The critics' impossibility argument from cannibalism and shared parts
The critics, whose objection was introduced at the end of the previous section, now state their argument that bodies eaten by animals or humans cannot be raised because their parts pass into other bodies.
These people say that many bodies of those who die hard deaths in shipwrecks and rivers become food for fish. Many others who die in wars or from some harsher cause and circumstance, and so lack burial, lie exposed as prey for whatever animals come upon them.
When bodies are consumed in this way, they say, and the parts and members that make them up are shattered into a great multitude of animals and united through food to the bodies of those that feed on them, the first impossibility is separating these parts out again. The second difficulty is even more perplexing.
For when the animals that have devoured human bodies, as many as are suitable for human food, pass through their stomachs and are united to the bodies of those who have eaten them, it is absolutely necessary, they say, that the parts of those human beings, as many as became food for the animals that ate them, pass over into other human bodies. The animals fed on them in between convey the food from which they were nourished into those human beings for whom they became food.
Then they add in tragic style the eating of children dared in famines and fits of madness, the sons devoured by their own parents through the plotting of enemies, that famous Median table, the tragic feasts of Thyestes, and other such calamities invented among Greeks and barbarians.
From these they construct, as they suppose, the impossibility of the resurrection. The same parts cannot rise again together with different bodies. Either the parts of the first bodies cannot be reconstituted, since the parts that made them up have passed over to others, or, if those parts are given back to the first bodies, the bodies of the later ones will be lacking.
Greek
Οὗτοι δέ γέ φασιν πολλὰ μὲν σώματα τῶν ἐν ναυαγίοις καὶ ποταμοῖς δυσθανάτων ἰχθύσι γενέσθαι τροφήν, πολλὰ δὲ τῶν ἐν πολέμοις θνησκόντων ἢ κατ᾿ ἄλλην τινὰ τραχυτέραν αἰτίαν καὶ πραγμάτων περίστασιν ταφῆς ἀμοιρούντων τοῖς προστυγχάνουσι ζώοις προκεῖσθαι βοράν. Τῶν οὖν οὕτως ἀναλισκομένων σωμάτων, καὶ τῶν ταῦτα συμπληρούντων μερῶν καὶ μορίων εἰς πολὺ πλῆθος ζώων διαθρυπτομένων καὶ διὰ τῆς τροφῆς τοῖς τῶν τρεφομένων σώμασιν ἑνουμένων, πρῶτον μὲν τὴν διάκρισιν τούτων φασὶν ἀδύνατον, πρὸς δὲ ταύτῃ τὸ δεύτερον ἀπορώτερον. Τῶν γὰρ τὰ σώματα τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐκβοσκηθέντων ζώων, ὁπόσα πρὸς τροφὴν ἀνθρώποις ἐπιτήδεια, διὰ τῆς τούτων γαστρὸς ἰόντων καὶ τοῖς τῶν μετειληφότων σώμασιν ἑνουμένων, ἀνάγκην εἶναι πᾶσαν, τὰ μέρη τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὁπόσα τροφὴ γέγονε τοῖς μετειληφόσι ζώοις, πρὸς ἕτερα τῶν ἀνθρώπων μεταχωρεῖν σώματα, τῶν μεταξὺ τούτοις τραφέντων ζώων τὴν ἐξ ὧν ἐτράφησαν τροφὴν διαπορθμευόντων εἰς ἐκείνους τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ὧν ἐγένετο τροφή. Εἶτα τούτοις ἐπιτραγῳδοῦσι τὰς ἐν λιμοῖς καὶ μανίαις τολμηθείσας τεκνοφαγίας καὶ τοὺς κατ᾿ ἐπιβουλὴν ἐχθρῶν ὑπὸ τῶν γεννησαμένων ἐδηδεσμένους παῖδας, καὶ τὴν Μηδικὴν τράπεζαν ἐκείνην καὶ τὰ τραγικὰ δεῖπνα Θυέστου καὶ τοιαύτας δή τινας ἐπισυνείρουσι παρ᾿ Ἕλλησι καὶ βαρβάροις καινουργηθείσας συμφοράς· ἔκ τε τούτων κατασκευάζουσιν, ὡς νομίζουσιν, ἀδύνατον τὴν ἀνάστασιν, ὡς οὐ δυναμένων τῶν αὐτῶν μερῶν ἑτέροις τε καὶ ἑτέροις συναναστῆναι σώμασιν, ἀλλ᾿ ἤτοι τὰ τῶν προτέρων συστῆναι μὴ δύνασθαι, μετεληλυθότων τῶν ταῦτα συμπληρούντων μερῶν πρὸς ἑτέρους, ἢ τούτων ἀποδοθέντων τοῖς προτέροις ἐνδεῶν ἕξειν τὰ τῶν ὑστέρων.