John Granger Cook 2017 article on the Question of an Empty Tomb in 1 Corinthians 15

[MrMacSon]

John Granger Cook (2017)
'Resurrection in Paganism and the Question of an Empty Tomb in 1 Corinthians 15,' New Testament Studies, 63(1); pp.56-75

Abstract

On the basis of the semantics of ἀνίστημι and ἐγείρω and the nature of resurrected bodies in ancient Judaism and ancient paganism, one can conclude that Paul could not have conceived of a resurrection of Jesus unless he believed the tomb was empty.

Wilhelm Bousset, one of the original members of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule, in his discussion of 1 Cor 15.3–5, wrote: ‘Here it is now extraordinarily important that the Apostle says nothing either concerning the empty tomb or concerning the witness of the women about the empty tomb. What he does not say, one cannot wish to read between the lines’ ... Bousset's approach has become programmatic for many scholars in the discipline.

My thesis is that Paul could not have conceived of a resurrection of Jesus unless he believed his tomb was empty. The intention of the article is certainly not to prove the historicity of the empty tomb – a pointless exercise after the arguments of David Hume.

The argument schema for the thesis is as follows:

1. ἀνίστημι and ἐγείρω, when used to describe resurrection, imply a physical movement upward.
   .
2. In ancient Judaism (from the second century BCE on), the existing evidence demonstrates that individuals viewed resurrection as physical (i.e. bodily). Clearly some ancient Jews believed in other versions of the afterlife such as the immortality of the soul or the future exaltation of the spirit.
   .
3. In ancient paganism, texts from classical Greece, the Roman Republic and the Empire all envisioned cases of resurrection as physical.
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4. Given the semantics of ἀνίστημι and ἐγείρω and this ‘cultural encyclopedia’ of resurrection, one can conclude that Paul and his readers, Jewish or pagan, would have assumed that a tradition about the burial of Christ and his resurrection on the third day presupposed an empty tomb.

1. Some Methodological Reflections

By ‘physical resurrection’ I mean a resurrection in which the body of a dead individual returns to life in some sense (e.g. a return to mortal life or immortal life). ‘Physical’ or ‘bodily resurrection’ is consistent with a transformation of the earthly body (e.g. into a σῶμα πνευματικόν). The evidence, by necessity, for resurrection in paganism is from widely diverse chronological eras and appears in diverse contexts in the authors who preserve the traditions. Nevertheless, one can discern patterns in the pagan narratives of resurrections that are clearly analogous to resurrection in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. Jonathan Z. Smith's distinction between analogy and genealogy in the history of religions can serve to illuminate the comparisons to be made below: they are analogies and not genealogies. My goal is not, for example, to demonstrate pagan influence (a genealogical method) on Paul and early Christianity or vice versa. In the discussion of Greco-Roman divinities below I have dispensed with the concept of the annual resurrection of vegetation deities.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... 7ECF899313 (the whole article is available!)

6. Conclusion

On the basis of the semantics of ἀνίστημι and ἐγείρω and the cultural encyclopedia of resurrected bodies, one can conclude that Paul would have assumed that the tradition about the burial of Christ and his resurrection on the third day presupposed a tradition of an empty tomb. To put it another way: Paul would have taken it for granted that the resurrection of Christ was inconceivable without an empty tomb. <continues>

Also see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4557&p=92064&hilit= ... ion#p92064 re Cook's 2018 book, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis

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[Ken Olson]

I would have to re-read the paper to be sure, but IIRC, Cook overplays his hand in eliding the difference between what Paul would have thought or expected to have happened and what he had an tradition that says this had happened.

On the basis of the semantics of ἀνίστημι and ἐγείρω and the nature of resurrected bodies in ancient Judaism and ancient paganism, one can conclude that Paul could not have conceived of a resurrection of Jesus unless he believed the tomb was empty.

6. Conclusion

On the basis of the semantics of ἀνίστημι and ἐγείρω and the cultural encyclopedia of resurrected bodies, one can conclude that Paul would have assumed that the tradition about the burial of Christ and his resurrection on the third day presupposed a tradition of an empty tomb. To put it another way: Paul would have taken it for granted that the resurrection of Christ was inconceivable without an empty tomb

These are different things:

1) Paul would have assumed that since Jesus was buried and then rose from the dead, the place where he was buried (i.e. the tomb) woudd not have contained his corpse afterwards.

2) Paul must have known of an earlier tradition that Jesus' followers knew where he had been buried and verified that his tomb was empty.

Best,

Ken

[Giuseppe]

It seems to me that Richard Miller has proved that the "empty tomb" was introduced with the first gospel, as a mediterranean tropos. Which means that it was not a true belief as it is for modern Christians.

Which means that Paul couldn't have conceived the presence of an empty tomb.

[Peter Kirby]

In what I wrote half a lifetime ago, I conceded this point (as an if-then conditional statement) and focused on whether there was knowledge of a tomb burial of Jesus.

https://infidels.org/library/modern/pet ... rebuttal1/
https://infidels.org/library/modern/pet ... rebuttal2/

[nightshadetwine]

I completely agree with Ken Olson. Just because Paul believed that Jesus was physically raised to heaven doesn't mean Paul knew about anyone actually finding the tomb empty like we find in Mark. The story of people finding the tomb empty could be completely made-up. I personally think the finding of an empty tomb is not historical. I think it was likely made-up by Mark who wanted to tell a "missing body" story which were pretty common at the time.

I'm also skeptical that Jesus would have been given a burial in a rock-cut tomb. From what I understand, most Jews buried their dead in the ground. Rock-cut tombs would have been for the wealthy or special cases. Mark has Joseph of Arimathea supply a rock-cut tomb for Jesus but I think this story might be made-up just to get Jesus into a rock-cut tomb so Mark can tell a "missing body" story.

[nightshadetwine]

Another interesting thing to point out is the words that are used for resurrection mean to go from a laying position to an upright position. To go from a sleeping position, to a waking position. So resurrection is "getting up" and "awakening". Waking from sleep was a common metaphor for resurrection.

https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com ... -of-myths/:

For example given that, in general, these different ways of dying are expressing the same things, we can understand better the words found in the ancient texts. For example, the common metaphor for death is sleep, of course, No? We know it is something that we can observe. Someone who is sleeping, we can think that he’s dead. Because he doesn’t do anything: he doesn’t move, he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t walk. So we can think he’s dying or he’s dead. So in the text, in many of the texts about the gods I have studied, we find the first metaphor for death which is sleep. And so we find it for the resurrection, they use the same word that indicates standing. For example, in Greek, the word which indicates resurrection is the verb anistemi, which basically means “standing”. When you sleep in your bed and then you stand from your bed – that is the meaning of the verb. And then it was used for the resurrection, so about Jesus, for example. In the Greek text about the resurrection of Jesus, we find this verb. Then it was translated into Latin, which is from where we take our resurrection, the word. And it’s curious that in the text, in the Sumerian text – which is the most ancient that we have – we find the same word to indicate the resurrection of Inanna the goddess. To say that she lives again, they use the Sumerian verb to say “to stand”. So it’s very interesting these similarities, even in the use of language, in the words...

"Resurrection in the Mediterranean World" by John Granger Cook https://www.academia.edu/42747803/Resur ... nean_World

Greek resurrection accounts are usually characterized by verbs that describe the vertical movement of a body (anistēmi, for example) or the awaking and rising of a dead individual (egeirō) – the two verbs used for rising from the dead in the New Testament. In other words: a fundamental marker for the concept “resurrection” in the New Testament and elsewhere, based on the meaning of anistēmi and egeirō, is the bodily motion upward of a formerly dead individual.

Verbs meaning “get up” or “rise” are used for resurrection in the Young Avestan texts of Zoroastrianism. Similarly, verbs with corresponding meanings are used for resurrection in the Hebrew, Syriac, and Ethiopic apocalypses of ancient Judaism. This corresponds to the etymological origin of “resurrection” in English, which is the Latin verb “resurgo” (“to rise from recumbent position, get up”) that was adopted by the early Latin translators of the New Testament as the basic expression for the resurrection of Jesus and others.

The word that is used in Egyptian texts seems to have the same meaning as the word used in other texts. The deceased person is said to "rise" or "get up". "Sleep" is used as a metaphor for death. In John Jesus says Lazarus is asleep even though he is dead.

"Resurrection in Ancient Egypt" by Jan Assmann in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments (W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2002):

In order to release the deceased king from death and earth, he had to be separated from his own death. The mythical model for this operation was the myth of Osiris... This is the meaning of resurrection in the Old Kingdom. It is the exclusive privilege of the pharaoh. Resurrection is a proper term for this idea because the dead king is constantly summoned to “rise.” “Raise yourself” is the typical address to the deceased, and it means not only to get up but to ascend to heaven.

The Mortuary Papyrus of Padikakem Walters Art Museum 551 (ISD LLC, Dec 31, 2011), Yekaterina Barbash:

The two goddesses, Isis and Nephthys, refer to death from the viewpoint of the living, uncovering their human emotions, as they recall their love for Osiris and grieve for him. On the contrary, glorifications tend to deal with death from a more mythological perspective of the hereafter. Thus, unlike the earthly pleas of Isis and Nephthys, the myth of Osiris, Horus, and Seth is evoked in spell 10 of PW 551: "The Great One(=Osiris) awakens, The Great One wakes up. Osiris raised himself on his side, the One who hates sleep (i.e., death), one who does not love weariness. The god stands, being powerful of his body. Horus has lifted him up, he's raised in Nedit."

Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple (Yale Egyptological Seminar, 2006), David Klotz:

Rather, the true meaning goes back to the Pyramid Text originals, where the deceased Osiris/King is asked to “wake up” (viz. “resurrect himself ”), a common theme in mortuary spells. As Griffiths has noted, “death is really only a sleep, then, a phase of tiredness,” while in the same vein sleep was considered a death-like state. Thus the term rs (“awake”) could refer as easily to resurrection from death as to physical awakening from sleep, since the two states were conceptually synonymous.

[davidmartin]

I completely agree with Ken Olson. Just because Paul believed that Jesus was physically raised to heaven doesn't mean Paul knew about anyone actually finding the tomb empty like we find in Mark. The story of people finding the tomb empty could be completely made-up. I personally think the finding of an empty tomb is not historical. I think it was likely made-up by Mark who wanted to tell a "missing body" story which were pretty common at the time.

I'm also skeptical that Jesus would have been given a burial in a rock-cut tomb. From what I understand, most Jews buried their dead in the ground. Rock-cut tombs would have been for the wealthy or special cases. Mark has Joseph of Arimathea supply a rock-cut tomb for Jesus but I think this story might be made-up just to get Jesus into a rock-cut tomb so Mark can tell a "missing body" story.

not just this. rock cut tombs make better allegorical symbols for anyone having in mind metaphorical interpretations
the gospels are full of such symbology that could be taken literally or not. the classic is the 'born again' misunderstanding in John
if this were so then the gospels decided to favour the literal meanings greatly for whatever reason - it's impossible to really prove these were based on earlier symbolic material though isn't it? certainly there's apocryphal texts that go the other way and downplay the physical interpretation... like the acts of john

[Ken Olson]

This is a post I originally posted back on June 6, 2018, but I have edited it slightly for clarity and layout and to fix typos:

viewtopic.php?p=87960#p87960

The last verse of Mark may be a kind of find story designed to explain why this information about the women discovering the empty tomb was not known before. The angel’s command to Daniel, near the end of the book, to “keep the words secret and the book sealed until the time of the end” (Daniel 12.4) has a similar function. It’s meant to explain to the original audience of the book (c. 167-164 BCE) why they are only now hearing the prophecies of Daniel, which purport to have been made some four centuries earlier.

This is not a new theory. In his discussion of the of Mark at 16.8 in his Moffat Commentary on Mark (1937), B.H. Branscomb writes:

That Paul does not mention the discovery of the empty tomb in his citation of the Christian proofs of the resurrection has already been referred to. In other words, the experiences of the women at the tomb were either unknown or disregarded until after a belief in His resurrection had been established on other grounds. If the early Church was aware that this story played no part in the earlier stages of the movement, and was only brought to light later, some explanation would be necessary. Mark’s final sentence gives the explanation—at first the women said nothing of these matters because they were afraid. After the disciples declared that Jesus had appeared to them, they came forward with their story. In time we can see this part of the account developing. Not only do the women discover the empty tomb, but Jesus appears to them (Matt. 28.8 and John 20.14), and they become the first witnesses to the resurrection. But this development was after Paul’s day. (Branscomb, Mark, 309).

Branscomb proposes the possibility that the experiences of the women at the tomb were either unknown or disregarded in Paul’s time, but then ends up adopting a far more traditional conclusion:

He quite possibly knew of the women’s story in the form in which Mark records it, and dated the resurrection on the third day because of it. But to Paul’s mind an empty tomb was not proof of the resurrection, and he rests his case on firmer ground.

The more radical form of this thesis about the story of the women at the tomb has been restated (relatively) more recently by Ross Shepard Kraemer, responding to F.W. Beare’s thesis that the empty tomb stories arose in response to beliefs about the bodily resurrection (Beare, The Earliest Records of Jesus, 1962, 241):

When Christians eventually crystallized beliefs about the bodily resurrection of Jesus, they told stories about the empty tomb designed to confirm the physical resurrection, even though, as Beare points out, the absence of the body most readily suggests that someone has removed it, not that the person had risen from the dead. Beare did not consider the significance of the fact that women are “credited” with the discovery of the empty tomb. But why? Positing women as the original parties at the empty tomb would have provided an adequate answer to the question of why this information had not surfaced earlier, by claiming unofficial and secret witnesses and by blaming women, indirectly at least, for a failure of nerve that led to the suppression of this information. To those who might have asked, “Why doesn’t the Apostle Paul mention these stories?” or “Why haven’t we heard them before?” the answer would have been: because women discovered the vacant tomb and either they did not tell anyone (Mark 16:8) or they did, but no one believed them (Luke 24:11), and no one then retold the story until now. (Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings, 1994, 130).

On the previous page from that quoted above, Branscomb observed:

The fact that Paul’s list in 1 Cor.15.3 ff. contains appearances to Peter and the disciples as a group—all the more probably in Galilee—but knows of no appearances to the women, strongly supports this view of Mark’s conclusion. For clearly the Marcan tradition and the Pauline one are related to each other.

How closely related are they? First, let’s look at 1 Cor.15.3-5, the sections that is commonly held to represent a pre-Pauline creed:

1 Cor. 15: 3For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

So the creed tells that the Jesus appeared after his resurrection to Cephas and the twelve, but who were the witnesses to the earlier parts? What witnesses establish that (1) he died, (2) he was buried, and (3), that he was raised on the third day?

Mark tells us:

Mark 15: 39 Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” 40 There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.

Mark 15: 46 Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock. He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. 47 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid.

Mark 16: When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

(Ben Smith posted these passages from mark in the Silence of the Women thread last night as I was writing this): http://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopi ... ome#p87919

I do not think the the correlation between the three events for which the creed in 1 Cor. 15.3-5 names no witnesses and the things seen by the named women who show up abruptly in Mark’s gospel is coincidental. Conservative apologists often suggest that the testimony of the women has to be accepted since, in first century Judaism, women’s testimony was not valued, so no one would invent it. On that theory, the pre-Pauline creed knew of the women’s testimony, but suppressed their names. But it seems to me that the thesis that a writer might invent the testimony of women who told no one in order to explain to his readers why they have never heard this story before is the better explanation. No doubt other explanations are possible.

Best,

Ken

[davidmartin]

that 1Co 11:23 is a pre-pauline creed is unlikely, when the same word 'received' is used of revelations elsewhere in the epistles. highly doubtful

commensurate with this, if the epistles don't mention the gospel story its likely because they consciously avoid all such material. i mean, using the epistles as a reference point for what may have been known earlier is suspect since the epistles make the claim they only know one single tradition, that of the epistles and seem to create the impression there's nothing else... why accept that claim?
after all , the epistles undermine the claim when they reveal there were other competing traditions and i think it is such as these that may have sourced the gospel stories.

[nightshadetwine]

after all , the epistles undermine the claim when they reveal there were other competing traditions and i think it is such as these that may have sourced the gospel stories.

I think we also can't just assume that the Gospel stories are based (or mostly based) on other traditions. It's possible that the authors of the Gospels are being highly creative and making things up to tell a story. The women finding the tomb empty could be made-up by Mark and not go back to any tradition.