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The Resurrection of the Son of God…
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The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3) (original 2003; edition 2003)

by N. T. Wright (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
1,829129,191 (4.58)1 / 15
I never thought I would read this book, it took a lot of time to finish this book. I would recommend this only if you are seriously interested in knowing, "What really happened at Easter?"

Thanks to Wright, I understand a lot about the early beliefs of life after death.
I enjoyed his writings on Early Church fathers.
All the way from Paul to Tertullian, they firmly believed and knew Christ died on the cross and bodily rose from the dead.

Resurrection has always been controversial, people in the ancient world knew, just like us, they knew that once a person died, it is a one-way street.

This book inspired me on a deeper level of my faith.

Overall, I really enjoyed Wright's writing and appreciate his work.
( )
  gottfried_leibniz | Apr 5, 2018 |
Showing 12 of 12
Excellent book! ( )
  jmd862000 | Mar 28, 2023 |
Vol. 3 of Christian Origins and the Question of God
  GSHale | Jun 29, 2019 |
The third volume of Wright's magisterial series on Christian Origins and the Question of God, originally designed to be the end of the second volume, but for understandable reasons became a volume in and of itself.

Wright set out to comprehensively make a historical case for not only the possibility, but the plausibility, of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead as established in the New Testament. This large work proves necessary on account of all of the confusion, distortion, and misunderstandings which circulate about the whole concept of resurrection and how it relates to Jesus.

Wright begins with an exploration of what the word "resurrection" meant in Greco-Roman and Second Temple Jewish literature of the era, and does well at showing that everyone understood anastasis as involving the bringing back to (physical) life of the dead; this was agreed upon even when people did not think it was a good idea. He explores the philosophical premises of the Greeks and Jewish people of the day to provide a theoretical framework for understanding views on the afterlife and how resurrection would or would not fit into them, and exactly what was understood by "resurrection."

Having done this Wright then explores the use of resurrection as word and theme throughout the New Testament, beginning with Paul's letters except for portions of 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 4, then returning to those sections, and then the rest of the NT letters. He then turns to early Christian literature until the point at which "resurrection" begins taking on a more purely "spiritual" meaning. Throughout he shows how consistently resurrection is seen as "life after life after death", assumed to involve the physical body, and was proclaimed as such from the beginning. He then returns back to the Gospel accounts, and then makes his conclusions regarding the right historical prism through which to look at these matters, their plausibility in light of all the considered evidence, and what Jesus' resurrection demands out of the faith of Christians.

Yes, it's a massive work, but that's only because of how thoroughly warped and distorted modern thinking has become regarding the concept of resurrection and its meaning. Extremely recommended for all Christians. ( )
  deusvitae | Mar 27, 2019 |
I never thought I would read this book, it took a lot of time to finish this book. I would recommend this only if you are seriously interested in knowing, "What really happened at Easter?"

Thanks to Wright, I understand a lot about the early beliefs of life after death.
I enjoyed his writings on Early Church fathers.
All the way from Paul to Tertullian, they firmly believed and knew Christ died on the cross and bodily rose from the dead.

Resurrection has always been controversial, people in the ancient world knew, just like us, they knew that once a person died, it is a one-way street.

This book inspired me on a deeper level of my faith.

Overall, I really enjoyed Wright's writing and appreciate his work.
( )
  gottfried_leibniz | Apr 5, 2018 |
I never thought I would read this book, it took a lot of time to finish this book. I would recommend this only if you are seriously interested in knowing, "What really happened at Easter?"

Thanks to Wright, I understand a lot about the early beliefs of life after death.
I enjoyed his writings on Early Church fathers.
All the way from Paul to Tertullian, they firmly believed and knew Christ died on the cross and bodily rose from the dead.

Resurrection has always been controversial, people in the ancient world knew, just like us, they knew that once a person died, it is a one-way street.

This book inspired me on a deeper level of my faith.

Overall, I really enjoyed Wright's writing and appreciate his work.
( )
  gottfried_leibniz | Apr 5, 2018 |
"The Resurrection of the Son of God' by NT Wright is a scholarly analysis of the historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection. Dr. NT Wright, the Bishop of Durham, exhaustively looks at primary sources. His bibliography extends for 40 pages. He reviews what the pagan world believed about the resurrection, what the Jewish world believed, in the Old Testament, the intertestamental period and the New Testament era, what Christians believed in the New Testament, and in the early writings of Christian fathers up to the time to Eusebius. With his detailed historical analysis, he conclusively shows the Jews, specifically the Pharisees, believed in a bodily resurrection, the Sadducees did not, nor did the various pagan religions. The early Christians followed the Pharisees in their beliefs, but tied it to Jesus as the Messiah.

Dr. Wright asks, "Why did the Christians have these beliefs?" Using standard historical analysis, he feels the best explanation is that 1) the tomb was empty; and 2) Jesus appeared to the disciples.

His concluding chapter analyzes the meaning of this historical evidence and what it means in our post-modern age.

This is a logical, well-written, outstanding Christian apologetic from a historian's view point. Five stars. ( )
1 vote jjvors | Sep 30, 2015 |
This work covers ancient beliefs about life after death from Homer's Hades to ancient Jewish beliefs, from the Bible to the Dead Sea Scrolls and beyond. It examines early Christian beliefs about resurrection in general and that of Jesus in particular, beginning with Paul and working through to the start of the third century. It explores the Easter stories of the Gospels and seeks the best historical conclusions about the empty tomb and the belief that Jesus did rise bodily from the dead.
1 vote Priory | Aug 27, 2013 |
This tome is extremely thorough, yet not dry. Wright's insights and some humour help to make this work a delightful read. Although, if you are looking for a survey of this topic you might want to refer to his work "Suprised by Hope". Note, however that this book is the 3rd in a series, so he constantly refers back to the first two books. At times, you also have to be patient with Wright while he is building up his point. Luckily though most of this work has already been done in the first two books of this series. ( )
2 vote aevaughn | Nov 8, 2010 |
This book is a comprehensive treatment of the resurrection. In it, Wright plows through piles and piles of ancient literature, following every conceivable first-century resurrection idea. Furthermore, he handles modern and post-modern rejections of the resurrection with the calm logic of a trained historian. Wright’s main point in this book is this: nothing less than the bodily resurrection of Jesus could explain the rise of early Christianity.

This book is big. Here’s a summary of the main parts:

1. Setting the Scene: Wright reviews the diverse afterlife beliefs of ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Jewish cultures. He takes special care to explore how Jewish views of the afterlife developed, from the Torah to second temple.

2. Resurrection in Paul: Here Wright explores Paul’s views on resurrection, with specific attention paid to the key passages of 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 4:7-5:10.

3. Resurrection in Early Christianity (Apart from Paul): This section surveys the rest of the New Testament and onward through the Apostolic Fathers, and even the Nag Hammadi texts.

4. The Story of Easter: Here is where Wright gets down to business. After evaluating the historical relevance of the Gospel of Peter, Wright analyzes the main emphases of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John with respect to the resurrection.

5. Belief, Event and Meaning: This section reminded me of that part of the Lord of the Rings after the ring was destroyed: there was still some mopping up to do. Wright uses his massive argument to challenge inadequate modern deconstructions of the resurrection. In the end, the resurrection led the early church to believe that Jesus truly was (and is) the Son of God.

The scope of this book is staggering, but along with all of Wright’s writing, it’s quite readable and interesting. If you’ve got a lot of time on your hands and would like an encyclopedic understanding of the resurrection, give this tome a try. ( )
2 vote StephenBarkley | Jun 24, 2009 |
I've written several posts reviewing the silly arguments Wright uses in this volume. Too much to post here, but they can be accessed at my vridar blog here
  neilgodfrey | Jun 5, 2008 |
I haven't finished this book yet, but so far, so good. Wright continues to follow his careful methodical approach, starting with resurrection in Greek and Roman literature and then Jewish literature of the time. He then deals with biblical texts relating to resurrection, showing convincingly that the early church fundamentally believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Very well written. ( )
  Phil76 | Mar 25, 2008 |
This book is one of the most significant contributions to resurrection studies of the modern era. It is the third installment of the series, Christian Origins and the Question of God, by N.T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham.

Wright begins, as he usually does, by explaining his methodology and presuppositions. This discussion alerts the reader to the points Wright will be addressing and how he will set about evaluating them. The beginning, therefore, is a welcome feature because many scholars do not spare sufficient time to expressly discuss these issues.

Next, Wright provides in-depth discussions of beliefs about the after life among ancient pagans, in the Old Testament, and in post-Biblical Judaism. Because few treatments on the resurrection provide this kind of research, I found this one of the most informative parts of the book. Wright convincingly shows that, despite possessing a variety of views on the after life, the ancient pagans simply did not have a belief comparable to bodily resurrection. Although Wright shares the opinion of many scholars that the Old Testament reveals little concern with the idea of life after death until its later books, he concludes that the later focus on resurrection is a natural extension of Israel’s belief in the faithfulness of an all-powerful God. In post-Biblical Judaism, which became Second-Temple Judaism by the time of Jesus, Wright demonstrates that despite a variety of Jewish beliefs about the after-life, the most common and vital was that of bodily resurrection.

After discussing the variety of after-life beliefs in the ancient world, Wright begins focusing on early Christian beliefs. Beginning with Paul, he explores in detail Paul’s beliefs about the resurrection in his letters and as related to his conversion. Wright is a Pauline specialist and his familiarity with the subject is revealed over these three chapters, bringing out excellent points in passage-by-passage discussions. Thereafter, Wright moves through the Gospels and then the rest of the New Testament, exploring the kind of resurrection belief they articulate and how they fit into the broader context of after-life beliefs of the time. And although you might think Wright would stop here, he proceeds to discuss the resurrection views of later Christian writers from 1 Clement and Ignatius, through the Apocrypha, the Apologists such as Justin Martyr and Theophilus, early Syrian Christianity, and finally the Gnostic texts.

The value of Wright’s exploration of early Christian resurrection belief goes beyond providing excellent exegesis for its own sake. Wright shows that, in contrast to the varied understanding of after-life belief in paganism and even in Judaism, early Christians attached themselves solidly to one point of the Jewish scale of after-life belief: bodily resurrection. But, as Wright points out, early Christian belief about the resurrection redefined many Jewish points in ways not anticipated therein and which did not develop within Judaism thereafter. These include 1) the splitting of the resurrection into two, with Jesus resurrected as the “first fruits” and the general resurrection to come later; 2) that Jesus’ resurrection somehow inaugurated the Kingdom of God but without a corresponding temporal authority; 3) that the resurrected Jesus was the messiah despite the fact that resurrection was not previously believed to be evidence of being the messiah; and 4) that the resurrected Jesus was the messiah despite being killed by pagan authorities. Other messianic claimants who were killed by the pagans were abandoned by their followers.

It is not until page 587 that Wright truly dives into the question of the resurrection of Jesus and history. Taking all that he has explored until now, Wright moves through the resurrection narratives with an informed historian’s eye. He provides valuable discussions of the origins of the resurrection narratives, as well as gospel-by-gospel discussions of the resurrection that brings out the contributions of each narrative to the study. Wright explores marks of historicity, such as the lack of “biblical adornment” that are more common in the Passion Narratives and the presence of women as important witnesses.

Finally, after presenting us with so much information and analysis, Wright assesses the central question of the best explanation for all of the evidence he has considered. He presents it in seven steps:

1. Second-Temple Judaism supplied the concept of the resurrection, but the early Christian view of it mutated it in ways that cannot be explained as a spontaneous development of Jewish thought. The consistent early Christian answer explaining these mutations is that they were prompted by Jesus’ tomb being empty and his resurrection appearances.

2. Neither the empty tomb standing along nor the resurrection appearances standing alone would have been sufficient to generate the early Christian belief in the resurrection. The empty tomb might be a mystery, but it would be a sad one. The resurrection appearances would be dismissed or classified as visions or hallucinations.

3. The empty tomb and the resurrection appearances taken together would explain the emergence of the early Christian belief in the resurrection.

4. Second-Temple Judaism’s definition of resurrection makes it impossible to conceive of that belief emerging without the body literally having gone missing and that person being found alive again after death.

5. The other explanations offered by early Christian opponents and later academics are insufficient to explain the early Christian belief in the resurrection.

6. In light of 1-5, it is highly probable that Jesus’ tomb was found empty on the third day and his disciples did encounter Jesus again as being really alive.

7. The best explanation for the early Christian belief in the empty tomb and having experienced Jesus alive and well again is that he was indeed bodily resurrected from the dead.

Wright spends the rest of the book elaborating on these points, especially point 7. I find him convincing in most of his argument. However, while I agree with him that the early Christian belief in the empty tomb is valuable evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, I am not as sure that the kinds of resurrection appearances reported in the Gospels would not be a sufficient cause for belief in Jesus’ resurrection, so long as Jesus’ body was indeed missing. Since this adds even more credence to the empty tomb accounts, the difference is not significant and circles back into belief in the empty tomb.

In summary, Wright’s work is a masterpiece of research and analysis. To those interested in ancient beliefs about the after life in general and the resurrection of Jesus in particular, this book is indispensable. ( )
2 vote Layman | Aug 15, 2006 |
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