AD 58-60 – What Kind of Resurrection was Paul preaching?

48 avenge. We will have a lot more to say about all this when we get to AD 66.

AD 58-60 – What Kind of Resurrection was Paul preaching?

During his trial in Jerusalem, Paul stated under oath that, “I am on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead” (Acts 23:6; cf. 24:21), after which there erupted a dispute in the Council between the Pharisees and Sadducees. Not long after that in his trial before the Procurator Felix in Caesarea, he stated that “there is about to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked” (Acts 24:15), and that the Judgment was also “about to be” (Acts 24:25). The Greek word mello is used in both of those verses. This closely matches Paul’s preaching to the Athenians eight years earlier about God having “fixed a day in which He is about to judge the world” (Acts 17:31). These statements are interesting for a lot of reasons, not only because of their affirmations of imminency, but even more so in regard to the nature of this “about to be” (Gk. mello) resurrection of both the righteous and wicked. If Paul was thinking of a collective body of Jewish believers being raised out of covenantally-dead Judaism, why would he mention “both the righteous and the wicked” being raised?

Those who teach the Collective Body resurrection view have not been able to satisfactorily explain Paul’s language here. If this is the same concept of resurrection that Paul preached everywhere, then he could not have been teaching a collective body resurrection concept anywhere, since it is clear here in Acts 24:15 that the resurrection would include both the righteous and the wicked. That does not fit the collective body view, but it perfectly fits the idea of the disembodied souls of the dead being raised up out of Hades for the judgment (just like we see pictured in the Sheep and Goat Judgment in Matthew 25). This was not a collective body resurrection out of covenantal sin death for only the Christians (the righteous). This resurrection included both the righteous and the wicked. The disembodied souls of all the remaining dead ones in Hades were raised up out of Hades and judged at the Parousia, just like it teaches in Rev. 20.

Since this was the concept of resurrection that Paul preached everywhere, it means that all his epistles that mention the resurrection must also be teaching this same concept of a resurrection of the dead out of Hades, and NOT a collective body of Christians (i.e., the church) being raised out of sin-dead Judaism. This is an important point that we need to nail down right here in our study of Acts. It will help us later as we study all of Paul’s letters in which he mentions the resurrection of the dead ones out of Hades that was about to occur at the imminent Parousia.

Paul also left the clear impression with the Pharisees in his trial at Jerusalem that he was teaching the same kind of resurrection that they believed in. He said that he was STILL (not “used to be”) “a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees,” and that he was “on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead,” the same kind of resurrection that the Pharisees believed in (Acts 23:6). The Pharisees did not have a collective body concept of the resurrection. They instead held an individual body view. So, if Paul was teaching a collective body view, we have to charge him with deliberate deception while he was under oath and on trial. It means he knowingly deceived the Pharisees into coming to the defense of a fellow Pharisee who supposedly believed in the same kind of resurrection that they did, when in fact Paul knew that his (collective body) view was radically different. Do you see the problem here?

In all my study of the rabbinical writings (Talmud and Midrash), I have never found any evidence that any of the Pharisees ever held to a collective body view of the resurrection. They all held to an individual body view, especially when referring to a resurrection that would include both the righteous and the wicked, as Paul does here. So, unless we want to charge Apostle Paul with deliberate deception, it would be best to understand him as teaching the same kind of resurrection that the Pharisees believed in, which was definitely NOT a collective body view.

Furthermore, he said later in his defense before Agrippa that this particular view of the resurrection, which he shared in common with the Pharisees, was the SAME promise of