Zone1 Common Figure of Speech/Colloquial Language?

[hobelim]

Why didn’t the Church follow the patterns of other groups whose leaders had been persecuted? Why did it (uniquely) consider Jesus as its continued leader? Why did it consider Jesus (after the crucifixion) to be the fulfillment of Israel’s destiny? Why did it organize itself so uniquely? Why did it worship Jesus as the Lord and endure persecution for that worship? How did it become one of the most inspired and dynamically expansive missionary organizations in the history of religions with a publicly humiliated and executed “Messiah” as its sole leader?

The answers to these questions requires a cause capable of explaining why Christianity does not follow the pattern of other religions or messianic movements. Why does Christianity pick up momentum from a crucified leader when other messianic movements at the time quickly faded away? Why didn’t Christianity pick out another leader in the face of its leader’s crucifixion, like other messianic movements whose leaders were executed? Above all, why did it become such a powerful Messianic movement capable of threatening the Roman Empire within a few generations after that same empire executed its Messiah?

What kind of cause could explain so many unique phenomena? A powerful one – one capable of overcoming the crucifixion of the movement’s leader, capable of communicating both imminent and transcendent hope (amidst the death of its presumed messiah); one capable of revealing that God’s kingdom had arrived in the world, and capable of providing sufficient momentum to turn a little Jewish sub-cult into an empire-wide – indeed, worldwide religion within a few generations. This powerful cause would seem to be the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus in combination with Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit which enabled the apostles’ (along with other missionaries) to perform miracles in the name of Jesus. John P. Meier summarizes this unique historical phenomenon as follows:

…[T]here was a notable difference between the long-term impact of the Baptist and that of Jesus. After the Baptist’s death, his followers did not continue to grow into a religious movement that in due time swept the Greco-Roman world. Followers remained, revering the Baptist’s memory and practices. But by the early 2nd century A.D. any cohesive group that could have claimed an organic connection with the historical Baptist seems to have passed from the scene. In contrast, the movement that had begun to sprout up around the historical Jesus continued to grow – amid many sea changes – throughout the 1st century and beyond. Not entirely by coincidence, the post-Easter “Jesus movement” claimed the same sort of ability to work miracles that Jesus had claimed for himself during his lifetime. This continued claim to work miracles may help to explain the continued growth, instead of a tapering off, of the group that emerged from Jesus’ ministry.

If the resurrection appearances and the apostles’ ability to work miracles are not the cause of this uniquely powerful messianic movement (after the humiliation, persecution, and execution of its Messiah), then what other cause would have the same explanatory power? History has left us with a void of realistic alternatives, suggesting that the Christian claim to have seen the risen Jesus is true, and that the early community’s power to perform miracles in Jesus’ name was derived from the risen Jesus Himself.

Yawn.

I gave you a chance to testify about your experience of Jesus appearing to you, yet you chose to copy and paste.

Fascinating!

Where is your faith? You seem to have no problem lying your ass off in the name of the Lord daily. Wassup?

 

[ding]

Yawn. I gave you a chance to testify about your experience of Jesus appearing to you, yet you chose to copy and paste. Fascinating! Where is your faith? You seem to have no problem lying your ass off in the name of the Lord daily. Wassup?

The Christian Mutation of Second Temple Judaism

Wright’s second and more extensive argument for the historicity of the resurrection appearances stems from several Christian mutations of the Jewish doctrine of resurrection prevalent at the time of Jesus (Second-Temple Judaism). He shows through a study of the New Testament (particularly the Letters of Paul and the Gospel narratives of the resurrection appearances) that Christianity changed the dominant Jewish view of “resurrection” in five major ways:

1. The Jewish picture of resurrection was a return to the same kind of bodily life as the one experienced before death (except in a new world with the righteous). Christian views always entailed transformation into a very different kind of life – incorruptible, glorious, and spiritual while still maintaining embodiment.35 The Christian view is so different from the Jewish one that Paul has to develop a new term to speak about it – “body spiritual” (soma pneumatikon). In 1 Corinthians 15:44-46 he makes every effort to distinguish the Christian doctrine from the Jewish one: “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body,and there is a spiritual body…..However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual.”

2. In Second Temple Judaism, no one was expected to rise from the dead before the initiation of the final age by Yahweh, however Christians claimed that this occurred with Jesus.36

3. No one connected the Messiah to the resurrection or the Jewish doctrine of resurrection to the Messiah prior to Christianity: “There are no traditions about a Messiah being raised to life: most Jews of this period hoped for resurrection, many Jews of this period hoped for a Messiah, but nobody put those two hopes together until the early Christians did so.”37

4. For the Jewish people, the eschatological age was in the future; for Christians the eschatological age had already arrived (and would be completed in the future).38

5. The doctrine of resurrection is central to the earliest writings of Christianity (e.g., all 9 of the early kerygmas), central to the writings of Paul39 and all the Gospel writers,40 and is the interconnecting theme among early Christian doctrines. The doctrine of the resurrection grounds Christology, particularly the doctrine of Christ’s glorification and, in part, the doctrine of Christ’s divinity; it grounds the Christian doctrine of soteriology – “for if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised” (1Cor 15:16); it shows God’s vindication of Jesus’ teaching; it grounds Christian eschatology; and is, in every respect, central to all other doctrines.

Second Temple Judaism does not place the resurrection in any such central role, and does not use it as an interconnecting theme for its doctrines. It is almost secondary in importance to other doctrines concerned with the law and prayer.

So what could explain this radical change? The preaching of Jesus? This is not tenable because Jesus does not put the resurrection at the center of His doctrine, but rather the arrival of the kingdom. Furthermore, He does not connect the resurrection to His Messiahship, and He certainly does not talk about the resurrection being transformed embodiment (or spiritual embodiment, or glorified embodiment), which is evident in the early Christian doctrine. The obvious explanation would be that the many witnesses (e.g., Peter, the Twelve, the 500 disciples, James, the early missionaries to the Gentile Church, and Paul himself) saw the risen Jesus in a transformed embodied state (manifesting at once a spiritual transformation which had the appearance of divine glory and power, and some form of embodiment which was continuous with Jesus’ embodiment in His ministry). This would easily explain all five of the above-mentioned mutations.

 

[ding]

I gave you a chance to testify about your experience of Jesus appearing to you, yet you chose to copy and paste.

Fascinating!

Read 1 Corinthians 15:8 to discover your error.

 

[rstrats]

Seymour Flops,

You say that it makes sense that the Messiah was using common figure of speech. Do you know of any examples which show that it was common to say that a daytime or a night time would be involved with an event when no part of a daytime or no part of a night time could be?