The Resurrection of the Body

[John Reece]

After being an avid affirmer of the Apostles’ Creed for nearly a lifetime, I checked to see if the phrase “resurrection of the body” is an accurate rendering of any text in scripture.

It is not.

The biblical texts are more accurately rendered “resurrection of the dead” (anastasis nekrwn).

The word “body” in the Apostles’ Creed is a translation of the Latin word caro (= flesh). For that (Latin: caro; English: flesh) to be an accurate rendering in any text of scripture, sarx (flesh) would have to occur in the place of nekrwn (dead) in the text of the Greek New Testament.

For “resurrection of the body” to be an accurate rendering of the Greek NT text, the word swmatos (“body”) would have to occur in the place of nekrwn (“dead”).

Jesus said:
I am the resurrection.
Anyone who believes in me, even though that person dies, will live,
and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this? (John 11:25-26 NJB)

I believe that
· Jesus is the Resurrection. (John 11:25)
· Even though my soulish body (swma psuchikon) will die, my spirit, which lives in Him, will never die. (John 11:26)
· My soulish body (swma psuchikon), which will die, will never be resurrected. (1 Corinthians 15:37 – the body that is sown is ”not the body” that is raised).

[dizzle]

While though the phrase does not appear, it is an accurate representation of what is meant by "resurrection" of the dead. It is a resurrection of the dead bodies. Bodies is implied.

[John Reece]

Bodies is implied.
Perhaps.

I understand the phrase to refer to persons, whose bodies have died.

[Hitch]

Hmmmmmm, It was very important that the body of Jesus remain uncorrupted. but I have no idea as to why .


It is a matter of degree because we know the microbes start work immediately after death. But no one to date has been resurrected after 4 days. Still every case recorded the same body that was inhabited by the living soul was the same body raised.

In Jesus case we know he was beaten to the piont of unrecognizablilty still after the Resurrection He bore some of the scars of the torture, (Im glad it hurts to write that:bawl:) but appearently not all. Ive wondered about that since I was a boy. I reckon its like when we tell a story and some of the details are important and some not. When God tells a story this or that may be included or left out but the places and characters become a temporal reality complete with eternal consequences to ther actions.

Quite an artist.

take care


Hitch

[dizzle]

03-01-2003 @ 08:19 PM
John Reece:


Perhaps.

I understand the phrase to refer to persons, whose bodies have died.

Not at all for that would be completely out of place with the Jewish framework of the statement and the belief. Spirits do not "die" and do not need to be resurrected. There is only one part of us that literally dies and literally needs to be resurrected. The only reason that conversion can be analogized as a "resurrection" is because there already was an existing belief in the resurrection of the body to build a foundation upon.

It is indisuptable that the Pharisees believed in the physical resurrection of the physical body. While he differed with them on many accounts, Paul made it a point to side with the Pharisees on this issue.

[John Reece]

Thanks for the responses. The reasoning is interesting.

[dizzle]

Hey no problem, John, I enjoy talking with you.

[The Curtmudgeon]

John, 1 Corinthians 15 pretty much makes the point that our resurrection is patterned after Jesus' resurrection. If you believe that our resurrection is only a 'spiritual' one, then logically it would follow that Jesus' resurrection was also only spiritual, thus giving the lie to all the accounts (listed earlier in 1 Cor. 15) of His appearing to people after His resurrection--and most especially to the appearance to the 11 including Thomas in which He specifically made the point that He had a real body, and was not a ghost or spirit:


John 20:27
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.

The (also Job: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God) Curtmudgeon

[John Reece]

Why did the people who knew Jesus so intimately not recognize him after his death and resurrection? In every case that I recall, it took some kind of revelation for them to know it was him.

How did this happen, if Jesus' resurrection body is the same as our physical bodies:

John 20

Jesus Appears to the Disciples:

19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you."

I'm glad you referred to this text in Job:
And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God
You should try reading it in Hebrew! It ain't as it appears and as you think. :smile:

[The Curtmudgeon]

03-08-2003 @ 04:49 PM
John Reece:

Why did the people who knew Jesus so intimately not recognize him after his death and resurrection? In every case that I recall, it took some kind of revelation for them to know it was him.

No, it was only two occasions that He went unrecognised: Mary Magdalene in the garden thought He was just the gardener, and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus with whom He discoursed on how the Scriptures had foretold all those events. In both cases, the idea that He had been raised from the dead was not present in the witness(es), and when you're totally convinced that someone is dead, even someone close to you and dearly loved, then you don't expect to meet that person walking around. In Mary's case it was simply the repeated sound of His voice that "woke her up" to the fact of His resurrection.

There's one other account that you might be thinking of, when Jesus appears to the fishing disciples on the Sea of Galilee. There, however, it appears from the Gospel account that it was merely distance that prevented the disciples from recognising Him, and so I don't believe that it really counts here. At great enough distance I wouldn't recognise my own mother reliably.

You have to recall that the Gospels make it very plain that the disciples simply did not understand Jesus' teachings about His resurrection until after they were confronted with the undeniable fact of it. That predisposed them to not recognise Jesus when they weren't expecting to see Him again after they knew He was dead.

How did this happen, if Jesus' resurrection body is the same as our physical bodies:

John 20

Jesus Appears to the Disciples:

19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you."

It's clear that Jesus' resurrected body is not "the same" as our present unresurrected bodies, as He appears within locked rooms, and disappears as easily. But my point was that His resurrected body is a physical body, even though it has different qualities from our also-physical but unresurrected bodies today. That was His point to Thomas: even though He could suddenly appear in a locked room, nevertheless Thomas could handle His body exactly as he could reach out and touch his fellow disciples. It was not the same, but it was still physical.

And in that very passage, there is no indication that the disciples did not recognise Jesus: they instantly recognised Him, they just thought He was a ghost or spirit, not a resurrected body. By that time, they had been told by Magdalene and the other women about their seeing the resurrected Lord, so the concept was no longer completely foreign to their minds and so when He appeared their only concern was with His form, not whom He was.

I'm glad you referred to this text in Job:

You should try reading it in Hebrew! It ain't as it appears and as you think. :smile:

How so? According to the Blue Letter Bible (http://www.blueletterbible.org/) site (enter reference 'Job 19:26' then click on the 'C' icon beside the verse) it means exactly what I've said: basar specifically means "fleshly body" as shown by its other uses in the OT.

The (but I don't read Hebrew myself) Curtmudgeon

[John Reece]

Curtmudgeon,

In F. Delitzsch's commentary on the Hebrew text, this is the translation of Job 19:26

And after my skin, thus torn to pieces,
And without my flesh, shall I behold Eloah...

Delitzsch adds this comment, "If we have correctly understood על עפר ver. 25b, we cannot in this speech find that the hope of a bodily recovery is expressed."

Further on in the commentary Delitzsch writes

For the present we leave it undecided whether Job here confesses hope of the resurrection, and only repel those forced misconstructions of his words which arbitrarily discern this hope in this text.

[John Reece]

Curtmudgeon
How so? According to the Blue Letter Bible site (enter reference 'Job 19:26' then click on the 'C' icon beside the verse) it means exactly what I've said: basar specifically means "fleshly body" as shown by its other uses in the OT.
There are serious disadvantages to relying on virtual (internet/software) resources for understanding biblical texts. You have just demonstrated one of them.

[The Curtmudgeon]

03-08-2003 @ 05:26 PM
John Reece:

Curtmudgeon

There are serious disadvantages to relying on virtual (internet/software) resources for understanding biblical texts. You have just demonstrated one of them.

The Blue Letter Bible site uses the KJV translation of the Bible, and Strong's Concordance as well as a number of very well-known commentaries on the text. You should have checked it out first before assuming that it was "just another Internet site".

There are plenty of bad Internet sites, but being on the Internet doesn't force a site to be bad--unless among "disadvantages" you're including "leads to a conclusion other than mine".

The (or do you see "disadvantages" to using Strong's?) Curtmudgeon

[John Reece]

Curtmudgeon,
The Blue Letter Bible site uses the KJV translation of the Bible, and Strong's Concordance as well as a number of very well-known commentaries on the text. You should have checked it out first before assuming that it was "just another Internet site".
You misunderstand, I was not casting aspersion on any internet site or Bible translation. I use such myself, but not for exegesis of the Hebrew and Greek texts.
do you see "disadvantages" to using Strong's?
You can bet you bottom dollar I do. Hebrew-and-Greek-by-the-numbers sets people up for a host of exegetical fallacies of which they are aware.

[The Curtmudgeon]

03-08-2003 @ 05:21 PM
John Reece:
In F. Delitzsch's commentary on the Hebrew text, this is the translation of Job 19:26

And after my skin, thus torn to pieces,
And without my flesh, shall I behold Eloah...

From the Coffman Commentaries (Coffman was C-of-C and used the ASV, which I am not/do not, but that 's a minor point):


Verse 26
And after my skin, [even] this [body], is destroyed, Then without my flesh shall I see God;

This is a stupid error in our version, which fortunately, is rare enough in the ASV; but there is no doubt of it here. The proper rendition here is, "In my flesh, I shall see God," as properly rendered in the KJV, the new RSV, and in the DOUAY. However, even without the testimony of other versions, the text, as we have it, even here (the ASV) contradicts their false rendition. The following verse reads, "Whom I shall see ... And mine eyes shall behold." Eyes are flesh, and without flesh would mean without eyes; and therefore the American Standard Version in this Job 19:26 is incorrect.

Why was such a stupid error as this committed by our translators. H. H. Rowley explains that the Hebrew words here may indeed mean either `in my flesh,' or `without my flesh."F14 Since either rendition might be correct, the true reading must be determined by the context; and the translators of our version (American Standard Version) evidently had not read the next verse (Job 19:27) where Job's eyes are mentioned; or if they read it, did not heed its positive and undeniable reference to one `in his flesh,' not 'without it.' Besides that, "The idea of a non-corporeal posthumous existence of Job is unlikely to have been in his mind."F15 "Unlikely" here is too mild a word. It was an utter impossibility.

....Now, if the passage were rendered, `without this flesh' the meaning would not have contradicted the truth. That "flesh" in which all of us shall see God, is not the old, worn-out body of our mortality, but a new body, as it shall please God to give us.


Please note that the characterisation of the translation as "stupid" is Coffman's phrase, not mine. But I do agree with his conclusion.

The (woops, I found that on an Internet site :smile: ) Curtmudgeon

[The Curtmudgeon]

From The New John Gill Exposition (a somewhat less contentious exposition :smile: ):


yet in my flesh shall I see God:
he believed, that though he should die and moulder into dust in the grave, yet he should rise again, and that in true flesh, not in an aerial celestial body, but in a true body, consisting of flesh, blood, and bones, which spirits have not, and in the same flesh or body he then had, his own flesh and body, and not another's; and so with his fleshly or corporeal eyes see God, even his living Redeemer, in human nature; who, as he would stand upon the earth in that nature, in the fulness of time, and obtain redemption for him, so he would in the latter day appear again, raise him from the dead, and take him to himself, to behold his glory to all eternity: or "out of my flesh" F6, out of my fleshly eyes; from thence and with those shall I behold God manifest in the flesh, my incarnate God; and if Job was one of those saints that rose when Christ did, as some say F7, he saw him in the flesh and with his fleshly eyes.


The (sorry, I just cannot buy Delitzsch's view of this verse) Curtmudgeon

[The Curtmudgeon]

This will be my last post on this topic, John, as I think you and I are pretty clear on our respective positions, even if neither of us has convinced the other. This story was related in a sermon by my pastor, W. A. Criswell, back in '73 on this topic (the physical resurrection) although not specifically on the verse Job 19:26:


There was a tremendous scientist by the name of Michael Faraday. In the 1800s, he was one of the great physicists of all time. He was also a tremendous Christian.

And lecturing in his class at the university, he referred to the resurrection of the dead. And one of his students hearing Michael Faraday refer to the resurrection said to a fellow student how inane such a belief was, and he scoffed at it and scorned it. And the great physicist overheard the student.

So upon a time, Michael Faraday brought before his class a beautiful silver cup. And he had before him a jar of sulfuric acid. He took the silver cup and dropped it in the jar of acid, and it was completely dissolved, it disappeared, and you could not see it the fluid.

Michael Faraday then took a handful of common salt and dropped it in the jar. And immediately acting as a catalytic agency, immediately the silver fell in a mass, coagulated down to the bottom of the jar.

Michael Faraday then took the mass of silver out. The next day he took it to a silversmith and says, "Mold it into a beautiful chalice." And he brought it back to his class and showed them the beautiful silver cup.

Then the great physicist added, "My young friends, if I a human being, a mortal man, if I can take this beautiful cup and dissolve it away and then bring it back more beautiful than ever before, shall I stagger at the power of God to take this human body and it dissolves back into the dust but He also has the power to bring it back more beautiful than ever before?"


The (I just like the imagery in the story) Curtmudgeon

[John Reece]

The (woops, I found that on an Internet site ) Curtmudgeon
:smile:

Please note that the characterisation of the translation as "stupid" is Coffman's phrase, not mine.

The fact that you feel a need to apologize for the lack of dignity in his language is a commentary on the quality of the Commentary.

In the Hebrew text, the word rendered "flesh" does not stand alone, and it's meaning cannot be ascertained without taking into account the preposition that is prefixed to it:

ומבשרי

That is a bonding of a conjunction, a preposition, a noun; and a possessive pronoun. The preposition is defined thus in Holladay's A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament: basic meaning out of, away from.

So when you say,
sorry, I just cannot buy Delitzsch's view of this verse
It is because, you have a presuppositional vested interest in not accepting Delitzsch's exegesis of the Hebrew text, which is spot-on accurate.

Edited to correct spelling error in the Hebrew (transposed two numbers in the Unicode)

[John Reece]

Curtmudgeon,

This will be my last post on this topic, John, as I think you and I are pretty clear on our respective positions, even if neither of us has convinced the other.

Many thanks for engaging in the conversation. I have enjoyed communicating with you.

The story told by Criswell is quite nice.

Thanks for sharing.

Blessings,

John

[John Reece]

I'm not trying to precipitate a debate (I'm not a debater), but I'm really interested to know why people believe what they believe.

I have questions to which I do not have answers.

Is it orthodox belief that after people die, they exist as disembodied spirits until their bodies are resurrected on the final Day of Resurrection?

If a 30 year old man dies, and his wife outlives him until she is 90, at the Day of Resurrection is he restored to his resurrected age 30 body and she to her age 90 resurrected body?

:huh:

[Hitch]

03-12-2003 @ 02:27 AM
John Reece:

I'm not trying to precipitate a debate (I'm not a debater), but I'm really interested to know why people believe what they believe.

I have questions to which I do not have answers.

Is it orthodox belief that after people die, they exist as disembodied spirits until their bodies are resurrected on the final Day of Resurrection?

If a 30 year old man dies, and his wife outlives him until she is 90, at the Day of Resurrection is he restored to his resurrected age 30 body and she to her age 90 resurrected body?

:huh:
I ve often asked rapturist about organ transplants...


My answer is the same. In every resurrection recoreded in Scripture, none of which were of long dead persons, the body that was raised was the same which had died.

Take care

Hitch

[John Reece]

Hitch,

:thumb:

[The Curtmudgeon]

Okay, I'm returning to this thread after promising not to, but only because John & Hitch have made a new point to be answered.

03-11-2003 @ 09:25 PM
Hitch:
My answer is the same. In every resurrection recoreded in Scripture, none of which were of long dead persons, the body that was raised was the same which had died.

But, except for the Resurrection of Jesus, every resurrection recorded in Scripture did not result in a new resurrection body, but only the temporary revival of the old physical body. There is no idea that any of the resurrectees (to coin a phrase) lived forever after or could appear in locked rooms or disappear at will or any of the other miraculous things that Jesus did after His resurrection. Lazarus, the widow's son of Nain, et al., are not still with us today (just think of the perfect witness they would provide for Christianity if they were!), they have again died as we all (unless Raptured! :smile: ) die, and after this passage of time have decayed as any other 2000-yeard-old corpses have decayed. And, in fact, as Hitch notes this type of temporary resurrection was never used on anyone long dead, but only when the body was still reasonably uncorrupted (Lazarus' four days after death was probably the record, as most other resurrections occurred during the funeral which by Jewish law had to be the same day as the person died, if I understand that correctly). Yet even the members of the First Baptist Church of Thessalonica (sorry, old joke that :teeth: ) were promised by Paul that they would be resurrected incorruptible when Jesus returns, no matter when that may occur.

Jesus' resurrection was different in kind from the temporary revivals, which is why Paul can speak of Him as the first-fruits of the resurrection even though Scripture records several who had been raised from the dead previously (especially those raised by Jesus Himself). His resurrection was a totally new kind of resurrection, with a totally new kind of resurrection body which had never been gifted to any by God before. And yet we have been promised the same kind of body when we are resurrected in the same manner, whether that be at the time of the Rapture or at the end of the age.

As for the age factor, it's a strawman. Our resurrection bodies represent our perfected state, as God would have us be had sin never affected us, so they have no effects from The Fall--no disease, no aging. I have been taught that while we will still be recognisably "ourselves", yet we will all be at some perfected median age, the same apparent age as Adam was when he was created--adult, yet not overly young nor overly old--whether we die as infants or aged. (Admittedly, what that age actually is must remain totally conjectural for us now, as Scripture doesn't address the point.)

Likewise, the organ transplant issue is moot: the donor will have all his "parts" intact in his perfected body, and the receiver will have all his "parts" intact as they should have been before disease or accident made them fail.

The (I won't say "parts is parts") Curtmudgeon

[John Reece]

It's good to hear from you again, Curtmudgeon.

Re:

As for the age factor, it's a strawman.

You assume I was debating or making an argument. That is not at all the case. I am not challenging orthodox teaching or the belief of anyone else. I honestly have questions about things I do not understand. I'm interested in learning, not debate.

Our resurrection bodies represent our perfected state, as God would have us be had sin never affected us, so they have no effects from The Fall--no disease, no aging. I have been taught that while we will still be recognizably "ourselves", yet we will all be at some perfected median age, the same apparent age as Adam was when he was created--adult, yet not overly young nor overly old--whether we die as infants or aged.

Are you sharing with me human speculation, or bibical revelation? If the latter, please refer me to where in the scripture such teaching is presented re the resurrection of the body that dies and is buried or cremated.

Whatever may be the case re the above, I don't think you have addressed my main question, which is this:

If our resurrected body is to be a raising from the earth of the reconstituted physical body that is buried or cremated, in what body do we exist in heaven between the time of physical death until the final Day of Resurrection?

Age is taking its toll on my brain [maybe I'm just afraid it may be resurrected as is :smile: ], so please bear with me if I'm overlooking something obvious or have forgotten something I should remember.

Blessings,

John

[The Curtmudgeon]

Today @ 02:05 PM
John Reece:

You assume I was debating or making an argument. That is not at all the case. I am not challenging orthodox teaching or the belief of anyone else. I honestly have questions about things I do not understand. I'm interested in learning, not debate.

Bad wording on my part; I didn't mean to imply that you were debating, so I should not have used the term 'strawman'. I realise that you are asking for why those of us in the physical-resurrection corner believe as we do.

Are you sharing with me human speculation, or bibical revelation? If the latter, please refer me to where in the scripture such teaching is presented re the resurrection of the body that dies and is buried or cremated.

Hmm, I wouldn't exactly call it 'speculation', although I cannot point you to specific supporting texts myself. Perhaps it is speculation, but I would rather characterise it as "teaching I've received from those more learned than myself" (while recognising that there may not be a significant difference :smile: ).

Whatever may be the case re the above, I don't think you have addressed my main question, which is this:

If our resurrected body is to be a raising from the earth of the reconstituted physical body that is buried or cremated, in what body do we exist in heaven between the time of physical death until the final Day of Resurrection?

Again, I'll have to resort to "teachings I've received from those more learned than myself"/"speculation". My understanding is that we have only spiritual bodies during that time span, not physical. We will be given our new physical bodies at one of only two or three specific resurrection 'events', and not until. Meanwhile, in heaven we will be spirits, unable to physically interact with the world-outside-heaven and those still in it (i.e. I believe that all "ghost stories" are exactly that--stories, with absolutely no Biblical basis at all and absolutely no truth in them [other than as expressions of what people have thought that they were experiencing]). As such spirits, we could, conceivably, be raised temporarily from the dead, as was Lazarus et al., and perhaps this is precisely what has happened in various (perhaps all) "near death"/"clinically dead" experiences as reported from hospitals. But we would then still be in our un-regenerated old bodies again, and still subject to the results of The Fall.

Age is taking its toll on my brain [maybe I'm just afraid it may be resurrected as is :smile: ],

I hear you, brother! I am so right there with you on that. :cheers:

so please bear with me if I'm overlooking something obvious or have forgotten something I should remember.

I've nothing to fault you for, John, other than that I've been taught to believe differently. If you require chapter-n-verse, however, I'm afraid I'll have to plead off. There are numerous books written on the resurrection, and whether it is physical or not, so I'll just bow out to the superior scholars if you wish to pursue it.

The (hope that's not taken as a cop-out) Curtmudgeon

[John Reece]

Thanks, Curtmudgeon.

Re:

If you require chapter-n-verse, however, I'm afraid I'll have to plead off.

No, no need to plead off. I really only wanted to know what you think.

Thanks for sharing.

Blessings,

John

[George Blaisdell]

Funny thing on Job 19:26 - Which seems so ambiguous in the non-Christian [Jewish] Old Testament - I went to the [Brenton] LXX, to see how Jewish scholars of the pre-Christ days rendered it into Greek, in hopes that the issue might easily resolve... And to my dismay, [or rather delight, for this is a great pericope] found this translation into English of Job 25-27: "For I know that He is eternal who is about to deliver me, [26]and to raise up upon the earth my skin that endures these sufferings: for these things have been accomplished to me of the Lord; [27] which I am conscious of in myself, which mine eye has seen, and not another, but all have been fulfilled to me in my bosom." With a note that the Alexandrian text has 'body' [soma] instead of 'skin' in 26.

epi ghs anasthsai to derma [soma] mou to anantloun tauta

There is no article with earth [ghs], which may be significant - for with the article [epi ths ghs] it would definitely mean THIS earth, yet without, I find myself in Revelation, where the first heaven and the first earth are passed away...

What a prophesy! For this is what he is describing, the prophetic understanding of his suffering, the understanding of faith, seen within his own bosom, the same word found in John 1 at the end [in the bosom of the Father]...

And that the eye mentioned is singular, indicating the nous, the eye of the heart, found [somatically] in the breast... And not the eyes plural, found in the skull...

So I don't lknow if this contributes or muddies, but there you have it... my tuppence...

geo