(July 11, 2015 at 9:18 pm)Crossless1 Wrote: When I mentioned Paul, I had in mind his report of his own experience of the risen Christ, which is clearly not physical in nature. As for his memorized formula, at the risk of nit-picking, there is nothing there that necessitates an interpretation that he is speaking of a bodily resurrection -- of a person literally walking out of a tomb. It merely states that Jesus was buried and raised on the third day before appearing before a number of witnesses. For all we know, these 'appearances' could have been 'spiritual' in nature as Paul's alleged experience seems to have been. He doesn't really say there was an empty tomb. The empty tomb stories we have are from the Gospels, which come later.
The gospels were WRITTEN a few years later based upon the testimony of men who had seen Jesus risen from the dead BEFORE Paul wrote. Those were the men Paul conferred with when he traveled to Jerusalem around AD 35-36.
Do you think that Peter, James and John just left out the part about Jesus being alive (and his tomb being empty) during Paul's visit?
