80 For details see the commentaries.
81 See Malherbe 1968; Thiselton 2000, 1251f.
82 Menander, Thaïs, frag. 218. The phrase was probably a popular epigram; for other refs., see Thiselton 2000, 1254 n. 249.
83 cf. 2 Pet. 2–3 (so Fee 1987, 775).
84 cf. Martin 1995, 275 n. 79; and in Paul cf. Rom. 1:18–23 (see above, 245–7, 264).
85 cf. Mk. 12:24b and pars.; Rom. 4:20f. See too the various second-century writers, for whom this was a regular theme (below, ch. 11).
86 1 Cor. 1:5; 8:1–6; 13:2, 8; see Wedderburn 1999, 233 n. 17.
87 eknepsate, a hapax legomenon in the NT, comes from eknepho, ‘become sober’.
88 Paul’s phrase is ho eschatos Adam (v. 45), often translated ‘last Adam’, but Paul’s point is not that there are plenty of ‘Adams’ of whom the Messiah happens to be the last one, but that he is the goal, the ultimate point. For this ‘final’ seems somewhat better.
89 See BDAG 901, quoting e.g. Mt. 12:26 par. As Fee says (1987, 779), these questions embody the kind of philosophical objections that must have lain behind the denial of the resurrection in v. 12. On the question of how well Paul understood the Corinthians’ views see Perkins 1984, 300f., 324; Conzelmann 1975 [1969], 261–3; Martin 1995, 104–36. I have taken the view that their objection was not particularly complicated, since it expressed the more or less universal view of pagan antiquity, and that this is what Paul is addressing.
90 Against Hays 1997, 269f.
91 See LSJ s.v.: e.g. Eurip. Hel. 1543 (‘How, by what ship, did you come?’); cp. Plato Tim. 22b.
92 It is worth noting that Paul, having spoken largely of ‘the dead’ (hoi nekroi) up to this point in the chapter, here switches to speak of ‘bodies’ when thinking of that which is to be raised. “The dead’, for him, are not simply ‘souls’ (so, rightly, Fee 1987, 775).
94 This is the first time the word soma, body, has occurred in this chapter. In the background, of course, is not only 6:13–20 but 12:12–27 (see above, ch. 6).
96 Hays 1997, 271 suggests Dan. 12 in the background; though this is likely, Paul does not seem to me to be emphasizing it. Boismard 1999 [1995], 40 declares that ‘an earthly being is buried in the earth and a completely different being will rise, comparable to the stars shining in the sky.’
97 Cf. LSJ s.v. For epigeios as indicating location in the NT cf. e.g. Phil. 2:10; this can of course carry negative overtones, and be contrasted with the heavenly world, as in e.g. Phil. 3:19; cf. Col. 3:2. Dahl 1962, 113–16 seems to me to elide epigeios with choikos, making it mean ‘corruptible’, rather than observing Paul’s distinction. Choikos is an extremely rare word formed from chous, ‘soil’ or ‘dust’; Paul presumably has in mind Gen. 2:7, where this is the material from which God forms human beings (though LXX uses ge, earth, where one might have expected chous in Gen. 3:19; but cf. Ps. 103 [MT 104]:29; Eccles. 3:20; 12:7; 1 Macc. 2:63, and perhaps also Ps. 21:16 [MT 22:15], where ‘the dust of death’, chous thanatou, seems to be a vivid way of referring to the grave).
98 Fee 1987, 782: ‘each is adapted to its own peculiar existence’.
99 See 1 Cor. 2:7f.; 10:31; 11:7, 15.
100 See e.g. Phil. 3:21, where ‘glory’ is contrasted with atimia, ‘dishonour’, and tapeinosis, ‘humiliation’. In a vast range of ancient literature the regular meaning of doxa is ‘good repute, honour’, as opposed to shame and humiliation: see LSJ s.v. Indeed LSJ only list ‘external appearance’ as a meaning for the word in relation to a few biblical instances, e.g. Ex. 16:10. Perkins’s comment (1984, 305) that the word changes its meaning after v. 42 from ‘the brightness of heavenly bodies’ to ‘honour’ misses the point. Boismard 1999 [1995], 45, says that the new body will be ‘as if transformed into light (glory)’. This, I suggest, is precisely what Paul is not saying.
101 Despite the suggestion of BDAG 388, citing Wendland. More recently cf. Martin 1995, 117–20.
102 For houtos kai, the introductory formula, see 1 Cor. 2:11; 12:12; 14:9, 12; Gal. 4:3; Rom. 6:11. Perkins 1984, 304 suggests that when we compare this passage with Rom. 5:12–21 it looks as though Paul is here on foreign territory. This seems precarious, to say the least.
104 Augustine (Enchir. 91) already saw this as the key point; see Torrance 1976, 75.
105 ‘In’ here appears to mean ‘in a state of’.
106 Thiselton 2000, 1276–81, has an excellent extended note on the subject; his critique of Martin is important, as are his comments on the older ‘non-physical’ misreading of pneumatikon (e.g. Scroggs 1966, 66). Among older work cf. e.g. Clavier 1964.
107 Knox, Phillips and NIV follow KJV, which was in turn following Tyndale. Few in the C16 or early C17, before the implicit dualisms of the modern world, would have supposed that by ‘spiritual’ here one should assume ‘non-physical’.
108 A classic example of the misreading that has become common is in Carnley 1987, 233: Paul more likely thought of the raised Christ ‘in terms of a glorified “spiritual body” than the “yet to be glorified” mundane, visible, and tangible body envisaged by Luke and John’.
109 On which see JVG 186–8, with the continuing dialogue represented fleetingly by C. S. Evans 1999 and my response (‘In Grateful Dialogue’, 248–50). On Héring’s proposal of ‘supernatural’ as opposed to ‘immaterial’ see Fee 1987, 786.
110 Not unlike the German ecumenical translation of 1981 (‘ein irdischer Leib … ein überirdischer Leib’).
111 cf. Martin 1995, 126–9. See, rightly, Dunn 1998, 60.
112 The same contrast is made in Jude 19, where similar comments apply. In Jas. 3:15 wicked thoughts and behaviour are described as evidence of a wisdom that is ‘earthbound’ (epigeios), psychikos and demonic, in contrast to the wisdom that is ‘from above’ (anothen); this is quite a similar contrast to that which Paul is making here. These are the only NT occurrences of the term outside 1 Cor. 2 and 15.
114 In any case, as Martin has pointed out, even within the post-Plato world there was no concept of absolute non-physicality such as many post-Enlightenment thinkers have read into Paul at this point; the Stoics believed that the soul itself was made up of a substance. See above, 348f.
115 e.g. 1 Cor. 10:3f. (‘spiritual’ food and drink in the wilderness; Paul did not suppose this was ‘non-physical’); 14:37 (those who consider themselves ‘spiritual’ are presumably not imagining themselves ‘non-physical’—and this is close, within the letter, to our present passage); Gal. 6:1; Eph. 5:19/Col. 3:16; 1 Pet. 2:5 (a ‘spiritual house’ and ‘spiritual sacrifices’, where the point is not ‘non-physical’, but ‘indwelt/energized by the Spirit’).
116 See TDNT 9.608–66 (Schweizer). In Arist. Eth. 1117b28, psychikos is opposed to somatikos, ‘bodily’, contrasting purer with grosser forms of pleasure; Plutarch De Comm. Not. 1084e speaks of the pneuma psychikon, the ‘breath of life’. The cognate verb psychoo can likewise mean ‘to give a psychical (as opposed to physical) character to physical sensations’ (LSJ 2028, citing Plot. 4.4.28).
117 For the normal understanding see e.g. Plato, Cratylus 399e—400e.
118 BDAG 1100 is therefore very misleading to include, as an extra definition of the word, ‘a physical body’, citing only v. 44, and, for its use as a noun, ‘the physical in contrast to to pneumatikon’, quoting only v. 46, with Iren. Haer. 1.5.1, where, in the context of a description of Valentinian beliefs about three different orders of being, the word for ‘material’ is to hylikon, and to psychikon is used for ‘animal’, the middle term in the sequence. The contrast in question is not between (in our sense) ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’, but has to do with quality, not substance. (See too Iren. 3.5.1.)
119 cf. e.g. Ptol. Apotel. 3.14.1; Jos. War 1.430, describing Herod’s remarkable gifts ‘of soul and body’, with psychikos used for the first; and e.g. 4 Macc. 1:32, where desires (epithymiai) are divided into psychikai on the one hand and somatikai on the other, sensibly translated by NRSV as ‘mental’ and ‘physical’. All these and more are quoted by BDAG, but then ignored for the purposes of 1 Cor. 15. Overall, psychikos seems in any case to refer to a quality, without emphasizing materiality or non-materiality, though it is a quality which was frequently ascribed to what today would be thought of as non-material entities.
120 Adjectives of ‘material’ tend to form in -inos (Moulton 1980–76, 2.359); those which end in -ikos indicate what something is ‘like’, giving an ethical or dynamic relation as opposed to a material one (Moulton 2.378, quoting Plummer on 1 Cor. 3:1). Robertson and Plummer 1914 [1911], 372 take this more or less for granted: ‘Evidently, psychikon does not mean that the body is made of psyche, consists entirely of psyche: and pneumatikon does not mean it is made and consists entirely of pneuma. The adjectives mean “congenital with,” “formed to be the organ of.” ’ See too Conzelmann 1975 [1969], 283, quoting Bachmann and Kümmel: ‘soma pneumatikon is not simply a body consisting of pneuma, but one determined by pneuma’ (my ital.); Witherington 1995, 308f. On 1 Cor. 2 see 282–4 above.
121 Hist. Anim. 584b22.
122 Vitr. 10.1.1.
123 Not even, as Fee 1987, 786, the sphere in which it now operates, though this is no doubt true as well.
124 See Hays 1997, 272. Unfortunately, the NJB has reverted to ‘natural’ and ‘spiritual’.
125 This remains controversial: Hays 1997, 273 is inclined to think a reference likely, while Fee 1987, 791 disputes it.
126 The latter adjective well illustrates the point made earlier about words ending in -nos being to do with physical composition. The passage is Alleg. 1.31f.; we should note that Philo precisely does not refer to the physical, ‘earthy’ human being as psychikos, and that when in the same passage he speaks of the psyche he is referring, naturally enough, to the soul, which in our modern sense is ‘non-physical’.
127 e.g. Rom. 8:9–11. For background cf. Job 33:4; Ps. 104:30; Ezek. 36:27; 37:9f., 14.
128 Lincoln 1981, 43 says that this argument is neither a fortiori nor inferred, but typological, based on inference from Gen. 2:7. My reading is that it is in fact based partly on vv. 20–28, expressed in the light of the reading of Gen. 2 which Paul is about to offer. This is not typological (two events related in pattern but not particularly in narrative sequence), but narratival: Gen. 2:7 begins a story which, in the light of vv. 20–28, and the analogies of vv. 35–41, Paul is now in a position to complete.
129 Note the fluidity, at exactly the same stage of the argument, between Christ and Spirit in Rom. 8:9–11; 2 Cor. 3:17f. Not that Paul makes Jesus and the Spirit identical (so, correctly, Fee 1987, 790 n. 15).
130 Gen. 1:31; cf. 1:1; 2:1–4. This raises the question as to what is really driving Carnley (1987, 313) to say things like: ‘Even the presence of a humanly generated “team spirit” is, after all, apprehended by the senses and it may be that something less material than a resuscitated corpse might also be apprehended by the deliverances of sense perception in the case of the Easter Jesus.’ This sounds as though what Carnley wants to find is that the first disciples really did see a ghost. Or perhaps that they were aware of a new team spirit.
131 Most recently Martin 1995, 123–7.
132 On the variant reading ‘let us bear’ see Hays 1997, 273f.; Fee 1987, 787 n. 5.
134 On the sin/death link, going all the way back in Jewish thought to Gen. 3, see e.g. Rom. 5:12–21; and, in the present passage, v. 17. As in Rom. 5:20, Paul slips in (v. 56) a cryptic remark about the way the law gave sin its power—a comment which he explains in Rom. 7:7–25 (whose closing outburst of thanksgiving (7:25a) is closely parallel to v. 57 in the present passage).
135 See Perkins 1984, 307; this is an implicit rejection once more of Philo’s worldview, as in e.g. Gig. 53–7; Ebr. 99–101; Fug. 58–64. See Horsley 1998, 224f.
136 So Fee 1987, 802 n. 31; see the use of the terms in e.g. Plutarch, De soll. anim. 960b; Philo Op. 119; Wis. 9:11–15.
137 Jeremias 1955–6. See also Gillman 1982.
138 On Paul’s use of these texts see Hays 1997, 275f; Tomson 2002. The MT of the Hos. text (13:14) speaks of judgment on Israel, but the LXX has turned it already into the promise of redemption; Paul takes this a step further again. The Isa. text (25:8) comes, of course, from one of the central OT promises of new life beyond the grave; however it was originally intended, Paul’s reading of it was consistent with other second-Temple exegesis. For rabbinic use of it see e.g. mMoed Kat. 3.9 (so Fee, 1987, 803 n. 35).
139 e.g. the eschatological trumpet: details in Fee 1987, 801 n. 26.
140 Perkins 1984, 306; Fee 1987, 799; Martin 1995, 127f.; Thiselton 2000, 1291f.
141 We may note at this point that those who will be ‘changed’, here and in Phil. 3:21, will thus, it seems, pass directly from the present bodily life to the future bodily life, without any intermediate state. This is the exception, necessitated by the unique eschatological moment, to the otherwise universal truth, that belief in final resurrection involves a two-step progression (first into an intermediate state, then to new embodiment).
142 This point is missed by e.g. Wedderburn 1999, 146, who caricatures Paul’s view (and subsequent Christian views) in terms (169) of living a life which is ‘[simply] a preparation for another one beyond death and the grave’. That may be how some jaded Christians have put it; but what Paul describes is new creation bursting in to the present world.
143 The most recent exponent of this is Boismard 1999 [1995].
145 Ps. 116:7f. (LXX 114:7f.).
146 Most translations render the first word as ‘precious’; but cf. JB, ‘The death of the devout costs Yahweh dear,’ modified in NJB to ‘Costly in Yahweh’s sight is the death of his faithful.’ The Hebrew yaqar means ‘precious, prized, costly’, reflected in LXX timios, which has a similar range. This leaves it open in theory as to whether the Psalmist means that YHWH welcomes the death of his faithful ones or regrets it; but the logic of the Psalm suggests the latter (see Weiser 1962, 720; Mays 1994, 370).
147 Thrall 1994–2000, 398–400 carefully assesses various ‘development’ hypotheses.
149 Most recently and blatantly, Boismard 1999 [1995], e.g. 82, explaining that Paul has discovered that his Greek-educated readers are ‘allergic to any notion of resurrection’ and so now ‘adopts the theme of immortality and leaves aside that of resurrection’—not merely tactically, however (that would not suit Boismard’s own agenda, which is to advocate abandoning the idea of bodily resurrection and to promote disembodied immortality in its place) but ‘due to a profound theological reason’.
150 Note the link of katergazetai, ‘accomplishing’, in 2 Cor. 4:17, with katergasamenos, ‘who accomplished’, in 5:5. The frequent translation ‘prepare’ is adequate enough, provided one remembers that it means ‘prepare’ as in ‘prepare a meal’, not simply ‘prepare’ as in ‘give advance information about something’. The root of katergazomai is after all ergon, ‘work’: the point is that the living God is already doing something, even though it remains often and largely out of sight. Moule 1966, 118 acknowledges that the sense he gives to the passage (that Paul envisages first being unclothed, and then being reclothed) requires that he take this verb in the sense of ‘designed’, ‘created’.
151 On dualisms and dualities see NTPG 252–256, 257–9. For the question in relation to 2 Cor. 4 and 1 Cor. 15 the article of Moule 1966 is still important, even though I remain unpersuaded by his main proposal; cf. too Thrall 2002, 292–300.
152 e.g. Plato Gorg. 524d; Crat. 403b Philo Virt. 76; Leg. All. 2.57, 59. This potential meaning may be partly responsible for the textual problems of the verse, as different scribes read it with different expectations.
153 See Moule 1966, 123.
154 cf. Col. 1:5 with 3:1–4; and see too 1 Pet. 1:4 (below, 465–7).
155 Paul’s language of ‘tent’ in 5:1f. should perhaps awaken overtones of the Temple and its rebuilding, as in the resurrection passage in Rom. 8:5–11.
157 e.g. Rom. 7:22, where it denotes the inner life of the non-Christian Jew. Cf. too Eph. 3:16, which is closely cognate with our present passage; and the similar language about the renewal of new life in Col. 3:10.
159 Ps. 116 [114]:9; see above.
160 2 Cor. 5:10; cf. Rom. 2:1–16; 14:10; Eph. 6:8; and e.g. Ac. 10:42; 17:31.
161 cf. 1 Cor. 6:12–20 etc.
162 cf. 2 Cor. 12:12.
164 cf. too, of course, Phil. 3:20f.
165 I regard as a strange curiosity the summaries by Boismard (1999 [1995], ix, 48) of his hypothetical development-scheme: first Paul thinks of an eschatological reign on earth (1 Thess.), then he gives this up and thinks the resurrection will take place in the sky, at the parousia (1 Cor.), then he comes to believe in a Platonic scheme whereby the resurrection has happened already and will become apparent, in heaven, immediately upon death (2 Cor.), and finally, ‘at the end of his life’, he placed ‘our beatific vision in God’ (Col.)! Where, one wonders, does Rom. 8 fit in this scheme?
166 See de Boer 1988, 183f.: physical demise, for Paul, has been shown up as ‘a terrible offense, the annihilation of the human person by an alien, inimical power’. The summary of Paul’s view in Lüdemann 1994, 177 offers an example of the all-too-common view which our analysis rules out completely: that, according to Paul, ‘Jesus entered God’s presence directly at the moment of his death’, and ‘was exalted directly from the cross to God’.
169 Carnley 1987, 249f. states: ‘Paul’s own exposition of the nature of faith and hope is regularly traced back, not to an experience or vision of the bodily Jesus of some kind, but to the continuing presence of the Spirit of Christ.’ He offers no grounds for this; nor, in the light of the last three chapters, could he have done so.
Chapter Eight: When Paul Saw Jesus
1 e.g. those of Bruegel (1567, in Vienna) and Solimena (1689, in Naples).
2 The classic statement of this in modern scholarship is Robinson 1982, 7–17. Robinson jumps from an unwarranted inference from 1 Cor. 15 and Phil. 3, via a glance at Acts and Rev. 1:13–16, to the conclusion (10) that Paul had an ‘uninhibited luminous visualization of the resurrection’, and that therefore all early experiences of it were ‘luminous, the experience of a blinding light’. Robinson then admits, damagingly one might suppose, that when the hypothetical reaction to this set in—when, in other words, Matthew, Luke and John wrote their resurrection accounts—they were composing them against the ‘foil’ of ‘this reduction of resurrection appearances to religious experiences’ (11).
3 Perkins 1984, 94.
4 Two examples among many: Carnley 1987, 238f.; de Jonge 2002. A brief, clear answer to this line of thought is given by Davis 1997, 138f. A detailed discussion of the nature of ‘visions’ in this connection is provided by Schlosser 2001.
5 On ancient parallels to the Acts/Paul relationship see Hillard, Nobbs and Winter 1993; for the relationship itself cf. Hemer 1989 ch. 6.
6 Stendahl 1976, 7–23 argues for ‘call’ rather than ‘conversion’; Segal 1990, 14–17, for elements of ‘conversion’ remaining appropriate. Cf. too e.g. Barrett 1994, 442: ‘if such radical changes [as Paul’s new attitude to the law, and his new mode of activity] do not amount to conversion it is hard to know what would do so’; see also Dunn 1996, 119f.; Ashton 2000, 75–8.
8 See e.g. Longenecker 1997; and recently e.g. Kim 2002.
9 cf. NTPG Part II.
10 Ashton 2000, 80 traces this formulation of the problem back to F. C. Baur.
11 See Rowland 1982, 378.
12 This discussion is aimed in part at the long legacy of Bultmann’s hermeneutic; see NTPG Part II.
13 For a brief, clear account of Berkeley see e.g. Warnock 1995, with other bib. On Feuerbach cf. e.g. Wartofsky 1977.
14 cf. e.g. Patterson 1998, 226f., n. 2: we may not be able to psychoanalyse Paul, but this does not mean that his experience ‘was not deeply affected by his own subjectivity. His experience could in no wise be considered an “objective” event.’
15 In addition to the commentaries see e.g. Newman 1992, 196–207.
16 The phrase could mean, by itself, either ‘a revelation which came from Jesus’ or ‘a revelation whose content was Jesus’; v. 16 indicates that Paul means the latter (so e.g. Hays 2000, 211). Cf. too 1:1: Paul received his commission ‘through Jesus the Messiah and God the Father who raised him from the dead’—the last clause being a key part of the whole picture.
17 See Rowland 1982, 376f.
18 cf. e.g. Rom. 1:18 with 2:5; 1 Cor 1:7; 2 Thess. 1:7 with the present passage. See too Newman 1992: the eschatological glory has been revealed in advance (see below).
19 Baird 1985, 657; Sandnes 1991; Newman 1992, 204–07.
21 Gal. 2:20f. and Col. 1:28f. are the closest he comes.
22 e.g. 1 Cor. 11:1.
23 Gal. 2:19f.; cf. too e.g. 1 Tim. 1:16, where it is said that Jesus the Messiah intended to show his patience ‘in Paul’, as the chief or first example to subsequent believers.
24 Longenecker 1990, 32 speaks of ‘the inward reality of Christian experience’; Thrall 1994, 317, of Paul’s experience containing ‘an inward element’, which is undoubtedly true, but not the point.; Patterson 1998, 223f. speaks of it as an ‘inner’ experience. Ashton 2000, 83 believes that this verse states unambiguously that Paul ‘experienced the revelation … as happening somehow inside himself’. Ashton suggests that to translate ‘to me’ needs ‘a lot of strenuous philological wriggling’, but Martyn 1997a, 158 makes the case for ‘to’ with not a wriggle in sight. So does Rowland 1982, 376, citing those very non-wriggling grammarians, Blass-Debrunner and Moule.
25 See Wright, ‘Gospel and Theology’, and Wright, Romans, 415f.
27 For the detail of this see Thiselton 2000, 661–3.
28 On apostleship see Thiselton 2000, 666–74, with copious refs. to other literature.
29 Fee 1987, 395 n. 14 emphasizes that ‘Jesus our Lord’ is almost a technical term for the risen Christ.
30 Thiselton 2000, 668.
31 Patterson 1998, 224. See, correctly, Newman 1992, 186.
32 Newman 1992, 186.
34 See Bultmann in Bartsch 1962–4, 1.38f., 41, 83.
35 e.g. Rom. 10:2–4; 1 Cor. 9:16f.; 2 Cor. 3:16; 5:16; Gal. 2:19f.; Phil. 3:4–12; Eph. 3:1–13; Col. 1:23–9. Cf. too the formula about ‘the grace given to me’ in Rom. 1:5; 12:3; 15:15; 1 Cor. 1:4; 3:10; Gal. 2:9; Eph. 3:2, 7; Col. 1:25. On this see Kim 1984 [1981], 3–31; Newman 1992, 164–7.
36 The theme of the ‘heart’ is prominent throughout the argument (2 Cor. 3:2, 3, 15; 4:6), strongly inclining us to read this reference in the light of the preceding ones. Thrall 1994, 316f. sees the plural ‘hearts’ as an objection to the ‘conversion’ reading of this text, but does not allow it its full force.
37 So, rightly, Furnish 1984, 250f.; Murphy-O’Connor 1996, 78 n. 20. See too e.g. Dunn 1990, 93–7, against Kim 1984, who built a good deal on 2 Cor. 4:4–6 being an account of Paul’s conversion in order to claim that Paul then perceived Jesus as divine. Kim 2002, 165–213 has presented an updated account of his view, in debate with various scholars including the present writer. I am not unhappy with his view that 2 Cor. 4:1–6 provides crucial insights into Paul’s understanding of who Jesus was (though I think Kim has missed out some key moves that Paul makes), but I remain unpersuaded, for reasons given in the text, that this passage refers either explicitly or implicitly to Paul’s conversion. Kim is followed by e.g. Thrall 1994, 1.316–18; Ashton 2000, 84–6, who do not seem to me to have reckoned with Furnish’s arguments, or those advanced here. Newman 1992 is right, if overly polysyllabic, to say that ‘Glory functions in Paul’s convictional world in sociomorphic portrayal of transference, and in Paul’s physiomorphic description of Christian progress,’ but this tells, if anything, against the present passage referring specifically to the Damascus Road Christophany. If it did, how could Paul have generalized from his experience—granted his placing of his seeing of Jesus at the end of a one-off sequence in 1 Cor. 15:8—to the experience he and the Corinthians all shared?
38 cf. e.g. Patterson 1998, 226. We cannot know, he says, why Paul concluded that it was in fact Jesus who had appeared to him in an internal experience. ‘All we can say is that on that day, for whatever reason, Paul came to the realization that Jesus had been right about God, that God had shone through in his life and ministry, and that the continuing work of his followers was indeed the work of God. And so he changed his mind’. So Paul’s ‘seeing’ of Jesus has become first an internal spiritual experience and then an internal mental argument, a ‘realization’. Paul never mentions anything about Jesus being right about God, and so forth, just as Patterson never mentions most of the things Paul himself says about the resurrection.
40 I infer this from Paul’s emphasizing, ironically as it seems to me, that the experience he relates took place fourteen years earlier.
41 So e.g. Sampley 2000, 163; Künneth 1965 [1951], 84.
42 cf. Barrett 1973, 308: Paul did not regard the Damascus Road experience as a ‘vision’; ‘he then saw Jesus our Lord objectively.’
43 On the passage see further Rowland 1982, 379–86.
44 See Alexander 2001, 1058: ‘functional redundancy is an indicator of rhetorical importance.’ See too e.g. Witherington 1998, 311–13.
45 The parallels are set out in detailed synoptic form by e.g. Barrett 1994, 439f.; Witherington 1998, 305–07.
46 Against e.g. Ashton 2000, 83.
47 On what follows see e.g. Barrett 1994, 444f.
48 On the speeches in the setting of formal court hearings in the ancient world see Winter 1993, 327–31. On the role of Berenice during the trial see F. M. Gillman 2002.
49 Another partial parallel, which is interesting in itself but which would take us too far afield, is Philo Praem. 165.
51 A similar story is told, without horse or beating, in 4 Macc. 4:1–14; there the subject is not Heliodorus, but a Syrian provincial governor named Apollonius.
52 Barrett 1994, 441 belittles the parallel as ‘relatively superficial’.
53 This could fit with of Bowker 1971: Paul’s conversion took place through meditation on Ezekiel’s throne-chariot, convincing him that the ‘rebellious people’ of Ezek. 2 were not the Christians but the Jewish leaders who sent him. See Rowland 1982, 374–86; Segal 1990; 1992; Ashton 2000, 95f.; but see the strong caution of Hafemann 2000, 459f.
54 Jos As. 14.2–8 (tr. C. Burchard in Charlesworth 1985, 224f.).
55 Ezek. 1:28–2:1. Cf. too e.g. Josh. 5:13–15, which in turn echoes Ex. 3:1–5.
57 Kim 1984 [1981]; 2002. Cp. Bowker’s theory (above, 391 n. 53).
58 Newman 1992; 1997.
61 See Wright, Climax, ch. 4.
65 There are several parallels between the accounts in Acts and Dan. 10:4–21. Wall 2002, 150 suggests parallels also with Ex. 19:16; Ezek. 1:4, 7, 13, 28; these seem to me not nearly so close, though of course as in many OT revelation-scenes Saul falls to the ground and is told to stand up, listen and obey (Ac. 9:4, 6; cf. e.g. Ezek. 1:28; 2:1; 3:23f.; 43:3; 44:4 with e.g. Gen. 17:3, 17; Lev. 9:24; Josh. 5:14f.; Jdg. 14:20; 1 Kgs. 18:39; Dan. 8:17f.; Tob. 12:16). These almost prove too much, since some of them are revelations of an angel of YHWH, some (such as Elijah’s fire) are signs of divine power, and so on.
67 Ex. 3:4 with Ac. 9:4; Ex. 3:14 with Ac. 9:5; and, for the commission, Ex. 3:10–17 with Ac. 9:15, 20, 22; 22:14f., 21; 26:16–18, 20. See Wall 2002, 150f., noting the parallel between Jesus and Moses in Ac. 7:23–43.
69 1 Cor. 15:25–8, coupled with an understanding of the risen Jesus as ‘the son’ who will eventually be subject to ‘God’. Cf. Mt. 22:41–5/Mk. 12:35–7/Lk. 20:41–4; cf. JVG 507–09, 642f.
70 Bowker 1971.
Chapter Nine: Hope Refocused (1): Gospel Traditions Outside the Easter Narratives
1 For the surprise see Evans 1970, 31.
2 See NTPG 421f.
3 So, rightly, Perkins, 1984, 74f.
4 See too the comments in Ac. 23:1–9 about the Sadducees’ and Pharisees’ views on the resurrection, which I dealt with at 132–4 above.
5 On the gospels see esp. NTPG chs. 13, 14; JVG ch. 4.
6 Lk. 24:44; Mt. 27:63f. In Lk. 24:25f. Jesus rebukes the two on the road, not for not believing what he had said, but for not believing Moses and the prophets (cp. Lk. 16:31). In the longer ending of Mk. (16:14) he rebukes them simply for not believing the early reports.
7 See JVG Part II (chs. 5–10).
8 It is noticeable that the non-canonical gospel traditions contain very little parallel material to the canonical gospels on this topic, and such relevant material as they do have is so different as to be best dealt with in a subsequent chapter (ch. 11 below). As a bored American commentator said after yet another goalless draw in a World Cup soccer match: ‘Well, folks, I would tell you the score, but there wasn‘t any.’
9 cf. NTPG ch. 14; and in ‘Doing Justice to Jesus’, 360–65.
12 Only Mk. (5:42) and Lk. (8:42) give the girl’s age, and at different points of the story; perhaps Lk. wishes to draw attention to the parallelism earlier in the combined narrative.
15 On the significance of the Aramaic see e.g. Guelich 1989, 302f.; Gundry 1993, 274f.
16 Mk. 5:42/Mt. 9:25/Lk. 8:55. As the refs. throughout Parts II, III and IV of the present book will show, these are the regular ‘resurrection’ words throughout the NT.
19 Mk. 8:34–9:1/Mt. 16:24–8/Lk. 9:23–7; see JVG 304. With these passages we may note the very similar tradition in Mt. 10:39 and Lk. 17:33 (‘people who seek to keep their life will lose it, and people who lose their life will find it’).
20 Mk. 9:43–8. Vv. 44, 46 are later insertions into the text, quoting Isa. 66:24 (‘where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched’); this itself is of interest, showing that from quite early on scribes were keen to emphasize the link between this passage and the prophetic ‘new creation’ theme, with its attendant warnings of judgment. The par. is Mt. 18:6–9, with slight variations.
21 Mk. 10:29–31/Mt. 19:28–30/Lk. 18:29f. The question of classification is difficult here; is this really a ‘Q’ passage, or modifications in triple tradition, or are the differences so great that they have to be classified as Mt. and Lk. special material? Mt. and Lk. both omit the repeated list of what will be gained after having formerly been lost. There are parallels to the challenge to hate father, mother, etc., in Thom. 55; 101; but they do not mention the age to come.
22 For Jewish parallels to the usage see SB 1.779f.
23 On ‘Gehenna’ see JVG 183 n. .
24 See JVG passim, esp. chs. 7, 9.
26 On palingenesia cf. TDNT 1.686–9; Davies and Allison 1988–97, 3.7f., with bib.
27 Mk. 8:31/Mt. 16:21/Lk. 9:22. Mk. uses anastenai for the final word; Mt. and Lk. both have egerthenai.
28 Mk. 9:31/Mt. 17:22f./Lk. 9:44. Mk. again has anastesetai; Mt., egerthesetai.
29 Mk. 10:33f./Mt. 20:18f./Lk. 18:31f. This time Mk. and Lk. have anastesetai, while Mt. remains with egerthesetai. These two key verbs seem to be spread reasonably evenly between the evangelists, without any having a strong preference for one rather than the other.
30 JVG ch. 12, which stands behind this whole paragraph. Contrast C. F. Evans 1970, 33, who declares that these predictions must be secondary, because otherwise Easter would not have been a surprise to the disciples, as it manifestly was; this kind of comment functions as a blunt instrument to bludgeon the argument into silence, which is a pity, since the situation is far more subtle than that. The question is, how would such comments have been heard? Contrast the recent positive arguments of C. A. Evans 1999a.
31 cf. the crescendo in 2 Macc. 7:9, 14, 17, 19, 31, 34–7; cp. Lk. 23:34 with e.g. 1 Pet. 2:21–3; 3:18.
33 Mk. 14:62/Mt. 26:64/Lk. 22:67–9, with significant variations: see JVG 524–8, 550f. for details and discussion.
34 Mk. 14:58/Mt. 26:61 (omitting the reference to making/not making with hands). Cf. too Mk. 15:29/Mt. 27:40.
36 Other evidence, admittedly again from hostile witnesses and via Acts, is found in Ac. 6:14. There is a half-parallel saying in Thom. 71, but it is the exception which proves the rule stated above: ‘Jesus said, I shall destroy this house, and no one will be able to rebuild it.’ Any hint of resurrection is explicitly ruled out—as is any hint of anything so Jewish as a rebuilt Temple.
37 Jn. 2:21f. (see below, ch. 17). See again JVG ch. 12.
38 Mk. 6:14–16/Mt. 14:1f. I have quoted the Lk. semi-parallel separately because, as appears immediately below, it is significantly different in several respects.
40 See too Mk. 8:27f./Mt. 16:13f./Lk. 9:18f.
41 A suggestion like this is of course made by Jesus himself in e.g. Mt. 11:14; Mt. 17:12f./Mk. 9:13. In what sense Matthew, let alone Jesus, thought that Elijah and John were in any literal sense the same person remains opaque, at least to me; see e.g. Davies and Allison 1988–97, 2.258f.
43 Mk. 3:6; 12:13/Mt. 22:15f. Barclay’s suggestion that this is evidence of a ‘widespread’ belief (1996a, 26) is without further support; the parallel with the Nero redivivus idea is hardly close.
44 Against Harvey 1994, 69, 78 n. 1. Harvey suggests that, according to Mark, Herod is not affirming that Jesus is John the Baptist come back to life, ‘but that the effect of his “rising from the dead” is that “his powers are at work” in Jesus’. I doubt that Mark would have been happy with this account of what he wrote; certainly it is not what Matthew or Luke made of it. In any case, Harvey’s proposed reading would scarcely constitute evidence of ‘reincarnation’ belief as such. Harvey is right, however (75), to point out that the suggestion that Jesus was John the Baptist come to life again did not entail Herod sending officers to see whether John’s tomb was empty.
45 So, rightly, Wedderburn 1999, 41. The idea that the resurrected person has special powers is of course related to what we find in Acts (e.g. 2:32f.; 4:10), that healing power is at work by the agency of the risen Jesus through the Spirit.
46 So Perkins 1995, 598 n. 749, quoting Nickelsburg 1980, 153–84.
48 So, rightly, Evans 1970, 31—though this reading was adopted by e.g. Lagrange and Vincent Taylor.
49 So e.g. Evans 1970, 30f.
51 Harvey 1994, 72. Harvey is misleading, though, to speak of resurrection belief at this period as ‘a speculative notion about the after-life’; resurrection, as we have repeatedly seen, was not so much about the ‘after-life’ but about a new life after the ‘after-life’.
52 This is the one major synoptic pericope I deliberately left out of JVG, with a view to its inclusion here. On the Sadducees and their beliefs see above, 131–40.
53 Mk. 12:18–27/Mt. 22:23–33/Lk. 20:27–40. Mt. follows Mk. reasonably closely; for Lk. see below.
54 Lk. 20:34–8. On the differences from Mk. see e.g. Kilgallen 1986, 481f.
55 See particularly Schwankl 1987; and other bib. in Davies and Allison 1988–97, 221–34. Juhász 2002, 116–21 provides a fascinating window on the treatment of this passage both by Jerome and in the early English Reformation.
56 Including Christian scholars: e.g. Evans 1970, 32; Perkins 1984, 74f.
57 On purgatory, and the remarkable contemporary redefinitions of it within mainstream Roman Catholicism see e.g. Rahner 1961, 32f.; McPartlan 2000, and the full and helpful article in ODCC3 (1349f.).
58 See esp. Bynum 1995. For the reformation controversies cf. Juhász 2002.
59 e.g. ‘Here for a season, then above,/ O Lamb of God, I come,’ the closing lines of Charlotte Elliott’s hymn, ‘Just as I am, without one plea’ (New English Hymnal 294). Remarkably few Easter hymns even attempt to express what the first Christians thought Jesus’ resurrection was all about: see Wright, ‘From Theology to Music’.
60 Out of many works on popular beliefs about life after death see e.g. Barley 1995; Edwards 1999; Jupp and Gittings 1999; Innes 1999; Harrison 2000.
61 On the question of whether the pericope goes back substantially to Jesus see the Forschungsberichte in Schwankl 1987, 46–58. I regard it as coming squarely within the criteria of double similarity and double dissimilarity (see JVG 131–3): it is thoroughly at home in Judaism, but the precise point and the way of making it is not otherwise known; it is thoroughly credible as a controversy between the Jesus remembered by the early Christians and the Sadducees, but not as an invention of the early church to back up its own concern with resurrection (they would have done it differently; see the similar argument in ch. 13 below about the resurrection narratives).
63 On the whole sequence cf. JVG ch. 11.
64 Mk. 11:27–12:37/Mt. 21:43–22:46/Lk. 20:1–44.
67 I owe to Dr Andrew Goddard the fascinating point that Jesus, answering this question about men who die childless, stands as himself a celibate, childless man before those who are about to send him to his death.
69 See esp. mYeb. passim; and e.g. mBekh. 1.7.
70 The analogy with Tobit 6–8 is obvious. The echoes of 2 Macc. 7 are fascinating (seven brothers and a mother who all die in the hope of resurrection), but not so close in theme. Schwankl 1987, 347–52 argues in detail for actual dependence.
71 Though cf. Mk. 10:2–12 (opposes a command from Gen. to one from Dt. on divorce). The present passage has some interesting analogies with that one, not least concerning celibacy. Cf. Fletcher-Louis 1997, 78–86, with ref. to the Lukan passage.
72 cf. JVG 284–6.
73 The text is variously expanded in this direction by the MSS A, B, TH, G and several others.
74 Harvey 1994, 71 is uncharacteristically imprecise when he suggests that Jesus is here distinguishing his own view from that of the Pharisees by describing ‘dead persons as (presumably incorporeal) “angels in heaven” ’. The point is (a) that they are alive; (b) that they are (not identified as angels, but merely) like angels in one particular respect. For the closest that early Christian writers come to identifying the dead with angels see below, 487, 492, 496, 512. For similar questions in Judaism see e.g. 161 above.
75 This is the point stressed by Kilgallen 1986, 482–5.
76 The only other use listed in LSJ is found in Hierocles Platonicus (C5 AD) in Carmen Aureum 4. Kittel (in TDNT 1.87) lists two other literary uses and one epitaph. The closest other phrase in the NT is at Ac. 6:15 (Stephen’s face looking ‘like that of an angel’).
77 So e.g. Ellis 1966, 237.
79 Neither the evangelists, nor Jesus, nor his interlocutors, face the question which occurs to us: if marriage is designed to procreate the species in the face of death, why does Gen. 2 describe it being instituted before the fall? The only answer sees to be that the present question and answer remain limited by the implied scope of the Levirate law.
80 Kilgallen 1986, 486.
81 Perkins 1984, 74f.
82 Evans 1970, 32. Evans says that the quotation from Exodus is added ‘somewhat awkwardly’, and that the argument ‘is not a proof of resurrection in general, but rather its opposite’.
83 On the underlying logic see esp. SchwankI 1987, 403–06.
85 bSanh. 90b.
86 See the works criticized on this score by Wedderburn 1999, 147–52. Wedderburn himself prefers, as he says, to affirm the alternative belief and drop the word ‘resurrection’.
89 For this point see Dreyfus 1959; Janzen 1985; and, within a fuller context, Schwankl 1987, 391–6. None of them, however, see its implications for the political meaning of the discussion with the Sadducees.
90 So Janzen 47. As he points out, the double quotation with which the Sadducees began linked Moses with the patriarchal generations, and Jesus will now exploit this to answer them; in addition, both quotations use the phrase ‘raise up’ in the sense of ‘beget children’, but with the overtone, to the listener/reader, of the sense ‘resurrect’.
91 Kloppenborg 1990b, 90. This point is already assumed by e.g. Schillebeeckx 1979 [1974], 409f.
92 Wright, ‘Resurrection in Q?’ Cf. too Nickelsburg 1992, 688: ‘Q’ portrays Jesus as Wisdom’s spokesman, standing in the line of the persecuted and vindicated righteous (Mt. 23:34f./Lk. 11:49–51); Q sees Jesus as the coming son of man whose future judicial status is the result of ‘the exaltative function of his resurrection’. Also Meadors 1995, 307f. On ‘Q’see, in addition to the standard texts (e.g. Kloppenborg 1987; 1990a; Catchpole 1993; Tuckett 1996), the brief treatments in NTPG 435–43; JVG 35–44. Martin Hengel (2000 ch. 7) has joined the ranks, if not of ‘Q sceptics’, at least doubters or questioners. For shrewd and sharp remarks from a historian in a neighbouring discipline cf. Akenson 2000, 321–8.
93 Several MSS add ‘twelve’ before ‘thrones’, but this is clearly secondary.
94 On the meaning of the passage see JVG 454f.
95 See above, 150–53, 162–75. There is a superficial parallel in Mt. 10:28 to the position of 4 Macc. (above, 142f.).
100 A further mention of Jonah is found in Matt. 16:4, inserted by Matt. (so it seems) into his version of Mk. 8:11f. See Catchpole 1993, 244.
101 Catchpole 1993, 245–6, amplified in private correspondence. Catchpole has warned me that the history of interpretation of the present passage should discourage anyone from thinking they had finally unlocked all its secrets.
102 A fuller argument, taking the ‘son of man’ material into account, is in Wright, ‘Resurrection in Q?’, 93–6; see too e.g. Edwards 1971, 56.
103 More controversial is the saying found variously in e.g. Mt. 5:12/Lk. 6:23, and in some MSS of Lk. 6:35: ‘your reward is great in heaven’. This, like Col. 1:5 and 1 Pet. 1:3–5 (see above, 238, and below, 465–7) has normally been taken to mean ‘you will be rewarded when you go to heaven’, but should, like them, be interpreted as ‘God has a great reward in store for you’, without prejudice as to the location in which this reward will be given.
104 In fact, it is logically possible, even if unlikely, that ‘Q’ did have a resurrection narrative which corresponds to what we now have in either Mt. or Lk., and that the other evangelist had access to another source which he preferred. We should never forget that ‘Q’ is simply a construct, and that as soon as we allow for one evangelist modifying it or preferring his own material we have opened a very wide door to all kinds of other possibilities.
105 I owe this point to David Catchpole in private correspondence.
106 Another part of the background to the idea of the righteous shining like the sun and exercising judgment is found in 2 Sam. 23:3f, with David’s prediction of the righteous ruler, ruling in the fear of God, who is like the morning light at sunrise. See too the judgment which is invoked upon all YHWH’s enemies after the defeat of Sisera: ‘So let all your enemies perish, YHWH; but let those that love him be like the sun when it rises in strength’ (Jdg. 5:31; cf. too Ps. 37:6; Mal. 4:1f).
107 Lk. 2:41–52. See 650f. below.
108 Lk. 10:30–37; cf. JVG 305–07.
111 JVG 126–9.
113 Evans 1970, 32f. thus misses the point when he says that the idea of Lazarus going back from the dead to speak to the rich man’s brothers is not the kind of thing you find in the normal Jewish view. This is true, but irrelevant to the purposes of the parable.
114 JVG 255f. It is similarly difficult to build much on the famous 23:43; ‘Paradise’ could well indicate a temporary resting place rather than a permanent destination.
115 For other occurrences of this theme cf. SB 2.225–7. For the patriarchs welcoming those who have died righteously cf. e.g. 4 Macc. 13:17 (142 above).
117 For other instances of the same phenomenon cf. NTPG 421f.
118 For this theme cf. e.g Lincoln 1998, with other bibliog.
120 cf. Gen. 2:1–2, where synteleo is used twice for the completion of the original creation on the sixth day before God rests on the seventh.
122 e.g. Evans 1970, 116 (followed by Selby 1976, 117): ‘Strictly speaking, there is no place in the Fourth Gospel for resurrection stories, since the ascent or exaltation has already taken place. Nevertheless, and doubtless in deference to Christian tradition, the evangelist supplies three [resurrection stories] …’ Also 120 (the ‘massive realism’ of the appearances is surprising in contrast to the preceding interpretation of resurrection as ‘spiritual ascent to the Father’). Jn. 20:17 offers a fairly conclusive refutation of this line of thought. See too Mencken 2002, 198–204, tracing this view back to Dodd 1953, 441f.
123 cf. e.g. Jn. 4:19–24; and the fulfilment, in Jn., of the various festivals (Passover: here, in ch. 6, and in chs. 12–19; Tabernacles, in ch. 7; Hanukkah, in ch. 10).
126 For the resurrection of both righteous and wicked cf. Dan. 12:2; 2 Bar. 50.2–4; 4 Ezra 7:32; 1 En. 51.1f.; mAb. 4.22; in the NT, alongside this passage, Ac. 24:15; Rev. 20:12f. Some cite 2 Cor. 5:10 here as well, but this seems to me rather to refer (like Rom. 2:1–16) to a final judgment, consequent upon which the righteous will be given resurrection life. For resurrection of only the righteous (the view, it seems, of Paul, in the classic passages from Rom., 1 and 2 Cor., Phil. and 1 Thess.) cf. 2 Macc. 7:9; Ps. Sol. 3:12; Lk. 14:14; Did. 16.7; Ign. Trall. 9.2; Pol. Phil. 2.2.
127 This phrase is missing in Codex Sinaiticus and a couple of early Latin MSS.
128 The earlier story of the nobleman’s son (Jn. 4:46–54) has some analogies with the synoptic story of Jairus’ daughter, and its emphasis on the fact that the boy is about to die but ‘will live’ (vv. 47, 49, 50, 51, 53) points to the theme of which the Lazarus story is the fullest statement.
130 cf. 1 Cor. 15:36f. For the idea of God ‘honouring’ martyrs cf. 4 Macc. 17:20.
131 Jn. 21:19, 22. On the ‘hour’ cf. 2:4; 4:21, 23; 5:25, 28; 7:30; 8:20; and, after the present passage, 12:27; 13:1; 16:32; 17:1.
134 ‘My father’s house’: cf. Lk. 2:49; Jn. 2:16. Philo Som. 1.256 uses ‘the father’s house’ to refer to heaven; 1 Macc. 7:38 refers to a mone with apparent reference to a place to live within the Temple (the NRSV ‘let them live no longer’ is an interpretative paraphrase of the Greek me dos autois monen, ‘do not give them a dwelling-place’).
136 Progress: e.g. Westcott 1903, 200; denied by e.g. Barrett 1978 [1955], 456f. Barrett notes 1 En. 39.4 and 2 En. 61.2 as references to dwelling-places, without seeing that in the passage in 1 En., as in e.g. 1 En. 1.8; 22.1–14; 102.4f.; 4 Ezr. 4:35, 41; 7:32; 2 Bar. 30.1f. (see above, 154f., 160, 161), the ‘chambers’ are where the righteous souls are stored until the day of resurrection. For the meaning of mone as temporary lodging, cf. e.g. Chariton 1.12.1; Paus. 10.31.7; OGI 527.5 (an inscription from Hierapolis).
137 The idea of Jesus raising the dead is very rare in earliest Christianity. It comes to flower in the long iconographic tradition in which Jesus raises Adam and Eve from the grave. This tradition, mostly associated with the East, nevertheless spread widely enough to include an Anglo-Saxon sculpture in Bristol Cathedral.
139 On the ‘sower’ (Mt. 13:1–9/Mk. 4:1–9/Lk. 8:4–8/Thom 9) cf. JVG 230–39.
Chapter Ten: Hope Refocused (2): Other New Testament Writings
1 In addition to the commentaries see recently Green 1998. We have of course already studied the narratives of Paul’s conversion in ch. 8 above. The probability that Acts, though written quite late, preserves much older tradition is stressed by Michaud 2001, 113, citing other scholars who support this view.
3 See JVG 268–74.
4 See Evans 1970, 134. The discussion of this text in Kilgallen 2002 seems to me never quite to reach the point.
7 For the sequence of thought—living in a certain way in the present because of the future judgment—compare 2 Cor. 5:6–10, 11f.
9 On apokatastasis see Barrett 1994, 206f.
11 Ac. 23:6–9; 12:15: see above, 132–4.
12 This point seems to be missed by Michaud 2001, 112–15.
13 It would thus be futile to make anything of the fact that the proclamation in Ac. 10:40f. does not mention the empty tomb. As in 1 Cor. 15:3f, it is clearly assumed.
14 cf. Rom. 1:3f., 2:16.
15 Harvey 1994, 73 overstates in declaring that there is no mention; see below. A recent study of resurrection in Hebrews is that of Lane 1998—all the more moving for those who knew the author to be struggling with terminal illness at the time of writing.
16 ‘The dead’ is plural, referring to the future resurrection of the many, not that of Jesus.
17 So, rightly, Koester 2001, 491.
18 1 Kgs. 17:17–24; 2 Kgs. 4:18–37; 2 Macc. 7. Koester 2001, 514 points out that, though the biblical stories are resuscitations and the people concerned would die again, they, like Isaac’s deliverance, are seen as foreshadowing the final resurrection.
19 Granted the way these concepts work in the Judaism of the time (above, ch. 4), I do not regard this as an unresolved tension in Heb. as Koester 2001, 306 suggests. Koester rightly draws attention (311) to the implicit resurrection teaching in 2:14f.; 12:22–4.
20 Attridge 1989, 380f., citing other commentators also, sees here the complete destruction of the existing creation rather than its renewal. The poetic language does not, perhaps, permit a firm conclusion on this point, but his suggestion that Heb. is governed here by a popular Platonic dualism, and that the ‘things which cannot be shaken’ are non-material, seems to me questionable.
21 Sacrifice: e.g. Heb. 2:17; 7:27; 10:10; ascension and enthronement: e.g. 10:12f.; both together: e.g. 9:11–28.
22 Heb. 13:20f. ‘Brought again’ is anagagon, lit. ‘led up’, as in LXX 1 Kgds. [MT 1 Sam.] 2:6; 28:11; Tob. 13:2; Wisd. 16:13; cf. too Rom. 10:7. Attridge 1989, 406 sees the avoidance of the regular NT ‘resurrection’ words as part of a consistent ploy of speaking of exaltation rather than resurrection for Jesus, though the actual content of this verse surely calls this into question. Contrast Lane 1991, 561, who sees this verse as making explicit what is implicit elsewhere.
23 Set out clearly in Lane 1991, 561; cf. too Koester 2001, 573.
24 Lane 1991, 561f., stressing the link with Heb.’s theology of covenant renewal.
25 cf. esp. 4:14; 5:5–10; 6:19f.; 7:16; 7:24; 9:24–8; 10:12–14 (continuing the long-drawn-out exposition of Ps. 110).
27 Jas. 1:10f. alludes to Isa. 40:6f. (the grass withers, the flower fades), but does not articulate the positive side of the passage, as we find in 1 Pet. 1:23–5.
29 3:13; cf. Isa. 65:17; 66:22.
30 On corruption and escape from it cf. (with 1:4) 2 Pet. 2:19.
31 cf. e.g. Cic. De Nat. Deorum 2.118.
32 So, rightly, Duff 2001, 1274.
33 Notable katakaesetai in A (C5) and some other MSS.
34 See e.g. Bauckham 1983, 303, 316–21; Wenham 1987, pointing out possible roots in Jesus’ apocalyptic teaching in the gospels; Wolters 1987; Neyrey 1993, 243f.
35 So Wolters 1987, 411f., proposing a metallurgical sense connected to the process of smelting.
36 This is the closest we come in John’s letters to the (equally rare) statement of the second coming in the fourth gospel (21:22f.).
37 1 Jn. 3:14f.; cf. Jn. 5:24.
39 cf. too 1 Pet. 4:13 (‘when the Messiah’s glory is revealed’).
40 See Achtemeier 1996, 96, demonstrating that the idea of an inheritance currently preserved ‘in heaven’, i.e. by God, ready to be brought into earthly existence, is familiar both in Judaism and the teaching of Jesus, and coheres well with Paul’s sense of ‘a totally transformed eschatological reality’.
42 So, powerfully, Achtemeier 1996, 95f.
43 Achtemeier 1996, 104: the sense of psyche here is ‘the salvation of the entire person rather than simply the rescue of a higher or spiritual part of a person in contrast to the body’. On resurrection and salvation in 1 Pet. see now Schlosser 2002.
44 1 Pet. 4:12–19, including a typical warning about the coming judgment; 5:10f., celebrating God’s grace, glory and finally power. This whole argument tells strongly against the analysis of Robinson 1982, 19, who suggests that for 1 Pet. the resurrection is mainly a present experience, which merely leaves room ‘for lip service to the apocalyptic view of future resurrection as a permanent if relatively passive ingredient in orthodoxy’.
45 On this passage see recently, in addition to the commentaries, Westfall 1999.
46 See esp. Davids 1990, 138–41; Achtemeier 1996, 252–62, both taking the latter line. Achtemeier also proposes that when v. 19 speaks of Christ ‘going’ to make his announcement to the ‘spirits’ this refers, not to a descent to the underworld, but to his ascent into heaven (as in v. 22), from which the announcement of victory would be made.
47 See Achtemeier 1996, 250f. Another more regular solution which likewise rejects any dualism here is that of Davids 1990, 137: Jesus was made alive with respect to the Spirit, leaving behind the sphere of sinful flesh.
48 Rowland 1985, 292–4, 310f.; 1998, 720–30. See too O’Donovan 1986, 56.
49 The vision in 1:13–16 should not be treated as a ‘resurrection appearance’ (as e.g. Robinson 1982, 10; so, rightly, McDonald 1989, 19). It is not only Luke, but also Paul and John, who limit the ‘resurrection appearances’ to a short, early period. Both form and content proclaim that this is a ‘vision’, written up with multiple echoes of biblical and post-biblical tradition (cf. e.g. Rowland 1980; 1998, 561f.; Aune 1997–8, 70–74), so that to treat it as a straight transcript of ‘what the seer saw’, as Robinson would require, implies a literalism—here of all places!—which elsewhere he is the first to discard.
51 Rev. 2:10f.; cf. 20:6, 14; 21:8.
52 Rev. 6:9–11. I am not convinced by Beale’s attempt (1999, 1010) to suggest that they are in a state of ‘spiritual resurrection’; see below on Rev. 20:4–6.
53 In favour of this being an anticipation of the end: they are guided to springs of living water, with all tears wiped from their eyes (see Rev. 22:1–5; 21:4). Against: they serve the living god in his Temple (7:15), but there is no Temple in the heavenly city (21:22).
54 Some MSS read ‘from (ek) the dead’, bringing the phrase into line with Col. 1:18 (some MSS, however, omit the ek there).
56 I assume that Revelation is written some time in the last third of the first century, but the precise date does not matter for our purposes. Oegema 2001 provides a history of how the ‘double resurrection’ in Rev. was treated in the patristic period; Hill 2002 [1992] offers an exegesis of the text and discusses the treatments of it by key early exegetes, including e.g. Origen (181–7) and Cyprian (198–207).
57 In addition to the commentaries cf. e.g. Clouse 1977; Wright, Millennium; Hill 2002 [1992].
58 The classic statement is 1 Cor. 15:23 (see above, 336f., etc.).
59 Bauckham 1993a, 56–70 lays out and discusses many Jewish parallels. ‘Death’ and ‘Hades’ may be both personifications and places; alternatively, ‘Death’ may be the ruler of the location called ‘Hades’. This, supposedly under the earth, was regarded as a more natural and appropriate place for the dead to be than in the sea; cf. e.g. Achilles Tatius, Leucippe, 5.16.2, where Clitophon, supposing that his beloved Leucippe has died at sea, declares that since he and Melite are on board ship at the moment they are sailing over Leucippe’s grave, and that perhaps her ghost is circling around the ship at that moment. ‘They say’, he comments, ‘that souls who die in the sea never descend to Hades but wander over the water.’ Other refs. in Aune 1997–8, 3.1102f.; further discussion in Chester 2001, 71f. For the variation between a resurrection of all and a resurrection of the righteous only see the note on John 5:28f. at 442 above.
60 Beale 1999, 1042 lists five possible reasons for the sea’s abolition (with further material at 1050f.): it is seen as the origin of cosmic evil, as a picture of the unbelieving nations, as the place of the dead, as the location of idolatrous trade, and as a synechdoche for the entire old creation. The last of these seems unlikely in view of the rest of Rev. 21:1; the fourth is interesting but unlikely to be the primary point; the first three seem, in combination, the best possibilities. Bauckham 1993a, 49f. argues emphatically, on the basis of similar language in other writings, that the ‘passing away’ of the first heaven and earth ‘refers to the eschatological renewal of this creation, not its replacement by another’ (see too Chester 2001, 73). Bauckham’s discussion of the sea and its abolition (51–3) draws attention to the final fulfilment of God’s promise to Noah, never again to flood the world (Gen. 9:11).
61 Even if this is figurative and intends to refer to martyrs in general, or even persecuted saints in general, it still leaves many of the righteous out of the category. Beale 1999, 998f. tries to insist that all the righteous dead are in fact included here; see below.
62 cf. however Caird 1966, 253f., who says on the one hand that the martyrs have attained ‘a heaven more solid and lasting, and therefore more real, than earth’ (but then suggests, puzzlingly, that the resurrections, both first and second, are not ‘to earthly, bodily life’). Chester 2001, 73 rightly insists that resurrection here ‘is of course a literal, physical resurrection’, while also being ‘a powerful and evocative symbol for a metaphorical, communal and cosmic resurrection’ in the traditions of Ezekiel, Isaiah and Daniel. For the patristic writers who envisaged a literal new Jerusalem, etc., see Hill 2002 [1992] Part I.
63 For the debates see esp. Beale 1999, 991–1021, taking the view just described; Beale is followed by e.g. Johnson 2001, 290–94.
64 Beale 1999, 1008f. attempts to demonstrate a ‘spiritual resurrection’ in other Jewish and Christian texts. But the passages he cites (apart from 2 Macc. 7, which refers to the ultimate resurrection, not an intermediate state) do not use anastasis and its cognates, but rather zoe and zao (‘life’, ‘live’), which clearly have a much wider referent, regularly including a non-bodily intermediate state.
65 It is possible that ezesan simply means ‘they lived’, in other words that they ‘went on living’ after their deaths; but it is much more likely that it means ‘they came to life’ (so, rightly, Beale 1999, 1000). Cf. the parallel with Jesus’ ‘coming to life’ (ezesen) in Rev. 2:8.
66 Rev. 22:1f.; cf. Ezek. 47:1–12.
67 This conclusion undermines the extraordinary suggestion of Riley 1995, 66 that physical resurrection ‘was (all but) absent at the outset and took generations to develop in the Church’. Even if we were to accept the view that Luke and John were the first to invent stories about Jesus’ risen body, that is still only two generations at the outside. Riley’s repeated reference to the flesh of a person ‘surviving the grave’ (8, 66) indicates clearly that he has not begun to come to grips with what the early Christians were talking about.
68 Evans 1970, 40.
69 This does not mean that the word ‘resurrection’ has become a nose of wax, to be moulded into any kind of shape; see the writers reviewed in Wedderburn 1999, 85–95. A sense of the specific meanings in the Jewish context on the one hand, and in the early Christian context on the other, lays most of these cheerful speculations to rest.
70 This shows how impossible it is to suggest, as does Wiles 1994, 125, that because the hope of resurrection was ‘in the air’ at the time this somehow made it more likely that people would believe that Jesus had been raised. What the Christians believed was not what was ‘in the air’ at the time.
71 Its absence may of course be explained by the curiously Levitical taboo against mixing Latin and Greek roots.
72 See, rightly, Wedderburn 1999, 150f., with 284 n. 356. Hanging on to ‘resurrection’ language but using it to mean something quite different is, at best, serving ‘to keep up a pretence of orthodox respectability’ (151). Küng 1976, 350f. stresses the unimaginability of the resurrection as part of his argument that ‘the resurrection of Jesus was not an event in space and time’. Evans 1970, 130 has been widely quoted to the effect that the difficulty lies in ‘knowing what it is which offers itself for belief’; this, I trust, is now clarified.
73 Except for Jn. 5:29; Ac. 24:15 (Dan. 12:2), and Mt. 13:43; Phil. 2:15 (Dan. 12:3). The first two simply make the point that the resurrection will include both righteous and unrighteous (see above, 442). The Mt. and Phil. passages are not early Christian references to the future resurrection; the former is spoken by Jesus prior to Easter, and the latter is used metaphorically of present Christian witness.
74 We have thus returned, though with new content, to the question posed by Moule 1967, 13: ‘the birth and rapid rise of the Christian Church … remain an unsolved enigma for any historian who refuses to take seriously the only explanation offered by the church itself’ (italics original).
75 Against e.g. Carnley 1987, 246.
Chapter Eleven: Hope Refocused (3): Non-Canonical Early Christian Texts
1 In particular: Chadwick 1967; Kelly 1977 [1958]; Frend 1984; Stark 1996. On the present topic see esp. Bynum 1995 ch. 1. Unfortunately Bynum assumes (3–6), as a yardstick for measuring later writers, an understanding of Paul which overemphasizes his view of resurrection as transformation and fails to take full measure, as we have tried to do in Part II above, of the importance for him of bodily continuity. An important study of a closely related topic is Hill 2002 [1992]. This entire chapter serves as an outflanking and refutation of Lona 1993, who tries to argue that bodily resurrection was an unimportant theme for the second-century Christian writers.
2 If Pelikan 1961 had cited his sources, the book would have been of considerable use for our study; sadly, it remains of interest only at a tertiary level.
3 Greek texts used: Loeb (1912–13); Lightfoot 1989 [1889]. Translations are my own; see too Lake in Loeb; Holmes 1989. On resurrection and allied ideas in the Apostolic Fathers, see O’Hagan 1968; Van Eijk 1974; Greshake and Kremer 1986, 176–83; Bynum 1995, 22–4; Hill 2002 [1992], 77–101.
4 1 Clem. 5.4, 7.
5 1 Clem. 6.2; 35.1f.; 44.5.
6 Indeed, into the heavenly sanctuary; cp. Jn. 14:2 (above, 445f.). See Hill 2002 [1992], 80–83, demonstrating that Clement believed in a temporary post-mortem heaven rather than in the righteous going to Hades.
8 1 Clem. 25.1–5; see the similar accounts in Hdt. 2.73; Pliny NH 10.2. In some early Christian circles the analogy was thought to be sanctioned by the LXX of Ps. 92:12 [91:13], where, in the phrase ‘the righteous shall flourish like a palm-tree’, the word for ‘palm-tree’ is phoinix, the same as the Greek for the legendary bird (so Lake ad loc.). Clement seems aware of the somewhat bizarre nature of the analogy (26.1: the creator shows us this ‘even through a bird’).
9 26.1: the biblical quotations come in 26.2f.
10 Though with different wording from that of the LXX.
11 In LXX: Pss. 40:11; 27:7; 87:11; the verb Clement uses, though (exanistemi), is not found in the LXX of the Pss.
12 In LXX: Pss. 3:6; 22:4; the latter is of course appropriate, since it speaks of God’s presence even in the shadow of death.
13 1 Clem. 50.3f. Is there an echo of the ‘chambers of the dead’ in 1 En. and elsewhere?
14 1 Clem. 44.2.
15 Bynum 1995, 24 is right that Clement draws a very close analogy between natural processes and the resurrection itself. But she goes much too far, in my opinion, in saying that this text and similar ones ‘do not mean at all what Paul means’. I suspect that it is her picture of Paul himself (3–6) that is at fault.
16 2 Clem. 9.1–6. The image of ‘entering the kingdom’ is found again at 11.7.
17 14.3–5, ending with the affirmation (reminiscent of 2 Tim. 1:10) that, if the Spirit is joined to the flesh, the flesh is capable of receiving a great gift of ‘life and immortality’. Those who suffer, the writer declares, while obeying the instructions he gives for living as Christians, will ‘gather the immortal fruit of the resurrection’ (19.3).
18 So e.g. Hill 2002 [1992], 100.
19 Trall. 9.2.
20 Philad., introd.
21 Philad. 8.2; similarly, 9.2.
24 Smyrn. 3.1–3. On the traditions underlying this version of Jesus’ words see Schoedel 1985, 226–8. The phrase ‘mixed together with both flesh and spirit’ seems to refer to a fellowship on both levels; cf. Eph. 5.1.
25 Eph. 19.3.
26 Eph. 20.1.
27 Magn. 9.1f. Lightfoot (1989 [1889], 2.131f.) gives strong support to this interpretation, seeing it echoed also in Philad. 5.2; 9.1, and discussing particularly the supposedly biblical passage quoted by Justin (Dial. 72), and also Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen. See too Hermas, Sim. 9.16 (see below). Lake, ad loc., refers to the later Gospel of Nicodemus and Acts of Pilate for this theme.
28 Rom. 4.3. I take this as a reference to the final resurrection, not to a ‘rising’ to heaven; so too Eph. 11.2 (against Hill 2002 [1992], 89).
29 Smyrn. 5.3.
31 On Ignatius’ apologetic concern in relation to other early writers see Schoedel 1985, 227–9. On whether Lk. 24 was written with the same motive see 659 below.
32 Smyrn. 12.2. We note the use of ‘flesh’ here, corresponding to Lk. 24:39 over against 1 Cor. 15:50. This anticipates the later usage of e.g. Tertullian.
33 Pol. Phil. 2.1f. On Polycarp cf. Hill 2002 [1992], 91f.
34 Pol. Phil. 5.2. ‘If we conduct ourselves worthily’ is ean politeusometha axios, an echo of Paul’s letter to the same church (Phil. 1:27).
35 Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.3.4; cf. Euseb. HE 4.14.
36 On which see NTPG 347f.
37 Mt. Pol. 2.3.
39 Mt. Pol. 14.2.
40 Mt. Pol. 19.2.
41 See Lightfoot 1989 [1889], 3.390–93.
42 Mt. Pol. 17.2f.
43 Mt. Pol. 18.2f.
44 Below, 701–3.
45 See e.g. Draper 1996; Niederwimmer 1998 [1989], 52–4.
46 Did. 1.1f.
47 Did. 9.4; 10.5.
48 Did. 14.1, 3.
49 Did. 16.6–8.
50 See e.g. Niederwimmer 1998 [1989], 223–5.
51 On this question, coupled with the suggestion of a possible lost ending to the work, cf. Aldridge 1999, with Hill 2002 [1992], 77f.
52 Barn. 1.6. The other two dogmata are righteousness, the beginning and end of judgment, and a glad and rejoicing love (taking euphrosynes and agalliaseos as adjectival, not objective as Lake ad loc, Holmes 162), which is the testimony of works of righteousness.
53 Barn. 4.1–14. Cf. too 19.10.
54 Barn. 5.5f.
55 Barn. 5.9–12; cf. 6.7, 9.
56 Barn. 6.9–19.
57 Barn. 6.19; on ‘perfection’ here cf. e.g. Phil. 3:12.
59 Barn. 21.1.
60 Barn. 21.3, 6, 9.
62 Editors sometimes alter this to ‘spirit’, for obvious reasons of sense, but the MSS clearly represent the harder reading.
63 Sim. 5.7.1–4. Hill 2002 [1992], 94 is clear that Hermas takes resurrection for granted.
65 So Lake on Vis. 2.2.7, and Mart. Pol. 2.3.
66 This phrase is repeated almost exactly in Sim. 9.25.2.
67 Sim. 9.24.4.
68 Sim. 8.2.6.
69 The most convenient collection of the fragments is Holmes 1989, 307–29.
70 HE 3.39.9, 12f. A different account of Papias on this point is given by the seventh-century Anastasius of Sinai (Holmes 1989, 321). On the whole question of an earthly paradise (and chiliasm in general) in Papias see above all Hill 2002 [1992], 22f., 63–8.
71 Jerome, Vir. Illustr. 18, quoted in Holmes 1989, 319; see too the fifth-century Philip of Side (Holmes 318).
72 Quoted in Holmes 1989, 323.
73 The text is similar to 2 Bar. 29.5. lrenaeus implies that this report from ‘the elders’ was written up by Papias, but does not ascribe it to him directly (as implied by Bynum 1995, 23). See again Hill 2002 [1992], esp. 254–9.
74 Iren. Adv. Haer. 5.33.3f. On lrenaeus, including his insistence that he, unlike the heretics, was following the genuine tradition, see below, 513–7.
75 So Louth 1987, 140; Holmes 1989, 291f.
76 Hill 2002 [1992], 102 favours a date around 150.
77 Diog. 6.6–8.
78 Hill 2002 [1992], 103 suggests, more positively, that though the work does not clearly refer to the resurrection, there is no evidence that the author doubted it.
79 See esp. Hennecke 1963, 1965; Elliott 1993.
80 I have worked from the introduction and text of Knibb in Charlesworth 1985, 143–76.
81 Bauckham 1998a, 389. See also Hall 1990; Norelli 1994, 1995; Knight 1996; Hill 2002 [1992], 109–16. Full bibliog. in Norelli 1995.
82 e.g. Helmbold 1972 (more precisely, ‘semi-Christian … or Christian-Gnostic’, 227). That there are many parallels with motifs found in the Nag Hammadi texts is obvious; but what matters is the actual content.
83 Asc. Isa. 3.15–20.
85 cf. too 4.14–18, which clearly teaches a future resurrection (despite Hill 2002 [1992], 113f., who curiously suggests that the resurrection in 4.18 might be of the wicked only, an idea otherwise unknown in Jewish or Christian sources).
86 Asc. Isa. 9.9–11. For the ‘robes’ as indicating the transformed state of the righteous cf. also 1.5; 3.25; 4.16f.; 7.22; 8.14, 26; 9.2, 17f., 24–6; 11.40.
87 Asc. Isa. 9.16–18.
88 Text: Hennecke 1965, 668–83; Elliott 1993, 593–612. On this work, its setting and particular emphases, see above all Buchholz 1988; Bauckham 1998a, ch. 8; and see too Hill 2002 [1992], 116–20. Bauckham (239) specifies the context as a time when ‘Christians were suffering for their refusal to accept Bar Kokhba as Messiah and to participate in the revolt’, placing this in turn within ‘the rabbinic attempt to exclude Jewish Christians from the religious community of Israel’.
89 Bauckham 1998a, ch. 9 shows in considerable detail that this ref. to Ezek. 37 is dependent on the traditions preserved in 4Q385 (one of the mss. of 4Q Second Ezekiel, which may be identical with the otherwise lost ‘Apocryphon of Ezekiel’). Similar dependence on these post-biblical traditions are found in e.g. Justin 1 Apol. 52.5f. and Tert. De Res. 32.1.
90 For Uriel and his role cf. Bauckham 1998a, 221f. In 1 En. 20.1 Uriel is first in a list of seven angels; elsewhere he is often third behind Michael and Gabriel.
91 Ap. Pet. 4; tr. from Henneke 1963. Bauckham 1998a, ch. 10 locates the notion of the ‘giving back’ of the dead within the wider world of Jewish and Christian thought about resurrection.
92 Apoc. Pet. 13.1; 16–17.
93 2 Esdr. 3–14 comprises the work more usually known as 4 Ezra; 2 Esdr. 15–16, a further separate work, is better known as 6 Ezra, a Christian work probably from the third century.
94 cf. e.g. O’Neill 1991.
95 Stanton 1977.
99 Text: Hennecke 1963, 191–227; Elliott 1993, 555–88. See Hill 2002 [1992], 123–5.
100 Ep. Ap. 2.
101 Ep. Ap. 11 (Ethiop.). In the Coptic parallel, Andrew is invited to observe that Jesus’ feet really are touching the ground, thus demonstrating that he is not a ghost.
102 Ep. Ap. 19.
103 Ep. Ap. 21.
104 Ep. Ap. 21; cf. Ac. Paul & Thecla 37.
105 Ep. Ap. 24.
106 Ep. Ap. 25 (following the Coptic version).
107 Since Papias’ works have not survived, it is hard to tell how substantial they were. We do know that he composed five suggramata (Eus. HE 3.39.1) which were probably bigger than 1 Clem., though perhaps not on the scale of Justin’s works. On Justin the study of Chadwick 1966 is still important. Among other writers of this period we should mention Melito of Sardis; though not much of his work has survived, his treatise On Pascha contains a memorable description (102.760–64) of Christ’s triumph over death and his carrying of humankind away to heaven; see Hill 2002 [1992], 105f.
108 cf. Mt. Poly. 9.2.
109 This can hardly be taken as evidence that he or anyone else would have confused belief in Jesus’ resurrection with early necromantic practices (see e.g. Riley 1995, 44–7; see above, 61f.). Had Justin known that such suggestions might be made we may doubt whether he would have regarded this argument as such a useful bridge across which to guide his pagan audience.
110 On the apparent inconsistencies within Justin’s chiliasm cf. Hill 2002 [1992], 25–7.
111 In the key phrase meta ten hagian anastasin, some editors have suggested reading hagion for hagian, i.e. ‘after the resurrection of the holy ones’, the full number of God’s people. Otto (in Migne PG 6.736) explains that Justin seems to see a double resurrection, first of the blessed (hagia) and then of everybody else. (This may go back to that particular understanding of 1 Cor. 15:23f., or perhaps to Rev. 20, or a combination of both.)
112 Methodius, as reported in Epiphanius Haer. 64 (in Photius Bib. 234), reports a saying of Justin that ‘that which is mortal is inherited, but that which is immortal inherits; and that the flesh indeed dies, but the kingdom of heaven lives’. This could mean anything or nothing. Similar things could be said about the reported conversation between Justin and the prefect at his final trial (Martyrdom of Justin ch. 4).
113 There is some debate as to whether this actually comes from Justin; a good case for its authenticity is made in Prigent 1964, 28–67; cf. too Bynum 1995, 28f.
114 Od. 2.304.
116 pneumatike mone, PG 6.1588.
118 Grant 1954 disputes Athenagoras’ authorship, but he is countered in some degree by Pouderon 1986. Cf. too Bynum 1995, 28f., with extensive bibliog. Athenagoras shows no sign of Justin’s chiliasm: see Hill 2002 [1992], 107f.
119 On this topic, which became famous in the third century, see Bynum 1995, 32f.
120 See Bynum 1995, 30f.
121 See esp. Autol. 2.10–27; also 3.9.
122 Autol. 1.7.
123 In Autol. 2.27 Theophilus insists that humans were created neither mortal nor immortal, but capable of either. Through sinning, humans became mortal, but now have the chance for this to be reversed, since those who are saved will obtain the resurrection and thus inherit incorruption.
124 Autol. 1.8.
125 Autol. 1.13.
127 Autocl. 1.13.
128 Autocl. 2.38.
129 Ibid., quoting Ps. 51:8; Prov. 3:8. On Theophilus’ theory about the ‘seven-day week’ of world history see Hill 2002 [1992], 162f.; and cp. Plut. De Isid. 47.
131 Octavius 34.6–12.
132 Octavius 38.3f.
133 See Kelly 1972 [1960], 163–5.
134 Apoll. 18.3f.
135 ANF 3.545–94; for recent discussions, see Bynum 1995, 35; among older works, cf. e.g. Siniscalco 1966, ch. 5. The anti-Marcionite poem on the resurrection (ANF 4.145f.), like the collection to which it belongs, was once ascribed to Tertullian but is not now regarded as his. It emphasizes, as did many apologists, the necessity of the restoration of the flesh, as a matter of justice, and the ease of its happening, on the basis (as usual) of God’s creative power. Without bodily resurrection, death retains victory over that which God made and already honoured. Tertullian refers to the resurrection elsewhere in his writings, but his treatise directly on the subject is full, and tells us more than enough for our present survey. On Tertullian’s strong chiliasm, and his debates with opponents on this subject who nevertheless believed, like him, in a bodily resurrection, see Hill 2002 [1992], 27–32.
136 cf. 1 Cor. 15:50 (‘flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom’), often quoted against the position Paul himself is arguing (above, 358–9).
137 De Res. 55 ad fin. (italics in translation: ANF 3.589).
138 Tertullian developed Jewish retellings of the story here: the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness found that their shoes and clothing did not wear out (Dt. 8:4). Nor, he says, did their hair and fingernails grow; this appears to be Tertullian’s own expansion of legend, followed by Jerome. On all this see Satran 1989.
139 Bynum 1995, 38.
140 On martyrdom as the context for much of the writing about resurrection in this period see Bynum 1995, 43–7. For the significance, for lrenaeus, of the Lyons martyrdoms, see below. 549.
141 Haer. 2.29.1. On the Valentinian movement see e.g. Mirecki 1992b. Valentinus himself was active in the middle of the C2, and his followers remained an identifiable group for several centuries thereafter.
142 Haer. 2.29.2.
143 Haer. 2.33.1–5. Dr Andrew Goddard suggests to me that the increasing emphasis on the resurrection of righteous and wicked alike may stem from the grounding of resurrection more on the judgment to come than (as with Paul) on the resurrection of Jesus as the Messiah who guarantees the resurrection of his people.
144 Haer. 2.33.5, introducing the idea of a divinely intended fixed number of the saved.
145 Haer. 2.34.1.
146 Haer. 2.34.4.
147 Haer. 5.3.2f.
148 Haer. 5.4f.
149 Haer. 5.6.1.
150 Haer. 5.6.2.