe]

As for the resurrection, so for the historicity. Tombola.

[Giuseppe]

Very thanks, MrMacSon, for this reference.

I read in the conclusive pages of the book:

We have seen how Christianity represented nothing new to a Hellenistic audience in its insistence that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead and made physically immortal. But the fledgling religion did more than recycle old notions about miraculous acts of individual resurrection, it answered directly to the longing nurtured by centuries of Paganism. Contrary to how traditional Greek religion expressed an attraction of the flesh while at the same time refusing to fulfill it, Christianity must have appeared a literal godsend. In the form that eventually would gain ascendancy, Christianity not only offered a promise of immortal flesh, but argued, still in accordance with the logic of the traditional Greek worldview, how this was possible also to all these destroyed bodies for whom all hope apparently had been lost. Christianity offered everybody the recipe for physical immortality.

(my bold)

So I wonder: if to insist on the historical reality of Jesus was. a more useful way to insist that Jesus was risen also in the flesh, then what Earl Doherty calls "paradigmatic parallelism" (basically, "as for Jesus, so for the Christians"), may give what the Pagans wanted so eagerly: physical immortality for every historical person who becomes Christian.

Proto-Catholics - Marcionites: 1 - 0.

[Giuseppe]

This explains validly and perfectly WHY just John the Baptist had to be the best precursor par excellence of Jesus called Christ: John was beheaded. His disciples buried his body but not his head (the latter was in the hands of the wife of Herod). Which better evidence that John didn't rise?

[Giuseppe]

The only defect of the book is the his horrid repetition of the apologetics of J. Z. Smith (fallacy of a distinction without a real difference) against the existence of the Pagan dying and rising gods.

[Giuseppe]

There is also the very acute problem of physical continuity between the Baptist and Jesus, as John’s disciples only got the headless corpse to bury. The head was the cherished possession of Herod’s wife Herodias. There is consequently nothing implying that the nature of the resurrected Christ in any way paralleled either that of Jairus’ daughter or the way Herod considered Jesus before his death to be the resurrected Baptist.

(p. 164, my bold)

[Giuseppe]

The way Jesus is changed from his ordinary body into the transfigured body, and then back again, demonstrates that to Mark there were certain limits to the difference between the mortal body and
the resurrected body, that is, if we are right in assuming that Mark really thought the transfiguration body foreshadowed the resurrection body. Regardless of whether it consisted of flesh, according to Mark the immortalized body is of a nature that really is the mortal flesh transformed and that may again be turned back into mortal flesh. As this transfiguration of Jesus is nowhere mentioned by Paul, it may thus be considered another way Mark chose to put more stress on the bodily continuity between the mortal body and the resurrection body

(p. 166, my bold)