Easter and History Discussion

Easter and History Discussion April 2, 2010

The question of whether “scholarship excludes the possibility of resurrection” by definition has been raised by Brian LePort. Do pay his blog a visit and chime in. My own view is that, if one is talking about scholarship in historical study, there is no way that a historian, whose job it is to assess probabilities based on available evidence, can ever legitimately conclude that it is more likely that an individual who was killed had been raised bodily into the life of the age to come, than that some other events which are not without historical precedent converged to give rise to the beliefs of the earliest Christians. This does not mean that historical study “proves the resurrection didn’t happen” – it just means that historical study can never provide proof or even a balance of probability that it did happen. If Christians want certainty about the historicity of the resurrection, it is not the fault of historical study that its tools cannot provide it.

Another interesting discussion in the biblioblogosphere is Daniel Kirk’s discussion of the Christology of the Gospels. Particularly interesting is the question of whether the story of Jesus walking on the sea echoes Job 9 and if so, whether this indicates a subtle claim about the divinity of Jesus.


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