Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
1 Corinthians 15:35-58, Seeds, stars and the last trumpet
Asked what kind of body the dead will have, Paul answers with the seed that dies and rises as a plant and with the differing glories of sun, moon and stars, sets the first Adam beside the last, and ends with the trumpet and death swallowed up.
1 Corinthians 15:35-58, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul takes up the question of what kind of body the raised dead will have. A seed must die before it grows into a plant, and God gives each thing the body he chooses, just as sun, moon and stars each have their own splendor. The present body is mortal and the resurrection body will be imperishable and given by the Spirit, as the first Adam was made a living being and Christ, the last Adam, gives life. At the final trumpet the dead will rise and the living be transformed, and death will be defeated for good.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/resurrection-of-the-dead\/","n":"The resurrection of the dead","s":"Most Jews, with the Pharisees, expected God to raise the dead to bodily life at the end of the age. The Sadducees denied it. Nobody expected one man to rise ahead of everyone else.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/adam-in-jewish-tradition\/","n":"Adam in Jewish tradition","s":"The Old Testament says little about Adam outside Genesis, but by Paul's day Jewish writers spoke often of his lost glory and of the sin and death he brought into the world. Each person, they added, became his own Adam.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/sowing-and-harvest\/","n":"Sowing, harvest and threshing","s":"The farming year every hearer lived by: seed scattered on thin and thorny ground, weeds that look like wheat, the harvest rush, and grain winnowed in the wind while the chaff burned.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/angels\/","n":"Angels","s":"God's messengers and his heavenly army. Jews of Jesus' day spoke of guardian angels, of the greatest angels standing before God's face, and of angels coming with God at the judgment.","r":""}
Jewish teachers listed questions like this as the standard objections to resurrection, such as bodies lost at sea or burned; later rabbis answered with an indestructible bone in the neck, Paul with the analogy of the seed, which later rabbis also used (Keener and his notes). Many Jewish teachers expected the body to rise exactly as it had died and then be healed (Keener; the cultural backgrounds article Resurrection). Most people thought the stars were made of fire; Gentiles took them as divine and Jews as angels, and many Jews compared the resurrection body to the stars (Daniel 12:2-3; the cultural backgrounds notes; Keener). Heiser notes the Greco-Roman belief that the dead had bodies of aether, the stuff of the stars, and argues that Paul draws on Daniel 12 instead. Philo set the heavenly man of Genesis 1 above the earthly man of Genesis 2, and Paul reverses the order (Keener and his notes; the cultural backgrounds article Adam in Jewish Tradition). Flesh and blood was a common phrase for mortals (Keener). The trumpet gathered people for assembly or war, and a daily Jewish prayer looked for a trumpet gathering God's people at the end (Keener and his notes).
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 15:39-41, 15:42-43, 15:46-49, 15:50 and 15:52
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on 1 Corinthians 15:35, 15:37, 15:41, 15:42-44, 15:45 and 15:52, and articles Resurrection and Adam in Jewish Tradition
- Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, ch. 42, Describing the Indescribable
