"Paul's teaching about the bodily resurrection arises out of a Jewish anthropology in which the 'soul' (Heb nepes; Gk psyche) is the animating principle of human life. . . . In mainstream Jewish thought human beings do not have souls, they are souls. This anthropological underpinning has tremendous implications for a doctrine of the resurrection in that it refuses to surrender the somatic [(i.e. bodily)] component of a human being. Resurrection involves the redemption of the physical body, although . . . the somatic nature of that resurrection gives scope for some of Paul's most creative thinking in 1 Corinthians 15:35-49. . . ."
L. J. Kreitzer, "Resurrection," in Dictionary of Paul and his letters, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 810 (805-812).
