Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [245]
In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul used the perfect tense of the verb “to see” to describe his visionary experience (“Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not “seen” Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the “Lord?” 1 Cor 9:1) Paul emphasized that his vision was equivalent to normal “seeing,” just as you and I might see each other. But Paul actually did not want to stress the ordinariness of the seeing, only that he saw as clearly as the other apostles. He was aware of the special nature of his revelation.6
Paul also wanted to demonstrate that his vision of Christ was the same type and order as that of the other apostles, even though he experienced Christ in visions only, while they learned directly from Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15 and elsewhere Paul used the Greek aorist passive ophthei (the passive voice of the simple past) to describe this kind of seeing:
… and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. (1 Cor 15:5-7)
The visionary language works in several ways at once. First, it follows the tradition of the LXX for describing visions. In the Septuagint the aorist passive of the verb “to see” is used frequently with the sense either of “visionary seeing” or of “seeing a divine being.” In short, it has the sense of the word “appear” in English, when that word is used to describe a visitation of a divine figure.
Secondly, Paul used the very same verb and form to describe his own seeing and that of the original apostles. This demonstrated that he was their equal in every way. Conversely, Paul assumed that he saw exactly the same person that the original apostles saw except that he saw the risen Christ. Just because Paul is using the technical language of vision, however, does not mean that he thought they were hallucinations. To the contrary, these were visions undertaken through the Spirit and were therefore spiritual depictions of what is soon to become actual.
Paul was essentially saying that he is among those few special prophets who received a vision of God-prophets like Abraham, Enoch, Noah, Job, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, and Daniel, those same people who followed in the ancient Near Eastern tradition of Enmeduranki, Adapa, Etana, Gilgamesh, Dan’el and Aqhat. Implicit in this tradition is the conclusion that Jesus ascended to heaven to become the “Son of Man,” just like the heroes of ancient Biblical tradition. When he returns, the end will come upon all and only those in Christ will be rescued.
He contrasted that with the experience of the disciples of Jesus, who saw merely the man Jesus. It is not their experience of the teacher Jesus which was important. And the reason for this is that it is not the earthly Jesus who preached and demonstrated that the resurrection had already started. Rather it is the risen Christ who has ascended to the Father. Because Paul had seen the Christ in his resurrected body, Paul knew that the resurrection had begun and that all who came to believe in him were the firstfruits of this resurrection. Paul and all those who saw him are the first apostles and prophets of this new epoch in human history. That his seeing was visionary means that it was of a higher order than ordinary seeing. What Paul said about the spiritual bodies is a direct result of that vision, a further description of that vision.
Paul’s Own Mysticism
IN SECOND CORINTHIANS 12 Paul said even