[3.5] Stone to Flesh / Lifeless Body

[Zanos]

Animate dead requires the corpse to have bones at the very least, but the corpse is simply flesh without bones as bones are not flesh.

For a skeleton, yes. For a zombie, no. It only requires a true anatomy. Whatever that means.

But that's mostly not relevant. The flesh blob interpretation disregards the immediate examples. Both of the sample results have extensive components that are not strictly 'flesh' and are not components of the inputs. A stone golem has no brain or bones or organs, but a flesh golem explicitly requires a brain, some internal organs, and all the 3.5 depictions I've seen clearly have skeletons. Similarly, I would find it frankly bizarre for a mass of just meat with no internal organs, bones, or structure to be referred to as a 'corpse'.

And of course, the primary use of flesh to stone is to turn petrified creatures, whose bones are obviously also petrified, back into regular people. I reject the idea that the spell is incapable of fashioning bone considering that all examples of its usage result in something that does possess bones(and other assorted bits of organ that are not strictly 'flesh').

Remember that 'fleshy' is not an exclusive term, when something is -y it features that thing prominently but not exclusively. Beer is watery when it mostly tastes like water, beer that is only composed of water is...water. A regular corpse is mostly composed of flesh, and therefore meets the definition of 'fleshy substance' just fine.

So considering that the term 'fleshy substance' does not exclude a regular corpse complete with internal anatomy, and all the sample usages of the spell indicate something that would have an internal anatomy, I'm going with the interpretation that such a thing does have bones, organs, and the like.

Of course having a skeleton is not sufficient for either spell, since while animate dead targets a corpse, the first line of the spell is:

This spell turns the bones or bodies of dead creatures into undead skeletons or zombies that follow your spoken commands.

And of course, the target of raise dead is 'dead creature touched.

3.5 does not redefine the term 'corpse', so you have to ask whether or not 'corpse' and 'dead creature' are synonyms. I'd personally contest that they are close enough, and the spell itself seems to indicate that there should be methods to breathe life into corpses created with stone to flesh. I say have at it.