What Happened to the Body?

by hmike 32 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  hmike

  I'm fairly new here, so please excuse me if this has been discussed before. It seemed like an appropriate time to bring this up.

  Suppose we accept that there really was a man Jesus, rabbi, teacher, etc., but just a mortal man. So if he didn't resurrect, what happened to the body, and how was the "myth" of the resurrection perpetuated, especially in light of the numerous "witnesses" (some of whom were still alive when the accounts were written, if we can believe that part of the accounts) and the effect this had on their lives?
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  Elsewhere

  My elder dad told me that it just evaporated or disappeared.

  He then told me to stop asking questions... because it was just gone and that is all that matters.
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  the_classicist

  Yeah, I heard about the dematerialize thing too. Doesn't make any sense, especially when you read the bible.
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  Voyager

  Watchtower/1953/Sept/1st/page-518/states, quote:

  JESUS?

  FLESHLY BODY DISSOLVED

  What happened to the perfect fleshly body of Jesus after his death? Was it preserved so that in time men will look upon it in worship? or does Jesus still have this fleshly body in the heavens, "spiritualized" so that it can be seen and worshiped? Neither. The Scriptures answer: It was disposed of by Jehovah God, dissolved into its constituent elements or atoms.

  Jesus was the antitype foreshadowed by Moses, the great mediator and leader of the congregation of Israel. God himself disposed of Moses? body by burial, and "no man knoweth of his sepulchre". (Deut. 34:5, 6) Later, one of the Christian writers says that Michael had a dispute with the Devil over the body of Moses. (Jude 9) The Devil desired to get the body of Moses the great leader and to use it as an object of worship to draw the Israelites away from their true invisible Commander and Leader, Jehovah God. With stronger desire the Devil wanted to obtain the fleshly body of Jesus after his death to induce some to worship it and use it for indecent false religious purposes, thus reproaching Jehovah God. But Jehovah thwarted the Devil?s purpose in both cases by disposing of the bodies of these two faithful men.

  Moses? body returned to the dust by process of decay, as all human bodies do, but not so in Jesus? case, for it is written: "For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption." (Ps. 16:10, AS; Acts 2:31) So God caused Jesus? body to disappear, but not corrupt, meaning that it was dissolved, disintegrated back into the elements from which all human bodies are made.?John 20:1-13.
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  Leolaia

  The whole point of the Empty Tomb story in Mark is that the body has been resurrected. Early Jewish beliefs about the resurrection concern the entire person being resurrected, though the fleshly body may be transformed into a spiritual glorified body (cf. 2 Baruch and 1 Corinthians 15). Thus there is continuity between the original person and the resurrected person. The Society denies this continuity.

  Some of the resurrection epiphany narratives also insisted on the corporeality of Jesus: "Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed. Touch me and see for yourselves; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have" (Luke 24:39). The purpose of these stories is to counterbalance other quasi-docetic stories which suggested that Jesus was disembodied after being raised (e.g. Luke 24:31). Ignatius uses a similar resurrection story to specifically refute docetic doctrine:

  "He truly suffered just as he truly raised himself -- not, as certain unbelievers say, in apperance only for it is they who exist in appearance only! Indeed, their fate will be determined by what they think: they will become disembodied as a phantom. For I know and believe that he was in the flesh even after the resurrection, and when he came to Peter and those with him, he said to them: 'Take hold of me; handle me and see that I am not a disembodied phantom'. And immediately they touched him and believed, being closely united with his flesh and blood . For this reason they too despised death; indeed, they proved to be greater than death. And after his resurrection he ate and drank with them like one who is composed of flesh, although spiritually he was united with the Father" (Smyrnaeans 2:1-3:3)
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  Narkissos

  First, I would remark that the question "what happened to Jesus' body?" is not an easy one either for those who believe in a corporeal, physical resurrection... where is Jesus' body now? On a cloud, on another planet? What is the meaning of a physical body in a spiritual realm?

  The NT texts which insist on a corporeal resurrection (e.g. Luke) are not the only ones nor even the first. They seem to react to a previous view implying a spiritual resurrection, or raising up, of Jesus.

  In the Pauline texts Jesus is raised in spirit, or rather as spirit:

  Thus it is written, "The first man, Adam, became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45)

  In Pauline theology the body of Christ is given in the Eucharist (1 Corinthians 10:16; 11:23ff) and subsequently identified to the Church (1 Corinthians 12:22-27). Christ lives as spirit within Christians individually (Galatians 2:20; Philippians 1:23) and collectively (cf. Ephesians 1:22f). There is no allusion there to an "empty tomb".

  The highly contradictory accounts of apparitions in the Gospels and Acts, progressively developing from Mark's Gospel where no apparition occurs, bear the distinct mark of pious legend. And the reference to eyewitnesses in 1 Corinthians 15 was probably added at a time when none of the supposed eyewitnesses could be questioned.

  Add to that some vestiges of alternative endings in which, instead of resurrecting, Jesus doesn't die at all (e.g. the "young man" escaping when Jesus is arrested in Mark 14, then appears again in the empty tomb; the substitution story of Jesus Barabbas vs. Jesus the Nazorean; the cry on the cross in Mark and Matthew implying that the "Christ" who came into Jesus at baptism left him before death)... a corporeal resurrection was just one version among many before it became the official version.
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  gaiagirl

  Some interesting questions come to mind: If the body was "dissolved" or "evaporated", then why was the stone blocking the doorway rolled away when the three women arrived (Mark 16:4)? Who was the "young man clothed in a white robe" (Mark 16:5) who was sitting inside the tomb when the three women entered? If I come home and find my garage door open, my car missing, and a stranger inside the garage, should I assume my car has died and gone to heaven?
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  Leolaia

  Narkissos....About Paul's theory of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul does refer to the resurrected as having a soma pneumatikos "spiritual body", which contrasts with the sarx, and which has been "changed" (cf. allagésometha in v. 51) from one nature (the earthly) to another (the heavenly). So I think for Paul, it is a question of a different kind of corporeality; the dead when they are raised will, like Christ, have a soma pneumatikos instead of the fleshly soma psukhikos (v. 44). This falls very naturally in line with the intertestamental concept of the resurrection being a corporeal affair (in the sense of putting on "garments", cf. 1 Corinthians 15:53-54), tho the kinds of bodies the righteous would have will be like those of the angels. Ghosts and demons, on the other hand, don't have bodies, at least from the point of view of Ignatius and the author of Luke (cf. the Pseudo-Clementines, in which the demons are the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim whose bodies perished in the Flood). The concept of "nakedness" in 2 Corinthians 5 also shows an awareness of the issue of embodiment at death.
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  Narkissos

  Leolaia,

  I fully agree, but to me it is all the more noteworthy that Paul fails to apply the concept of sôma pneumatikon to Christ's resurrection and describes him as pneuma instead... which in turn makes room for the Eucharistic and Ecclesiastic notions of the "body of Christ".

  To put it simply, I would suggest that Paul doesn't regard Christ as one human individual among many, or his "resurrection" as a sample of the general concept of "resurrection" (notwithstanding the hazardous remark "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised"). Rather, the unique raising of the heavenly Son of God as life-giving Spirit (pneuma) is the theological foundation for the resurrection of believers as "spiritual bodies" (sômata pneumatika).
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  Leolaia

  Perhaps the problem is that Paul is dealing with (1) a pre-existing Jewish belief about the general resurrection which he has adopted and (2) his own pneumatic christology -- and the two don't exactly neatly mesh, resulting in a tension between Paul's teaching on the manner of the resurrection and Christ's ongoing pneumatic role in the church. Although, as you put it, Paul does not specifically say that Christ's resurrection is an exact "sample" of what the believers would later experience, he does designate Christ as "the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep" (15:20), and while this may pertain only to Christ's temporal priority of resurrection, the whole discussion of the manner of the resurrection in ch. 15 leaves the reader with the impression that the kind of resurrection Christ experienced is representative of what the general resurrection would be like. Thus, to answer the question "How are dead people raised, and what sort of body do they have when they come back?" (v. 35), a question which clearly refers to the general resurrection, Paul uses the example of Christ's resurrection in v. 45 to illustrate the manner of the believers' resurrection.