I will address two very different questions in this edition of the Readers Mailbag.

If you
have a question you would like me to address, ask away, and Ill add it to the list.

QUESTION:

I just finished reading scholar Gregory Rileys Resurrection Reconsidered. He presents the
position that people in the Greco-Roman world had a very different perception about spirits
(ghosts) than we do today. Riley states that people living in the first century Roman Empire
believed that dead people frequently came back to visit the living, appearing in bodies
that looked exactly like their former fleshly bodies, and having the same capabilities of their
former fleshly bodies: capable of eating food, drinking wine, and even engaging in sexeven
sex with the living! The ONLY difference between a spirit body and a fleshly body was that
USUALLY a spirit body was impalpable (could not be touched). Riley believes that Paul
would have been shocked to hear about an empty tomb as he would have believed that
Jesus fleshly body would OF COURSE still be in his grave! To Paul, Jesus had been
resurrected as a spiritual body. His fleshly body remained in his grave. You seem to believe
that Paul believed that the fleshly body of Jesus left the grave entirely and was transformed
into an immortal body.

RESPONSE

Yes I have just (re)read Rileys book in connection with my next project on the development
of the Christian understanding of the afterlife. Riley provides a simple but very readable
discussion of how ancient peoples (both Jewish and pagan/Greek/Roman) understood the
nature of the body, the soul, and the spirit, and how they construed the nature of the
afterlife. I pretty much agree with his understanding of most of the Greek materials (where
he puts his greatest focus). But I think he is completely wrong about Paul. In part that is
because he thinks Paul was more influenced by Greeks like Plato than like apocalyptic Jews
like his fellow Pharisees.

It is true that Paul thought that the resurrected Jesus had a spiritual body. But

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Apocalypticism in a Modern Idiom

The Origins of Apocalypticism