Paul's Greatest Idea and Why It Was Forgotten

so the real question is sources and Paul is just shocking but get ready Paul is our only first hand witness of the resurrection of Jesus because we don't have anybody in the New Testament talking about Jesus resurrection that says in the first person I saw the Lord First Corinthians 9 or last of all he appeared to me so that's just absolutely fundamental and it's interesting whenever people talk about the resurrection they go to the gospels first and you should go to the gospels last and even if they go to the gospels too often they're going to go to Matthew because it's everybody's favorite book I guess because it's first are they going to go to Luke who has Jesus appear what what I think once on Sunday and then later a week later and John has him appearing and so forth uh and Mark of course doesn't have appearances in his original ending but those are all secondary there's there's nobody writing those who says I was there I saw it and Paul wasn't there meaning at an empty tomb but he does say I've seen the Lord and then he does describe to us in two passages what that might have entailed so two places he says I've seen the Lord First Corinthians 9 and I would add Galatians last of all uh he revealed him his son in me uh I'm quoting it wrong but he says uh he was set apart for the gospel Galatians 1 and that when it pleased God to reveal his son in me or to me if you go it to me that could be a third as far as just an absolute unambiguous statement I've seen the Lord uh that would be First Corinthians 9 and then last of all he appeared to me now the last of although is important because Paul lines himself up with other Witnesses that he says he has received testimony from and what he as you know it's First Corinthians 15 he breaks it down he talks about he appeared to Peter and to the 12 and to all the apostles and to James we have no record of James now in the evianite materials you know the Hebrew gospel materials that you studied I know he does appear to James and James is actually at the Last Supper and I present that in my book The Jesus Dynasty so if you put it all together Paul is aware of an appearance to James and then a mass appearance almost like you'd think of maybe these Marion ology appearances of our lady or something 500 Brethren at once saw him he knows about that we have no record of that otherwise so if you go with our earliest witness and we could probably date that you know very close to uh the 50s so let's say 54 55 CE that's within 20 25 years of Jesus's death if he was crucified in 30 which is a good working date to go with so 20 25 years later Paul says I I I've seen I saw him or he appeared to me literally the verb is was seen it's the heiress passive he he was seen by me he appeared to me so I like to call it sightings uh because you know when you cite something uh I don't want to trivialize it but you know when people say and this is people will think I'm being lighthearted here but you know Elvis was seen in the local grocery store it actually you know and then somebody says well there have been five other sightings of Elvis in Memphis over the past five years and these people swear they saw it well there's you know it's not comparable at all but I'm trying to get the idea of like a sighting or he was seen or he appeared some sort of manifestation of Jesus now this would be 25 years after but then when you ask him as his uh Corinthian correspondence do and directly because he he's gotten their questions and one of their questions is do you have to believe in Resurrection he goes absolutely you know if if you're a Christian you believe in not only that Christ was raised that Jesus Christ but that at the at his coming those who belong to him will also be raised next question well what do you mean race bodies are decayed bodies are corrupt people are lost at sea what what kind of a body are you talking about and he basically says what nobody wants to talk about he says uh God knows God knows so you have to ask what did he actually see because he if he saw something he could say well I saw this person you know five five to six feet tall and he was shining and he had a white robe I mean we have descriptions like that they're called epiphanies all the way through the Hebrew Bible The Book of Daniel is famous for these you know I saw an angel and he was clothed like the sun and he had these guards he doesn't say that he doesn't report it as what we would tend to call an epiphany right and so when he does this you have to wonder why does he not describe the body so I think what we can say if we're trying to be really careful here is we can say that Paul does not report seeing a physical body because he addresses the question of what kind of body and if you go to Philippians 3 20 and 21 19 20 21 I'm not going to turn to these but that's basically the verses he does refer to his body calls it a body and he says that when Christ appears the whole thing is our Commonwealth or our our government is in heaven from which we have laid a savior Christ the lord and when he appears he will transform our lowly body this body body of Flesh and Blood to be like his glorious body so whatever Paul saw it was a glorious body it would be you know in the book of Acts it's a blinding light now I want to stay with Paul's own testimony in this interview but it is interesting that the book of Acts presents it like that remember in the book of Acts when Stephen is martyred he sees a figure standing at the right hand of God in heaven that he refers to as Jesus that supposedly is like a human figure because he says I see Jesus at the right hand of God and uh so that I think isn't he the one that says Lord Jesus receive my spirit so this is a different thing Paul doesn't say that Paul says that I can't describe the body other than characterize it as glorious powerful immortal no longer of dust not flesh and blood but Immortal and glorious so it reminds you of many of the Hellenistic accounts that we have in which uh we have a person disappearing I think Romulus is one of the best known uh I think it's Avid that talks about this and the passage I'm thinking of where Romulus is giving a discourse uh to his Roman citizens in Rome on one of the hills and he begins to rise up and then slowly disappear and it says his body melts away as he rises and so all apparently has something like that in mind for Resurrection that's in sharp contrast to what we have in the Gospels where it is a flesh and blood body so here we have to distinguish the and we have to talk about what does the word Resurrection really mean in other words literally Resurrection in Greek is anastasis to stand up so when you're dead you're down right lying down in a grave and when you stand up you're standing up you're it's the Revival of a corpse and that's the normal meaning of Resurrection to stand up or to raise up Aguero in Greek for example in the Gospels when Mary Magdalene and the women come to the tomb and they're told by the angel he's not here he's been raised up raised up meaning lifted up he's gotten up uh that idea is not really what Paul calls Resurrection but Paul calls Resurrection I would call more transformation from a lowly fleshly mortal decaying let's go further stinking rotting corruptable aging body that is going to lead you to death to a glorious body that is Immortal and is no longer dust so his big analogy is Adam he says Adam was the first Adam was of the Dust right perishable but the second Adam he says is a life-giving spirit now various academics get into arguments and discussions about but do you need the do you need the physical body in order to transform it into this spiritual state and what they want to do is kind of hold on to the physical like the bones let's say the bones of Jesus were founded the bones of Jesus matter and they want to hold on to the physical and say well yes he was transformed but it's that physical body that was transformed well for Paul that would only be true of people living at the time think about it Jesus returns in the Clouds Of Heaven it's very little literal First Corinth First Corinthians 15 first those Thessalonians 4. very literal and the dead are raised and corruptable and the living are transformed well if the dead are raised incorruptable it doesn't mean they come out corruptable first like some sort of a people call it a zombie apocalypse or something you know half skeletal remains or something like that that's not his idea and in the Book of Revelation the people who are lost at sea says the oceans give up the dead that are in them you're not talking about a physical body anymore so Paul's view of Resurrection has nothing to do with the physical body doesn't depend on the physical body I don't even think it involves the physical body now there is a case that he covers then if I was a flesh and blood living human being not dead but living so this wouldn't be Resurrection because I'm Not Dead and Jesus returns in the blink of an eye he says the twinkling of an eye the dead will be raised Incorruptible and we because he thinks he's going to be alive and we the living will be transformed he doesn't say resurrected he says transformed right from the physical body of dust to the Heavenly Body of the spirit and he calls it a life-giving spirit so the first Adam was dust second Adam is a life-giving spirit so for Jesus to come out of the Tomb you know how all Orthodox Christians Evangelical Christians the most important thing to them is to show that a physical corpse got revived and came out of the Tomb and then ate with people and they touched his wounds and they saw him for Paul that would not be particularly impressive it would indicate maybe some kind of a miracle that God could revive the dead make live the Dead but they're not in an immortal State at that point their flesh and blood and Jesus says that he said look I'm not a ghost I'm not a spirit I have Flesh and Bones so what you've got is two views one view is what most Christians think is the view and there's no witness to it whatsoever that Resurrection means a corpse is in a tomb and on the morning of the third day the tomb's empty and that corpse is walking around Jerusalem showing itself showing himself to people and that's not actually Resurrection as Paul understands it uh because Resurrection is transformation that would be my motto to leave with the resurrection transformation it's being transformed from the physical sphere of existence the Mortal sphere to the immortal so that would be the main uh presentation I would give on Paul and I would argue that that is probably the earliest Christian view that actually um because it's our earliest we have and it's the only one we have that's first person and I think if he thought otherwise he would have said I've seen the Lord in his glorified state but he doesn't say that I've seen the Lord and then he equates what the others saw to that so I'm going to read backwards I'm going to stay with Paul First Corinthians 15. I'm not going to go to the gospels which I think are derivative and later when you're talking about proving it like how are we going to prove it we need a corpse to come out of a tomb and breathe and live and show the wounds otherwise it could be a ghost or maybe somebody just hallucinated or imagined uh Paul's not worried about that he believes that what he saw is so real that there's no doubt about it so if you read backwards from our only witness he says he appeared first to Peter now he uses the same term as last of all he appeared to me so why should I assume that he appeared as a corpse resuscitated for Peter but for Paul it's a transformed being into this heavenly State Immortal glorious and Powerful I'm gonna read it straight through Peter also must have seen a glorified Jesus who's been taken away translated what we call apotheosis in Hellenistic religions so I think the earliest views of Christian Resurrection Paul being our only first-person witness were apotheosis and if you say as kelsus later did well that could have just been a ghost it could have been but these testimonies of these people are that no we saw him we literally saw him in a way that was uh powerful and amazing just as people saw angels and so forth now one other evidence of that is embedded in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus is asked in the Gospel of Luke it's also in mark But Luke has a fuller account and the reason I'm using Luke is Mark doesn't have appearances but Luke does so let's go to Luke and let him tell us what Resurrection is like and according to Luke when Jesus is asked about a woman with seven husbands because they keep dying right remember that it's like a sadducey question they don't believe in Resurrection so what if a woman had seven husbands and the first one died and then the second third fourth fifth all the way to seven whose wife will she be in the resurrection because there were seven men married to her I mean so it's one of these crazy hypotheticals people always get when they want to argue religion you know like uh I'm a pacifist oh really you're a pacifist what if someone broke in your house and tied your family up and was torturing them and you had a gun in your hand and are you telling me you wouldn't shoot them you know it's that kind of thing so it's basically saying resurrection's stupid it's crazy who could believe it because obviously this woman uh had seven husbands and you can't break all these people back it just doesn't make sense so they didn't believe in Resurrection this was the Sadducees but what did Jesus answer according to Luke he says you heir not knowing the scriptures and then he talks about how God is the god of the living not the Dead not the Dead because all live to him so it's not like Souls living in Paradise or afterlife or something like that as much as they're in the keeping of God and then he says in the age to come those who are worthy to obtain the resurrection will be like Angels they won't marry they won't give in marriage neither will they die anymore so Luke actually has that idea of the resurrection of being a transformed being that he Likens to some sort of angelic existence but really higher than angels Paul shares that view Paul says to the Corinthians same letter First Corinthians 6 when they're having their law disputes going to court against each other he says I'm ashamed of you don't you know that the Saints will judge the world don't you know that we will judge Angels well obviously you're not going to judge angels in a physical body or if you're dead so I think we've got to start with Paul and he's very clear it's a transformed body so however here's the thing Paul mentions the tomb he mentions the tune because he says he was buried now this is the earliest testimony have of what happened to Jesus when he died I don't think this has ever pointed out hardly ever I never hear it everybody's empty tomb empty tomb Mark has an empty tomb Matthew Luke John that's a late tradition an empty tomb no it's not a late tradition the empty tomb is but not the tomb uh the idea of Jesus being buried what Paul says is he died and he was buried and he was lifted up the third day lifted up the way I just explained meaning in this transformed state and he actually tells you what that'll be like in second Corinthians 5. and here's what he says if he says we are dwelling in a tent like a tent temporary and later we're going to dwell in a building building is permanent and he says if we get rid of the tent that's when you die your body goes back to the Dust you don't need that buddy you're tentless but you're also homeless you don't have your house shed and then he switches to clothing old clothes new clothes so he says we're clothed in the body this is the image of Plato really we live in a the old clothing of the body like I touched my body here this is my soul or my inner self is not the body the body decays the body perishes it's not important it's never coming back it's of no consequence it's dust Adam is dust Jesus is dust but the life-giving spirit that emerges he says is reclathed we're literally further clothed in any ads this is what everybody misses we do not want to be found naked so when you take off your clothes you're naked you're dead your soul is in the keeping of God and he goes that's not what we want we don't want to be naked with God is using a metaphor of course all clothing body lose the body you're naked meaning nobody re-clothe new buddy so those are his analogies so if you draw that all together would would Paul think that the tomb was empty I would say no I would say that he would have no interest in a tomb of any tomb what if someone in the Corinthian Community had died and was buried and apparently they had because they're asking him at Corinth what's going to happen to some of these people in our group that have died right well they're in their tombs does Paul say well go out to the tomb and wait at the entrance and if Christ comes they'll walk out that isn't what he says he says the dead will be raised and corruptable well if they're raised incorruptable you don't take bombs and rotten flesh and finally dust to heaven or somebody's lost at sea you don't have to go find their body parts so this whole idea of mixing the physical with the transformed body of the resurrection and by the physical I realize in the Hellenistic world it's not our category of physical and spirit for Paul the human body that's of dust and it perishes when you die you can call it physical or call it whatever you want but the new body he calls a life-giving spirit he uses the word panuma spirit and it means that it's not of this world it's it's of a higher and higher origin origin so that's a lengthy exposition of what I think Paul thought about Resurrection and he would not have been impressed at all with a a period uh resuscitated corpse what would that prove about a new creation that person's still going to die you know you have to wonder in Matthew when he has physical resurrections right think of it this is just the craziest thing in Matthew even the most conservative evangelicals have trouble I'm not going to name any names but they're out there on YouTube like well maybe that's a metaphor well it's not a metaphor to Matthew I mean read it you know when Jesus dies the tombs were open and people came out of the tombs and walked around and appeared to people what are they going to look like what are they going to look like well if they've been dead two or three days I guess they'd look almost the same what if they've been dead a year uh it's just you know this idea of resuscitating corpses getting confused with Paul's view of resurrection postview of Resurrection is a new creation and being turned into one of these sons of God glorified he calls Jesus the firstborn of many brothers and sisters first born of this whole family of God [Music] [Music]

Channel: James Tabor

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Id: KfmQ3_b3QJ0

Length: 25min 37sec (1537 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 19 2023