The Social Context of 'Resurrection'
Posted: 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)
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.
"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.