Posts by Leolaia

52

Why does anything exist at all?

by logansrun in

jw
friends

god or no god, why is there something rather than nothing?

why do elements have properties?

why does consciousness exist?

Leolaia

I read a science article about quantum theory and all the weird things that happen at the quantum level, where quarks can seemingly come into existence from nothingness and behave completely differently from what we think of as natural Newtonian laws. Maybe someone else could explain this better, but it speculated that the universe could have arisen out of nothingness as a quantum bubble with net zero mass and energy, and the big bang was the event that took the bubble out of quantum singularity.

4

Howard Dean: The Remix

by Euphemism in

.

dean said in his primetime interview last night that he's "not a rock star.".

think again howard.. thanks to the collective creativity of the internet, we now have: the howard dean remixes

Leolaia

By the way, do you have any favorites? It's a long list and I'm not sure which to start with?

4

Howard Dean: The Remix

by Euphemism in

.

dean said in his primetime interview last night that he's "not a rock star.".

think again howard.. thanks to the collective creativity of the internet, we now have: the howard dean remixes

Leolaia

Great, thanx....I watched them play 'em on Keith Olbermann and thought it was priceless.

22

Captain Kangaroo dead at age 76- farewell

by wednesday in

'captain kangaroo' bob keeshan dies at 76 by

ap file ''captain kangaroo'' entertained and educated children for 36 years.

keeshan died of a long illness, his family said in a statement.. .

Leolaia

Oh nooooooo :(( I looooved Captain Kangaroo, though I don't remember much of it rather than the stuff with him and the moose. It was really sad losing Mr. Rogers too, tho I am glad I went to the Rose Parade last year and had an opportunity to see him in person. I was most touched by the death of Jim Henson. That made me cry on more than one occasion. So I wonder what's next. I think I will be most moved when Bob from Sesame Street passes away .... I love that guy.

11

3 heavens?

by yxl1 in

2 corinthians 12. .

1i must go on boasting.

although there is nothing to be gained, i will go on to visions and revelations from the lord.

Leolaia

Rabbinical and pseudepigraphal literature refers to seven or ten heavens. Paradise is located in the third of the seven, or the seventh of the ten. This is obviously what the reference in 2 Corinthians is to. This is what we find in the Jewish Haggadah on the assumption of Enoch into heaven:

"They [the angels] took him from thence to the third heaven, where they showed him Paradise, with all the trees of beautiful colors, and their fruits, ripe and luscious, and all kinds of food which they produced, springing up with delightful fragrance. In the midst of Paradise he saw the tree of life, in that place in which God rests when He comes into Paradise. This tree cannot be described for its excellence and sweet fragrance, and it is beautiful, more than any created thing, and on all its sides it is like gold and crimson in appearance, and transparent as fire, and it covers everything. From its root in the garden there go forth four streams, which pour out honey, milk, oil, and wine, and they go down to the Paradise of Eden, that lies on the confines between the earthly region of corruptibility and the heavenly region of incorruptibility, and thence they go along the earth. He also saw the three hundred angels who keep the garden, and with never-ceasing voices and blessed singing they serve the Lord every day. The angels leading Enoch explained to him that this place is prepared for the righteous, while the terrible place prepared for the sinners is in the northern regions of the third heaven. He saw there all sorts of tortures, and impenetrable gloom, and there is no light there, but a gloomy fire is always burning. And all that place has fire on all sides, and on all sides cold and ice, thus it burns and freezes. And the angels, terrible and without pity, carry savage weapons, and their torture is unmerciful." (Haggadah, 12a)

As I discussed in earlier threads, both Paradise and Gehenna were originally viewed as in Sheol -- in the underworld. This underworld was variously believed to be at the edge of the world (as Paradise was planted in the East), or subterranean. Then this changed into a belief that inside Paradise there was a "gate to heaven", and then this changed further into a belief that Paradise itself was located in heaven. The notion was that Paradise (the Garden of Eden) was preserved into heaven (and thus not destroyed in Noah's Flood) and will descended onto the earth again at the final age (cf. Revelation). Then finally the Haggadah represents the most advanced stage, where both Paradise and Gehenna are located in heaven. This is the also what we find in 2 Enoch of his tour of the seven heavens:

"The ascension of Enoch to the first heaven. And they took me up on their wings and carried me up to first heaven. And they put me down there. They led before my face their movements and their aberrations from year to year. And they showed me in the light the angels who govern the stars, the heavenly constellations. And they showed me there a vast ocean, much bigger than the earthly ocean. And the angels were flying with their wings. And they showed me there the treasuries of the snow and the cold, terrible angels were guarding the treasuries.... And those men took me up to the second heaven. And they set me down on the second heaven. And they showed me the prisoners under guard, in measureless judgment. And there I saw the condemned angels, weeping. And I said to the men who were with me, 'Why are they tormented?' The men answered me, 'They are evil rebels against the Lord, who did not listen to the voice of the Lord, but they consulted their own will.' And I felt sorry for them....And the men took me from there. They brought me up to the third heaven. And they placed me in the midst of Paradise. And that place has an appearance of pleasantness that has never been seen. Every tree was in full flower. Every fruit was ripe, every food was in yield profusely; every fragrance was pleasant. And the four rivers were flowing past with gentle movement, with every kind of good food. And the tree of life is in that place, under which the Lord takes a rest when the Lord takes a walk in Paradise. And that tree is indescribable for pleasantness of fragrance....And the men carried me away from there and they made me go up to the northern heaven; and they showed me there a very frightful place; every kind of torture and torment is in that place, and darkness and gloom. And there is no light there, but a black fire blazes up perpetually, and a river of fire is coming out over the whole place.... And the men lifted me up from there and they carried me up to the fourth heaven. And they showed me there all the movements and displacements and all the rays of light of the soon and moon....And the men carried me away to the east of heaven. And they showed me the gates through which the sun goes out according to the appointed seasons..... And the men picked me up from there and carried me away to the fifth heaven. And there I saw many armies and Grigori [the angels that sinned]. And their appearance was like the appearance of a human being, and their size was larger than that of giants.... And those men took me from there and they carried me up to the sixth heaven. And there I saw seven angels, grouped together, brilliant and very glorious. And their radiance was like the radiance of the sun when it shines.... And the men lifted me up from there, and they carried me up to the seventh heaven. And I saw a great light, and all the fiery armies of the incorporeal ones, archangels, angels, and the shining otanim stations. And they showed me from a distance the Lord, sitting on his throne. And all the heavenly armies assembled, according to rank, advancing and doing obeisance to the Lord. And they withdrew and went into their places of joy and merriment, immeasureable light, but gloriously serving him." (2 Enoch 3:1-20:4)

If you read some of my older posts on hell, the ascension of King David, and so forth, there are more quotes on third heaven from 1 Enoch, the Life of Adam and Eve, and many other pseudepigraphal works. The concept of blessedness in a third heaven is also found in the Upanishads and in Buddhism -- it is possible that the Jews borrowed the concept from Persian influence.

This is one great example of how the pseudepigrapha shed light on obscure things in scripture.

Leolaia

12

Giving up carbs = headache

by SpunkyChick in

jw
friends

any of you try giving up carbs?

i have a slamming headache from restricting my carb intake...anyone experience this and when does the headache subside?

Leolaia

I have been restricting my carbs. I did a strict Atkins for about two months, then added more carbs, and since then have avoided pasta, bread, starch, and refined sugar or corn syrup where I can, but have been pretty liberal about eating fruit and I have been addicted to Just Fruits brand of crunchy freeze dried fruit. I also have about 2 or 3 meals a week where I just totally splurge on carbs. The upshot is that I lost 20 lbs and have kept it off for more than half a year. I don't think I will be able to lose more weight though unless I go back on a strict Atkins diet.

35

Did You Know Any Particularly Weird Witnesses???

by minimus in

jw
friends

i know some will say all witnesses are weird but i'm thinking of the real weird ones.

you know, the type that you used to run away from when they would approach you to say hello in the kingdom hall.

i know of one strange guy that looked like a pervert/child molester.

Leolaia

Yes I remember Radar Man. That's what we used to call him. He believed there was an antenna inside a nearby mountain that was stealing his thoughts and taking away his wonderful invention ideas and giving them to other people, like....his ideas for the television, radio, etc. And there were Brother Tlumacki who said the most stupid, weird, strange things at the WT study that would leave us all in stitches....I tell you, it rarely was a dull moment when he gave a comment. I can only remember a few over these years. The one I remember the best was when he went on a rant about masturbation and saying how people who wear sunglasses a lot must be masturbators since it's been scientifically established that masturbation makes you go blind. He was hilarious.

17

LOST IN TRANSLATION

by sandy in

did any of you see this movie?

i thought it was a pretty good movie.

i am curious to hear what other people thought of it.

Leolaia

Oh yeah, on another trip he saw Eric Clapton checking into the hotel under the name "Jeff Beck".

17

LOST IN TRANSLATION

by sandy in

did any of you see this movie?

i thought it was a pretty good movie.

i am curious to hear what other people thought of it.

Leolaia

I stayed at that hotel from the movie last spring. It was very, very nice. My partner is there right now on a business trip. He told me today that he just saw Elijah Wood and Sean Astin who are there in Tokyo for the premiere of ROTK. On another trip he literally bumped into Robin Williams, with apologies. Oh yeah, he also saw Chow Yun Fat on another trip.

77

Resurrection Appearance to James the Just

by Leolaia in

apostle paul provides an early list of jesus' resurrection appearances in 1 corinthians 15. it is important because this list was written before our canonical gospels were written and thus serves as an independent source of information.

paul writes:"christ died for our since, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to cephas and secondly to the twelve.

next he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to james, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though i was born when no one expected it.

Leolaia

That would seem to be Doherty's thesis. I personally lean much more towards Sheehan's thesis of Jesus as a real person who was later deified, with Pauline and Gnostic groups drawing on Hellenistic syncretistic concepts ubiquitous in the diaspora. The main problem with Doherty, as I see it, is that it is biased too much toward the "mystery" conception of Jesus; adoptionist christologies appear to be just as old as docetic ones, and whereas the entire emphasis of Paul's gospel was on Jesus' death and resurrection, Jewish-Christian groups who expressed adoptionist views showed much less interest in Jesus' death and resurrection and focused themselves on the moral philosophy and lifestyle advocated by Jesus. The early formation of Q within a Greek-speaking Jewish-Christian community at the same time as Paul's activity would strongly argue for the antiquity of this view of Jesus (which aside from its didactic character also espouses the adoptionist view of Jesus in Q 3:21b-22).

Paul himself is dependent on the body of oral teachings attributed to Jesus, alluding to them mainly in concentrated blocks in his epistles: (1) There is a block of didactic Jesus sayings in 1 Corinthians 7-9 which Paul mostly attributes to the "Lord" (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 = Mark 10:6, Matthew 19:3-9; 1 Corinthians 7:25 = Matthew 19:10-12; 1 Corinthians 9:14 = Luke 10:7), a second block can be found in Romans 12-14 (cf. Romans 12:14 = Luke 6:27; Romans 12:17 = Luke 6:29; Romans 12:18 = Mark 9:50; Romans 13:7 = Luke 20:20-26; Romans 13:8-10 = Mark 12:28-31; Romans 14:10 = Luke 6:37; Romans 14:13 = Luke 17:1-4; Romans 14:14 = Mark 7:15), and a third block in 1 Thessalonians 5 can also be detected (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:2 = Luke 12:39, 1 Thessalonians 5:13 = Mark 9:50; 1 Thessalonians 5:15 = Luke 6:29). Other scattered resemblances to Jesus sayings include 1 Corinthians 2:9 = Gospel of Thomas 17, 1 Corinthians 4:8 = Gospel of Thomas 81; 1 Corinthians 10:27 = Gospel of Thomas 14:2; 1 Corinthians 13:2 = Gospel of Thomas 48; Galatians 2:28 = Gospel of Thomas 22:4; and Philippians 3:3 = Gospel of Thomas 54. This would argue for the antiquity of oral tradition of Jesus sayings as anterior to even Paul and this very early view of Jesus as a didactic teacher fits better with viewing the Jesus tradition as having its initial locus in an actual teacher/rabbi than in a metaphysical construct that was later turned into a human figure with a historicizing backstory.

And as I discussed in an earlier thread, the deification of Jesus occurs almost effortlessly from the inertia of Jesus' own sayings: his circumlocutional reference to himself as a son of man "humble human being" in sayings such as Matthew 8:20 (cf. Job 25:4-6; Psalm 8:3-6) was easily converted into that of the Messianic Son of Man figure who sits on the Judgment Seat on the Day of Judgment (cf. Daniel 7, 1 Enoch), and new sayings about Jesus coming on clouds to judge the world (cf. Mark 8:38; 13:26; 14:62) were recruited almost verbatim from apocalyptic works such as 1 Enoch, and the Jewish War of A.D. 68-70 almost surely encouraged this shift. Jesus' calling God "Abba" or "Father" was derivative of his philosophy of God's intimacy with humankind (a view in direct opposition with the religious orthodoxy in Jerusalem and also expressed in apocalyptic works that restrict God to "third heaven") as "the Kingdom of God" -- a view that builds on the old Israelite notion of God's physical presence in Jerusalem and his Temple but designates the community of believers as the "Temple" or "Kingdom" where God now resides. This general intimacy was then later construed as a special intimacy Jesus alone had with God as his "Son," and this led to the title "Son of God" that applies to the Davidic Messiah (cf. Psalm 2:6-7) which comports well with Jesus' theme of the "Kingdom of God"....and within the context of Gentile Christianity which had little interest or understanding of Jesus as a Davidic Messiah, the title "Son of God" was understood in a secular Roman sense as referring to the deified ruler. When these trends interact with the syncretistic and Hellenistic notions of a pre-existent Logos, the dying-rising god of mystery religions, and the notion of angelic revelation of secrets (cf. Daniel, 2 Enoch, 3 Enoch, the merkebah), the deification of Jesus was almost certain. Jesus' message of God's presence among men became shifted to a belief in Jesus as God's presence among men.

But I do not view the dying-rising god theme, for instance, as original to the Jesus tradition. Otherwise, why do not the Q sayings of Jesus themselves make reference to this theme? The sheer absence of this theme in my view is strong evidence that it is secondary to the earlier didactic theme of the Jesus tradition. And the didactic theme (which incidentally is the focus of the Epistle of James and the Didache, which also derive material from the pre-gospel Q tradition and not from the finished gospels) comports better with an original Jewish-Christian conception of Jesus as a teacher of moral philosophy. I think Sheehan has a plausible theory of the genesis of the resurrection theme in Christianity, as an application of what Jesus said about those safeguarded by God in his Kingdom into a belief that Jesus himself was safeguarded from death and not abandoned to Hades. Here is my take on the matter. This raising, as understood in the context of first-century Judaism, was like the raising of Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Isaiah to Paradise. None of these figures were rising-dying gods. I think that is the whole original essence of the Easter belief; Jesus lived for the Kingdom of God and thus he was saved from Hades like the great patriarchs and pious men of old. The early visions and epiphanies of Jesus were visions of Jesus in God's company in Paradise (or on earth prior to his transferal to Paradise -- more on that later); that is the kind of experience suggested by 2 Corinthians 12:1-6. That is why he is accompanied with Moses and Elijah in the Transfiguration stories (cf. Mark 9:1-13); it is a foreshadowing of what was to come. That is why Jesus relates the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus promising the salvation from Hades of those living a virtuous life (Luke 16), and in the parable the poor man Lazarus is depicted as in the fellowship of Abraham -- again showing dependence on the common Jewish notion of the assumption from death of the virtuous men of old. Jesus originally was no more of a "dying-rising god" than Lazarus or Moses or Abraham.

The crucial shift is the change from the "raising" of Jesus (egerthanai) to the "resurrection" (anastenai) of Jesus -- it is the latter notion that requires the survival of Jesus' body beyond death. The original gospel of Mark, known to Matthew and Luke, as you may recall only spoke of the "raising" of Jesus. Now, as you may recall from my "Ascension of King David" thread, the common Jewish belief in the first century was that those who ascended to heaven did so at death or shortly afterward, and left their physical bodies behind to decay (cf. Jude 9 on the matter of the "corpse of Moses"). Now the original version of Mark, as preserved by Matthew and Luke, Jesus was "raised" immediately at his moment of death: "And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit (apheken to pneuma)" (Matthew 27:50). Luke 23:44-49 says: "Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (paratithemai to pneuma mou)!' And having said this he breathed his last." John and the Gospel of Peter are also dependent on the same Passion tradition and John 19:30 says Jesus "bowed his head and gave up his spirit (paredoken to pneuma)," and Gospel of Peter 5:19 says that "having said this he was taken up" (anelephthe; cf. analephtheis in Acts 1:11 referring to Jesus' ascension). The redaction of Mark that produced Secret Mark, however, replaced all the occurrences of Jesus being "raised" (egerthanai) with him being "resurrected (anastenai)", and the redactor also tellingly deleted the reference to Jesus giving up his spirit; Mark 15:37 simply says: "And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last." The same redaction added the two stories of physical resurrection -- one of the demonized epileptic boy (which is still preserved in Mark 9:26-27) and the resurrection of the rich young man (preserved only in Secret Mark, but which also appears in independent form in John 11). These stories, following predictions the Passion in the narrative, are intended as foreshadowings of Jesus' own resurrection. And it was this redaction that infused the gospel with mystery cult "dying-rising god" motifs -- particularly the notion of death as baptismal initiation (cf. Mark 10:38-39 and the repeated motif of the naked man in a linen cloth). So all this appears to be strong evidence of mystery religion influence as being a later stage in the development.

So we first have the original notion of Jesus ascending to heaven at his death like Abraham and Moses (leaving his body behind to decay), and then when Jesus was identified with the Son of Man figure in 1 Enoch who stands at the right hand of God, his "raising" involved not just preservation into blessedness but a "glorification" into the Messianic figure who will judge the world. This gives rise to an adoptionist belief that Jesus became the Son of God at his "raising", though others also believed that the annointing as Messiah and Son of Man occurred at Jesus baptism (i.e. the view of Mark). Docetic notions of the Revealer ascending into heaven immediately at death (cf. the Gospel of Mary) also drew on the early notion of Jesus' ascension at death. But the Pauline use of mystery religion mysticism took a different approach. The "dying-rising god" concept that contributed to the deification of Jesus motivated the shift from egerthanai to the anastenai of Jesus -- that the Christ who died was physically brought back to life, like Osiris who was redeemed from death when Isis reconstituted his body and breathed life back into his body. The mystery religion notions that were recruited in the shift from egerthanai to anastenai had to be reconciled with the pre-existing tradition about Jesus' Passion. Jesus was not reanimated immediately on the cross and thus his ascension had to occur at a later time. There had to be a delay of some sort where his reanimation could occur unseen. Thus we encounter the creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (which was not part of the possible interpolation that follows, since v. 12 follows the thought from v. 4 and it logically depends on an earlier mention of Jesus being "raised from the dead") that says that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised (egegertai) on the third day according to the Scriptures." That he has reinterpreted the term egerthanai as meaning anastenai "resurrection" is evident from v. 12 where he uses the terms interchangeably. Thus Paul has modified the adoptionist view of Jesus' Sonship as the result of his resurrection: Jesus Christ "was declared the Son of God with power by his resurrection (anastaseos) from the dead." The same view is expressed by the Lukan Peter in Acts 2:32-36 who says "this Jesus God resurrected (anastesen) ... [and] exalted to the right hand of God, having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit ... and God has made him both Lord and Christ." This Lukan Peter then proceeds to argue against exactly the type of "raising" which I believe was original to Christianity: that Jesus was raised into Paradise like King David (Acts 2:34). Luke denies that such types of ascensions have occurred (despite his inclusion of the Parable of Rich Man and Lazarus and the Transfiguration story in his Gospel, which undermine this very claim), and specifically says of Jesus that "he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh suffer decay" (Acts 2:31). The first claim is perfectly consistent with the earlier notions of Jesus' ascension, the second is not.

The Empty Tomb story was then recruited as the proof that Jesus was indeed physically resurrected from the dead. The earliest version was that of Mark which is problematic because it cuts off abruptly in 16:8, and this has given rise to a host of exegetical problems. Was there a suppressed ending? The thing is that obvious about the Empty Tomb story in Mark is that it is not the original form of the story because it shows signs of Secret Mark redaction: the mention of the "young man" (neaniskon) just like the individual Jesus had resurrected and the women being "astonished" (ekthambeisthe), a term that is a repeating feature of Secret Mark. The parallel version in Luke instead refers to "two men" (andres duo) and the women being only emphobon "afraid" (Matthew adds that they had kharis "joy" in addition to phobon "fear"). It is hard to tell because both Matthew and Luke themselves heavily redacted the story for their own purposes, but it seems probable that they did not know the Secret Mark redaction. Now what is intriguing is that Mark (representing the Secret Mark redaction) implies that the tomb was empty by having the young man say: "He has risen (egerthe), he is not here; see the place where they laid him. (Mark 16:6). Now the first half of the phrase is consistent with view that Jesus was spiritually raised, while the second half specifically claims that the tomb was empty implying a physical resurrection. This statement also occurs in its entirety in Matthew 28:1-8, but interestingly the highlighted phrase "see the place where they laid him" is missing in the parallel passage in Luke 24:6 and some manuscripts go further and omit the entire statement. The phrase in Luke 24:6 however is preceded by a rather astonishing statement that is absent in the Markan and Matthean versions: "Why do you seek the living among the dead (ton nekron)?" Indeed, nowhere does the Lukan account actually mention an empty tomb and this deficiency must have been early felt because Western manuscripts add the following Johannine-based interpolation: "But Peter arose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings only" (Luke 24:12).

This raises an intriguing possibility in my mind which at this point could only be regarded as a hypothesis: What if the original version of the Empty Tomb story wasn't an Empty Tomb story at all? What if the original version was that Mary and Salome went to the tomb to "annoint" the body (cf. Mark 16:1), and there they encounter an angel (cf. Matthew's "an angel of the Lord," Luke's "two men in dazzling apparel" which Secret Mark has converted into a "young man") who tells them not to annoint the body that is in the tomb because as he says, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? For he has risen, he is not here." The original notion was that Jesus had already left his body at death and ascended to heaven, and was thereby "annointed" by his ascension (cf. the primitive adoptionist notion partially preserved in Acts 2:32-36 and Romans 1:3-4), and so why do they seek the "living" Jesus in his "dead" corpse? This original concept would have then been systematically obliterated by Secret Mark, Matthew, and Luke in their own idiosyncratic ways to advance the notion of Jesus' egerthanai as anastenai, but traces of the original notion still remain intact throughout the different tomb stories.

So Paul also buys into the notion of egerthanai as anastenai and his discussion of Jesus' resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 makes clear that he understood resurrection in a physical sense. Yet it is not clear whether he understands Jesus' resurrection in the sense that would leave an Empty Tomb, as he describes it as glorifying Jesus as "a life-giving spirit" and likens His resurrection as a plant growing from a seed which is then discarded (1 Corinthians 15:37, 45). Paul thus holds onto the view of Jesus' resurrected body as a spiritual body and not of the flesh. Docetists would solve the problem by positing that Jesus never had a physical body, and thus his resurrection simply a "raising" of the spiritual body he always had. 1 Clement 25:1-5 comes up with a better analogy of the resurrection that better fits the Empty Tomb story: Jesus' resurrection was like the phoenix being reborn and rising with a new body from the ashes of the old. It is nevertheless unlikely that Paul would have viewed Jesus' body as left behind to decay since he says that Christians at the Last Trumpet would similarly be "changed" (allagesometha) into an incorruptible (aphthartoi) "spiritual body" (pneumatikon), and "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 15:44-50). So despite the bad analogy, Paul viewed Jesus' resurrection as converting his fleshly earthly body into a spiritual incorruptible one. This view of a purely spiritual body is especially suggested by the resurrection appearance in Luke 24:13-35 where the resurrected Jesus met two men on a road, gave them Eucharistic bread to eat, and then "vanished from their sight". These epiphany stories were, of course, perfectly consistent with the docetic view that Jesus lacked a physical body even in life and the Pauline view was insufficient for refuting docetism because it concurs with docetists in the spiritual nature of Jesus' resurrected body. And so we find a still later stage where epiphany stories began to emphasize the material corporeality of Jesus' body such as Jesus showing the wounds on his hands and feet and eating a meal with his disciples (Luke 24:36-43; John 20:24-28; Ignatius, Smyrnaeans 3:1-3). Ignatius goes so far as saying that those who touched him were "closely united with his flesh and blood (te sarki autou kai to haimati)," expressing almost the opposite view of Paul.

It is also not clear whether Paul believed that there was a delay between Jesus' resurrection and his ascension to heaven. The original sense of egerthanai was that Jesus was "taken up" when he died but when Paul and other Christians identified it with anastenai, the "raising" was no along associated with an ascension but with Jesus' resurrection only. This opened the possibility of a delayed ascension, of a further earthly ministry of Jesus that intervened between resurrection and ascension. It is in this context that Matthew 28:18-19 has Jesus giving the commission to the disciples "to make disciples of the all the nations", Pseudo-Mark 16:15 presents Jesus as telling his disciples to "go out to the whole world and proclaim the good news in my name," Luke 24:47 has Jesus asking that "repentence for the foregiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations," and John 21 has Jesus giving patoral authority to Peter. Strikingly, however, the Gospel of Mary has Jesus giving his commission before his death:

"When the Blessed One had said this, he greeted them all. 'Peace be with you!' he said. 'Acquire my peace within yourselves. Be on your guard so that no one deceives you by saying, "Look over here!" For the seed of true humanity exists within you. Follow it! Those who search for it will find it. Go then, preach the good news of the domain. Do not lay down any rule beyond what I ordained to you, nor promulgate law like the lawgiver, or else it will dominate you.' After he said these things, he left them. Then they were distressed and wept greatly. 'How are we going to go out to the rest of the world to preach the good news about the domain of the seed of true humanity?' they said. 'If they didn't spare him, how will they spare us?' " (Gospel of Mary 4:1-5:3)

This gnostic gospel takes the view that Jesus left them right at his death, as the phrase "if they didn't spare him" shows that Jesus did simply return to heaven but died a martyr's death. The interesting thing is that the commission is given not after but before his death, right after Jesus' statement about Deceivers which is paralleled by Mark 13:5-6. What follows the End Times lecture in Mark's gospel is the Last Supper, and though the original form of Mark contained a Eucharistic narrative that mentions the bread is being "my body" and the wine as being "my blood" (as it is shared between Matthew and Luke), it has occurred to me that in an even earlier form of the Passion narrative, the transubstantiationary theme that derives blatantly from Hellenistic mystery religions was absent, and instead the Last Supper was the original scene where Jesus gave the Commission to the apostles. Indeed there is some evidence for this. The Didache gives the earliest description of the Eucharist and the prayer that goes along with the breaking of the bread has nothing to do with Jesus' body but everything to do with making disciples:

"We give you thanks, our Father, for the life and knowledge which you have made known to us through Jesus, your servant; to you be the glory forever. Just as this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and then was gathered together and became one, so may your church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom." (Didache 9:3-4)

Here the bread is likened to the "life and knowledge" of Jesus is to be scattered "upon the mountains" and bring together the church "from the ends of the earth." It unspecified whether the commission is viewed as to the Gentiles or to the Jews scattered in the diaspora. Viewing the Eucharist in these terms makes a lot of sense. The temptation in the wilderness story likens "bread" with "every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4), a quote from Deuteronomy 8:3 which reveals that the likening of bread with both "life and knowledge" rests on a traditional Jewish basis. Mark 2:25-26 also makes an allusion to 1 Samuel 21 in which Jesus says: "Did you never read what David did in his time of need when he and his followers were hungry, how they went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the loaves of offering which only the priests are allowed to eat, and how he gave some to the men with him?" The obvious connection is that Jesus is freely dispensing "bread" (interpretations of the Law) that the Pharisee priests believed they had a monopoly on. Jesus' feeding of the multitude in Mark 6:30-44, which explicitly contains the Eucharistic motif of breaking the bread, could similarly be seen as a metaphor for the distribution of "life and knowledge" among the people Jesus teaches (cf. Mark 6:34 where Jesus has also "set himself to teach them [the multitude] at some length"). There may also be a link with the wheat in the Parable of the Sower where Jesus says: "What the sower is sowing is the word. Those on the edge of the path where the word is sown are people who have no sooner heard it than Satan comes and carries away the word that was sown in them. Similarly, those who receive the seed on patches of rock are people who, when first they hear the word, welcome it at once with joy. But they have no root in them, they do not last," etc. (Mark 4:14-20). If there were similar sayings about "the word" being "bread," it is thus quite simple to understand how those with a Logos christology came to identify Jesus as the bread (cf. John 6:31-58) and also the Eucharistic bread as Jesus "body". The more original meaning though would have been identifying bread with the message, the teaching and moral instruction (didakhe) of Jesus, and thus it seems quite plausible that an early story about the Last Supper related it as the scene of the great Commission and originally designated the Eucharist as a metaphor of the didakhe the disciples were to spread. The metaphysical reinterpretation of the Eucharist however detached the Commission from this original context and relocated it to the newly created period between Jesus' resurrection and his ascension.

There is one more implication of the delay between Jesus' death and resurrection, necessitated by the reinterpretation of Jesus' egerthanai as anastenai. As already stated, the original idea was that Jesus was "taken up" to heaven at the moment of his death. However if Jesus experienced a delay of up to three days between his death and his resurrection (inspired by, among other things, Hosea 6:2-3 which says: "He has struck us down, but he will bandage our wounds; after two days he will bring us back to life, on the third day he will raise us"), he would have possibly spent some time in Hades. This is the view of Luke in Acts 2:23 when he says that Jesus' resurrection "freed him of the pangs of Hades." But this statement brings us to what Jesus said to the good thief in Luke 23:43: "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in Paradise." Now it is true that in 1 Enoch and several other Jewish writings, Paradise was viewed as a subdivision of Hades. But when we look at writings that directly refer to the ascension of the patriarchs and faithful men of old into Paradise (such as Testament of Abraham, Testament of Isaac, Testament of Jacob, Ascension of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Zephaniah), Paradise is usually conceived as in heaven (cf. also 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 where Paul equates "Paradise" with "third heaven"). The best example is the Testament of Abraham, which states that "the angels escorted [Abraham's] precious soul and ascended into heaven ... [taking] my friend Abraham into Paradise, where there are the tents of my righteous ones and where the mansions of my holy ones, Isaac and Jacob, are in his bosom" (20:6-14; cf. the "Bosom of Abraham" in Luke 16:23). The Apocalypse of Zephaniah also clearly distinguishes between Hades and the abode of the "ancient worthies". Thus, notwithstanding my earlier position, I think that Luke 23:43 most probably claims that both Jesus and the good thief were "taken up" into heaven on the day they died. It knows nothing of a delay between Jesus' death and resurrection and most likely draws on a tradition independent of the Empty Tomb stories. But having Jesus resurrected on the "third day" normally implies that Jesus spent some time in Hades. The obvious question, then, was what did Jesus do when he was in Hades. Exegesis of Psalm 68:18 seemed to provide an answer; the loose quotation in Ephesians 4:8 reads: "When he ascended to a height, he captured prisoners, he gave gifts to men." The original referrent in Psalms was God as divine warrior, but deutero-Paul interprets the Scripture as referring to the ascension of Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit. Deutero-Paul continues: "When it says he ascended, what can it mean if not that he descended right down to the lower regions of the earth" (Ephesians 4:9). The capturing or perhaps freeing of prisoners from Hades, may also have something to do with the statement in 1 Peter 3:18 that "in the body he was put to death, in the spirit he was made alive (zoopoietheis), and in the spirit he went to preach to the spirits in prison." The traditional interpretation is that Jesus preached to these prisoners of Hades during the three days he was dead. The problem though is to what event does the verb zoopoietheis refer to? The passage does not use the otherwise familiar egerthanai and anastenai words. Is the idea that when Jesus died he was quickened and "made alive" in the sense that he had a spiritual "raising" akin to egerthanai "being raised" but instead of ascending to heaven he first descended to Hades or "the prison" referred to in 1 Enoch where the spirits of the giants and the rebellious spirits were being held? I'm not sure, but 1 Peter 1:3 does refer to the "resurrection (anastaseos) of Jesus Christ from the dead" and the statement in 1 Peter 1:21 that "God raised (egeiranta) him from the dead and glorified him" also indicates that he understood Jesus' raising (egerthanai) as the same as his resurrection. Perhaps zoopoietheis is being used roughly similarly to the original sense of egerthanai; on the other hand, it could also be possible that zoopoietheis is also synonymous with Jesus' resurrection, and the preaching to the spirits in prison occurred some unspecified time afterward. The most natural way of understanding the verse, though, is that it refers to a time when Jesus was in Hades, the abode of the dead, where he "preached" and presumably "saved" some of the souls in Hades. But did they have the opportunity of going to Paradise like the good thief? There is nothing in 1 Peter that points to this, though interestingly the mention of "captured prisoners" is associated in Ephesians with Jesus' ascension "to a height".

There is nothing in the ascension stories of the gospels (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:50-53; John 20:17-18; Acts 1:6-11) that suggests that Jesus took to heaven the newly-resurrected righteous dead. But in this vein there is one reason text in the gospel tradition: Matthew 27:52-53 which states that during the earthquake at Jesus' death, "the tombs opened and the bodies of many holy men rose from the dead, and these, after his resurrection, came out of the tombs, entered the Holy City and appeared to many people." The concept seems to be related to that of Ephesians 4:8-9 which implies that when Jesus ascended he took "the prisoners ... [of] the lower regions of the earth". The difference is that the tradition related in Matthew speaks of a bodily resurrection of the "holy ones" from the dead. More importantly, the statement in Matthew (which doesn't refer to any ascension of these resurrected ones) directly contradicts Paul's doctrine on the resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 states: "But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep. Death came through one man and in the same way the resurrection of the dead has come through one man. Just as all men die in Adam, so all men will be brought to life in Christ; but all of them in their proper order: Christ as the first-fruits and then, after the coming of Christ, those who belong to him." Matthew 27:51-52 , by stating that "the bodies of many holy men rose from the dead" at the moment Jesus died suggests that the resurrection of the righteous happened before Jesus was resurrected -- in fact, at the very moment he died. Here the "proper order" is reversed. Paul believes that "all who have fallen asleep", "all [who] die in Adam" (whom he equates with those "dead in Christ," since they have been redeemed by Him) would rise at Christ's return. This is the same view expressed in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, where those "dead in Christ" (presumably all who have been redeemed by Christ) "will be the first to rise" at Christ's second coming. 2 Timothy 2:18 (of the Paulinist school) specifically refutes the notion that "the resurrection has already taken place."

So what's the deal with Matthew's narrative? It is important to note that this story about the holy ones rising from the dead was a Matthean addition to the original Markan account. This story is absent in Mark 15:38, and it doesn't appear in the Lukan version of the account (Luke 23:45 ). In fact, other early gospels based on the same crucifixion narrative also omit any mention of this resurrection but mention the splitting of the temple veil (cf. Gospel of Peter 5:15-20; Gospel of the Nazoreans, Fr. 21, 36; Acts of Pilate 11:1-3 ). Now this in itself is quite remarkable since the resurrection of the holy ones would have been an awesome event, even more so than the tear in the temple veil, yet it is nowhere mentioned by Mark, Luke, John, or any other gospel except of Matthew and later versions of Matthew. Furthermore, it is fairly certain that the account in Matthew has been altered in its wording. The biggest problem are the words "after his resurrection", which -- most bizarrely -- delays the appearance of those resurrected for three days (Matthew 27:53 ). This totally defeats the whole purpose of having them raised when Jesus dies on the cross as something that led the centurion to confess Jesus as the Son of God (Matthew 27:54). The centurion certainly could not have been awed by their resurrection if the resurrected dead did not leave their tombs! The delay however does bring the canonical account into line (partially) with Pauline theology, which proclaims Jesus as the "first fruits" of the resurrection. For Paul, the "saints" could not arise before Jesus himself has risen. Yet the gloss fails to bring Matthew fully into line with Pauline theology since the bodily resurrection of the righteous dead still takes place before Jesus. There is actual textual evidence that the text in Matthew has been altered. One of its earliest witnesses was the Diatesseron, a gospel harmony produced by Tatian at the end of the 2nd century. This harmony was in turn based on the one produced by Justin Martyr several decades earlier. The Pepysian Harmony and the Ephrem Commentary both attest the Diatessaron reading as follows:

And with that, the veil that hung in the temple before the high altar burst in two pieces, the earth quaked, and the stones burst, and the dead men arose out of their graves. And entering the holy city, they appeared to many. And the centurion and those with him, who stood facing Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, and said with awe, "Truly this was the Son of God!"

Here the interpolated gloss does not appear and the appearance of the risen dead in Jerusalem occurs at the same time as Jesus' death and was witnessed by the centurion. This reading makes better sense with the context. It also lacks the greater detail of the canonical account in this passage -- all of which is theologically loaded: "bodies" (more specific and agreeing with Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:35-44), "of saints" (certainly superior to the mere "dead" of the Diatessaron, and therefore more developed, and also Pauline), "who had fallen asleep" (again a more elegant description, and again used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:20 and 1 Thessalonians 4:14 ). All this suggests that the Diatessaron's reading is earlier and preserves a more primitive version of the text than does the canonical text, which has been revised to bring it into conformity with Pauline theology.

It is not a forgone conclusion, however, that Jesus had to have gone to Hades during the three days, for there is another possibility. He may have just hung around earth (possibly in the company of angels) as a disembodied soul. In fact, this is probably the real immediate source of the three-day motif. According to rabbinical tradition in the Talmud, the soul in death hovers over the grave until the body is entirely consumed (Shab. 152b). It was widely thought that the dead could come back to life within three days of death; during the first three days of death it was customary for relatives to visit the grave to see of the loved one had come back to life (Massek. Sem. viii), and when Mishnaic custom began to require quick burials, the tomb was not immediately sealed over the dead. The Testament of Job, attesting the older burial custom, says that "after three days they laid [Job] in the tomb in a beautiful sleep" (53:7). I find it a viable possibility that the early "appearance stories" of Jesus were placed within this three-day window (during which time Jesus was a disembodied spirit), only later to be relocated to after the resurrection on the third day. When we examine the ascension stories, we find several describing ascensions within three days after death. According to the Life of Adam and Eve, three days after the death of Adam his soul was handed by God to Michael the Archangel which assigned it an abode in third heaven (Life of Adam and Eve; cf. the Talmud, Gen. R. vii; Haggadah 12b which also posit the same three days), while the body was buried by Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael near Hebron. The Testament of Abraham stated that when Abraham died, Michael the Archangel snatched him from the clutches of Death while meanwhile "they tended the body of the righteous Abraham with divine ointments and perfumes until the third day after his death. And they buried him in the promised land at the oak of Mamre, while the angels escorted his precious soul and ascended into heaven" (20:10-11). Most telling however is 4 Baruch 9:9-14. In this text, a Christian interpolator has turned a reference to the death of Jeremiah into a foreshadowing about Christ, and it tells not a story of an ascension but a resurrection:

"And all the people heard their weeping and they all ran to them and saw Jeremiah lying on the ground as if dead. And they tore their garments and put dust in their heads and wept bitterly. And after this they prepared to bury him. And behold there came a voice saying, 'Do not bury the one who yet lives, for the soul is returning to his body!' And when they heard the voice they did not bury him but stayed around his tabernacle for three days saying, 'When will he arise?' And after three days his soul came back to his body and he raised his voice in the midst of all of them and said, 'Glorify God with one voice! All of you glorify God and the Son of God who awakens us -- Messiah Jesus -- the light of all ages, in inextinguishable lamp, the light of faith." (4 Baruch 9:9-14)

This conception of Jesus' resurrection is perfectly consistent with the Jewish belief that a dead person could come back to life within three days. The extent to which this widespread Jewish notion derives from the Hellenistic milieu is uncertain, but it clear that the case of Jesus' resurrection could have initially been undertsood as a reuniting of the hovering soul to the body and this notion need not derive directly from Hellenistic mystery religions. When we take a step back and survey what we have already considered, we find a stunning array of different ideas of how Jesus came back from the dead. He could have rose at death as a spirit to Paradise (like in the case of Isaac and Moses, and as in the promise made to the good thief), he could have risen as a spirit to Paradise on the third day after his death (like in the case of Adam and Abraham), he could have been reunited with his body and resurrected on the third day after his death (like in the case of Jeremiah) and ascended to heaven on the same day, he could have been resurrected on the third day after his death and spent some time with his disciples and then later on ascend to heaven (this became the later dominant view in Western "orthodox" Christianity), he could have spent time with his disciples in the three days following his death or he could have been in Hades during this time, etc. etc. It is amazing how one dominant homogenized Christian view emerged out of the multiplicity of alternatives.

Anyway, that's my crude reconstruction of the whole Jesus resurrection belief, and I'm pretty convinced that while the mystical "dying-rising god" concept had a powerful influence on the development of first century Christianity, it wasn't the origin of the notion of Jesus having "risen," which instead derives from traditional Jewish concepts (which may have in turn been influenced by Hellenistic ideas). And the pattern of development makes a lot of sense to me if we start with Jesus as a real teacher who subsequently became viewed as preserved from death in Paradise like the faithful men of old, then glorified, then resurrected, then deified, than work the other way around.