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[Dawood]

Christianity doesn't know what the word resurrection even means.

Thesis: Christianity doesn't know what the word resurrection even means. Or fudges the definition as needed.

Exhibit A: Jesus' debate with the Sadducees on resurrection in Matt 22:23-33.

To the Sadducees question about who the woman who was married 7 times will be married to in the resurrection, Jesus answer is that scripture says we will become angels in the resurrection.

Glossing over the fact that no Old Testament scripture suggests anything like that so his claim that they didn't know this due to a lack of knowledge of scripture is false; his claim shows a lack of understanding what reurrection even means: becoming an angel is NOT resurrection.

Furthermore, his suggestion that God saying at the Burning Bush "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" proves the resurrection (combined with what he just said about becoming angels in the resurrection), implies that he considers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to have already experienced the resurrection.

Exhibit B: The Christian belief that a few stories of appearances is enough to prove a resurrection.

Jesus' lack of understanding the word resurrection could explain why Christians have such a low evidence requirement for Jesus' resurrection: they don't know the meaning of the word. A resurrection means more than just a few guys saying they saw someone after death. After all, they could see his ghost or perhaps he became an angel. But a resurrection means bodily rising to live on earth again. But Jesus didn't do that. Per the stories he appeared a few time to a few people, then went to heaven, putatively to wait thousands of years and return. That's NOT resurrection. (Also, Elvis and 2Pak could be considered resurrected if it were!)

Resurrection is the physical arising of a dead body back to life, followed by living again on earth, thus the person is around as proof of their resurrection for as long as they continue to live. If one is resurrected to ultimately die again, they will live maybe a few more years or decades, and they are around as proof thereof (strangely in the story of Lazarus in John this is undertood); if one is resurrected to die no more, they will live forever, on earth, in a physical body, and thus be accessible to us as proof. But Christians don't see that connection and think Jesus turning into an angel, appearing 3 or 4 times, and then hiding out in heaven, constitutes a "resurrection." It does NOT! He is not risen; he is angelified (if anything).

This also explains why Christians see no problem with Jesus being a shape-shifter after the so-called "resurrection": appearing to Mary as the gardener, or to the two on the road to Emmaus "in another form": i.e. resurrection to them does NOT really mean resurrection but becoming an angel, something which is ultimately not subject to proof because its fully mystical and intangible, unlike a real resurrection which would be very physical.

[jimwalton]

> To the Sadducees question about who the woman who was married 7 times will be married to in the resurrection, Jesus answer is that scripture says we will become angels in the resurrection.

You are wrong about this. Jesus doesn't say that people (we) will become angels. He says that they will not marry or be given in marriage as the angels do not marry and are not given in marriage. The Pharisees regarded the future of the resurrection body as performing marriage functions, as Muslims do today. Jesus is saying the Pharisees are wrong on this point.

> Glossing over the fact that no Old Testament scripture suggests anything like that so his claim that they didn't know this due to a lack of knowledge of scripture is false;

Therefore this critique and negative evaluation is misguided and false. Jesus didn't have a lack of knowledge of the Scriptures because he is not making the point you claim he is making.

> Furthermore, his suggestion that God saying at the Burning Bush "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" proves the resurrection (combined with what he just said about becoming angels in the resurrection), implies that he considers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to have already experienced the resurrection.

There are different aspects to resurrection. The Judaistic view of the resurrection always involved two stages: an intermediate stage, in which the dead were in some way or other still alive, and a final stage in which they would be re-embodied. And, since few Jews believed that disembodied immortality was really the final state, into which one passed immediately upon death, the main debate as far as the Pharisees were concerned was between their two-stage view and the Sadducees’ no-stage view, in which people ceased to exist altogether after death. What is more, everybody knew that what was normally meant by “resurrection” had not happened yet. The question “What do you say about the resurrection?” was always a question about the future.

Tom Wright comments, " Jesus draws from Exodus 3.6 that the patriarchs are still alive, but this is not the end of his point. The real punch line of the story is that if they are still alive in YHWH’s presence, they will be raised in the future. Nobody supposed, after all, that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had already been raised from the dead. Quoting a text showing they were still living on in some non-bodily fashion, if that were the end of the story, would not even be relevant to the discussion. To that extent it would be right to say that the quotation from Exodus 3 would seem to prove the opposite of resurrection: that the dead are not raised, but only live on in post-mortem disembodiment of whatever sort. That would not be an answer to the Sadducees’ question. The point is that the patriarchs are still alive and therefore will be raised in the future."

After Jesus's resurrection, where he was raised to a physical state, Jesus brought new understanding to what believers can expect.

> Jesus' lack of understanding the word resurrection could explain why Christians have such a low evidence requirement for Jesus' resurrection: they don't know the meaning of the word.

This is not true, either.

> A resurrection means more than just a few guys saying they saw someone after death.

Resurrection meant more than one thing, depending on to whom you were talking. Judaism often defined resurrection as re-embodiment after a period of being dead. Jesus showed that another way of looking at resurrection was immediate restoration to a physical-type of existence.

> But a resurrection means bodily rising to live on earth again. But Jesus didn't do that.

First of all, you are fabricating this limited definition of resurrection, but second of all, Jesus did rise to live on Earth again for 40 days. The term "resurrection" in the NT is the Greek word is ἐγείρω, which simply means "rise; rise up; resurrect." There is no specific limitation of the word to "bodily rising to live on earth again."

> if one is resurrected to die no more, they will live forever, on earth, in a physical body, and thus be accessible to us as proof.

You have invented this false definition of resurrection.