K R Harriman

Most standard analyses of the identification of the deniers of the resurrection and the nature of their denial in 1 Cor 15:12 evaluate three sets of options: denial of any post-mortem fate, over-realized eschatology, or dualistic anthropology from Greco-Roman philosophy. The author argues that all of these theories are inadequate, and proposes a theory that identifies the Corinthian resurrection deniers as a cross-section of members from upper and lower classes, with varying levels of education, whose denial of the general resurrection emerges from a variety of sources in philosophy and the myths of popular religion.

From the early centuries of the church, there has been much discussion on how best to describe Jesus’s resurrection and the expected eschatological resurrection (particularly of believers). One popular way of describing resurrection has been as ‘physical’, which in some ways corresponds with the ancient description of the resurrection ‘of the flesh’. Critics of this approach have, in fact, treated these descriptions as synonymous and have argued that ‘physical’ is not an apt adjective for describing Jesus’s or the eschatological resurrection. I argue here, particularly by reference to 1 Cor. 15, that it remains appropriate to refer to resurrection according to the Bible as ‘physical’, not as ‘bodily, but not physical’, and that it is the critics who have overcomplicated the term by making it entail what it does not entail and have thus provided obfuscation where they claimed to provide clarification.

The raising of Lazarus from the dead has proven to be a problematic story for biblical scholarship. Despite its significance in featuring Jesus raising a man who had been dead for four days and in being a catalyst for Jesus’s death, it is only mentioned in the Gospel according to John, possibly the latest of the canonical Gospels. Of course, the Lazarus story also raises the question that has inspired much discussion: Can a historian qua historian rationally affirm a miracle claim for a historical event? I argue that it is possible for a historian following a sound methodology to affirm that a miracle claim is the most likely explanation for an event. In the specific case of the Lazarus story, I argue that the most likely explanation is that it substantially reflects a genuine historical memory of one of Jesus’s deeds.

While studies in Johannine ethics continue to develop through analysis of broad ethical instructions, this paper contributes to the conversation by conveying the belief of participatory victory that seems to inform the ethical instruction of the author of 1 John. That is, in the midst of the cosmic conflict in which John and his fellow believers find themselves, John speaks from the vantage point of one who participates in the victory of Jesus to other participants in that victory. Though there is no explicit statement of this notion of participating in the victory of Jesus, its influential place in the authorial framework is discernible at several points in the text, such as when John uses the terminology and imagery of victory, uses the terminology and imagery of participation, and particularly when he converges these two streams of thought.

The default translation of the phrase δι’ οὗ καὶ ἐποίησεν τοὺς αἰῶνας in Heb 1:2c is spatial: “through whom he made the worlds/universe.” The typical explanation for why this temporal term should have a spatial meaning is that αἰών can have the sense of “the ages and everything in them,” so that it is roughly equivalent to the universe of space and time. In contrast, this paper demonstrates on the bases of lexical-historical, broad contextual, and immediate contextual evidence that a temporal translation (“ages” as in history) is preferable and that this temporal sense is more specifically salvation-historical in meaning.

(Dissertation available at the provided link.) This dissertation analyzes the worldview foundations and functions of resurrection belief in the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by reference to case study texts of Dan 12, 1 Cor 15, and Q Al-Qiyamah 75. In other words, it analyzes the reasons (or worldview foundations) for resurrection belief that make that belief plausible in the worldview each text seeks to form in its audience, and it analyzes how resurrection relates to worldview component functions (using N. T. Wright’s worldview model). The analysis of each of these texts through my methodology of exegetical-theological comparison demonstrates both significant continuity and even more significant discontinuity between these worldviews in what is an ostensibly similar article of faith of resurrection belief. I juxtapose the case study texts, with 1 Cor 15 as my central term of comparison, in order to demonstrate two points. One, related to the general comparative task, I argue that the functions of resurrection belief in the texts and in the symbolic universes these texts help form are consequences of the particular worldview foundations the authors use as bases for resurrection belief. Two, related to my specific task of illuminating the NT, I argue that this comparison shows how Christian resurrection belief as presented in the NT (specifically by Paul) is of such a Christomorphic character that, even where its worldview foundations and functions have continuity with the Tanakh and the Qur’an, every element is reformulated around the resurrection of Jesus.