RESURRECTION

Thursday, April 01, 2010

In Jesus' day it was clear what the various Greek, Aramaic, etc. words for resurrection did not mean. Resurrection did not mean life after death in some disembodied form, it did not mean the immortality of the soul in either torment or paradise, and it did not mean reincarnation. It meant the reversal of death, restoration to some kind of bodily immortality. Many pagans believed in disembodied life after death, but they considered resurrection impossible. Some (not all) Jews expected resurrection for the righteous at the end of days--but not for anybody before then. A resurrected body might differ from our bodies, but it had to be a body. Neither a ghost nor a disembodied soul nor a spirit on a higher plane of consciousness would have been called "resurrected."

(From William Lane Craig's book, ON GUARD--Defending Your Faith With Reason and Precision)