Boid on the Resurrection of Moses

I haven’t forgotten my promise to fix up the phonetic transcription of Syriac phrases in your monograph. This will come in a few days.

There is still something you have left out, in my opinion. I have said quite a few times that the first chapters of Acts are not from the same hand as the waffly stuff later on. At the moment I don’t know where to put the dividing line, and I don’t know if these first chapters are all from the same hand. All the same, ch. III. as I have said quite a few times, is not what Polycarp would have written because he would not have liked it. Look AGAIN at the argument from the precedent of Moses. This argument assumes the familiar concept of the incorruptibility of Moses’s body, but there is a step beyond that. There is an argument from the resurrection of Moses. When was Moses resurrected? What are the verses from the Torah that are assumed? Presumably he was resurrected and translated. Obviously the usual proofs of the incorruptibility of his body must first be assumed. Certainly the words of Moses in Deuteronomy, “as he raised me up”, are then assumed, and these words are explicitly quoted in the argument in Acts. But is this enough? Perhaps the words “he beholds God’s picture” in Numbers XII, meaning he sees the plan and purpose of Creation, are assumed. Your comments would be helpful.

Another observation. I am starting to think I have overlooked the obvious. The concept of the incorruptible body of Moses in the cave outside normal space is well documented in the Tannaitic texts and all four Targums and (I think) Philo. But it is never said how this stasis is to be ended or has already ended. Why is the end not stated? I suggest as a counter to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus on the model of the resurrection of Moses.

Next question. I have often said that the content of the N.T. has been deliberately falsified, not by changing the words on the paper, but by setting up a tradition of misreading some passages and wilfully missing the plain meaning of other passages and wilfully ignoring the reminiscences of the Torah in other passages. Have you noticed that the plain meaning of the argument for the resurrection of Jesus in Acts III is totally absent from most Christian writing and argument? Why? What makes the omission even more glaring (if that were possible) is the seizing on the minor argument from the words of the Psalm “thou wilt not suffer thy servant to see corruption” in ch. II. Again, your comments would be helpful.

Here is a difficulty to be looked at. The sermon in Acts III is attributed to Peter, yet the argument is not used in official or semi-official Church writings of the time.

A second difficulty. Why is the content of the Epistles of Peter attributed to Peter? Is it because they present something like what is in the Epistle of Jude and elsewhere, but revised?

A third question. If the attribution of the Epistle of Jude is old, is this Yehuda meant to be Jesus himself? I mean, who else would be informed enough to say Jesus was in the underworld actively working on the Sabbath? “He preached to the spirits that kept not their first estate”. (I paraphrase from memory).