RESURRECTION RECONSIDERED reviewed by PHEME PERKINS

[SanAnselmo]

RESURRECTION RECONSIDERED: THOMAS AND JOHN IN CONTROVERSY. By Gregory J. Riley. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995. Pp. x + 222.


Written from the perspective of the radical left-wing of New Testament scholarship, this book presumes that references to Thomas in John, the Gospel of Thomas, and other apocryphal Thomas traditions reflect the opinions of a primitive Christianity whose theology contradicts what became the orthodox doctrines of Christianity. The doctrine under challenge here is resurrection of the physical body.


Disputes over Riley's history of early Christianity aside, the book provides a wealth of information about the diversity of beliefs in late antiquity. Accounts of the survival of the "soul" of the deceased should be contextualized in terms of burial rites. They show that a "soul" can exhibit material characteristics such as those attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. R.'s desire to demonstrate this thesis sometimes leads to overinterpretation of the evidence. Game boards in tombs and food offerings are both alleged to show that the deceased retain material existence (54). Literary sources suggest that the pieties associated with burial cults are not necessarily correlated with convictions about the deceased.


R. also goes to great efforts to depict Thomas as a "negative" figure in the Johannine narrative because the demands a repulsive method of proof (115). John, he claims, condemns Thomas as ignorant because enlightenment and gnosis do not lead to knowledge of God (122). R.'s discussion of Gos. Thom. 71 forces the saying into the temple polemic of Jn 2: 19-22 par. by taking the saying to mean that no one--not God, Jesus, or the community--rebuilds the temple. This reading ignores the probable anti-Jewish reference in the saying: the Jewish temple will never be rebuilt. R. wants to enlist Thomas's sayings in favor of a polemic against the bodily resurrection of Jesus (148-55).


Despite exegetical difficulties on most points, the book provides a wealth of suggestive information to reinterpret the resurrection accounts.


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By PHEME PERKINS, Boston College

[choib]

펄킨스가 잠시 허튼 소리를 하는 것같습니다: "this reading ignores the probable anti-Jewish reference in the saying: the Jewish temple will never be rebuilt." 이미 요한복음은 66-70년의 유대전쟁에 대한 기억을 갖고 있지 않습니다 - 누가도 마찬가지로. 마가복음은 이 말씀을 통해 예루살렘의 멸망을 예언하지요

[choib]

따라서 펄킨스의 "the Jewish temple will never be rebuilt" 는 요한복음의 상황과는 전혀 다른 의미를 내포하고 있습니다. 펄킨스 그녀의 지적은 약간 논리에 맞지 않는 것같습니다. 오히려 마가복음의 상황에 잘 맞습니다.