Reddit mentions of The Corinthian Body

>Do we believe the stars and moon are made of "wind" or "breath"?

You're trying to tell me what the 1st century belief is. The same pneuma you're using to mean "wind", is the same pneuma used to describe celestial bodies.

This comparison is further highlighted in Corinthians by Paul's usage of soma (body) over sarx (flesh) so that he can more directly draw the parallel and show this is not a fleshy "soulish" body that we currently have, but a pneumatic body in literally the same way as that of the celestial bodies.

>call me a heretic, or you might understand that this is pretty close to how the ancients, with their limited understanding of science, understood things.

Heretic in terms of non-orthodox, sure. But the issue isn't about what you believe, but the words and concepts you're trying to anachronistically place into the text.

There's literally no room in the scripture or teachings for the kind of incorporeal "being of light" that your talking about in 1 Corinthians 15.

You're welcome to make that case, but so far you've offered nothing but your own interpretation of the text that, as I point out, flatly contradicts common scholarly understanding of Paul's teachings on the resurrection body (I also highly recommend Dale Martin's The Corinthian Body which deals with the pneumatic body at length).

>The whole account reeks of literary invention - it is not meant to be taken literally!

But the problem is we're deciphering what the early Christians believed.

Even if we accept the entire passion and resurrection narratives as literary invention, that's not what Paul's teaching.

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 is a creed that is intended literally, not metaphorically. A creed that is accepted as a legitimate teaching of the Jerusalem church even by the likes of Ehrman and dates to only a few years after the Crucifixion.

So again, even if we say the whole thing is made up, within a year Christians are teaching it as literal.

Any notion the early Christians took bodily resurrection as metaphor or symbol doesn't fit with the historical evidence we have.

I'd direct you to a book called "The Corinthian Body".

Essentially when Paul refers to resurrection, it's not the same body that was buried, but its resurrected into a newer "spiritual body". Which is spiritual more in the sense of saying "ted is a spiritual kind of guy"

Corinthians 15 provides a decent overview.'

Earlier in Corinthians 15 we also see Paul describe Christ as "that he was buried, that he was raised..."

I don't think it makes sense to say a "spirit" was buried and raised or that the story should skip from a physical body to a spirit in the same sentence without qualification.