The following is part 3 of an intended 4 part series (now longer) which reflects on the resurrection of Jesus. It is, at times, highly technical which is due to the fact that it comes from a three-hour lecture that I gave for a class on the Historical Jesus at Tyndale University College in 2004.This past weekend we celebrated the most important part of Christianity—the cross and resurrection of Jesus. The cross is a historical reality that no historian/religion denies: Jesus of Nazareth died on a Roman cross in AD33—not too controversial. But what his disciples and Christianity claims after that is controversial through and through. They claim that he did not stay dead; that three days later he rose. Where did this belief come from? Why did Christianity take the shape that it did? And what does it tell us about the future of the world? I want to explore these questions in a four part series this week: (1) the ancient world’s view of death, (2) The Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) view of death and resurrection, (3) the Gospel's view of Jesus’ resurrection, (4) Paul’s view and what he says it has to do with God’s people in the future. Journey with me over the next four blogs and feel free to engage the discussion.
Ancient Greek Thought on Death and Resurrection: It doesn’t happen and it should not be desired!
Many argue that the idea of resurrection was just a normal belief at the time of Jesus and that the Gospel writers just re-focused it on Jesus. This is an involved issue and deserves more time than I can give it here; but let me offer some thought on the issue. It is essential to recognize this as a false claim; for there was no pagan ideology, in the ancient world that believed in resurrection from the dead as a viable option. A movement with resurrection from the dead at its centre would not have got very far. (Not without something else being its seedbed which we will talk about in part two). The ancient Greeks did not allow resurrection from the dead. As far as the ancient Greek world had a Bible, its Old Testament was Homer and its New Testament was Plato. So what did they have to say about such a prospect?
Homer’s characters (Achilles in The Illiad; Apollo in Eumenides) despised the idea and said resurrection was impossible. The gods even punished people for trying to raise people from the dead.
Ancient Greek Thought on Death and Resurrection: It doesn’t happen and it should not be desired!
Many argue that the idea of resurrection was just a normal belief at the time of Jesus and that the Gospel writers just re-focused it on Jesus. This is an involved issue and deserves more time than I can give it here; but let me offer some thought on the issue. It is essential to recognize this as a false claim; for there was no pagan ideology, in the ancient world that believed in resurrection from the dead as a viable option. A movement with resurrection from the dead at its centre would not have got very far. (Not without something else being its seedbed which we will talk about in part two). The ancient Greeks did not allow resurrection from the dead. As far as the ancient Greek world had a Bible, its Old Testament was Homer and its New Testament was Plato. So what did they have to say about such a prospect?
Homer’s characters (Achilles in The Illiad; Apollo in Eumenides) despised the idea and said resurrection was impossible. The gods even punished people for trying to raise people from the dead.
Plato popularized the dualistic philosophy of body and spirit: the physical body is weak and corruptible, but the spirit is good and noble. Thus one should not be scared of death, but embrace it, because it promises perfection, precisely because it is the spirit world. For Plato, the soul was the non-material aspect of a human being, and is the aspect that really matters. Bodily life is full of delusion and danger; the soul is immortal and will continue to exist after the body is gone. So, the soul will flourish in a new way because it has been released from the prison of the body. Thus, though one may want to see someone raised from the dead, this in fact would be a mistake, because one should not want to come back to the physical world after they are sitting comfortable in the true world of spirit.
So, the mainstream of ancient thought was this: the body is a prison-house. A necessary one for the moment, but nobody, once out of it, would want it back again. At no point in the spectrum of options (and there were certainly more than we have looked at) did any one ever think that someone dead could actually ever be alive again, in the same way they once were. Resurrection was not an option. Those who followed Homer knew that they would never get a body again; those who followed Plato did not want one. The ancient world was thus divided into those who said that resurrection couldn’t happen, though they might have wanted it to and those who said they didn’t want it to happen, knowing that it couldn’t anyway.
This begs the question: what worldview existed at the time of Jesus that could have contained and informed the idea of resurrection from the dead then if not Hellenistic (Greek) ideas? There was only one that could possibly make sense of it…
So, the mainstream of ancient thought was this: the body is a prison-house. A necessary one for the moment, but nobody, once out of it, would want it back again. At no point in the spectrum of options (and there were certainly more than we have looked at) did any one ever think that someone dead could actually ever be alive again, in the same way they once were. Resurrection was not an option. Those who followed Homer knew that they would never get a body again; those who followed Plato did not want one. The ancient world was thus divided into those who said that resurrection couldn’t happen, though they might have wanted it to and those who said they didn’t want it to happen, knowing that it couldn’t anyway.
This begs the question: what worldview existed at the time of Jesus that could have contained and informed the idea of resurrection from the dead then if not Hellenistic (Greek) ideas? There was only one that could possibly make sense of it…
1 comment:
Thanks for bringing out the context again Mark! The Greeks must have thought the Christians who were shouting bodily resurrection were crazy or unintelligent. It shows the animosity they must have stood against and how much harder it was to preach resurrection. The Gnositcs and their Platoesque philosophy was a constant threat to the early discples and it makes sense seeing how much Paul and the authors of the New Testement talked about their view of resurrection - they knew they had to stand their ground or Greek Philosophy would begin to dictate the Christians theology.
Looking forward to the next entry!
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