Bodily Resurrection and Ethics in 1 Cor 15: Connecting Faith and Morality in the Context of Greco-Roman Mythology

New Testament scholars have long recognized a relationship between the future resurrection and ethics. Paul J. Brown contributes to this ongoing discussion by tracing Paul’s logic for connecting the moral imperatives in 1 Cor 15 to the bodily resurrection. The author examines the afterlife belief system of the resurrection-deniers and proposes that their eschatology was informed by Greco-Roman mythology. This enabled the Corinthians to embrace the bodily resurrection of Jesus as a hero and reject the prospect of their own. Brown suggests that Paul strategically leveraged their Greco-Roman thinking in his discussion of the resurrection to argue that their in-Christ status made them partakers of the Messiah’s beatific afterlife, and that the Greco-Roman practice of patron emulation should motivate them to live in imitation of the heavenly man.