Resurrection

This blog concludes the book review begun in our last two.

This blog continues where our last one left off. 

Spring 2007 saw the sensational claims by a new book and a Discovery Channel broadcast that the family tomb of Jesus had been discovered in the south Jerusalem Talpiot neighborhood.  The Ted Koppel special aired immediately afterwards pitted one of the book’s authors and a maverick scholar who supported him against a team of four biblical scholars, theologians and archeologists from evangelical, mainline Protestant and Catholic perspectives.  Now an outstanding anthology of scholarly respons

I am writing from Taiwan, but I am not immune to the news about the new Stone "Dead Sea Scroll".

Go to http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/07/1184950.aspx and click on the links to the Hebrew and English texts of the new stone causing the stir about possibly referring to the concept of a resurrected Messiah before the time of Jesus.  Look at lines 78-85, which must be what Israel Knohl is referring to.  Notice what's actually in the text vs. what he has to supply.  The text itself, reads merely :

Whatever you think of the logic of Gamaliel's argument as described in Acts 5 (leave the disciples alone and if the movement is not of God it will go away--but that sure hasn't worked for Islam!), it's interesting to apply it to first-century rabble rousers.

The third book that I considered during this Easter season, after the volumes I noted earlier by Geza Vermes and N.T. Wright, was written by Gary R. Habermas.  It is entitled, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).  It probably had more impact upon me than either of the other two, and profoundly impacted the implication of Jesus’ historical resurrection for my present life.

In this season of Eastertide, the period of fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, we not only celebrate Jesus’ victory over death in his resurrection, but we also consider seriously the implications of his resurrection for our own lives.