The Social Context of 'Resurrection'

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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mbuckley3
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The Social Context of 'Resurrection'

Post by mbuckley3 »

"See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having" (Lk.24.39)

"How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?" (1Cor.15.12)

"But some one will say, How are the dead raised? and with what manner of body do they come?" (1Cor.15.35)

"It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body" (1Cor.15.44)


Some familiar texts illustrating confusion about resurrection claims, both for Jesus and for the 'saints'. In a world where it was expected that a 'divinised' man would communicate through dreams and visions, any claim that Jesus now had a body was problematic; for it to be flesh-and-bone, and not 'transformed',was a step too far. As for believers, a repeat of the zombie rampage of Matt.27.52-53 does not seem to have been envisaged. Even those few De Resurrectione works which argue for the full recomposition of an individual's fleshly body (Ps-Justin, Ps-Athenagoras), park that in the End Time, safely away from current society.

So what was this force determining responses to the return of a fleshly body ? It is inadequate to posit philosophical discussions of a dichotomy between body and soul; popular philosophy wasn't that popular, and 'surely' was itself a reponse to something wider and deeper in the general culture. I suggest that 'something' was the notion of corpse pollution. It was very necessary to be sure that you were dealing with a (living) body and not with a corpse. As the Cynic Teles put it (Hense,31.9-10) : "We shrink both from looking at and from touching corpses."

Corpse pollution is of course a topic in the Torah - see Numbers 19, passim. But it was a given throughout the Mediterranean. Whatever the omissions and elisions of the literary record, the stones do not lie. Sacred laws are inscribed at hundreds of sites, corpse pollution is a major theme. To take just one example, at the shrine of Athena at Lindos, 41 days of exclusion (so also, exclusion from social life) were prescribed for a relative, 7 for having washed the corpse, 3 for having entered the house in which it lay. The corpse, buried outside the city walls, remained toxic : there are plenty of examples of memorial rites at a tomb automatically incurring pollution and requiring purification.

The force of this social norm is apparent in the treatment of 'returning bodies' in this neglected passage of Plutarch (Moralia 264-265), the case of the "hysteropotmoi' : "Why is it that those [Romans] who are falsely reported to have died in a foreign country, even if they return, men do not admit by the door, but mount upon the roof-tiles and let them down inside ? Varro gives an explanation of the cause that is quite fanciful...But consider if this be not in some wise similar to Greek customs; for the Greeks did not consider pure, nor admit to familiar intercourse, nor suffer to approach the temples any person for whom a funeral had been held and a tomb constructed on the assumption that they were dead. The tale is told that Aristinus, a victim of this superstition, sent to Delphi and besought the god to release him from the difficulties in which he was involved because of the custom; and the prophetic priestess gave response : 'All that a woman in child bed does at the birth of her baby, when this again thou hast done, to the blessed gods sacrifice offer.' Aristinus, accordingly, chose the part of wisdom and delivered himself like a new-born babe into the hands of women to be washed, and to be wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and to be suckled; and all other men in such plight do likewise and they are called 'Men of Later Fate' ['hysteropotmoi']."

According to Liddell & Scott, the only other instance of this word is in Hesychius' C6 Syntagma :
"'Deuteropotmos' [Man of Second Fate] or according to some, 'hysteropotmos' : this is what they called a person for whom funeral rites had been observed on the assumption that he was dead and who later appeared living. Polemon says that such people were barred from entering the temple of the sacred gods. Or, he is one who has been reported to have died abroad but then returns. Or, one who, for a second time, tumbles through a woman's lap [for adoption? - cf. Diodorus Siculus 4.39], as was the custom of the second birth among the Athenians."

A 'returning body' was not unambiguous 'good news'. It was treated with aversion as a corpse, and could only resume life with, in some sense, a new identity.
Secret Alias
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Re: The Social Context of 'Resurrection'

Post by Secret Alias »

Very interesting. Which would help explain perhaps the line of argumentation from the heretics in De Carne Christi from what I remember that Christ had another nature besides matter. There was a lot of interest in the second century in the Marcionite notion of matter being evil and Christ imparting another substance (through baptism?). Eusebius cites a work On Matter which resurfaces in De Recta in Deum Fide.

The example the Marcionites go back to is Abraham's theophany. These are "men" but not men of flesh and blood. Similarly the last words in Luke which the Marcionitee take to mean that Jesus was a spirit who didn't have flesh and blood. If there's no flesh and blood there is also no ritual pollution.

The strange thing that emerges is a Marcionite resurrected Christ who could be handled and touched without contradicting Jewish laws of ritual purity! Strange how things work out. As you infer the resurrection narrative WITHOUT SOME SORT OF PHYSICAL TRANSFORMATION OF MATTER takes on antinomian dimensions.

Also worth noting that "the Passion" in Hebrew might have meant something like the adoption of another yetser, another nature. It is my suggestion to read the term נוצרים as notsarim (root YOD-tsade-resh, nif‘al participle) meaning “re-formed”.

Notsarim = “those with a new yetser”. This is a Marcionite conception and is reflected in anti-heretical treatises (i.e. that Jesus had a different flesh)
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The Social Context of 'Resurrection'

Post by neilgodfrey »

mbuckley3 wrote: Thu Oct 14, 2021 5:03 pm A 'returning body' was not unambiguous 'good news'. It was treated with aversion as a corpse, and could only resume life with, in some sense, a new identity.
Such is real-life. In the story world, however, we find a different response. I set out one instance at Bodily Resurrection in Ancient Fiction -- from the novella Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius. Way back in another post I listed a host of "resurrected" figures that Richard Carrier had itemized but I don't think I ever got to follow up the details of each one. I suspect that each one was heard as a tale of happy and wondrous news.

But in real-life, outside the story world, I find it difficult to imagine Mary being excited when one she thought was the gardener was actually the revived corpse of her beloved. That "Touch me not" line would hardly needed to be spoken before a horrified mourner.
davidmartin
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Re: The Social Context of 'Resurrection'

Post by davidmartin »

The Odes can be read as saying the resurrection has already happened
"I received the face and likeness of a new person, and I walked in Him and was saved."
"Your hand leveled the Way for those who believe in You. And It chose them from the graves, and separated them from the dead ones.
It took dead bones and covered them with flesh"
All in the past tense!

" I arose and am with them, and will speak by their mouths" A spiritual, visionary resurrection

The moment the resurrection becomes a future event it is necessary the human Christ be resurrected after death as a prototype. In a lot of ways many objections simply vanish including pollution if resurrection were thought to be spiritual
lsayre
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Re: The Social Context of 'Resurrection'

Post by lsayre »

Some Gnostic's appear to have held to a hierarchy for mankind wherein there were nominally three core types/states:
1) Hylic (or Somatic) man, who was matter bound and effectively thereby 'dead'. Dust you were, and dust you will become....
2) Psychic man, who possessed a soul, but still apparently faced the potential for death, perhaps if found to be in backsliding error/sin.
3) Pneumatic man, who possessed an immortal spirit essence that lived on eternally after death.

Being 'born again' may have been the ascension from state 1 to state 2, and being 'risen from the dead' may have been the ascension from state 2 to state 3, or something along these general lines. I believe (a distant past, itinerant) real/living Paul's references to terms such as 'born again' and 'risen' may originally have been rooted in a thought system along lines such as this. Wherein baptism may impart a soul, and whereby at this level Paul could begin to feed 'milk' only. But the really good stuff he reserved for the 'elect' (or 'mature'), who were perceived to have 'risen' to the Pneumatic level.
perseusomega9
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Re: The Social Context of 'Resurrection'

Post by perseusomega9 »

mbuckley3 wrote: Thu Oct 14, 2021 5:03 pm The force of this social norm is apparent in the treatment of 'returning bodies' in this neglected passage of Plutarch (Moralia 264-265), the case of the "hysteropotmoi' : "Why is it that those [Romans] who are falsely reported to have died in a foreign country, even if they return, men do not admit by the door, but mount upon the roof-tiles and let them down inside ?
I wonder if there's any relation to this passage in Luke and the related Markan passage:
When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
gryan
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Re: The Social Context of 'Resurrection'

Post by gryan »

mbuckley3 wrote: Thu Oct 14, 2021 5:03 pm "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having" (Lk.24.39)

"How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?" (1Cor.15.12)

"But some one will say, How are the dead raised? and with what manner of body do they come?" (1Cor.15.35)

"It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body" (1Cor.15.44)
Paul wrote:

2 Cor 4
10We always carry around in our body (ἐν τῷ σώματι) the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body (ἐν τῷ σώματι). 11For we who are alive are always consigned to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our mortal flesh (ἐν τῇ θνητῇ σαρκὶ). 12So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

Gal 2

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, in faith(fulness) I live (ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, ἐν πίστει ζῶ), that of the God and Christ (alt text) who loved me and gave himself for me.

This, IMHO, is the real origin of the idea of the resurrection of the fleshly body of Jesus--the evidence is in the transformation of the bodily lives of those who have been "co-crucified" by mystical participation. The rest is metaphor.
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