My latest reading of G.K. Beale's The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text was interesting because Beale
made an argument that essentially undercuts N.T. Wright's defense of
Jesus' resurrection, which has become popular in evangelical circles.
N.T.
Wright's argument (as I understand it) is that the resurrection in
ancient Judaism was believed to be physical, and so, when the early
Christians proclaimed that Christ was risen, they meant that he rose
bodily. That excludes the possibility that Jesus' body was
still in the tomb when the early Christians said that Christ was risen.
In this view, the early Christians could not have hallucinated an
apparition or ghost of Jesus and called that a resurrection, for
resurrection in ancient Judaism was not the soul or spirit existing
apart from the body. Rather, for some reason, the early Christians held
that Jesus rose bodily, and, for Wright, the reason is that Jesus did
rise bodily. Wright's argumentation is probably consistent with
classical Christian apologists' emphasis on the empty tomb as physical
evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. See here for my summary of the debate.
A while back, I was talking with skeptic Steven Carr about Jesus' resurrection. (Click here to read some of those posts.) Carr
was arguing that early Christians could have believed that Jesus rose
from the dead, even if Jesus' body was still in the ground. Carr's
position essentially robs early Christianity of any physical evidence
for Jesus' resurrection, for the disciples could have seen a
hallucination of Jesus and claimed that Jesus was risen from the dead.
Carr referred to an example of this conception of resurrection in
ancient Judaism: Josephus said that the Pharisees thought that the souls
of the righteous leave the physical body and go to heaven to receive a
new body. But some retort that Josephus was not accurately conveying
the views of the Pharisees but was seeking to appease his Gentile
audience, which disdained physicality and the concept of a physical,
bodily resurrection.
Where Beale comes into my discussion
is that Beale argues that resurrection in ancient Judaism could be
defined as entering the intermediate state between death and the
resurrection at the last day. Consequently, one can go to heaven or
some intermediate state, and that could be considered a resurrection.
Beale refers to passages in Jubilees, II Maccabees, IV Maccabees, and
others. Jubilees 23:27-31, for example, says that the godly for "one
thousand years...will...live in joy and...will rise up and see great
peace...and their bones will rest in the earth, and their spirits will
have much joy" (Beale's quotation).
Why is Beale arguing this?
Beale, as I discussed in my last post on his book, is an
amillennialist. He believes that the millennium exists throughout the
church age, as the dead saints reign in heaven with Christ. The thing
is, Revelation 20 says that the millennium commences with the first
resurrection, as these dead saints rise from the dead. But the saints
did not undergo a bodily resurrection, according to many
amillennialists, for Revelation 20 is about the souls or disembodied
spirits of the righteous reigning with Christ in heaven.
Consequently, to justify his amillennial position, Beale has to argue
that a disembodied spirit going to heaven can count as a resurrection. In his attempt to defend amillennialism, Beale makes an argument that appears to contradict the view of N.T. Wright.