We've talked a lot in class about Jesus' healing of the lepers and of the casting out of demons. Though I may disagree with Crossan that there were no supernatural occurrences happening, I do agree, however, that there are social implications. The acceptance of people that Jesus shows is fantastic and his "open-table fellowship" with everyone from prostitutes to lepers and tax collectors shows that the Kingdom of God is open to everyone. What does Jesus' raising of the dead, such as with Lazarus mean?
In more than one of the Gospels, Jesus raises different people from the dead. Even if we agree with Crossan's method and take these stories as figurative constructions, there is still something important here. The Judaism of the first century A.D. was very concerned with the body, and so it only makes sense to show an immense figure such as Jesus raising those who were dead. To Jesus, the Kingdom of God does not end when someone dies, but rather that all people are part of it. Death is no immediate release from the world, but rather the world has something important to give. The Kingdom is here and now according to Jesus, and therefore even the dead should partake in it.
I am very confused as to what is of so great importance that the world can give a dead man. Isn't death for a mortal release from the physical body? If so, then how can this physical world give anything of importance to the released who has lost all physical sensibilities? If not, then what is so important?
ReplyDeleteThe Christian tradition, as we have observed, forms at the confluence of two great cultural traditions: the Greek and the Hebrew. Thus there are inevitably competing ideas (for example about the body and death) that have never really resolved themselves. From the Hebrew tradition we get a groundedness in the body, and a sense of the body's importance even after death. From the Greek mystery cults via the Stoics we get a potent antisomatism -- the body as mere husk, the source of unhappiness and temptation, and its postmortem triviality. Christianity is full of these sorts of paradoxes, so Raj's confusion is understandable.
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