Who Were the Corinthian Resurrection Deniers?
(avg. read time: 11–22 mins.)
I had mentioned previously a desire to explore cases of resurrection in Greek mythology. I will need to wait until another article I have planned to do this more extensively. But for now, what I can do is epitomize research I have done elsewhere, which the reader can find in full here:
Harriman, K. R. “A Synthetic Proposal About the Corinthian Resurrection Deniers.” NovT 62 (2020): 180–200.
This is certainly not a focused analysis of those cases of resurrection, but what this article does is bring these stories and the larger complex of Greek afterlife beliefs into consideration for the debate about who the Corinthian resurrection deniers were.
Paul’s most extensive teaching on resurrection in 1 Cor 15 is occasioned by the denial of the resurrection of the dead (i.e., the general resurrection) by some of his Corinthian audience (v. 12). That these interlocutors provided the impetus for Paul’s teaching is clear. What is not as clear is who exactly these interlocutors were and why they denied the general resurrection. Interpreters have posited multiple theories of the identity of the ones Paul mentions in v. 12 and of the nature of their denial of the resurrection.
Of course, this problem stems from how Paul’s language in this chapter and elsewhere in 1 Corinthians does not allow for any precision in identifying the deniers with any specific group to the exclusion of others. Paul certainly had the education and awareness of philosophical schools to be more specific if he had problems with a specific philosophy, but he remains determinedly general in his language. The quest for identifying a singular philosophy or ideology as posing the problem of the denial of the resurrection is most likely doomed to continued failure. My synthetic proposal is that it is far more likely that the Corinthian deniers whom Paul responds to represent some mixture of different classes and different groups with multiple types of Greek (and, to a lesser extent, Roman) afterlife beliefs—arising from both philosophy and religious myths—who have blended those pre-established beliefs with Christian eschatology and resurrection belief, both primarily concerning Jesus. From Paul’s perspective, the deniers have not sufficiently integrated their afterlife beliefs with the gospel he proclaimed to them. In this article, I also demonstrate how my synthetic proposal is superior to more popular ones by demonstrating how it better explains all three of the factors of the text in question that any theory of the identification of the deniers must explain, and how it does so according to the criteria of the best explanation.
Means of Evaluating Identification Theories
I evaluate the three standard sets of identification theories as well as my own theory by means of evaluating how well each of them explains the following three factors. One, obviously, the theory must explain why the deniers do not believe in the general resurrection of the dead (or even of the righteous, specifically). Whatever positive beliefs the deniers may have, it is clear from Paul’s argument that their distinctiveness consists in this particular denial.
Two, the theory must explain why the deniers do believe in Jesus’s resurrection and the efficacious benefits thereof, as Paul’s argument assumes. If they did not believe in Jesus’s resurrection, one must wonder why Paul proceeds in his argument in vv. 13–19 as if they did. One must also wonder why he assumes that they accept the testimony of vv. 3–11 (per the protasis of v. 12) if they did not believe in Jesus’s resurrection. Otherwise, the Corinthian deniers could have easily sidestepped Paul’s argument by saying, “We do not believe in Jesus’s resurrection either.” From Paul’s perspective, surely such a response would lead to a rejoinder that these deniers were among the assembly, but not of them (cf. 1 John 2:19).
As it is, Paul’s argument in vv. 13–19 assumes that the deniers share in common with Paul and the rest of the community the belief proclaimed in the kerygma that Christ has been raised, otherwise they would need to reject the entire kerygma and all of its implications, a rejection they would presumably find unacceptable. This assumption of shared belief is why he ties the general resurrection to Jesus’s resurrection in vv. 13 and 16 (and thus the affirmation of remembering one event to the affirmation of expecting the other). Paul then outlines the consequences of denying the first and thus the second of these beliefs: emptying the audience’s faith of any substance or salvific effect (vv. 14, 17), the apostles (the founders of the community and proclaimers of its shared kerygma) bearing false witness of God (v. 15), and the loss of any hope after death if Christ has not preceded them in resurrection (vv. 18–19). To deny the general resurrection is to deny Jesus’s resurrection and to deny Jesus’s resurrection is to deny the essence of the Christian faith, the salvific benefits thereof, and the foundation of the community.
Three, any theory of identification must make contextual sense, both of the literary context of 1 Corinthians and of the historical-cultural context of Roman Corinth. I include the dual emphasis on literary and historical-cultural context because it has not been unusual for scholarly theories to focus on one to the exclusion of the other. But a full-orbed explanation can account for both present knowledge of the historical-cultural context and the actual document that Paul wrote in that context.
To evaluate the quality of these theories in explaining these factors, I use the following standard criteria for determining the best historical explanation: background plausibility (the degree to which a theory is implied by knowledge of historical background), explanatory scope (how much of the data a theory explains), explanatory power (how clearly a theory explains the data), simplicity/parsimony (per Occam’s razor, how elegantly or simply a theory explains the data without resorting to ad hoc propositions), and, secondarily, illumination (how informative and predictive a theory is in other areas of research). The prevailing theories fall short by these explanatory criteria, but my synthetic proposal combines their strengths, eliminates their weaknesses, and adds considerations not accounted for in these theories, all of which contribute to its superiority in satisfying the explanatory criteria.
Evaluation of the Prevalent Theories
Analyses of the theories are typically organized according to a threefold typology. First, a few scholars argue that the deniers deny the possibility of an afterlife altogether, which could indicate that the deniers were Epicureans, Sadducees, or simply similar to these groups. Second, some argue that Paul is pushing back against an over-realized eschatology in which the Corinthians believe themselves to possess the fullness of salvation through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Third, others argue that the Corinthians denied the embodied character of resurrection belief due to prevailing notions of Greco-Roman philosophical afterlife beliefs and dualistic anthropology.
In any case, none of the major proposals satisfyingly identify the deniers or the problem with the group’s beliefs according to the explanatory criteria outlined above. Although it is easy to understand why people who deny any and all afterlife would also deny the general resurrection, the first theory cannot make sense of any other aspect of the text. The fact that the Corinthian deniers could accept Jesus’s resurrection while denying that they too will be resurrected demonstrates that they are at a stage on a spectrum of worldview integration in which they have not integrated their beliefs to an extent that satisfies Paul, but it is difficult to argue this if they were originally inclined to follow Sadducean or Epicurean philosophy.
While an Epicurean identification might make better contextual sense than a Sadducean identification (since it is more likely that the Epicureans had a greater presence and influence in Corinth than the Sadducees did), Paul seems to be responding throughout 1 Corinthians and in this chapter in particular to people he regards as having deficient eschatology (in that they have not accounted for the role of the body, the acts performed by the body, and the resurrection of that body in the eschaton). He is not responding to people who have essentially no eschatology, otherwise he would need to lay theological groundwork that he seems to assume is established here (1:8; 3:12–17; 4:5; 5:5; 6:2–3, 9–14; 10:11; 11:26; 13:8–13; 15; 16:22).
The background plausibility of this theory relies on possibility rather than probability and must be judged as unsatisfactory. Its explanatory scope and explanatory power are extremely limited. It is not sufficiently simple, as it would require multiple levels of ad hoc argumentation to explain how this group could accept Jesus’s resurrection, acknowledge other aspects of Christian eschatology (but not take them seriously enough at the ethical level), and yet still deny the general resurrection because they did not believe in any afterlife at all. Because this theory fails these other criteria, it also fails in the possibility of being illuminating.
The interpretation of the resurrection deniers as being motivated by an over-realized eschatology and a radical reinterpretation of resurrection is, in most of its forms, more of an imaginative scholarly construct than a demonstrable aspect of history. Although the theory explains the denial of the future general resurrection, it does not explain why the straightforward statement of denial is, “there is no resurrection of the dead” rather than, “there is no longer/there will be no other resurrection of the dead.” This theory also does not explain why the deniers believe in Jesus’s resurrection and not the general one, nor why Paul would think his argument would work against their denial by linking Jesus’s resurrection to their own. Furthermore, such a spiritualized understanding of resurrection does not seem likely to have emerged from the Greeks and Romans, who had the same conception of resurrection as bodily in nature. The typical warrant for this view has come from the literary context of this letter and Pauline texts, specifically in the almost universally cited 1 Cor 4:8 and 2 Tim 2:17–18. However, apart from any other difficulties in connecting theses texts to the one analyzed here (such as the fact that 4:8 is Paul’s characterization of his interlocutors rather than their own discourse as marked by the ὅτι present in 15:12), both of these texts feature the crucial term ἤδη (“already”), which is conspicuous by its absence in 15:12—as are any expressions that convey equivalent ideas—if Paul intended to convey a view of over-realized eschatology. These other texts are both clear in their statements of over-realized eschatology precisely because both feature an element that is absent from 15:12.
The background plausibility for over-realized eschatology is low, given its difficulty in explaining historically how this view developed. The explanatory scope and power are better than the first theory, but the theory ultimately fails to explain adequately the deniers’ belief in Jesus’s resurrection as well as the actual statement of their denial in v. 12. For these reasons, the theory is also not parsimonious, given the ad hoc rationalizing it must do to explain the discrepancy between the acceptance of Jesus’s resurrection and the denial of the general resurrection. If it was valid on other grounds, this theory could illuminate the development of divergent eschatologies in early Christianity, but its predictive ability is already questionable, given the lack of a clear statement from the deniers that the resurrection had already taken place.
Is the final theory that the Corinthian deniers deny the expectation of bodily resurrection under the influence of philosophy and dualistic anthropology thus more likely by process of elimination if by nothing else? This theory fits the historical-cultural context, given the known influence of dualistic anthropology and of philosophical afterlife beliefs, such as in the immortality of the soul (even if this belief was far from the only such expectation among philosophers). This theory also explains the denial of the resurrection, at least for the upper-class members of the group who would have more likely had exposure to Greco-Roman philosophical anthropology and philosophy in general. The basic problem with this theory is its inability to account for any of the deniers’ positive beliefs in a way that distinguishes it as a compelling theory. If they deny the general resurrection only on the grounds of a philosophically influenced dualistic anthropology, why do they accept Jesus’s resurrection? If the deniers regarded the body as an inferior anthropological facet, why does Paul seem to think that they had any positive regard for the baptismal ritual that necessitates the involvement of the body for its efficacy?
The background plausibility of this theory is the highest of the standard theories, but it is limited by the restriction of the denial to a philosophical matter, which is built on the further unjustified assumption that only (or perhaps primarily) the upper-class members of the Corinthian congregation would deny the eschatological resurrection. In that same vein, the theory may adequately explain why some upper-class members denied the general resurrection (hence why I do not completely discount it), but it does not explain why some lower-class members, who probably did not have the same exposure to or acceptance of philosophers’ positions, would reject it. After all, while popular religions and the myths that they purveyed were widely accessible to members of all socioeconomic classes, the philosophical literature and teaching does not seem to have been as widely accessible to less educated and less literate members of the populace (e.g., Plutarch, Mor. 328e; Suetonius, Nero 52). There is also a lack of clarity/power to the explanation for the discrepancy between their denial of the general resurrection and their acceptance of Jesus’s resurrection. This theory fails to be parsimonious because of the number of assumptions it relies on that have not been sufficiently justified, such as the assumption that the deniers consisted of (at least primarily) upper-class members who would have more access to philosophically informed education and discourse. This theory may be an incomplete explanation, but it does have the potential to illuminate the ways in which early Christians interacted with schools of Greco-Roman philosophy, especially on matters of anthropology and eschatology.
This last theory also vividly illustrates the assumptions undergirding most identification theories of any type. One such assumption is that the deniers of resurrection are more or less coextensive with the upper-class members that Paul has expressed problems with in various portions of the letter (especially in chs. 8–11). It is surely accurate that adherents of philosophies that denigrated the body would object to the idea of the body returning from the grave, but on what basis can we assume that only the upper-class and only those who received exposure to these philosophical ideas through formal education and elite society would deny the resurrection but those among the less formally educated would not? Nothing in the text indicates that the “some” are only from one class or one group of society. The only thing that defines the “some” as a group is the fact that they deny the general resurrection of the dead. Likewise, as I show below, there is no historical warrant for restricting denial of the general resurrection to this class or group.
The Neglected Factor of Mythical Influence
Other theories present more nuanced reconstructions of the socio-religious dynamics in this situation that seem much more likely. The works of Paul Brown, Dag Øistein Endsjø, and Dale Martin are especially notable in this regard. While most scholars have looked to schools of philosophy to match Paul’s description, they have often not noted the distinction these scholars make between how the more educated classes could be more philosophically oriented and how the less educated classes would be more mythically oriented.
In contrast to the philosophers’ works, the myths of gods and heroes were widely known and available through oral transmission, cultic sites, religious festivals (including games), and rituals. Most significantly for this analysis, these myths included stories of gods and heroes being resurrected (returned to bodily life) after death (including Osiris, Horus, non-Orphic Dionysus, Melqart/Heracles, Achilles, Pelops, Alcestis [by Heracles], and Hippolytus [by Asclepius]). In Corinth itself, Dionysus was known and there was an Isis and Sarapis cult as well as some evidence of the awareness of Osiris. Likewise, the Isthmian games were supposed to commemorate the hero Palaimon/Melicertes, who was translated and made immortal rather than resurrected.
These myths clearly involved a bodily post-mortem or post-disappearance fate for the subjects, usually as bodily restoration by resurrection, but sometimes as reception of a new body (often by translation). Indeed, the gods themselves were embodied entities. If bodies were good enough for gods and heroes, the general populace did not have reason to denigrate the body.
Likewise, while certain philosophers may have desired an afterlife in which the soul lived on forever, the popular myths of the day—most famously conveyed by Homer’s Odyssey 11—presented pictures of the typical afterlife in which some part of the dead continues existing, but whatever is left after death is not truly living. By contrast, to become immortal was to become divine (Euripides, Andr. 1255–1256; cf. the much later Plutarch, Pel. 16.5; Rom. 27.3-28.8 on the purported translation of Romulus). In contrast to certain philosophical views, which drew a sharp distinction between the body and what remains after death, these stories portrayed these post-mortem shades as participating in embodied mortality, so that their continued existence is not truly immortality; they are the residue of the dead. In fact, these phantoms are identifiable because of their resemblances to specific bodies. But for the vast majority of people, even the renowned figures of the myths, this resemblance was the closest they would come to inhabiting bodies again, as any resurrection—much less an eschatological resurrection—was not expected (Homer, Il. 23.75–79; 24.550–551; Od. 11.210–222; Euripides, Herc. fur. 718–719; Sophocles, El. 137–139; Aeschylus, Eum. 647–648).
The exceptions to this trend were the gods and heroes raised from death to everlasting bodily life. I have already listed several more well-known and widely cited examples. While Homer consigned even the heroes of the Trojan War to the shady existence of Hades, Hesiod states that the place for the heroes after their deaths was on the Isles of the Blessed (Op. 166 –173), although some heroes could even reside with the gods. Of course, in the traditional ancient interpretation, such fate was embodied, as the stories of Dionysus, Pelops, Achilles, and Heracles in particular make clear.
In other cases, whether resurrection per se has occurred or not, the heroes experience a new, immortal and embodied life. In one story, the Dioscuri declare that their sister, Helen of Troy, will be made a goddess after her death (Euripides, Hel. 1666–1669), meaning that she would receive an immortal body. Although there is some obscurity over the nature of the post-mortem fate of Aristeas of Proconnesus (Herodotus, Hist. 4.14–15; Origen, Cels. 3.26–29; Aeneas of Gaza, Theo. 63.20–64.8), the ancients clearly saw him as an analogy for Jesus’s bodily return from death and he was worshiped by some after his death. As Castor was dying, Pollux opted to ask Zeus to give his brother half of his immortality, so that they could alternate between Olympus and Hades, thereby participating in the fates of heroes and mortals (Pindar, Nem. 10.75–90). Euripides may hint at a version of the story of Peleus in which the father of Achilles reunites with Thetis and is made immortal before he could die (Andr. 1263–1268). Additionally, an appended ending of Euripides’s play Iphigenia at Aulis claims that the titular character was spared from her sacrificial death and made immortal by the gods (1607, 1622). Finally, Ino, the mother of the aforementioned Melicertes/Palaimon, was translated and made immortal (Homer, Od. 5.333–335; Ps.-Apollodorus, Lib. 3.4.3). Clearly, resurrection and other paths to bodily immortality were options for exceptionally favored heroes, even if not for the average mortal.
With these stories in the background, we can return to consideration of how class concerns may or may not impinge on resurrection denial. Since Paul’s letter clearly addresses problems of factionalism and status obsession at Corinth, one cannot entirely discount the possibility that some of the deniers were upper-class members and that these members may have been influenced by negative views of the body in some Greco-Roman philosophies. At the same time, it is unnecessary to assume that only upper-class members would object to the general resurrection or that the only basis on which any of them would do so is dualistic anthropology. After all, it is clearly false that lower-class members would have had no issue in accepting the general resurrection.
The inclusion of both aspects of potential influence helps to explain the contents of Paul’s argument. Paul meets the philosophical challenge through his agricultural imagery and his cosmological points in vv. 36–44. The subjects and imagery here were commonplace in Greco-Roman philosophy, but Paul is addressing them through a scriptural lens with a view to eschatology. The interlocutor of v. 35 is possibly a representative of the more philosophically inclined, as Paul responds to a question about bodies (ποίῳ δέ σώματι ἔρχονται: “With what kind of body are they coming?”) by making a larger point about a proper cosmological framework and insisting that the interlocutor needed to rethink cosmological assumptions about bodies and death. At the same time, one should not understand Paul as meeting a challenge only the philosophically inclined could understand.
In the next section of his argument in vv. 45–49, Paul makes explicit the fact that Adam and Christ are the points of reference for the types of existence defined in the antitheses of vv. 42–44. As in vv. 20–23, Paul refers to the larger narrative of God and creation to articulate the significance of Jesus’s resurrection. In this way, he meets not only the philosophical challenge of describing the type of cosmology in which the resurrection of the dead makes sense, but also the mythological challenge of describing the story in which Jesus’s resurrection makes the sense it does. Jesus is not another hero whose fate has no direct bearing on others; he is the new progenitor of humanity, the one who gives resurrection life via the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Paul is furthering his initial work in 1 Corinthians to construct a new narrative world for the Corinthians that will reshape their theology, eschatology, cosmology, anthropology, and the Christology that unites all of these aspects.
It is clear enough that this theory fits with the historical-cultural context; the last point to address is how it fits with the literary context. The mixed composition of this group would fit with the factionalist atmosphere Paul portrays in the letter, especially in the first four chapters, along with the obsession of some members with status elevation (as illustrated in these chapters and in how they approached spiritual gifts, according to Paul). Other ethical concerns, particularly in the sexual realm, may, in some cases, be explicable by a lower view of the body and a lack of appreciation for the implication that what one does with one’s body matters in eschatological terms (6:12–20). However, it is arguably more likely to be explicable by the lack of ethical formation in the Greco-Roman religious background whence they came, wherein the only “ethical” concerns are cultic practices and their proper performance. Paul’s problem throughout the letter is that his audience still has at least one foot in the ways of the world around them. This point is especially well illustrated in chs. 8 and 10, where there is an issue of eating food offered to idols and participating in idol festivals as part of the vibrant Greco-Roman religious life of Corinth, which affects believers across the socioeconomic scale (8:7–11, 10:7, 14–21, 27–28; cf. 12:2).
Summary
As such, my synthetic proposal for the identity of the deniers is that they consisted of a mixed group of some upper-class Christians and some lower-class Christians. Both groups were likely formed by the popular myths of their cultural contexts, but the upper-class were more likely to include some who came from more philosophically oriented backgrounds and the lower-class were more likely to have had primarily mythically oriented backgrounds of popular religion and storytelling. The former would thus deny their own resurrection because their philosophical background would lead them to deny the desirability of resurrection. Yet because they are Christians who have not fully integrated their theology—as Paul argues—they would accept that God uniquely raised Christ from the dead for their sake, but perhaps not that their union with Christ necessarily entailed that they would rise from the dead. The latter would deny their own resurrection because their mythological background might lend credence to God raising Jesus, but it gave them no grounds for expecting that his fate had any impact on their own. Paul may have kept his description about the deniers generalized because they do not stem from any one way of thinking, but rather represent a cross-section of members who deny the general resurrection for a number of different reasons. This proposal makes the best sense in light of the historical-cultural context of Corinth. It makes sense of the denial of general resurrection, which would not necessarily be restricted to any one group on the basis of education, socioeconomic class, or religious/philosophical influence. The syncretistic element and the fact that they have not fully integrated Paul’s teaching makes sense of their belief in Christ’s resurrection, as well as the problems Paul has been addressing throughout this letter. It also makes sense of why Paul argues in vv. 13–19 on the assumption that his interlocutors would not deny Jesus’s resurrection.
This identification theory has a high degree of background plausibility in light of the allowance for philosophical influence combined with the emphasis on the much more culturally prevalent myths. It also has greater explanatory scope and power than the other theories in that it provides a plausible explanation for why a cross-section of Corinthians might deny the general/eschatological resurrection and it explains all of the relevant factors that an identification theory must properly address. It is suitably simple/parsimonious because it fulfills the previous three criteria without relying on the sets of questionable ad hoc assumptions that the other theories do. Finally, this theory illuminates how gentile audiences from a variety of backgrounds could have responded to the Christian message and theology of resurrection as well as how the early Christian teachers engaged with mythology and philosophy (often in intertwined fashion) from the earliest generation.