Thanks PaulE
I used the words in 1 Corinthians 15 to speak of Jesus resurrected body, because I believe that the resurrected body of Jesus and his followers will be very similar. Paul, in this chapter, calls Jesus the "firstfruits". How do firstfruits differ from the rest of the crop, except that they were harvested first?
The question is, again, to Paul is Christ Jesus an average man in need of an individual resurrection, or the heavenly Son of God who assumes human nature and fate to transform it, changing death into resurrection? This, I think, is the limit of the comparison. Additionally, it's quite interesting to me that in Romans 8:23 aparkhè (firstfruits) qualifies the Spirit in believers.
My reading of Galatians 3:21 gives me the same impression. Jesus will change or transform our lowly body, the body of our humiliation, to be like his glorious body. I feel that our resurrected body will be essentially the same in it's composition as that of Jesus.
I think you mean Philippians 3:21, which speaks of conforming "our body of humiliation" (making it summorphon) to "the body of his glory" -- a transformation indeed, but not incompatible with the notion of a "collective body" of Christ. That it could be interpreted this way is consistent with (the probably post-Pauline) Colossians 3:4: "When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory."
As to the apparition stories, one problem for your thesis that they are very early is their gradual and diverging development. The first Gospel (Mark) has none of them (it might originally have had a Galilean apparition, but then it was lost; perhaps we have a later version of it in John 21). This is a very difficult fact to explain if the stories in Matthew, Luke and John are actually older than Mark.
1. Gospel accounts say that women were the first witnesses at the empty tomb and to see Jesus. This was a time period when women were considered dubious witnesses, not even allowed to testify in court. If the stories were a later invention, wouldn't more reliable witnesses be chosen?
This might be due to Mark's love of paradoxes. He adds a harder one by concluding (?) on the fact that the women who were asked to tell actually didn't tell anything, for they were afraid! This is quite unexplainable if (1) he wanted to seriously prove anything and (2) he knew earlier stories that the women did see the risen Lord and told it to the other disciples, etc.
2. The appearance accounts contain no scriptural fulfillments. This is strikingly different from the rest of the gospel accounts. Everything from place of birth to riding into Jerusalem on a donkey was pointed out to fulfill a Hebrew Bible prophecy. This indicates to me that the stories spread before there was time to re-examine the Scriptures in the light of the recent event.
If some OT parallel could be found for the apparition stories, I still see no reason why the late 1st-century Gospels (or even later Christian writers) would not have added them. And if no parallel could be found (even 2,000 years after) the argument vanishes...
3.No mention of human salvation. Jesus is resurrected, we saw him, we touched him, we ate with him and he told us to go witness to the world. Actual reports of what happen. The stories spread before there was time to reflect on the significance, as Paul later does. Peter does also.
4. The bewilderment in describing Jesus body. It could be seen, felt, it could eat, it had scars, it could go through locked doors, it could ascend. Just the events that could be seen, felt, or heard. The stories spread early, before time for theological reflection as later done by Paul.
I disagree. The apparition stories have a clear theological agenda -- to prove the reality of Jesus' resurrection, and to provide a ground for the authority of the witnesses (cf. Acts 1:22; 1 Corinthians 15:3ff). Moreover the anti-docetic insistence (Jesus eats to show that he is not a "spirit," Luke 24:37,39) is clearly targeted at an earlier, docetic belief imo.