Did Paul, with his "resurrection body", believe that a physical body of Jesus still lay in a tomb?

Tosh and tommyrot, per good British English, if one looks at what Paul actually says in I Corinthians 15, but British philosopher Jonathan M.S. Pearce believes differently. He's been corrected.

I disagree that there's massive difference between Paul and the Synoptic Gospels and that Paul's talking about two actually different bodies, unlike his claim that Paul's "resurrection body" means that Jesus' physical body was still lying in a tomb.

First, especially in Luke, it's pretty clear to me that something like Paul's "spiritual body" is being talked about, rather than a theoretically "narrow" physical resurrection. And, it's not just Luke's relatively extensive discussion of resurrection appearances by Jesus.

His argument with the Sadducees, common to all three Synoptics (Mark 12, Matthew 22, Luke 20), would seem to support this Jesus, and the gospelers here, talking about something like a spiritual body, and Mark using Sadducee beliefs specifically to introduce this as a teaching. 

Beyond that? Mark discusses nothing and Matthew next to nothing. That, then, leaves Paul only in conflict with John. And of course, as in many other things, John is not a Synoptic gospel, and also has its own long editing history, in part related to Gnosticizing issues.

Second, it's purely an argument from silence to claim that Paul believes there's a physical body still in a tomb; it's arguably also a misinterpretation of 1 Corinthians 15. (This is something I've long thought.) And, as when used by mythicists, such arguments from silence aren't good logically as well as being not good empirically.

This one is the biggie. Although Pierce has apparently finally fallen on the non-mythicist side of the fence re a historic Jesus, he's backed unwarranted arguments from silence before.

Third, Paul's "spiritual body" pretty clearly seems something out of middle Platonism, as his interpretation of what ‮ylidob‬ resurrection means. The "spiritual body," at least to me, pretty clearly is within his take on Jewish ideas of resurrection, an "ideal body." Paul, (and the pseudo-Paul of Colossians) does have Gnosticizing elements, tis true. That said, most scholars distinguish that from full-on Gnosticism, first of all. Second, per my take, there's no conflict between Paul perhaps having cadged an idea from middle Plantonism and having been influenced by Gnosticizing.

Given that the Synoptics, while they nuance Paul in many ways, also are at least indirectly dependent on Paul in some ways, a head-on conflict between them on any theological matters would be questionable. 

Pearce's fanbois rallied to his colors, though, voting down anybody who disagreed with him, both nuanced disagreers and the religious right or semi-so.

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Update: Via Twitter, Pierce thinks he has me.

First, he notes that Jesus does eat a fish in the second half of Luke 24. True. He also eats nothing at Emmaus before that, and Luke 24:36-43 has drawn a lot of critical skepticism over the years, including whether it might be an interpolation. See here and here for starters.

As for Third Corinthians? No, Jonathan, we don't know that the author is early Christians trying to correct Paul's theology. Rather, it could be one pseudopigraphal work trying to correct the theology of an earlier pseudopigraphal work from the "school of Paul," ie, Colossians. Otherwise, the full length of Third Corinthians, shorter than Philippians and not a lot longer than Philemon, is too slender a reed to lean on too much.

But, unlike the Tippler, or John Loftus, or Gnu Godless in Dixie, I haven't gotten famous and hired by Patheos, whether myself or a "school," speaking of, to help me write.

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Update 2: At Gary the ex-Lutheran's blog, having posted a link to this on Gary's piece about Paul and Platonism, I seemed to have picked up a shape-shifting fundagelical-like commenter known as "Aussiestockman." I've run into him a bit before; (under current name?) he's a relatively recent commenter there, so, hence my "fundagelical-like." I don't have enough data points to prove he is full-on. 

But, by current Wordpress name used there at least (Google had few hits in general with it spelled as all one word) I do have enough to say the "like." And, for Google to add his name here among search hits, as I've also added it to the SEO population.

The goalpost-shifting? After noting my graduate degree background, he raised the bar to PhD, and other things. My last response to him said, among other things, that even if that wasn't enough, it was certainly more than he had.

Per his last comment, to which I didn't respond, I made a real point in my first comment. (He also didn't respond to my note about his lack of qualifications on the issue.) Ergo, we're entering trollery land.

Did biblical Edom exist? Implications for an "Israel"? And, what politics are involved in this?

 For the unfamiliar, the Copenhagen school of interpretation of the Tanakh/Old Testament is indeed minimalist even within critical exegesis. It claims that not only did Abraham not exist, not only did Moses not exist, but David and Solomon also did not exist and almost any historical claim in the Tanakh before the return from exile and Ezra (we presume) doing editorial work on the Torah (Copenhagen folks often claim writing work, not just editorial work, taking a more fragmentary rather than documentary approach) isn't true.

Well, Smithsonian has a piece about a re-exploration of old copper mines in Israel's Arabah that were reportedly redeveloped from earlier Egyptian New Kingdom mining circa 1000 BCE. As in, time of alleged Biblical Edom and time of David. Earlier archaeological work was done there about a century ago by the renowned Nelson Glueck. Glueck claimed he had found "King Solomon's mines." Later work in the 1960s backdated it to Egyptian New Kingdom times and said that the great cataclysm of the eastern Mediterranean circa 1177 BCE led to their being shut down.

First, I'm not going to argue that whoever redeveloped the mines at Timna at this time wasn't well off. People wearing Tyrian purple, found on site in the new work by Erez Ben-Yosef.

OK, who did this mining? And, how close to 1000 BCE did it start?

First of all, the author, Matti Friedman (more on him at Wiki) doesn't mention the dating range of any material. (I Tweeted to him at the time I started writing this.)

Second, how do you know this is "Edomite"? Egypt started a partial return to glory with the 22nd Dynasty, founded by Sheshonq I, the "Shishak" of 1 Kings note, invading Judah of Rehoboam at instigation of Israel of Jereboam I. (Note: Israel Finkelstein, a minimalist but not quite of Copenhagen level, considers the story a legend; he's mentioned in the Smithsonian piece, for his comments related to Timna, plus that he, like Ben-Yosef, works at Tel Aviv University.) Why couldn't it be running the mines again? And, that is a valid question whether the part about Sheshonq invading organized kingdoms of Israel and Judah is true or not.

Sheshonq came to power 945 BCE, hence my Tweet to Friedman asking about the precision of the dating.

Third, even if run by a group called "Edom," that doesn't mean we should conceive of them as being anything like a nation-state. Ben-Yosef does, and Finkelstein has harshly criticized him.

Fourth, beyond the carbon dating range, is one of language. Got any ostraca or other items with writing on them? Until you do, and said ostraca have a language known as "Edomite" on them, this is pure conjecture.

Fourth, Friedman seems to be doing some spinning:

What Ben-Yosef has produced isn’t an argument for or against the historical accuracy of the Bible but a critique of his own profession. Archaeology, he argues, has overstated its authority. Entire kingdoms could exist under our noses, and archaeologists would never find a trace. Timna is an anomaly that throws into relief the limits of what we can know. The treasure of the ancient mines, it turns out, is humility.

Well, archaeology has always had limitations and young Turks have always been wanting to state new theories and ideas.

That said, we need to go further. Friedman says, very early in the story, and a photo is also so captioned, that Ben-Yosef is "agnostic" about the bible as history. The caption starts:

Erez Ben-Yosef, who leads the Timna excavation, is a self-described agnostic when it comes to biblical history.

Sounds simple, right? But, put an asterisk in that and see below.

And, in either case, is Friedman? Or, does he see an "opening" to run with here?

And, why not? Click the link on his name, or the Wiki page, and .... ???

He's a pretty ardent Zionist.  Per Wiki:

Following the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Friedman wrote an essay criticizing what he views as the international media's bias against Israel and undue focus on the country, stating that news organizations treat it as "most important story on earth". He said when he was a correspondent at the AP,

the agency had more than 40 staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian territories. That was significantly more news staff than the AP had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the "Arab Spring" eventually erupted. [...] I don’t mean to pick on the AP—the agency is wholly average, which makes it useful as an example. The big players in the news business practice groupthink, and these staffing arrangements were reflected across the herd.[7]

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the piece went "viral" on Facebook.[4] The Atlantic then invited Friedman to write a longer article.[18] AP issued a statement, saying that Friedman's "... arguments have been filled with distortions, half-truths and inaccuracies, both about the recent Gaza war and more distant events. His suggestion of AP bias against Israel is false".[19]

Given that he's also listed as an NYT op-ed columnist, and the likes of Bret Stephens have praised his books, uhhh ....

And, its relation to this?

Even if Ben-Yosef isn't postulating a real Moses, bank-shotting off a real Edom, he's postulating the Glueck-like idea of a real David and Solomon is true.

And, of course, that's got implications for Zionism.

Let us say the dating is correct and within a narrow band. Given that, as Ben-Yosef noted, Edom is mentioned outside the bible and as of this time, who says that proves the bible is historically true on the existence of polities named "Israel" and "Judah"? And, who says this copper was being mined for any such polity rather than for a re-emerging Egypt?

That said, per the argument between the archaeological heavyweights, per a link off the Smithsonian piece, Ben-Yosef IS, at a minimum, more agnostic than Friedman:

While I still maintain that the historical reconstruction presented in my recent publications 73 fits better the available evidence, it should be noted that the differing views of specific aspects of the early Iron Age archaeology of the south—including its identification with Edom— have little bearing on my main argument, which is methodological in essence.

But, not FULLY agnostic. Per a Jerusalem Post piece, Ben-Yosef thinks Israel (would actually be Judah???) at least indirectly controlled the mines. But, we still don't have the alleged copper basin of Solomon. We DO, per the J Post, have evidence of Timna copper of this era in ... ??? 

Egypt. (See above!)

In any case, color me less than fully convinced. That's also despite Biblical Archaeology Review playing this up, on the first 21st century work, 15 years ago. (Shock me.)

The precision of the carbon dating is not a big deal. Not having writing or any other things at Timna to specifically identify this as a people, a polity, separate from Egypt, as in not under its control, is a deal. 

But, I have my answer, per this piece. Here we are:

The results of several different types of tests conducted in recent years, including high resolution 14C dating and archaeo-magnetism from multiple slag mounds,[6] necessitated a revision in the dating suggested by Rothenberg and determined that the peak of activity at Timna took place during the early Iron Age, or 11th-9th centuries B.C.E.

And, that is broader than the Friedman piece implies. 1000 BCE is just the midpoint, but even the above doesn't specify if uncertainty on the range is higher on one end than the other.

It's also clear from that piece that Friedman is strawmanning about Ben-Yosef. He's not so agnostic about bible as history at all. 

It's even more clear at this J Post piece:

So if we understand differently the potential role of nomads, the basic attributes of archaeologists to identify power should also be changed. And if we're looking for walls and big palaces in order to understand the size, the magnitude of the united monarchy of David and Solomon, we don't necessarily have to find these attributes in order to for biblical descriptions to have a real history in them. 

This is what I'm saying. I'm not saying we can prove, but I'm saying that archaeology can definitely not disprove the description in the Bible of an influential, big kingdom, strong kingdom centered in Jerusalem. This is part of our insights from studying a nomadic society in the South

Has Finkelstein claimed that archaeology "disproves" or just that "it shows no proof," first?

Second, yes, new revelations in archaeology show, let us say "kinglets" without walls and palaces. (I say this while in the middle of the new Graeber-Wengrow book.) Big kings and big kingdoms without those things? Not so much.

Finally, to pivot this back to politics? 

The Smithsonian could have done some more editing on this. And, it possibly could just have rejected the piece, if it didn't solicit it.

If the Tacitus passage on Nero, the Great Fire, and Christians is an interpolation, why?

I addressed week before last week how John Drinkwater handles the infamous passages from Tacitus' Annals about Nero's ALLEGED cruel punishment of Christians after the Great Fire. Beyond what I already knew about the Great Fire, about Tacitus in general, and about the Greek itacism and other problems with the specific issues in the passage, I also relied on this piece from a religion Wiki (warning: friendly to Jesus mythicism) which gave me more food for thought.

Tertullian and other Church fathers cite no such passage, and it appears not to be referenced by any Christian before 400 CE.  Sulpicius Severus, ca 400 CE, appears to be the first Christian to write about it, but his account in his "Sacred History" is hugely suspect. It's basically a "blown-out" version of Tacitus. It also gets many other things wrong, starting with claiming there was a massive number of Christians at that time, then that Nero outlawed Christianity along with starting the persecutions. Clement I, especially if one goes by "traditional" date and provenance, would have readers who would have remembered this, had it happened. He doesn't mention it. Celsus surely would have flung this issue at Origin, had he known of it, and of course Origen would have found some way to try refute it. He doesn't discuss it. Tertullian, who cites Tacitus a fair amount, doesn't mention it. Nor Eusebius, the first Christian historian.

And, some early writings actually explicitly counter Tacitus' claim. Brent Shaw, in an academic journal, extracted and summarized here by Charles Mercier, has the details on the possibility this is an interpolation. (Mercier then has a Part 2, which frames Catholic touting of Neronian martyrs within Reformation hagiography.) Shaw, per Mercier's Part 1, doesn't totally agree with the Religion Wiki take on why this is possibly an interpolation. As noted, if the passage IS genuine, the best and most we can derive from it, in my opinion, is that Tacitus was doing a bank shot to smear Nero by saying his torturous deaths were so cruel that Christians got sympathy. (I'm not fully ready to commit to it being an interpolation, as that's an argument from silence, and to do otherwise risks petard-hoisting. That said, [motivated reasoning alert?] the idea that there are degrees of silence would nuance that.)

But, what if it IS an interpolation? Why?

Let's say that Christians of 300 CE or later read Suetonius, and took his account that Claudius expelled the Jews who were engaged in Messianic disturbances (sic on my interpretation of ChrEEStos) and instead took that to be Jesus. 

So, why extrapolate from there to Nero?

Per my big piece about the differences between "antichrist," "man of lawlessness" and "666/The Beast," and John Chyrsostom chiding Christians of his time for visiting synagogues? At 400 CE, Christians still would have known enough Hebrew and/or Aramaic to know that the "666" was Nero. (As I note there, "Nero Caesar" in the Hebrew alphabet is נרון קסר‎ NRON QSR, which when used as numbers represent 50 200 6 50 100 60 200, which add to 666. See the link at the top of the paragraph for more detail.) They would not have know that this could have come from a disciple of John the Baptist who wrote the non-Christian core of Revelation, so they asked, "WHY is Nero the Beast"? And, they created the answer. There may also be angles related to Constantinople as the New Rome and other things.

That said, that leads to a third theoretical option besides Tacitus being true here. That is that there were messianic disturbances at this time, tied to the precursor of the revolt and the First Jewish War in Judea. We have Claudius' previous expulsion of the Jews from Rome. Tom Holland, in his book "Dynasty," notes that, according to Valerius Maximus, the first Roman expulsion of Jews happened way back in 139 BCE. That would have been just after the establishment of the Hasmonean kingdom. And, while the Christian population of Rome at this time (setting aside the issue of them counting themselves separate from Jews or not) was only 1/10 of 1 percent, Jews made up around 5 percent of Rome's population, as the past expulsions had in general not been permanent and Jew/non-Jew and Jewish/non-Jewish, to get at both culture and religion, differences weren't as sharply noticed as in Christian Europe, making returns easier.

But, how likely is that? Suetonius had mentioned the expulsion of the Jews under Claudius; surely he would have mentioned this, too, one would think. Tacitus and Suetonius would have used more explicitly anti-Jewish language, as both were writing after the First Jewish War. And, after the "separation" started, Christians would have cited this among anti-Jewish polemics.

Of the three, an interpolation seems more likely. The double bankshot seems less likely. The Jewish Messianic revolt seems not much more likely than Tacitus telling the truth here.

Update, May 26, 2024: A person at r/AcademicBiblical, in chat with me about a main comment of hers there, where she claims that 1 Clement, stripped of legendary accretions, is about Peter and Paul being killed by fellow Christians, nonetheless, in response to me, claims that the Tacitus is not an interpolation. 

I offered as a sidebar the Option B, that, if genuine by Tacitus, it's still a double-bankshot smear, projecting back from his own interactions with Christians, of what was a non-event, so that he could smear Nero even more than Christians.

As for said person's claims rejecting the interpolation idea? They note that the Correspondence of Paul and Seneca mentions the Great Fire earlier. Two counterpoints: First, on a late dating, only about 20 years earlier. So, it's in the same milieu, even if earlier. Second, the 11th letter of said correspondence is generally believed to be by a second forger than most other letters. Severus himself? Third counterpoint? As mentioned above? Tertullian regularly cited Tacitus, so why not here?

Finally, if you've read both, Severus just reads a lot like Tacitus.

Said person does reject an actual persecution, so they're solid there.

I raised the Tertullian and Celsus issues, and got pretty much a handwaving response.

That one is rather easily explicable. The Annals does not look like it was ever completely finished by Tacitus, or did not receive the full editing required, and so it also wasn't distributed nearly as widely. In fact, Tacitus' works in general were largely ignored, and the Annals was probably just in disrepair. So this isn't surprising nor indicative of much.

We'll agree to disagree. As I said in response, at the time of Severus, Jerome references all 30 books of Annals plus Histories. And, Tertullian wrote no more than a century later. And, got more handwaving in return:

Handwaving, half-truths and more.

Jerome is also writing after Sulpicius, so the Annals were at that point becoming known to Christians, so Jerome isn't surprising or pertinent there. 

And as we know, from the late second century to the early fourth century, Tacitus' works were actually in disrepair and the Annals was not read either by Christians or by Greco-Roman authors. It was just a text almost entirely unknown until there was a revival effort to try and bring his works into public eye (by pagans specifically). Read more

First, Jerome is relevant because it shows he knows them all, and he was enough of a historian for that era to probably have looked at all of them. And, ergo, it directly refutes the "and as we know" of the second paragraph.

I had debated about direct-quoting, even with the first exchange, but this confirmed in me to direct quote both. Especially because it gets even worse after that:

No, actually it doesn't. It shows that from Tacitus' writing, until 250 years later, there is no knowledge the Annals even existed.

And as a case in point, you can read Anthony Barrett's book Rome is Burning, which specifically notes a Roman emperor actively went out of his way to rejuvenate Tacitus' works because they had fallen into disrepair and obscurity. This was the Emperor Tacitus (reigned in 275 CE to 276), who specifically ordered Tacitus' works be revived.

As Barrett notes, even in the sixth century, Cassiodorus still refers to a "certain Cornelius [Tacitus]", using distanced terminology that implies his readers probably would have no familiarity, again speaking to Tacitus' poor reception.

Both Sulpicius and Jerome are writing *after* Emperor Tacitus' attempt to revive his ancestor's work. So no, nothing here is incorrect and is in perfect alignment with the historical record. The Annals were a habitually neglected source, and it was only after Tacitus' reputed descendant the Emperor Tacitus revived his reputation that the Annals started coming to people's attention. Thus, around 70 years later, Sulpicius finally reads the Annals and sees that passage, and Jerome finally knows of them later.

OK, an Emperor who is in the middle of the The Imperial Crisis, aka The Decline of the Third Century and reigns 6 months really has time to puff his namesake? And, certainly doesn't have the reign to make it happen, even if he ordered it? And, the Anthony Barrett who barely touches 4 stars with one book, and can't crack 3.5 on most? And, a handwaving interpretation of what Cassiodorus meant, while continuing to reject my comment about Jerome?

(Update: Per my review of a Melvin Goodman book, this isn't the only bit of suspiciousness from Sulpicius Severus, either.)

Anyway, I promised Crissy the last word. On Reddit, not here.

And, here's why I think that Correspondence piece can't earlier than 380 CE on the 11th letter. Yes, Christianity was legal before that under Constantine. It didn't become the state religion until 380 CE, under Theodosius I's Edict of Thessalonica.) Obviously, despite failings here and there, the Correspondence knew better than to reference a comment from Tacitus if a legitimate one existed.) Before that, no Christian writer would have felt safe blaming Nero. But, once the gloves were off, people besides Severus could simply have reference Tacitus without creating an interpolation, if the actual Tacitus had written something.

And, this leads to me offering further thought on the WHY.

After making Christianity the state religion, Theodosius launched the first attacks on paganism. A Sulpicius Severus would have written his own piece, as well as "dropping a dime" inside Tacitus as alleged proof, in support of these attacks.

"Look at the old Rome! Since the start of Christianity, it has persecuted us!"

Rather than the approach of the biblical gospels and Acts, to have gloves fully on vis-a-vis Rome, it was now time to take the gloves off in service of the New Rome.