Which version is true?

[polonius]

Perhaps the essential “truth� of Christianity is the Resurrection of Jesus.

We are told that there is a “Christ of Faith’ and a �Jesus of History.�

Into which category does the Resurrection fall?

[steveb1]

Perhaps the essential “truth� of Christianity is the Resurrection of Jesus.

We are told that there is a “Christ of Faith’ and a �Jesus of History.�

Into which category does the Resurrection fall?

I follow the standard critical scholarship view that the earliest accounts of the resurrection were reports and claims of a wholly spiritual, non-material and private series of revelations, visions, and dreams. For me, this does not exclude the idea of real mystical, transcendent experiences. But it does deny that the earliest "Easter experiences" were about a resuscitated corpse imbued with magical powers.

Paul's inner Jesus was completely spiritual - unlike some of the Gospel narratives of a quasi-physical risen Jesus. Paul's risen Christ, in Paul's own words: "The Lord is a Spirit"; Jesus became "a vivifying/life-sparking Spirit". Paul and John both agree that "the flesh avails nothing" and cannot inherit the Kingdom.

Along with critical scholarship, I hold that those Gospels' resurrection narratives which involve a seemingly physical Jesus are late accretions to an original visionary/mystical set of experiences. The later accounts - which have Jesus walking, talking, breaking bread with disciples and permitting them to feel his "body" and even to probe his crucifixion wounds - were probably added to earlier visionary accounts. This was likely done because the authors wished to quell early "Gnostic" and "Docetic" trends which looked askance at a heavily physical view of the ministry Jesus and his resurrected form.

For me this view effortlessly dovetails with Christ Myth theory, which itself suggests that earliest Christianity was utterly "gnostic" and "pentecostal" in that it never claimed a historical Jesus to begin with, but equally affirmed that Jesus or his "Spirit" was making continuing, new revelations about himself. Both the pre-and-post Easter Jesus were perceived as two modes of operation conducted by a totally non-material, spiritual "Son".

The original Gospel - "the Good News" - was that this Son had moved from his position next to God in the highest heaven down into the lower heavens, where he was "incarnated" in the "likeness" of a man and the "likeness" of a servant and where he was tortured, died, and was raised back up to his former place in the highest heaven. Paul in the Philippians Hymn refers to this celestial transit as the kenosis or "self-emptying" of Jesus, who exchanged his "likeness" or "form" of godliness for the "form" of a man and a dying/rising servant.

So, for me, that the earliest resurrection accounts were likely completely visionary and subjective is a factor which perfectly dovetails with my embrace of the Christ Myth theory. There never was a historical "Gospel" Jesus. But there was an ancient belief in a heavenly Son, which was refurbished and "upgraded" by a mystical awareness that He had undergone a Passion, Death, and Resurrection for the sake of humanity. That was the earliest Resurrection narrative, and the Christ of Faith was an eventual interpretation of an original Easter experience of the heavenly Son's celestial victory..