Of course, there are
still differences between the resurrection appearance details as described in
the Gospel narratives and the brief statements in Paul’s Epistles. Hence, while
Paul likewise accepts the notion of bodily resurrection appearances, the
descriptive approaches vary. Many of the differences may be due to the Gospel authors
narrating their stories, while the epistolary genre is entirely different,
given brief statements of the reported earliest beliefs instead of detailed
accounts. For example, Paul never describes (or even mentions directly) an
empty tomb. Nor does Paul state that Jesus’s female followers held him by the
ankles after his resurrection (Matt 28:9; John 20:17), that Jesus otherwise
offered to be touched (cf. Luke 24:39-40; John 20:17, 27), or that he ate food
in the presence of his followers (Luke 24:41-43; Acts 10:41, or as implied in
John 21:9, 12). Consider this, though: these situations may have been described
much differently if Paul had written a Gospel. But whereas the Gospel
narratives in Matthew, Luke, and John make it clear throughout in their descriptions
that Jesus’s appearances were bodily in nature, Paul also develops his view in other
more theoretical ways in his teaching that he also thought that Jesus appeared
bodily. Paul communicated his ideas in a variety of ways, such as by elaborating
on his Pharisaic background views of both corporal and bodily resurrection,
plus his teachings that the righteous would inherit a refurbished earthly
creation (which would seem rather irrelevant or even just plain metaphysical
nonsense for Platonic disembodied spirits!) Most of all, Paul’s notion of the
resurrection body is further indicated by his usage and interaction between
crucial terms such as sōma, anastasis, egeirō, and especially exanastasin
in Phil 3:11, or similar phrases where the concept of anastasis was
combined with ek nekron (as in Phil 3:11b; 1 Cor 15:12; or Rom 8:11). In
these instances, especially for the Pharisees and in the majority Jewish
parlance, this would most likely indicate that for Paul, the sōma that
went down into the ground in burial was essentially the same sōma that
emerged in the resurrection appearances (as in the creedal statement in 1 Cor
15:3-5). Of course, there were significant changes in resurrection bodies too,
as Paul argues rather pointedly, especially in 1 Cor 15:35-45. It is even
obvious in the Gospels that there were differences in Jesus’s resurrection
body, such as when Jesus appeared and disappeared, or when he was already gone
when the tomb was opened. Moreover, Jesus’s wounds were already healed, and he
no longer suffered any pain, and so on. But Jesus’s physical body had died, was
buried, was raised, and appeared afterward—that is, what “went down” in death
and burial returned in the resurrection and appearances. Though there were
marked differences, Jesus had not ceased having (or being) a body—his own body.
This is why many scholars have added that an empty tomb is implied in the
pre-Pauline creedal statement in 1 Cor 15:4 as well as in Paul’s other teachings
on these matters. (See the critical works listed above by Wright, Cook, Licona,
and Gundry). As Cook declares succinctly on the opening page of his treatise,
his primary hypothesis that “there is no fundamental difference between Paul’s conception
of the resurrection body and that of the Gospels” (Empty Tomb, 1). To be
sure, the notions were expressed differently in the Gospels and in Paul, but
the shared concept is that of the same raised body instead of a raised and
glorified spirit. (Gary R. Habermas, On the Resurrection, 4 vols. [Brentwood,
Tenn.: B&H Academic, 2024], 2:696 n. 25
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