[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by zeek

I know nothing certain about ghosts or resurrected bodies.

Sure you do! You've been participating in this thread and following what has been posted, right? I assume you've actually read through 1 Cor 15, right? The apostle Paul has given us as close of a description as humanly possible. "There is a natural body"....he explains. "There is a spiritual body"...he explains by way of comparison. "if there is a natural body, there is a spiritual body". The man was living in the first century, working with a culture and a vocabulary of the first century. This is why he used the metaphor of the seed and the grown plant - he was living and teaching among an agrarian society. And guess what, almost 2,000 years later the metaphor still holds up....we still have seeds and we still have grown plants...isn't God wise!

Propositions about such things seem to be pure speculation. We suppose that Paul knew something about them because we come to the Bible with the assumption that it is an infallible factual source. I don't recall any instance of Jesus telling Paul, "I have a spiritual body."

Doing sound theology and exegesis is not pure speculation. Yes, we do come to the Bible with the assumption that it is an infallible factual source, glad you said it! Unfortunately for some, this matter is not up for debate on this forum. There are too many rabbit trails to get off track as it is without having to litigate whether every jot or tittle is the Word of God. There are TONS of forums out there where this kind of thing is the main fare. This forum is not one of them.

Paul claims to have been a Pharisee. He probably learned about the resurrection from them. From his vision of Jesus he inferred that Jesus was a spiritual body, the first resurrected human being. Otherwise, Jesus would have been a mere ghost. The conclusion that he had witnessed the resurrected Christ put him in the company of the Christian witnesses of the resurrected Christ.

I don't believe the resurrection was much of a subject among any of the Jews of the day, at least not bodily resurrection. Even the disciples, who had been at Jesus side for about 3 years, did not seem to understand much about the resurrection. Jesus boldly declared to the Jewish leaders seeking to kill him: "destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up". Jesus was not talking about his soul or his spirit, he was talking about his physical body. (his soul and spirit never died).