Questiions

[00:00:02] Did Paul state that Jesus was put in a tomb? Is Jesus like pagan gods? [00:00:08] Is the hope for a messiah like the belief in Santa Claus Written by Bart Ehrman Read by Ken Teutsch Here are some more of the excellent questions I have received from readers and my responses. [00:00:25] Dale Allison has said that the word for buried in 1 Corinthians 15 means to be buried in a mass grave, tomb or stone cave, but it does not mean in a shallow grave where birds eat the corpse. Is this true response? [00:00:44] The verb Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15:4 means to be placed in a taphos, which is the place of whatever kind a corpse was buried or simply ended up in. First Clement uses it to refer to that dark place that is nowhere, I guess, from which God brings people when they are born in the world. [00:01:10] Ignatius of Antioch uses it to refer to the bellies of the wild beasts that he is going to when they rip him apart and devour him. Ignatius to the Romans 3:13 in short, it can mean any place that a dead or non living person is so no, I don't think it rules out any place where human remains or humans before they are on earth are deposited or found. [00:01:35] By the way, my sense is that most corpses deposited in a shallow grave were not eaten by birds. Birds did peck at crucified victims on their crosses, as you might imagine, and there was obviously no way to shoo them off. [00:01:49] Horrible. [00:01:53] In response to my claim that the Christian views of Jesus resurrection were not modeled on the idea of pagan gods who died and then arose from the dead, I have scanned most of these blogs. It seems that the claim for dying and rising gods is not quite settled. The idea seems to remain ambiguous rather than unambiguous for me. [00:02:16] Are we saying that Attis, osiris, Tammuz, Dionysus, etc. Have no possible claim to that resurrection process, albeit not identical to the New Testament version? [00:02:29] What about this heavyweight scholar? In the 2010s, Paula Corrente conducted an extensive survey of the status of the dying and rising God category, though she agrees that much of Frazer's specific evidence was faulty, and she argues that the category as a whole is valid, though she suggests modifications to the specific criteria. [00:02:54] I think it depends on what you mean by the resurrection process. I'd say dying and rising gods are analogous to the idea of resurrection of Jesus in the Christian tradition, based on Jewish apocalyptic views, but not the same. [00:03:10] Resurrection is a Jewish category that deals with how the mortal body will be brought back to life and made immortal. It is not about gods who die and are then revived. [00:03:21] A closer analogy to Jesus in the Greek and Roman traditions I think are humans who die or at least are no longer found to be living on earth and are then taken up to heaven. Romulus, emperors, Apollonius, etc. [00:03:36] The latter are more what happens to Jesus in the earliest Christian tradition. He is not originally a God who dies and then comes back to life. He is a human who dies and is taken up to heaven to be made a God. Only later did Christians start saying he was God before he died. That's the topic I talk about in my book, how Jesus became God in response to my comment in a blog post with respect to the authorship of the Book of Revelation about all we can say is that Revelation was written by someone named John. [00:04:14] Is it not equally possible that it was written by someone of unknown name who attributed it to John so that readers would assume it had been written by Jesus disciple of that name? [00:04:27] It's possible, but a the book is explicitly addressed to Christians of Asia Minor who knew the authority, and I don't see any good reason to doubt that was the author's audience. [00:04:40] John was a common name and if he wanted his readers to think he was that John the son of Zebedee, it seems more likely he would have made the identification clear or unambiguous. [00:04:51] C There are passages that seem to disavow an authorial claim to be one of the apostles. The 24 elders before the throne worshiping God for eternity are often thought to be the twelve Patriarchs and the twelve Apostles of which John the son of Zebedee was obviously one. And it would seem unlikely that the author is indicating that he was seeing himself. [00:05:18] Barth if one who is a free thinking seeker of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as I am and cannot find in Isaiah or any other book in The Old Testament 1 single clear, complete, definitive prophecy of the Jews Messiah which is measurable in time and manner, then who can deny that the Messiah figure idea grew up and existed only in the imagination just as the Santa figure did? You wrote that claiming to be the Messiah was like claiming to be the President. [00:05:50] I cannot believe you wrote such a thing. We have statutes written about the President, but you cannot show me even one stand alone Messiah prophecy and all you have are fragments like Isaiah which you even refute as being messianic in nature. [00:06:04] So I simply ask you to educate me by showing me where I can find in the Old Testament evidence which tells me the Messiah figure is identifiable and tangible a personage as is the President. Can you do that even if there was a prophecy concerning our President or the Messiah? Who says it had to come to pass? [00:06:24] Response Many people in our country are hoping for a new Abraham Lincoln figure, or a new FDR or a new Ronald Reagan to be elected as President. They are looking for a new Savior to deliver them from whatever mess they think they or the country is in. That doesn't make the hope a myth. As far as tangible figures called or expected to be the Messiah in the Bible, there are indeed cases the term Messiah is applied to specific saviors of Israel. In the Old Testament, King Solomon is God's anointed, that is Messiah. Even more intriguing, Cyrus of all people is explicitly called the Messiah. Isaiah 45:1 he, as one might note, was the King of Persia, a pagan with no interest in serving the God of the Jews. But for the author of Isaiah, he was the political figure warrior that God would use to deliver Judah from its captivity in Babylon. [00:07:22] Later thinkers who were hoping for a deliverer from their current foreign oppressor Rome after 63 BCE looked for a similar warrior king, but but usually of course, a Judean rather than a foreigner. It's not a myth, but an expectation or at least a hope for clear indication of what one group of Jews thought about that future figure. Read the Psalms of Solomon, chapter 17. [00:07:48] It's a non canonical Jewish book from after the OT period and prior to the NT. [00:07:54] You should be able to find it fairly easily online. [00:07:57] The Messiah is a very human warrior king bent on destroying the enemies of Israel.