Now to begin, it is absurd to argue that Paul ought to use arguments evidenced only in later sources, for it is based on an assumption that the development of these arguments existed in Paul's time (no matter how "inconceivable" Carrier wants it to be for his own purposes). It is not enough to suggest that the Talmud may be drawing on earlier arguments. But even if we allow this, contextually, Carrier's appeal to the Talmudic arguments and their lack in Paul fails, because:

• Unlike the rabbis, Paul had recourse to appeal to an actually resurrected person. He did not have to appeal to any deductions or a fortiori arguments; he had something much superior -- personal experience (and that of the other disciples) with what a resurrected body was actually like. Thus Carrier's argument that Paul does not appeal to "known Pharasaic defenses of the resurrection" is misplaced from the beginning; Paul did not need any of these defenses, in light of the collective personal experience he could appeal to. The rabbis had only theoretical responses because that is all they could offer.

  This relates to a fundamental error that Carrier makes. He finds it "peculiar" [120] that Paul "provides two kinds of evidence in support of Christ's resurrection: scripture and various epiphanies like his own roadside vision" as opposed to the testimony of witnesses that Jesus ate fish and so on and that he does not appeal to any witnesses [124]. Yet Paul's very appeal to what Carrier calls "epiphanies" -- the experiences of the apostles, of James, of Peter, of the 500 -- would be exactly that sort of appeal. Moreover, Carrier fails to appreciate that:

  1. The Corinthians had no clear objection to Christ being raised; their objections centered on their own resurrections. Just because Jesus had been raised does not mean that they could not have held a thoroughly inconsistent position in which they agreed that Jesus had been raised, but that they would not be. Indeed, Paul's formulation of the question suggests such a blatant inconsistency: "Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?" It does not say, "...how say some among you that Christ was not raised from the dead?" but takes for granted that they accept what was already preached. Witherington in his commentary on Corinthians [301] notes the option that the Corinthians could have believed that there was no longer resurrection (Christ had one, but there would be no more), though he now prefers a view that these people may have simply denied resurrection, and "may not have thought through what that might imply about the Easter event" -- or else may have reworked Jesus' appearances into being like an appearance of a pagan deity.

     Carrier claims that 2BH makes sense of the worries of the Corinthians, because they would think, "if Christ's body remained on earth, and so ours will as well, in what sense can we really be resurrected?" [140] But this entails an incredible position that when Paul or others preached the resurrection of Christ, they failed to teach any part of 2BH to begin with! Is Carrier really going to seriously propose that this most basic issue (as opposed to the more arcane one we propose, about the nature of the rez body) was lacking in the kerygma, and that Paul and the others just said Christ was "raised" without giving even the most basic idea of what this meant -- and that these problems emerged only a decade or so after Paul first preached in Corinth?

     FAQ answer: Carrier seems to be addressing this to some extent when he writes:

     Had that been so, then Paul would not be teaching them these details again in 1 Corinthians and yet again in 2 Corinthians. Obviously, they did not understand something very fundamental about "how they would be raised" and "with what body they would come," so much so that some of the Corinthians were concluding that the dead would not be raised at all--which they could not possibly have concluded if Paul had "already taught them" all about how they would be raised. Therefore, these letters entail there was a large gap in their education (at least that faction's education--and they may have been evangelized after Paul, while those converted and taught by Paul were having a hard time explaining Paul's views to them). But that Paul himself would leave them in the dark should come as no surprise, since Paul's "introductory course" in Christianity (represented by his letter to the Romans) is a lengthy discourse packed with details about what they were expected to believe, yet it never discusses anything about the mechanics of resurrection--in fact, it's discussion of resurrection is so scanty and ambiguous that it practically ensures confusion (hence see my discussion on pp. 149-50)

     This answer is misguided, for Carrier has manifestly misunderstood the point. The "details" is not what I am saying Paul would have had to forget to teach; it is the very fundamental core point of the two bodies that he would have had to have missed! If Christ and his resurrection was the plumb line for this, then there is nothing for the Corinthians to ask about, unless Paul forgot to teach this most critical element from the start, which is an absurdity. 1 and 2 Corinthians answer accessory questions that assume the truth of a core premise, which will be either 1BH or 2BH. The contexts of the questions only make sense if a 1BH lies in the background.

     As for Romans being an "introductory course" to Christianity, that is also an absurdity. Paul was writing to people who were already Christians and needed no "introductory course". Morris in his commentary on Romans [8ff] examines twelve ideas on the purpose of Romans and concludes that the best evidence points to it as a letter written by Paul to introduce himself to the Roman church, as a prologue to a visit, and a way of letting them know what he preached. Carrier will need to defend his view if he wants to be taken seriously here.

  2. Once again, it is foolish to assume that the Corinthian objectors had not, in their own arguments, taken into account these very points, and made their own explanation that mere re-assertion by Paul would not suit. If the questions are about the metaphysical nature of the body, answers Carrier envisages would be pointless:
     • "What kind of body did Jesus have?"
     • "One that could eat fish."

     Questions about the content of the rez body Paul does properly answer, as best he can without the advantage of quantum physics, with his analogies to proper kinds of bodies for specific places. He obviously cannot answer with a molecular analysis of a resurrected cell. Carrier cannot deny that such limited "stupidity" as we suggest was indeed a possibility, either, for he already admits that under his view, the Corinthians missed a "very simple point" about God's power that "would indeed make someone seem stupid" as Paul did call them! [122]

• Carrier pulls from the Talmud inane questions that do not match the more credible ones Paul is dealing with. Asking whether a person will rise nude or clothed, or whether they will still have defects, are less credible "nitpicks" of the valid question Paul does answer, "With what kind of body do they come"? Carrier does not show us any matter where the rabbis were confronting the same questions Paul was, on the same level Paul was. The claim of "no resurrection" no doubt arose, as Carrier allows, from alleged problems raised in the "how" and "what" questions; but these, again, are not the sort of claims that the rabbis were answering. We do not see that the Corinthians were asking about being resurrected in the nude. Carrier also assumes that Paul, if he knew of such arguments, agreed with them and found them sound; the Pharasaic argument that "body and soul must be reunited so they can both be judged together" is, for example, on its face, a contrivance that could easily be defeated by noting that the disembodied enter judgment (hell or heaven) upon death. This is why it is simply outrageous for Carrier to note that Paul "bypassed" issues of clothing and wounds! [118] Paul was not addressing "metaphysical minutae" [120] but a very concrete and central question of doubt about the core of the doctrine.
• Carrier's further point that Paul would have appealed to texts like Daniel 12:2, Isaiah 26:19, and Ezekiel 37:5-10 [117] if indeed "he meant that our bodies would be reformed from the dirt into which they are dissolved" not only fails to show that this is not indicated in the text of Paul as it stands (which we will see that it is), but also assumes that the Corinthian objectors had not themselves known of these passages and already dismissed them with their "newer" arguments -- which in essence is what we say happened.
• Carrier's argument that if Jesus' body was in the grave rotting, the Corinthians could have some doubts about their resurrection, is also misplaced. As we noted elsewhere, Wright [315] notes that a view was held by the pagan philosophers of the day that spirit was "composed of material, albeit in finer particles." Thus Carrier is telling us that the Corinthians would have "doubted" something similar to what they would have once believed in! Indeed, it would erase any need for them to "worry" at all, since by lack of this new body, they would be missing nothing!
• As well pulled into the mix are patristic writers, who use arguments that Carrier believes Paul ought to have used. But aside from the gratuitous assumption of Paul's awareness of arguments used hundreds of years later, contextually, Carrier is again trying to fudge:
  • Justin Martyr said, "The resurrection is a resurrection of the flesh which died." But not only will we show that Paul does indicate this very thing; Justin's quote is in fact part of a huge work (lost to us, except in fragments) in which Justin is analyzing and delineating the specifics of the doctrine of resurrection. Justin is not specifically refuting someone who denies the discontinuity, as Carrier supposes Paul would be in our scenario.
  • Athenagoras said, "it is absolutely necessary" that soul and body be restored together, for "it is impossible" for the "same man" to rise otherwise. This likewise comes from a huge treatise on resurrection, one in which the author is not specifically "answering" someone who denies a discontinuity. Carrier may as well pick any part of either of these enormous works and make some issue of Paul's tiny segment not "using" some part of it in an epistle that had numerous other issues to deal with.
  • Finally, again, the series of questions Carrier wonders of Paul not dealing with, such as matters of wounds and deformities, and of keeping track of all the parts of the body, merely assumes yet again that these were the actual problems the Corinthians put to Paul. Nor is it effectual to note that Paul does not cite words of Jesus, unless Carrier proves that some word of Jesus had direct bearing on something Paul was answering, which Carrier does not do.

1. We do not agree that the Corinthians "did not believe in the survival of the soul" and as noted above to do agree that denial of their own resurrection "entailed" denial of Jesus' resurrection. Paul's retort that they were "lost" without the resurrection does not in the least prove, as Carrier claims, that it was believed that "death was final and irreversible" for Paul is speaking in soterological terms in which the Corinthians would be lost to eternal judgment and retribution, not to conscious existence. Carrier's use of 1 Cor. 15:29 is also misguided for it does not need to be "pitted against someone who denies any reward for the dead."
2. We agree with Carrier that the Corinthians did not have an issue with the flesh being denigrated.
3. We disgaree that Paul was not explicit about the continuity of the old and the new body.

It is to this last point that we now turn.

Passages and language that contradict 2BH.

Certain aspects of Paul's language are so clear that they are an explicit indication not of 2BH, but of transformation of the former body. Let us now turn to these.

• It is the dead that rise. This point is so simple, and so contrary to 2BH, that Carrier's missing it is quite astonishing.

  Put simply, Paul repeatedly says that it is the dead that rise. This language makes absolutely no sense under 2BH. The free-floating spirit that Carrier envisages taking on a new body is not "dead" and does not "rise" when it takes on its new body. The terminology only makes sense if it is something that is dead that is in some position from which it rises. The only aspect that may be so described properly is the dead body left in a prone position on the earth. Indeed, the inclusion of "buried" in the 1 Cor. 15 creed makes little sense if the body of Jesus was simply going to stay in its place and rot.

  FAQ answer: Carrier contrives the tortuous answer that "buried" is emphasized because "it was a scriptural element of the Gospel that emphasized and confirmed his death and established the finality of his essential consecration to the land of the dead" and also that it "was essential to the rationale of baptism." Carrier's failure here is twofold. On baptism, the analogy to burial was something adapted after the fact; ritual baptism was performed prior to Christianity by other Jewish sects, and so if 2BH were correct, we would expect that if baptism were used, that no analogy at all would be drawn. No more "rationale" was needed as the ritual already existed prior to Christianity. A similar answer may be given for the "scriptural element" -- Carrier is oblivious to the NT use of the OT, within which history called out the text, not vice versa. Burial would not be emphasized in the first place unless it were believed that the body were somehow removed. Only THEN would some "scriptural element" be sought out to validate what had happened as guaranteed by prior prophetic texts.

  Carrier is oblivious to how inappropriate these terms are for 2BH. He merely says, blandly, that Paul believed Jesus was "raised from the dead" "by being given a new body in heaven" [154] and that this is "perhaps why the language he uses for resurrection is never that of regeneration". But the language used IS that of regeneration -- it is the dead that are raised! The metaphor of death as "sleep" fits precisely that of a body in repose. (Carrier is also in error when he claims, trying to correct Wright, that Paul would not call a conscious state "sleep"; he neglects the nature of the disembodied afterlife in Jewish thought as a factor.)

  FAQ answer: Carrier pretends not to notice a problem here. He tries to define ther "dead in Christ" as "those who sleep in the spirit of Christ" but as has already been pointed out, this free-floating spirit will not "rise" under any hypothesis. Only a dead, buried body can do that, and Carrier has no answer for this.

• 1 Cor. 15:42-44 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: 43It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: 44It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. In his debate with Carrier, Mike Licona noted that the object "it" in the above indicated that it was the same body being referred to. Carrier replied by noting that "it" was not in the Greek (which is literally true). I asked Licona if he had any further comment on this point, and he replied as follows:

  The exegete is faced with the reality that there often are a number of ways to translate a particular verse. In such circumstances, he is responsible for preferring the best explanation. Although Carrier’s translation is possible, it is by no means the best. The majority of translators agree. I have 21 English translations and of these only 3 would be sympathetic to his translation (NJB, RSV, NRSV). Here’s why:

  Carrier’s translation of 15:44 is “A natural body is sown. A spiritual body is raised.” This is possible, since the nouns “natural body” and “spiritual body” are in the nominative case (i.e., usually a subject). However, Richard’s statement during our debate that the word “it” does not appear in Greek is deceptive, although I’m not implying that he meant it that way. In first semester Greek, everyone learns that Greek verbs imply their subject. On many occasions a verb appears without its subject, because it is implied in the verb’s inflection. This is like the command “Do it!” The subject “you” is implied. The passage under consideration is a perfect example of this, even when verse 44 is excluded. What we have in verse 44 is a third person singular verb. Thus, if the nouns “natural body” and “spiritual body” are to be understood as predicate nominatives, the implied subject of the verb “sown” is “it.” Predicates rename the subject and are usually interchangeable. To those unfamiliar with Greek, this may sound complicated and I’m sorry for that. But this is learned in first semester Greek. Eighteen of twenty-one English translations will quickly verify the truth of my explanation by translating the verse “It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body.”

  Thus far, we have two possible translations:

  Carrier: “A natural body is sown. A spiritual body is raised.”

  Licona: “It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body.”

  Let me explain why mine is to be preferred. In the context of 15:42b-44a, Paul writes:

  speiretai en fthora (it is sown in corruption)

  eyeiretai en aftharsia (it is raised in incorruption)

  speiretai en atimia (it is sown in dishonor)

  egeiretai en doxee (it is raised in glory)

  speiretai en asthenia (it is sown in weakness)

  egeiretai en dunamei (it is raised in power)

  speiretai soma psuxikon (it is sown a body natural)

  egeiretai soma pneumatikon (it is raised a body spiritual)

  Paul uses the verbs “sown” and “raised” eight times in these verses. Note that even if we exclude the last two statements (7-8; which is verse 44), all of the others (1-6) represent a clear case where the “it” (i.e., the corpse) is implied in the verb. This is indisputable. Otherwise, there is no subject in 1-6 and the sentences make no sense. Paul is crystal clear in 1-6: “It is sown…It is raised.”

  What about statements 7-8? Carrier’s translation requires that, after Paul has said “it is sown” and “it is raised” six times (1-6), he suddenly switches the thought so that the “it” is not implied in the verb even though the verbs and grammatical order of 7-8 are identical. It is true that Paul has changed what completes the thought of the verbs from the dative case in 1-6 to the nominative in 7-8. But the strength of the precise repetition of the exact verbs and grammatical order virtually requires that the nominatives be taken as predicates to the subject “it” which is implied in verbs 7-8 as in 1-6.

  The translation that I and the overwhelming number of modern translators offer is simple and smooth. It may not appear that way from this technical explanation. However, Richard’s translation is actually anything but simple or smooth when it is placed in its immediate context. Instead, it breaks the smooth thought that proceeds through Paul’s text. It’s also interesting to note what Paul writes a few verses later in verses 53-54. Paul goes out of his way to say that it’s this present mortal body that will be changed: “For necessarily this corruptible will put on the incorruptible and this mortal will put on immortality. . .” Notice the pronoun “this.” One can almost imagine Paul grabbing his arm as he emphasizes that it is this body that will put on immortality as one puts on a coat. Paul is clear: The corpse will be clothed with immortality and imperishability. A transformation will take place to our present body.

  And in fact, let us next make that point from 53-54:

• 1 Cor. 15:53-54 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. As Licona notes, the figure here requires an adding to of the corruptible (which can only be the corpse, not Carrier's floating spirit or "inner man") by the incorruptible. This is completely incoherent for 2BH. Carrier's analysis of this passage includes 15:44-52 as well, and of these Carrier claims that Paul "conspicuously avoids saying that one body becomes the other." But "becomes" would be an inadequate description to begin with; it would fail to capture the radicalness of the change. His further claim that "wore" in "we wore the image of the one of dirt" somehow suppresses the "idea of continuity" because the "idea of 'wearing' our current bodies is conveyed as more an event than a condition" also fails to appreciate the radical nature of the overhaul. So likewise Carrier's presumptive argument that [134] the distinction of the bodies as earthly and heavenly "allows no continuity between the two bodies." Carrier's arbitrary declaration of Platonism is merely an assumption that the transformation is not radical enough to earn the distinction. It is like saying that a "fresh banana" and a "rotten banana" can't ever refer to the same banana!
• Romans 8:11, 23 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you....And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

  These quite obvious references to resurrectional transformation rest as burrs in Carrier's saddle. To dispense with them, he is forced into a series of tortuous exegetical routines:

  • Romans 8:11 is waved off as referring to "our present life" [149]. Carrier must gratuitously insert the concept of "now" into 8:11 to force this interpretation (his point that "he who raised Christ" is "the agent, not the point of comparison" does not affect our view). He must also ignore that the critical adjective is mortal, or liable to death, a pointless description if the issue is merely our "present circumstances".

    Note that the actual comparison is not, as Carrier claims, merely "the giving of the Spirit" but also the results of that Spirit being given: With Christ, the raising of Jesus from the dead. The parallel is unmistakable:

    • Spirit = principle of activity, which
    • raised Jesus from the dead/shall quicken your mortal body

    Carrier's attempt to evade this by wresting Paul's meaning to be, "God gives life to our bodies now, bodies that will die because they are mortal" is an exegetical travesty in which he merely assumes what he needs to prove and tries to force Paul to say what he wants Paul to mean. Note as Morris does in his commentary on Romans [310] that the phrase "giving life" or quicken is appropriate to us and not Jesus, for Jesus being the "Prince of Life" (Acts 3:15) only needed to be raised, not given life.

  • Romans 8:23 Carrier dispenses with by means that may be considered deceptive. He says that it should be understood "in light of another passage" but hides the passage in the endnote rather than citing it. The passage is in another letter, 2 Cor. 5:6-8: Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. This Carrier uses to illicitly force a meaning for Rom. 8:23 that we are "groaning for" entrance into our "new spiritual body." In other words, he once again forces his meaning onto the text, this time by begging the question of a distinction that he himself must invent in 2 Cor. 5:6-8. However, he is unable to adequately deflect the force of the most clear part of 8:23, which refers to the redemption of our body. The meaning here clearly refers to our present body, and this is to be seen in our view as accomplished by transformation; that is the only option for reading this text. However, Carrier must once again add ideas into the text to force his view upon it, so that "body" means not the mortal body, but the "inner man" (!), and "hence entering into our new spiritual body" [150]! There is nothing here but more assuming what is not proven, and redefining terms and adding to the text for convenience. For to use Carrier's own logic, Paul could have said "redemption of our spiritual body" or "our inner man" as Carrier puts it -- but he didn't.
• Romans 6:4. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Carrier barely regards this verse in an endnote [222] and fails to see that the figure of baptism as used here stands firmly against 2BH: The same body that goes into the water is the one that comes out, albeit signifying a person inwardly transformed. Had this not been a parallel to Christ's own burial and resurrection, it would never have been a suitable figure for Paul to use here.

Passages and language that Carrier thinks affirm 2BH, but do not.

FAQ answer: No, not really. Carrier answers some other view which says that the seed and the plant are "the same thing" and that isn't what I argue. I argue rather that the seed contains all that is the plant within it -- and this is better suited for 1BH than 2BH.

Carrier tries to evade the clear language of this passage with three obfuscations:

1. He appeals to the word rendered changed (allasso) and argues that it ought to be rendered exchanged. There are two problems with this view.
   • The first is that as Carrier describes 2BH, "exchange" is not an appropriate word for what the dead undergo. Feasibly, it could be used of those who are still alive when the resurrection occurs (and given the radical revamping our view involves, it also fits for us as well!) but the dead will not undergo any "exchange" by Carrier's view -- they abandoned their dead bodies long before, and God does not collect or do anything with the old body. Carrier says that the verb is used of "taking one thing in exchange for another" [136] but in his view, there is nothing being taken other than, arguably, a body from those still alive at the resurrection -- and in Carrier's view, it seems more likely that in that case, we would have the grotesque scenario of corpses being left behind as their owners' "inner man" speeds up to heaven to put on the new "resurrection body."
   • Second, as Licona pointed out in his debate with Carrier, lexicons cite "change" as the primary meaning of the word and put "exchange" second. As we consider where else it is used in the NT (4 times outside 1 Corinthians), it is clear that sometimes the word can be read as either "change" or as "exchange" based on the minimally available context:
     • Acts 6:14, "We have heard him say, that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us."
     • Rom. 1:23 "And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things."

     In one place, "exchange" does make the best sense:

     • Heb. 1:12 "And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail."

     But elsewhere, "change" is the only viable reading:

     • Gal. 4:20 "I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you."

     From this it is clear that the meaning of allasso must be determined by context and that Carrier's appeal is negated.

2. He tries to negate the proper view with the misplaced retort, "If a corpse enters a garment, it is still a corpse. How would dirt putting on a coat make it no longer dirt?" [137] Let me answer this rather foolish question with ones of my own: If Bruce Wayne puts on his bulletproof bat-suit and his utility belt, is he "still Bruce Wayne"? How would Bruce Wayne putting on a bulletproof suit and a utility belt make him no longer Bruce Wayne? His accoutrements make him more than Bruce Wayne; he is now "Batman". So if a corpse puts on the incorruptible power of God, will it remain a corpse? Better: If a soma (to avoid the prejudice of the word "corpse") puts on the power of God, will it stay the same as it is? (An even better subject for the analogy I'm positing would be Ralph Hinckley from that old show The Greatest American Hero, because his suit actually did give him powers; but I suspect many readers don't remember that one.) No, it is clear that the metaphor best suits a transformation effected by some outside force (and not simply putting a "new substance" on over an old one, but putting a transformed substance on, period). Carrier has simply reduced "the incorruptible" to a mere "garment" or "coat" in order to imply that no change would occur.
3. Carrier then tries to force-fit the metaphor into 2BH by saying that it means "the mortal body enters the realm of (emphasis added) the imperishable, and is enveloped by it" and passes away, leaving behind the "imperishable garment" (the spirit body prior to the resurrection, as it were). But this is a twisted metaphor. Under 2BH as Carrier describes it, it is the spirit, not the mortal body, that "enters the realm of the imperishable". The body rots in the ground and does not "enter" anything except perhaps a casket or a grave. Carrier has added the words "realm of" to Paul's words in order to pound the square peg of this theory into the round hole of Paul's words. Moreover, one does not "clothe" themselves with, or put on, a realm.

Once again Carrier must resort to props to force a text into his desired position. He begins with the unsubstantiated claim that Paul wrote the above because "the Corinthians continued to have problems" [139] understanding the issue even after his first letter. The above reads in no sense like Paul answering questions as he does in 1 Cor. 15. He does not quote an objector, and the passage follows exhortationally from his prior points concering persecution in the present body (4:8-15). He further argues:

• Carrier claims that Paul's emphasis on not worrying about visible things only makes sense if our current body is temporal and does not survive the resurrection. But once again this is simply Carrier failing to appreciate the radical nature of the transformation, which likewise cannot be seen at present and indeed would seem especially incredible in a world in which disease and pain were rampant.
• He claims that the text describes an "entirely new" body in the future, but neither word, "entirely" or "new," is in the text. He also draws a presumptuous conclusion that Paul's use of the word skenos (tabernacle, or tent) for the body is related to "Orphic conceptions of the body as a residence, jailhouse, or tomb." It is far more likely that it is related to Paul's profession as a tentmaker, or else to common use of the term upon which the Orphics made a special emphasis; what Carrier is performing here is the linguistic fallacy of illegitimate totality transfer, a common exegetical error in which the we have "the ascription of a predetermined meaning to a word, either derived from or concocted by other uses of the word elsewhere, to the word in a particular context." To attempt to draw over the ideas of Orphic or Philonic theology into the mere use of a word is an absurdity.
• He notes that Paul calls our bodies "earthen vessels" (4:7) which he says are clay pots that "once used, must be destroyed." In this case Carrier is making the same error as Calvinists who use Paul's "potter analogy" in Romans 9 to deny that humans have any free choice. He is straining the analogy to the breaking point in order to force an exegesis onto the text. If we are to follow that through, then his 2BH becomes null and void as well, since pots do not have spirits and do not receive "new bodies". The obvious point of Paul's analogy is merely to contrast ourselves with the divine source of our strength, not commit to a full-scale anthropology!
• Carrier finally demonstrates his lack of knowledge of the collectivist anthropology of the period by reading into Paul's words about being "in Christ" an idea that this means that in the intermediate state we will be part of some Borglike "collective essence" [145]. In other words, he reads Paul's words like a true individualist. The phrase rather speaks to the sharing of virtual identity, or group embeddedness in which a common perspective is shared.
• It should also be noted that "not made with hands" in no way suggests that the mortal body, or the transformed resurrection body, is "made with hands" -- Paul of all people would certainly know that Adam was "not made with hands" and that the Psalmist credited God with knitting him together in his mother's womb!

Carrier's closing section on Paul's encounter with Christ consists in part in his assuming to have proven that Paul describes 2BH and that Paul's spiritual experiences may be safely dismissed within his materialist paradigm. We may note in close an irony: Carrier conveniently accepts as reliable the single point from Acts that all Paul experienced at conversion was light and a voice -- while saying that "in every other respect" he regards Acts as "worthless as a source"! [154] Would that we could employ such a methodology of convenience and get away with it! In addition, Mike Licona had this comment:

If one goes to Acts 13 where Paul is speaking, he is clear that a bodily resurrection, i.e., a transformation of the same body, is what is being claimed, since he speaks of the body of Jesus not decaying. You cannot get any clearer than that. Moreover, most scholars on Acts regard Acts 2, 10, and 13 as earlier Church tradition, which the author included in his text. So, Richard is here uncritically accepting Acts 9, 22, 26 to support his view while rejecting Acts 13, which is held by most critics to reflect early Church tradition. If he accepts Acts 9, 22, and 26 as authentic reports of Paul, then a fortiori he must regard Acts 2 and 13 as authentic, since they weigh more heavily. However, if goes there, his two-body hypothesis is dead on arrival. Richard cannot reply by claiming that he is using 9, 22, and 26 because evangelicals accept it and, thus, he is merely saying that the evangelical view of resurrection is incorrect on an evangelical’s view of Acts. The evangelical takes Acts in its entirety, since it was written by the same author. The author is clear in 2 and 13 that the body of Jesus did not decay. The appearance to Paul came after Jesus’ ascension, and, thus, the appearance to Paul in a glorious light from which Paul hears Jesus is not required to be the same as the pre-ascension appearances. Whatever the nature of the appearance to Paul, it was of such nature that he had no problem thinking that he saw the same Jesus who had appeared to his disciples a few years earlier, a Jesus whose corpse had been raised.

FAQ answer: Aside from resorting to the contrived begged question that Acts misreports Paul's actual beliefs, and backpedalling on his clear, and obviously now embarrassing, statement that he regards all of Acts but one bit as ("in every other respect") a worthless source, Carrier tries to fudge by saying that Paul isn't specifically referring to the body of Jesus, and doesn't mention the empty tomb (though one is clearly implied in 13:37). It is at this point that Carrier is clearly scraping barrel-bottom when it comes to his desperation to evade an obvious problem with his thesis.

Thus we conclude our response to Part 1 of Carrier's chapter. This removes any real need to respond to his Part 2, which rests on the conclusion in Part 1, but we shall nevertheless pursue a response for a later date.