Tabor On The Resurrection

Have you ever noticed that when the holidays roll around both Skeptics & Legalists appear online in order to battle for the hearts & minds of the People?

The Legalism crowd cries out around Christmas insisting that Christmas trees are forbidden because Jeremiah wrote against the use of trees in pagan religion in his time.  It doesn’t seem to cross their minds that Christmas trees are like the binding ritual in the hands of Ezekiel.  The pagan binding rite in the hands of the Witch of Endor is inductive prophecy in Ezekiel’s hands.  In the same way, Christmas trees are a prophetic answer to the use of trees in the hands of pagans.

On the other side, men like Bart Ehrman & James Daniel Tabor grow more vocal, both reading the text in maladroit fashion.  For example, Dr. Ehrman thinks that Acts teaches that Peter & John were illiterate - but the text doesn’t say that. Rather, it says that some of the Sanhedrin accused them of being unlearned, nor illiterate,  

In this video, Dr. Tabor builds part of his argument on an alleged statement about Adam & Christ in 1 Corinthians.  Its content is worth mentioning, insofar as his video proves how lettered men who think they are authoritative voices are known to churn out some sketchy theories.

By way of reply…

In his article he wrote.  “,” I focus on early Christians biggest challenge–how to maintain faith in the literal resurrection of Jesus’ body of flesh and bones, given our earliest and only eye-witness testimony–that of the apostle Paul, to Jesus’ resurrection as a “life-giving Spirit,” which has nothing whatsoever to do with  corpse revival or bodies of “flesh and blood,” which he emphatically declares “will not inherit the Kingdom of God.”

How does he conclude that Paul is talking about Jesus’ **resurrection** as a life giving Spirit?  

The text doesn’t say that at all.  

1 Corinthians 15:45–48 (ESV): Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 

Paul is drawing on Genesis for Adam.  At the time Adam was ensouled, he became a living being.  

Genesis 2:7 (ESV): 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Just because Christ is said to have been raised from the dead, it doesn’t therefore follow that Paul’s reference to Christ having become a life-giving Spirit means that Paul is referring to this having occurred when Christ was raised from the dead.  Paul is very clearly referring to Christ’s ensoulment. 

The gist of Paul’s argument is that people are representatively united to Adam in the Fall in a one (Adam) to many (people) relation. In addition, they are also united to Adam in his creation as a living being with a human soul.  They are also united to Christ by way of redemption but not the Fall as well as Creation insofar as Christ is theandric as well as the Redeemer-Mediator. 

Luke 1:31–35 (ESV): And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 

34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 

35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.

 

Adam lacks the requisite authority to resurrect the dead.  Christ, as Redeemer - Mediator does.  Adam - became a living being (Genesis 2:7).  Likewise Christ, at the moment He was ensouled became a life giving Spirit, united to the Godhead (thus theandric) having authority as Redeemer - Mediator to preside over the creation, revivification; & resurrection of every living thing. This text is referring to Christ’s incarnation not his resurrection.

Consequently, the resurrection of dead, according to 1 Corinthians 15:45 - 48 has everything to do with physical bodily resurrection not whatever it is Dr. Tabor is trying his best to defend.   After all, Christ was ensouled into a living, breathing flesh & blood body, and God is said to have united to Him in monogenes fashion. 

Luke 1:31–35 (ESV): And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 

34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 

35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.

Dr. Tabor’s theory of what Paul means in 1 Corinthians requires that Paul was arguing that people become life giving spirits in the Resurrection because Christ became one **in his resurrection.”However, the truth of the matter is that Paul’s words point to the Incarnation itself which is parallel to Adam’s own ensoulment by which he became a living being.   Without that, his theory is dead or nearly dead at its root.