Mar
The Resurrection: Real ‘in the hearts of men’
7:22 AM Sun, Mar 23, 2008
Bruce Tomaso
In yesterday’s Religion section, I reviewed a new book, “The Resurrection” by Geza Vermes.
Vermes is a religion historian at Oxford University whose specialty is Judea around the time of Jesus. He is perhaps best known for his 1973 work, “Jesus the Jew,” one of the first modern examinations of the life of Jesus in the context of his Jewish upbringing and the Jewish culture of his day.
In “The Resurrection,” Vermes combs through the written record, chiefly the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, and concludes that the credible evidence for Jesus’ physical resurrection is scant at best.
For one thing, the accounts contradict one another on several key points; it’s not logically possible that they’re all accurate. (Such internal contradictions, found throughout the Bible, ought to give hard-core inerrantists pause, but they never seem to.)
As I wrote in the review, the New Testament versions of the Resurrection “differ in describing the sequence of events, the identity of those who discovered the empty tomb, what they encountered there, what they said afterward, the number and location of the risen Jesus’ appearances, even the timing of his reported ascension into heaven. (Was it on Easter Sunday, or 40 days later?)”
Still, Vermes concludes, the Resurrection is real in at least one very genuine sense: It’s real “in the hearts of men.” Belief that Jesus overcame death sustained the early Christians and made it possible for them to start a religious movement that would change the world. Today, that same belief brings hope to untold millions of people.
If that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.
Source : religionblog.dallasnews.com
