In the middle of a desert in a world we know, Mattchu is picking his way through a small red box. He picks some small black objects out of it; some he eats, but most he glares at and throws away. As he is picking, a large, muscular raccoon-like being walks up behind him...
BROM (snorting): You again. What the heck are you doin'?
MATTCHU (turns, snarls): Eats raisins, stupid raccoon thing!
BROM: "Raisin"? We don't have those here. What are they?
MATTCHU (mouth drops open, thinks): Uhhhhh....issss like grapeses. Only smaller.
BROM: What are "grapeses"?
MATTCHU: LOOK! FRUITSSES, OKAY?
BROM: Oh. (Pauses.) I see you're at it again on th' resurrection.
MATTCHU (groans): Oh, noooooo....
BROM: Yeah, well -- you made a lot of dumb mistakes in your last article, and you really need to correct 'em before you start a new one.
MATTCHU: BIG DEAL! KISS OFF!
BROM (shrugs): Whatever. Your funeral. So what you want to argue this time?
MATTCHU (grins): Ha haaaa! I saysss: I tend to think that most "pagan critics" like Celsus were highly educated and literate critics, but would the common man, the illiterate, and uneducated have also shared in the philosophical views of the educated upper class? Would they have known much about the works and ideas of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle? Were Christianity's "pagan critics" highly educated in the philosophy that was common among Greek's upper class elite? Furthermore, would they have understood Jewish metaphysics, theology, and other philosophy significantly enough to know what a "resurrection" entailed and why? I see nothing in this paragraph or the next that establishes this necessary background.
BROM (slaps head): What, this crap AGAIN?
MATTCHU: Huh??? WHAT???
BROM: Tas'phal'an, man, this is the same dumb game as before. You're tryin' to force out some sort of difference between classes, without a shred of evidence and against all we have, just like with crucifixion. That's YOUR burden to prove, not Mr. H's to disprove just because you make it up on the spot.
MATTCHU: Well....uhhh....consider that the common, illiterate, and uneducated masses regularly found attractive what the upper-class, literate, and educated people found repugnant.
BROM (rolls eyes): Yeah, uh huh. And there's a lot they both liked, and a lot they both found repugnant. Whoop dee doody doo. You just wasted a load of time provin' nothin'. None of that gets down to establishin' where resurrection would be in that wavelength, which is what you need to do. Listen, goofy...do you know WHY Gnostic type religions were so popular later on? Huh?
MATTCHU: Uhhhhhhhh.............
BROM: It's because they promised a release from the material world, buddy. And also, this is something that Carrier guy already tried, just like last time, and Mr. H answered it, after Carrier tried to find "resurrections" in gods like Osiris:
And so, the general conclusion: Describing any of these as "resurrected" is an argument we would expect from Acharya S, or Freke and Gandy, but not an alleged Ph. D. candidate for a degree in history. Put it simply: Carrier has now gone off the deep end and removed himself from all chance of credibility by affirming a view of "resurrection" as anything that he says it was, and claiming that the difference "makes no difference" and this, as noted, contrary to the overwhelming consensus as represented by the likes of Perkins and Wright, that belief in a human (not divine gods and immortals) being raised from the dead in a body that would last evermore, was completely rejected as repugnant and/or impossible by the Greco-Roman world.We now close this section with a comment on Carrier's conclusion that "the shear [sic] abundance of these tales reflects a widespread hope of returning to life in the pagan community." The premise has slipped by without proof that these stories reflect a widespread hope concerning a renewal to life for human beings. But a third to half of Carrier's candidates are either gods, demigods, or mythical beings (a dryad!) which hardly says anything about any "hope" that mere mortal human beings had for a return to life. Moreover, even those that do involve mortals clearly do not reflect any particular hope in connection to a resurrection as properly defined. None of the mortal deaths involve, as Carrier claims, returning with a better body -- though someone like Asclepius might get back as a deity, if his performance was superb. At best Carrier shows a vague hope for apotheosis, which by itself indicates, as the chief alternative, that resurrection of the physical body used on earth was not considered an option. As Peter Bolt reports in "Life, Death and Afterlife in the Greco-Roman World," (Life in the Face of Death, 74) these temporary restorations cannot be compared to resurrection; those actually buried, who then returned from the realm of the dead, amount to none but Alcestis and Eurydice -- and even the latter did not quite make it. In contrast, everywhere what is properly called "resurrection" is mentioned by the ancient writers, it is deemed impossible:
"You must endure, and not be broken-hearted. Lamenting for your son will do no good at all. You will be dead yourself before you bring him back to life." (Homer, Iliad< 24.549-51) "Once a man has died, and the dust has soaked up his blood, there is no resurrection." (Aesch. Eumen. 647f) "But blood of man once spilled, Once at his feet shed forth, and darkening the plain -- Nor chant nor charm can call it back again." (Aesch. Agamemnon) "But never by laments or prayers shalt thou recall thy sire from that lake of Hades to which all must pass. Nay, thine is a fatal course of grief, passing ever from due bounds into a cureless sorrow; wherein there is no deliverance from evils. Say, wherefore art thou enamoured of misery?" (Sophocles, Electra) And so on. Lest Carrier retort that this was just some view of a literary elite -- a desperate counsel to begin with -- Wright [33] appeals to the Epigrams of Callimachos (15.3) and a conversation between two average people, one dead, the other still alive:
"What's it like down there?" "Very dark." "Is there any way back up?" "It's a lie!" And then there is a "well known" epitaph of the day inscribed on Greek and Latin tombstones: "I wasn't, I was, I am not, I don't care!" [34] Bolt meanwhile finds no evidence on tombstones of any hope of return [68]: "We are mortals, not immortals!" "When life ends, all things perish and we turn to nothing!" "We are and were nothing." These epitaphs on the tombstones of non-elite persons suggest, contrary to Carrier, that "elite" ideas about the afterlife were not at all limited to the elite. But more of this later in this essay. It is enough for now to repeat that Carrier's attempt to reduce the matter to the lowest common denominator of "a bodily returning to life" is a preposterous absue of terminology.
So dude -- all that rap about maybe the lower classes wouldn't have found resurrection bad -- stuff it, eh? You're missin' the point that Mr. H is not just saying "bad," but impossible, as the quotes show.
MATTCHU: HA! But when Priam says that "you will be dead before you bring him back to life" what specific evidence here that being brought "back to life" is explicitly a Jewish resurrection concept? What evidence is there that Homer has this in mind when he puts these words into the mouth of King Priam?
BROM (slaps head again): Aw, come on, that is just so STUPID. Look at the quote, man! "Once a man has died, and the dust has soaked up his blood, there is no resurrection." It don't need to be that "a Jewish concept of a glorified, immortal, imperishable body of risen flesh is precisely what Aeschylus has in mind," dude! What he says encompasses any idea of the body coming back to life, and that would include the Jewish idea of resurrection -- and it don't matter if he knew about it or not! It's like some backwards type sayin', "there's no way men can get to the moon" -- you think you can show 'em NASA films and convince 'em? No, they'll still say it isn't possible and claim the films are staged. Think for once, huh?
MATTCHU: Uhhhh.....
BROM: Now this bit about Irey, too. You ain't readin' too well, which is no surprise. Mr. H ain't sayin' that it was "because of the resurrection belief" that people were killed. Look how he quotes Wright: He's sayin' that the belief was a target, somethin' that was a basis for the WAY Christians was persecuted.
MATTCHU: Oh....uh....
BROM: Dude, you got a lot more work to do. And you'll just embarrass yourself more if you end up with that "spiritual resurrection" bit in your quiver. That's dead meat, and it's not Mr. H that says so; it's experts like Gundry and Perkins.
MATTCHU: Uhhhhh...There is another problem here though: If Jesus had been taken straight up to heaven like Moses or Elijah and Jesus was not resurrected or transformed into a spiritual body of some sort (be it flesh or a lack, thereof), how, then, does Mr. Hominid get around the problem that "flesh and blood" cannot inherit the Kingdom of God?
BROM: Dude, come on, do some homework. Mr. H talked about this before. "Flesh and blood" means human weakness. Get with the program. Are you tryin' to ask about a resurrected body or an ascended body? Because it ain't clear here. If it's the first, that'll take care of it. If not, then your missin' another point, the one made here. Either way you're makin' a mess of things. I mean, you don't even get this last bit right: Apotheosis isn't "a belief in the immortals and a translation of the body into the heavens while still alive". Look, dude: He says soul, not body! The body stays behind, dude, it doesn't "translate into the heavens."
MATTCHU: (blinks)
BROM: Dude, you're just not concentrating here. Wake up. Do those raisin things make you goofy or somethin'? It's gotta be, if you're plannin' on defendin' Till on that land promise crap. You gonna argue with him that "mine" in Leviticus is a figure of speech, or what? I think you'd best just stay in school -- take that ethics course, and maybe learn about how lyin' like Loftus did is actually wrong. You don't seem to know that yet, do ya? All that "take it to his blog if you have a problem" is just an excuse -- you endorse his work, you write for his blog.
And dude -- that bit about why Mr. H changed his name wins ya a Screwball Award.
MATTCHU: ARGGH! I doessssn't hassss to listen to thissss!
BROM: Little dude, you're so confused this time we won't even need to throw you anywhere.
MATTCHU: Huh? What doesssss you mean by ---
Suddenly, there is a loud explosion. Mattchu is sent flying into the air, screaming. Brom watches, his head shaking.
BROM: Huh. Didn't know raisins caused that, too.
