Fleshly Resurrection, Authority Claims, and the Scriptural Practices of Lukan Christianity

In this article, I argue that references to the fleshly resurrection of Jesus in Luke and Acts, both those that tell of Jesus eating with his apostles and those that assert that Jesus’s flesh was “incorruptible” (Luke 24:36–53, Acts 1:4, 2:31, 10:40–41, 13:37), share thematic continuity and are best understood as stemming from Luke’s concern for the exclusive authority of the twelve apostles. I assume that Luke has access not only to oral and written resurrection narratives but also to a collection of the Pauline Epistles and that Luke frames Lukan narrative as the result of the scriptural practices of one second-century textual community, among others. In mapping both divergences and convergences between Lukan understandings of resurrection and views often attributed to Marcionites and/or so-called docetists, I challenge the view that Luke’s assertions of fleshly resurrection represent (proto)orthodoxy’s incipient battle with heresy over the nature of the resurrection of Jesus.