174. Compleat History of Res.- A Dialogue With N. T. Wright

7/30/2019 174. Compleat History of Res.- A Dialogue With N. T. Wright

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/174-compleat-history-of-res-a-dialogue-with-n-t-wright 1/17

[JSNT 26A (2004) 489-504]ISSN0142-064X

Compleat History of the Resurrection:

A Dialogue with N.T. Wright

Markus Bockmuehl

Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge CB3 9BS

[email protected]

TomWright is not one to do things by halves. His is the high-octane, Grand

Unified Theory approach to New Testament studies. Where lesser mortals

may acquiesce in losing the wood for the exegetical trees, N.T. Wright

deals in inter-galactic ecosystems—without neglecting in the process to

footnote a surprising number of trees. His history-cum-theology of Chris

tian origins is now proposed to run to at least five volumes, of which TheResurrection of the Son of God (RSG) is the third and most recent.

1The

project's ambitions are expanding at a breathtaking rate: this latest instal

ment of 800 pages and half a million words had been planned as a 70-page

conclusion to Jesus and the Victory of God (henceforth JVGf until the

closing stages ofthat previous volume. The resulting tome, ironically, is

10 percent longer than its predecessor, which in turn dwarfed the first,

most comprehensively titled volume of the series {The New Testament and

the People of God=NTPG 3

). Readers with doctorates may remember tossing on their beds in sleepless dread of an oral examination to be conducted

in the spirit of Mt. 12.36-37. But half a dozen Cambridge dissertations,

bound end to end, still could not fill a volume of this size without exceeding

their combined word limit. Tom Wright is not one to do things by halves.

As an embarrassingly slow and distracted reader (and not for that reason

alone a disciple of Callimachus's maxim μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν), this

reviewer tends to reach swiftly for the smelling salts whenever faced with

1 h Th R f h S f G d (Ch O d h

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



490 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26.4 (2004)

grands projets of this sort. Yet after trudging through these 800 pages

with the help of double espressos and other liquids suitably fit to raise the

dead, I must acknowledge that I found this a remarkably engaging work of

scholarship, which communicates in consistently winsome and persuasive

terms not only most of what I knew already, but a good deal more besides.

An inescapably morbid part of the reviewer's brief is to find fault; and I

shall get round to some ofthat in due course. But in the face of a work of

this magnitude we do well to be reminded of Brendan Behan's famous quip

about the critic being like the eunuch in a harem...

The present work is fresh and intellectually captivating. Whether because

of its subject matter or because of extensive pre-publication road testing

(pp. xv-xvi), Wright's case here does not depend, in precariously domino

like contingency, on a few high-profile theories that have over the years

been widely questioned and prone to caricature. Among these have been a

Palestinian Judaism oppressed by its general sense of continuing exile, a

gospel eschatology overwhelmingly focused on the year 70, or Jesus of

Nazareth's grand self-assertion as the definitive replacement of Jerusalem,

Temple and all that stood for Israel. These familiar theories do indeed sur

face, as does the somewhat idiosyncratic non-capitalization of'god' and

'lord'. But rather less of the argument seems to rest on them; and RSG is

on the whole much less vulnerable to flippant dismissal by critics for a

single favourite methodological bête noire (such as that it fails to render

an account of the synoptic problem or of authenticity in the sayings tradi

tion, as was occasionally said about JVG). Knee-jerk criticisms of Wright's

earlier theories will find surprisingly little leverage in this clear and vigor

ous case, conceived, in deliberate contrast to its predecessors, as 'essen

tially a simple monograph with a single line of thought' (p. xvii).

To be sure, we still have here the self-professed 'historian'—a term that

is used emphatically throughout and relies largely on the 'critical realism'

outlined in volume 1 of the series (cf. pp. 12-23).

We shall return to the question of historical method a little later; those

prepared to hold methodological prissiness in abeyance and press on with

the argument will find that swashbuckling critical adventure soon ensues.

One need not follow Tom Wright very far into the scholarly woods to find

the customary rhetorical arsenal of shooting, cutting and thrusting imple

ments once again deployed to entertaining effect in a relentlessly didactic

range of bons mots and finger-wagging reprimands An ancient writer's



BOCKMUEHL Compleat History of the Resurrection 491

ing a lacuna in scholarship is brought down to earth with a bump (Ί think

it is he who has missed thepoint', cf. p. 41 n. 53); another prominent writer

is found to 'agree with the wicked in making an alliance with death'(p. 168). Whether deserved or not, such put-downs reassuringly confirm

that all this is vintage 'Wright Stuff.

The Argument: Bodily Life after Life after Death

Wright divides his task logically into five parts. These begin with (1)

ancient pagan, Old Testament and post-biblical Jewish views of life after

death, before turning to the resurrection (2) in Paul and (3) in other early Christian writings of the New Testament and the second century. Only

then does the argument turn to (4) the interpretation of the actual Easter

narratives in the Gospels—as a way of ensuring that they are understood

in the context of Jewish and Christian resurrection belief as a whole. The

concluding part (5) then devotes the last 50 pages to 'Belief, Event and

Meaning'.

Chapter 1 (pp. 1-31) deftly and robustly dispels the widely held notion

that the resurrection is not an appropriate object of historical inquiry— whether it be deemed inaccessible in principle or merely in the absence of

evidence, and whether such comprehensively sceptical views are them

selves held for theological or for historical reasons. This is a necessary

and in my view wholly justified tour deforce, even if I would differ inpoints

of detail or emphasis: to declare the historical dimensions of the

resurrection a priori inaccessible or irrelevant can only be seen as obscu

rantism, whether its motivations be of the liberal, sceptical or fideistic sort.

Chapter 2 is a well-researched, wide-ranging and interesting survey of diverse ancient Greek and Roman views about life after death. The possible

options, frommurky subsistence in Hades through a variety of disembodied

states to transmigrations and apotheoses, clearly (and in my view adequate

ly) support Wright' s conclusion: whatever gloomy or sanguine view ancient

pagans may have had of the soul's state after death, resurrection—in the

sense of genuine bodily life after genuine bodily death—was simply 'not

an option' (pp. 60, 76, 83). Not least by comparison with Orpheus and

Eurydice, Alcestis's return from the underworld is a rare exception. TheGraeco-Roman 'background' in this case is no background to the early

Ch i ti i t ll W i ht i ti l l i i htf l th th f



492 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26 A (2004)

resume her earthly life. We learn that Scheintod accounts appear for some

reason to have proliferated from the mid-first century onwards. (In the

absence of modern medicine they were surprisingly common well into thenineteenth century.) By contrast, the chapter seems a good deal vaguer

and less focused on the viewpoint of Socrates (pp. 51-53). Given the book's

stated historical ambitions, this survey surprisingly lacks a chronological

frame of reference or development.

Two similarly topical chapters on the Jewish background follow under

the title 'Time to Wake Up'. In the Old Testament (pp. 85-128), the most

important constant factor is seen to be YHWH himself, both as Creator

and in his covenant with Israel. It is against this background that Dan. 12follows logically on the prophetic tradition of Hosea, Isaiah and Ezekiel

in itshope of new life for Israel's dead. The chapter's implied development

is well understood and largely uncontroversial. There is therefore a natural

sequence into the chapter on post-biblical Judaism (pp. 129-206). Wright

wisely allows for a wide spectrum of Second Temple Jewish opinion, all

the way from 'aristocratic' Sadducean denials via immortality of the souls

of the blessed (Philo, 4 Maccabees) to definite bodily resurrection. Some

texts combine both of the latter two viewpoints, but the bulk of the chapter

is devoted to what he argues is the clear majority position, viz. texts that

favour resurrection. Among these, somewhat controversially, is the book

of Wisdom, which is squeezed a good deal harder than by most commen

tators—including M. Gilbert or E. Puech, who are cited in support. (A few

pages earlier, by contrast, another author was praised for his realization that

Pseudo-Phocylides 'se peut contenter d'allusions', p. 157 η. 108.) Along

with assurances aboutστησεται in Wis. 5.1 as 'safely' denoting resurrection

(p. 171) or the 'definite possibility' that Josephus's Essenes believed in

bodily resurrection (p. 186), such moves from modern critical imaginings

to ancient authorial intentions (so explicitly p. 174) are at times close to a

sleight of hand. But even if (like the reviewer) one is inclined in a number

of these cases to agree with Wright, his argument that 'most Jews of this

period hoped for resurrection' (p. 205) could be strengthened by engaging

a little more seriously with mixed or discordant evidence, for example in

funerary inscriptions.

Wright then includes a brief treatment of Qumran that largely followsE. Puech (but without distinguishing sufficiently between sectarian and

t i ie s) Th i l m h t p f n t s r e f




detriment to the argument, it might have been possible to cede a little

more ground to the view that some early rabbinic authorities balanced two

logically incompatible views : no later than the third century, belief in bodily resurrection could co-exist with entry at death into the Garden of Eden, a

place where 'the righteous sit in glory with crowns on their heads and

feast upon the splendour of the Shekhinah'.4Another suggestion is one to

which we shall return below: the laudable range of cited sources might

have been complemented by some more explicit discussion of how the

key Old Testament passages were in fact read in the first century. Never

theless, Wright' s conclusion is unquestionably soundand vitally important:

resurrection was 'life after "life after death'" rather than a mere redescription of death; it was a metaphor that had 'become literal' (p. 202) and

affirmed concrete embodied life after embodied death.

If part 1 may have seemed to some tastes a little rushed, part 2 on Paul

makes up for this impression by an exhaustive treatment of the entire can

onical Pauline corpus, including an extended section on 1-2 Corinthians

in general and in particular (pp. 277-311; pp. 312-74 on 1 Cor. 15 and

2 Cor. 4.7-5.10) and followed by a separate chapter on Paul's encounter

with the risen Jesus in the letters (Gal. 1.11-17; 1 Cor. 9.1; 15.8-ll;2Cor.4.6; 2 Cor. 12.1-4) and in Acts. As Wright notes (pp. 209-10), the diversity

of opinion attested in Judaism surprisingly did not carry over into early

Christian beliefs; nor did such a spectrum develop subsequently (except

of course in 'gnostic' circles, which are not discussed until pp. 534-51).

What was affirmed about Jesus was not 'perceived presence' or even

'exalted status', but bodily resurrection. It is true that one finds here the

familiar profile of Wright's reading of Paul, which in this volume is

(perhaps understandably) not defended in detail: metaphorical reading of parousia texts like 1 Thess. 4.16-17 and 1 Cor. 15.51-52; π\στ\ς Χρίστου

as a subjective genitive; the ubiquity of 'story' and the end of exile, and so

on. Even allowing for disagreement on some of these and other matters,

the exposition struck me as mostly sound and unobjectionable. Despite

Paul's relative silence about the actual course and nature of the events on

Easter Sunday, Wright correctly interprets the apostle's understanding of

their significance in a framework of bodily resurrection.

A few nagging questions remain insufficiently addressed, such as whyGalatians says so little on the resurrection—the near silence of the




Pastorals, by contrast, is cited (though not adopted) as a possible argument

against authenticity. Absent resurrection language in Phil. 2.9-11 is a simi

lar old chestnut that could have benefited from a slightly less obliqueengagement (and without necessarily requiring much additional space).

Here, as elsewhere, I wondered if in the interests of historicity one might

usefully tone down, or at least render more precise, the recurring idea that

belief in the resurrection constituted a frontal threat to the imperial cult.

As Seneca, among others, humorously illustrates, during Paul's lifetime

both the public face ofthat cult and its supporting ideology were perhaps

less ubiquitous and totalitarian than much recent New Testament scholar

ship has tended to suppose. Even the early church's cultured despisers,from Acts 17.18, 32 to Celsus and beyond, treated the resurrection claim

as religiously silly and gullible rather than as politically serious or men

acing.

In the uncharacteristically cluttered conclusion to this first Pauline

chapter I tripped over the assertion that for Paul the story of Israel 'comes

to a shocking but satisfying completion in Jesus as the crucified and risen

Messiah' (p. 274, my italics): without a measure of qualification or

precision, that conclusion is bound to strike some readers as reminiscentof replacement theologies in which the New Covenant has no further need

for a covenant with the Jews.5

Rightly or wrongly, Wright is widely be

lieved to subscribe to a version of this view, which of course has ample

patristic precedent in writers like Origen, Cyril and Eusebius. It is undoubt

edly the case that even a mega biblion must leave some things unsaid and

refer readers to things said elsewhere. While allowing for that, even warmly

sympathetic readers may wonder if there is not in Romans and elsewhere

scope for aPauline interpretation of the resurrection as Israel's story prolep-tically (and indeed 'shockingly') re-affirmed and fulfilled, rather than

satisfactorily completed. Future discussion of this topic might profitably

expose this position more explicitly in relation to mainstream, orthodox

interpreters who take a different view.6

5. E.g. on Rom. 11.25-32 in The Climax of the Covenant (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,

1991), pp. 250-51 anapassim; cf. also Wright's commentary in The NewInterpreter 's

Bible, X (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002).6. One thinks of seminal expositions like that of Karl Barth (e.g. CD Π/2, pp. 286-

8 ) f h f h l IF l b d k b h




Wright's handling of the Corinthian correspondence is particularly clear

and well argued, even if it sides somewhat summarily with R.B. Hays

against A.C. Thiselton's renewed case for a Corinthian problem of 'over-realized' eschatology (p. 279). The core of the argument takes shape in

the 62 pages on 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 4-5. Here Wright carefully demon

strates that Paul sticks uncompromisingly with his Pharisaic background

in affirming bodily resurrection in general—and the bodily resurrection of

Jesus in particular. The body that is raised differs in some significant ways

from that which dies, but even as πνευματικόν it remains emphatically a

body. The apostle can indeed use the language metaphorically, but only in

relation to events of the Christian life and 'return from exile'—which is in

keeping with the Old Testament and in no way amounts to a 'spiritual-

ization' of the resurrection. Wright shows that Paul does change his mind

between 1 and 2 Corinthians, but only on the perspectival question of

whether he himself would remain alive until the new age was fully realized.

There is certainly no hint of creeping Platonism. Even the passages about

his own encounter with the risen Jesus in the letters and Acts are found to

be compatible with this view of resurrection: unlike in 2 Cor. 12, Paul's

'seeing' there is not a vision.

Next we find 180 pages on the non-Pauline texts, beginning with the

Gospels but at this stage excluding their resurrection narratives (for the

reason given earlier). As might be expected from JVG, attention to 'Q' or

any other hypothesis of Gospel origins remains fairly marginal—p. 434

points out that even though 'Q' (if it existed) had no resurrection narrative,

Matthew evidently had no trouble incorporating it in a theology to which

resurrection is vital. Nor indeed is there much discussion (beyond that

offered in JVG, cf. p. 409 n. 30) about the authenticity and meaning of Jesus' predictions of both suffering and vindication—though these are

rightly seen as central to the pre-Easter ministry. Within the chosen param

eters, Wright offers a competent survey of all the standard texts. Given

Wright's subsequent emphatic conviction that no Jew could have expected

an individual rather than a general resurrection (e.g. pp. 695, 700 and

passim), his relatively thin treatment of Herod's reaction to Jesus as the

Baptist redivivus seems the more surprising.

The discussion of John's Gospel is an improvement on JVG, whoserelative silence in this department reviewers repeatedly faulted. Wright

ff b i d id t f th j hi h f d t




Wright offers some unusual interpretations en route to this conclusion.

Two examples may suffice. First, Jesus' anticipatory thanksgiving at the

tomb of Lazarus (11.41) is offered because, despite Martha's assurancesto the contrary, even by the fourth day 'there was no smell': Jesus' apparent

prayer 'for Lazarus to remain uncorrupt' (?) has been answered, and all

that remains is to summon him out and send him on his way (p. 443). I

came away wondering about the implications for the Fourth Evangelist:

should we believe him to be hedging his bets about how dead Lazarus was

in the first place, and (despite 11.23-26) about how relevant this story is

for his understanding of resurrection?

Secondly, Wright's familiar reluctance to find a 'second coming' in theGospel texts resurfaces in relation to Jn 14.2-3: the μονή which Jesus goes

to prepare for the disciples is here not an enduring abode in his Father's

heavenly home (as the Fathers since the second century consistently

thought), but merely a temporary repose in which souls are kept until their

eventual resurrection. Although intriguing, Wright's interpretation here

seems difficult to square either with the ancient reception of this passage

or with the explicit statement in 14.3 that the purpose of Jesus' 'coming

again' is to take the disciples with him to be where he is—that is, with the

Father (14.2, 12).

The New Testament survey ends with treatments of Acts, Hebrews, the

CatholicEpistles and Revelation, and summarizes the overall biblical view

of the resurrection body as consistently 'transphysical' (p. 477) rather than

non-bodily or spiritual. Part 3 then concludes with a rapid tour of key

second- and third-century Christian texts:7

the Apostolic Fathers, some

Christian Apocrypha and apologists; theologians like Tertullian, Irenaeus,

Hippolytus and Origen; early Syrian Christianity; and finally, by way of

contrast, the Gospel of Thomas and the Nag Hammadi literature with its

deconcretization of resurrection. Gnosticism interpretedresurrection out

side the mainstream framework of creation and new creation, future judg

ment, and relativization of secular authorities ('which Roman Emperor

7. Not perhaps 'the entire corpus', pace p. 681: absent and arguably relevantsecond-century resurrection texts include the writings of Clement of Alexandria,

Aristides' Apology, the Diatessaron, the Acts of Peter and Sib. Or. 6-8 (except p. 580n. 95, which concerns the cross). Although more difficult to date, some martyrs' Acts

th th P l ' ( 487) i ht h b f i t t S d d thi d t




would persecute anyone for reading the Gospel of Thomas?' pp. 549-50).

The possibility that such 'spiritualizing' eschatology could predate Thomas

might be worth exploring further.

8

After highlighting the extent to which the Lordship and Messiahship of

Jesus are in the New Testament dependent on an articulate belief in his

resurrection, Wright turns to the New Testament's resurrection narratives

themselves (part 4). Drawing out indications of historical verisimilitude

(including the role of women), while allowing for the difficulties raised by

stories like that of the risen saints inMt. 27.51 -53, he shows the evangelists'

convictions about both continuity and discontinuity of Jesus before and

after the resurrection to be, contra many New Questers and the JesusSeminar, entirely congruous with the Pauline texts examined earlier. The

impression given in these accounts is that the disciples were neither reli

giously nor psychologically prepared for the events of Easter Sunday.

Unlike the passion narratives, these texts evince no homiletical application

to specific Old Testament typology (or for that matter to Christian escha

tology). Once again the question of substantial continuity and subtle differ

ence between the pre-Easter and the post-Easter Jesus is one of the key

themes of the Gospels—as typified in stories like that of the disciples on

the road to Emmaus. Not just Matthew and Luke are adduced in support

of this view, but Mark too (with 16.1-8 as well as a lost ending possibly

reflected in Mt. 28.9-20) and even John. In their different ways, all four

evangelists wrote what they wrote because they believed the events actually

took place (p. 680).

Part 5, finally, attempts to make some hermeneutical and historical sense

out of the mass of evidence presented. This is in some sense where the

rubber hits the road. Granted Wright's exegetical conclusion that the earlyChristians were unanimous in affirming Jesus' bodily resurrection, what

can we say from a historical point of view about the factors that gave rise

to this belief? Put together, Wright argues, the empty tomb and appearances

form a necessary and sufficient condition for early Christian belief in the

bodily resurrection of Jesus (pp. 692-96). Neither cognitive dissonance

theory nor metaphorical theories of divine presence (à la Bultmann,

Schillebeeckx et al.) provide historically workable alternatives. No Chris

tian belief of this sort could have arisen if Jesus' body had remained in the

tomb. To speak of resurrection per se requires a self-involving judgment




of a kind not ordinarily expected of historians; but Wright presses on to

suggest that an actual bodily resurrection provides not only a sufficient but

in fact a necessary condition for the empty tomb and appearances—in thesimple sense that 'no other explanation could or would do' (p. 717).

This in turn, if true, raises the question of the 'so what?'—to which, at

the end of this maximum opus, Wright devotes just 19 pages. To the early

Christians the reality of the resurrection confirmed that Jesus was indeed

Lord and Son of God—hence the second part of the book's title. Wright

cites plausible ancient pagan and modern Jewish perspectives in allowing

that the resurrection might well have been thought to carry a significantly

different meaning from that which the apostolic church in fact attached toit. However, in terms of the questions it necessarily raises about the sub

version of Caesar's Empire and the nature of Israel's God, the resurrection

does point in the direction of the kind of exalted Christology that did in

fact develop. In this vein, the arrow has hit the sun. Or at any rate the sun's

reflection in the pool.

The book closes with a list of abbreviations, a wide-ranging 34-page

bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and three indexes. The

preface indicated Wright's desire to let the argument emerge from primaryrather than secondary sources (p. xvii); and on a topic of this magnitude that

seems well advised. At the same time, text and bibliography suggest that

relatively little of the primary work in Jewish and patristic sources may

have been based on standard critical editions in the original languages

(though classical texts appear to fare better). Selective engagement with

secondary literature seems inevitable in view of the subject, let alone the

stated aims. Examples of this include a fair number of even major works

referenced once or twice enpassant, or not at all. Most of the extensive exe-getical discussions rarely and inconsistently engage with commentaries.

For the international influence of this book it could be of consequence that

the majority of foreign-language titles are drawn from three or four multi-

author volumes on the resurrection published within the last five years.

But perhaps, before trotting out a pedantic list of omissions, we will do

well once again to invoke Behan's rule.

Three Questions

Leaving aside my earlierEeyorish quibbles about length versus exhaustive




this is a hugely accomplished and persuasive achievement. Indeed, it is in

the nature of the case that comprehensiveness was needed in order effect-

ivelyto 'answer Epicurus',as the Mishnahputsit(m.^4èo^2.19). Multum in

parvo it is not; but the book's size does in fact permit a very clear line of

argument, which is pursued with Wright's trademark mix of competence,

clarity and gusto. In the process we are presented with an almost encyclo

paedic reference work that covers the vast majority of pertinent primary

sources in antiquity and demonstrates belief in the bodily resurrection of

Jesus to have been fundamental to every strand of New Testament and

mainstream second-century Christianity (pacecertain fondly held views of

the importance of Thomas and Gnostic texts). There is quite simply no

other book of this size and scope on the resurrection. That alone makes this

new maximum opus well worth heaving home from Borders or the library.

This is now the standard point of reference on the resurrection.

As may have been gleaned from the summary I have given, my own

response to Wright's overall argument is one of agreement and appreci

ation, from which my few passing quibbles do not detract. Within that con

text of consent, I wish in the remaining space to highlight three queries

for further discussion. They are more substantive in the sense that they do

(or may well) raise significant areas of interpretative divergence, but I cite

them here in the genuine belief that to attend to them would strengthen

Wright's overall case. In ascending order of importance, they concern

issues of exegesis, of history and of theology.

1. In the exegetical department there appears at times a curiously anti

quarian hermeneutical approach to the Old Testament, which is quite

extensively read in historical vein to attest ancient Israelite belief. This is

done from a conservative stance (assuming a real David, a second-century

Daniel drawing on pre-Persian tradition including a 'firmly' eighth-century

Hosea, and so on), but it takes for granted that a diachronic scholarly

construct is the appropriate way to read the Old Testament. Appropriate,

to be sure, for an 'archaeological' documentation of ancient Israelite reli

gion; and I have no quibble here. But also appropriate, it seems to be

implied here, for a reading of the Old Testament as the Bible of the New,

and of all first-century Jews and Christians. True, Wright's Jewish chapter

offers an important discussion of the Septuagint as vital witness to the

increasingly resurrection-centred reception history ofthe biblical text; and




that the hermeneutical footprint of these Old Testament texts in the first

century BCE may for purposes of this topic be far more definitive than

what they might have meant in the eighth.

In seeking to understand the contextual meaning of the resurrection of

Jesus, it seems worth asking if the interpretative balance between the his

torical genesis of the Old Testament texts and their historical meaning in

the late Second Temple period ought not to be roughly the opposite ofthat

which Wright assumes. If this is correct, one might wish to assign rather

more weight to the ways in which these texts in fact function in the LXX,

in other ancient versions, in Philo, the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish

interpretations.

Such hermeneutical accounting for the biblical resurrection hope's

Wirkungsgeschichte might make a difference, for example, to one of the

most consistent props of Wright's argument, viz. that nobody expected a

messiah to be raised, or indeed any individual at all (pp. 205,695,700 and

passim). This claim appears to fall down on a number of fronts. Most obvi

ously, perhaps, Herod Antipas is said to have believed that Jesus repre

sented a risen John the Baptist (Mk 6.16 parr.). While recognizing here

'an exception to the general rule' (p. 413), Wright is not at his strongest in

discussing this passage. Of course we may believe that Antipas, like his

father, was an insecure, power-mad and paranoid crank whose religion was

no more than a convenient hotch-potch of syncretism and superstition.

And yet it was evidently possible, however unusual, for a first-century

Jew to think in terms of an individual being raised from the dead—raised

ambiguously, perhaps, to a life that may or may not be understood as im

mortal, but 'raised' nonetheless. Isaiah promised that the dead would be

raised(avaoTr]GovTai οι νεκροί, και έγερθήσονται, 26.19)—yetaproleptic

ήγέρθη is happily stipulated of John as of other dead people including

Jairus's daughter (Mt. 9.25) and the puzzling Matthaean saints (Mt. 27.52).

Whatever one might think about the idiom and genre of these assertions

(and that of Antipas is obviously reported as a delusion), the Gospel writers

do not seem to single out any one of them as intrinsically ridiculous.9

In the

claim of its surpassing eschatological finality, the resurrection of Jesus is

9. Even today, a tour of the internet or a visit to any Lubavitcher neighbourhoodfrom Brooklyn via the world's original Ghetto in Venice to the mystical city of Safed

ill il ill t t h t ft hi d th f th f ll f R bbi




not of course like any of these cases—and yet even here it might prove

worthwhile to correlate and fine-tune the actual first-century meaning of

biblical texts.

Another, perhaps more powerfully influential illustration concerns the

first-century hermeneutical weight of passages like Isa. 53 or Zech. 12 in

Jewish sources and more generally in the context of a variety of traditions

that envisage a suffering or dying Messiah. Indeed a whole chapter of the

ancient Christian dialogue with Judaism depends on an argument that Scrip

ture itself foresaw two comings of the Messiah, first humble and then glori

ous—a point that would not be patently obvious from a diachronic reading

of the Old Testament. And yet, as even Trypho' s response to Justin's use of

it may suggest, that argument could not have survived as long as it did if in

the shared interpretative tradition there had been nothing to talk about.

Might it be worth taking the exceptions to Wright's Rule (no raised

messiah) a little more forthrightly? The exceptions and their interpretative

co-texts may ironically strengthen his case by serving to illustrate that, far

from a freakish innovation, the apostolic church's unique confession was

entirely within the intelligible range of how Jews would read Scripture

and messianic expectation in light of the facts (empty tomb, appearances)

that had transpired. 'He is risen indeed' : what if the first Christians believed

this about the meaning of Easter Sunday because it really was what 'Moses

and all the prophets' had said about the Messiah's suffering and glory?

2. My secondpoint for discussion concerns the remarkable epistemological

optimism of Wright's historical stance. This is perhaps of interest in two

respects, one more general and the other concerned with the resurrection

in particular. In the first instance, whether rightly or wrongly, some of us

come away wondering about the epistemology underlying the apparent

implication of this and previous volumes: that Wright's work, more than

others before or besides, comes closest to telling it like it really was. For the

sake of the argument, let us accept assurances of 'irony' in the author's

claims to be working sine ira et studio (p. 37 η. 31), or to be shooting

arrows either at the sun or at least at its 'true image' in the pond (pp. 11,

23,736-38). But this reviewer, at least, would still find it helpful to know

in which cheek he should envisage Wright's tongue to be planted at this

stage. Quite how, for example, do his historiographical aims and results

differ in practical terms from those of say a Ranke or a Tacitus?10

While




classicists tend to recognize the latter's notorious remark m Ann. 1.1.3 as

ideologically motivated and self-serving (along with its complement

quorum causasprocul habed), it is by no means universally recognized as

ironic. As it stands, more than one reader may come away with the impres

sion that Wright's familiar theoretical crosshairs of standardized 'world-

view questions', story-worlds and so forth seem here still to be poised in

the robust confidence that this particular exercise will guide the critical-

realist arrow reliably to its target, or at least nearer than it can get by any

other means. (As and when his future writing permits, I would also still be

interested in seeing Wright's 'critical realism' articulated in more red-

blooded engagement with contemporary writers on history and histori

ography; one thinks of John Lukacs, Saul Friedlander, Richard Evans, Jan

Assmann and others.)

A more immediately pertinent approach to this question is via the rela

tionship between historiography and the resurrection. Wright is in my view

entirely correct to reprimand the chorus of cultured despisers who either

snidely or piously deny the very possibility, even the desirability, of saying

anything of historical consequence about the resurrection. The well-aimed

blow dealt here to fatuous and pseudo-intellectual scepticism about the

meaning of Easter is more than welcome. Anyone still caught in the stifling

rigor mortis of modernist critical assumptions will find here a breath of

fresh air. And yet... For all the critical realist qualifications, is it finally

true either to history or to theology that if only the historian's tools are

honed with sufficient care they will point unerringly to the Resurrection of

the Son of God as the only possible conclusion, the only one that is both

'necessary' and 'sufficient' (as the Conclusion suggests)? For what is it

that fundamentally sets apart the historical fruits of Wright's 'critical

realism' from that which is claimed with equal self-assurance by, say,

John Hick? Can it really be a matter of sheer investigative brawn and persis

tence, of digging the archaeological dirt deeply enough and deploying our

video cameras at sufficiently powerful zoom?

Is there not a danger that to proceed in deliberate analogies of arrows

hitting the target, or in Holmes-and-Watsonesque repartee with one's

readers (pp. 710-12), is to imply a sleuthing exercise that belies the epis

temological stance that Scripture itself affirms as the only appropriate one?

We may (indeed I think any honest reader must) grant the historicity of

the empty tomb and the subsequent experiences of 'visions signs and




wonders' befitting a messianic Passover (Deut. 26.8). And yet it remains

the case, as Wright himself appears at one point to concede (p. 723), that

the Christian interpretation of the historical phenomena is only one of anumber of possible conclusions that an ancient or modern observer might

draw—even one open to 'self-involving' or 'self-committing'judgments.

As both the evangelists and their subsequent detractors readily knowledge,

tombs might be empty for a number of reasons; so also transforming visions

and religious experiences were known as the stock-in-trade of true prophets

and superstitious charlatans alike.

For the early Christians, to speak about the resurrection of Jesus was

indeed in part to speak truthfully about history, as Wright so admirablydemonstrates. But the New Testament writers at the same time repeatedly

insist that the only access we have to that truth is through the apostolic

testimony (a word not in Wright's index): while the crucifixion was a

matter of public record, the resurrection, qua resurrection, quite clearly

was not. The events of both days were equally 'factual'. But it is the

apostles, and only they, who attest the resurrection (Acts 10.41-42; cf.

Acts 1.22, 25; 1 Cor. 9.1; Jn 19.35; 21.24; 1 Jn 1.1-3). Even the Thomas

episode is primarily concerned not with the nature of 'the evidence' (even

though it confirms its trustworthiness), but really about his emphatic

refusal to trust the apostolic testimony ('unless [I see and touch him], I

will not believe', Jn 20.25,27,29).11

Rudolf Bultmann's notorious misap

propriation of 2 Cor. 5.16 to support the notion of history's irrelevance to

faith has over the years encouraged much eisegetical mischief. But for all

their insistence on the facticity of the resurrection, the early Christians

never claimed that accessible empirical 'events' were intrinsically 'neces

sary' and 'sufficient' to establish that truth. Even accepting the legitimacy

of his plea for historical inquiry over against history's detractors (at Yale

and elsewhere), in this respect Wright doth protest too much against the

caution voiced by the likes of Hans Frei (pp. 21-23). Does it matter for an

epistemology of history that the biblical story itself deliberately introduces

the conclusion 'He is not here, but has been raised' not as deduction from

'sufficient evidence', but as angelic proclamation—which in turn leads to

Eucharistie fellowship with the living Christ?




3. Finally, a briefer and more tentative point, which is less a criticism than

a question, and a request for ongoing discussion of a topic too long neglec

ted. Wright here offers a refreshing tour deforce against the idea of resur

rection as 'pie in the sky when you die '. And yet I wondered if this priority

is not at times in danger of tipping out the eschatological baby with the

spiritualizing bathwater. The belief that a believer will 'go to heaven' is

certainly misguided when it abstracts from the hope for bodily resurrection;

we are agreed on that. But in the absence of such foreshortening it has

arguably an excellent pedigree not only in Jn 14.2-3, but in the effective

history of passages like Lk. 23.43, Phil. 1.21, Rev. 7.9-10 and so on as

read by Christians since antiquity (and none of which Wright discusses in

any depth).

Side by side with affirmations that the body is 'asleep' until its resur

rection are texts that speak of the departed saints as present with Christ in

paradise or heaven; indeed passages like Col. 3.3, Eph. 2.6 or Heb. 12.22-

23 claim this proleptically for all believers even now. Granted that these

texts do not subvert belief in a bodily resurrection, is there not a danger

that the richness of the biblical hope will be equally short-changed by

denying the image of a permanent abode before the throne of God and the

Lamb (p. 471), or with Jesus in the 'mansions' he has prepared in his

Father's house (pp. 445-46)? What, if anything, should be the role of

heaven and of participation in its divine fellowship within the Christian

hope?

The biblical and early Christian vision of a new heaven and a new earth

foresees for the World to Come an end to the ancient chasm between trans

cendent heaven and fallen earth. This point is exemplified in the important

doctrine of the ascended Christ (rather too hastily discussed on pp. 654-56): in the resurrection, embodied human existence is no longer incom

patible with eternal life in the presence of God's heavenly throne. That too

is the vision of Rev. 21-22, as understood by Bernard of Cluny and count

less others: Jerusalem the Golden, the heavenly city in which God himself

dwells and wipes away every tear, embraces and subsumes the new earth.

Here is the 'sweet and blessed country, the home of God's elect'.

I reiterate in closing that all three of these queries are raised in anticipationfor further constructive discussion, within the context of warm gratitude

and genuine admiration for a twenty first century classic in scholarship on



Λ Π^ ,

Copyright and Use:

As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use

according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as

otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement.

No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the

copyright holder(s)' express written permission. Any use, decompiling,

reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a

violation of copyright law.

This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission

from the copyright holder(s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal

typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However,

for certain articles, the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article.

Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specific

work for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered

by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding the

copyright holder(s), please refer to the copyright information in the journal, if available,

or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s).

About ATLAS:

The ATLA Serials (ATLAS®) collection contains electronic versions of previously

published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS

collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association

(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.

The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the American

Theological Library Association.

Documents

174. Compleat History of Res.- A Dialogue With N. T. Wright