John Dominic Crossan’s new book on Images of Easter

Dom Crossan and his wife Sarah Crossan have a book coming out of images of Easter in the eastern orthodox churches.

It is called Resurrecting Easter: How the West Lost and the East Kept the Original Easter Vision

In Resurrecting Easter, bestselling author John Dominic Crossan and his wife, Sarah, uncover a very different vision of the Resurrection story from the one well-known in Western Christian tradition. Drawing on photographs taken during annual travels across Eastern Christianity sites, the Crossans note that the standard image for the Resurrection in Eastern Christianity is universal as Christ raises Adam-and-Eve that is, all of humanity, with him. In Western Christianity, however, Christ’s Resurrection is not universal, but individual, solitary, alone. This alternative understanding of Easter introduces readers to a universal, inclusive, community-based vision that offers renewed hope and possibilities for today’s fractured world.

Two things come to mind.

First, I’ll always remember Crossan’s saying in his Historical Jesus book that “Emmaus never happened, Emmaus always happens.” Remember that from 1991!

Second, in the Eastern Orthodox church, Good Friday is just the warm-up act to Easter Sunday, it is all resurrection, new creation, and the defeat of death.

So it should be one to read this coming Easter, which is only three months away.