{"id":29378,"date":"2015-04-03T11:28:33","date_gmt":"2015-04-03T15:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=29378"},"modified":"2015-04-03T11:28:33","modified_gmt":"2015-04-03T15:28:33","slug":"the-burial-of-jesus-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/04\/the-burial-of-jesus-3.html","title":{"rendered":"The Burial of Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I wrote the book The Burial of Jesus: What Does History Have to Do with Faith?<\/a>\"\"<\/i> to mediate historical approaches to the Bible and to Jesus to a Christian audience, and to wrestle with the stories of Jesus\u2019 death, burial, and resurrection myself, while paying attention to the neglected middle \u2013 the traditions about Jesus\u2019 burial, which seem to me to provide a lot more information than tends to be noticed, as we hurry past them to get to Easter.<\/p>\n

I have blogged about the book in the past, and have answered questions<\/a> about it and shared comments<\/a> from people who have found it helpful. Indeed, I have blogged about the subject of the burial of Jesus<\/a> quite often,\u00a0most recently in response to Bart Ehrman\u2019s suggestion that Jesus might not have been buried at all<\/a>. So this year, let me simply provide a brief quote from the book, and see if it whets anyone\u2019s appetite to read more:<\/p>\n

Since historical study deals only in probability, if Christians\u2019 affirmation of Jesus\u2019 resurrection is about the historical question of what happened to his body after being placed in the tomb, then the most Christians can affirm is that the body of Jesus had almost certainly<\/em> vanished from the tomb. They could presumably further assert, without transgressing the limits of historical inquiry, that it is not impossible<\/em> that Jesus rose from the grave. Clearly such language will seem a poor and inadequate expression of Christian faith. Even if it were possible to have more confidence about the matter using historical tools, it would still only allow one to say that Jesus probably <\/em>rose from the dead \u2013 a statement that would still be judged a far cry from a Gospel that one can proclaim!<\/p>\n

The problem is not with either history or faith at this point. The problem is that Christians often wish to make historical claims<\/em> without having sufficient historical evidence<\/em>, as well as at times confusing theological affirmations <\/em>with historical <\/em>ones. The question will need to be asked therefore whether resurrection faith is really supposed to be about history at all, whether it is an affirmation about the whereabouts of a corpse. To many Christians, resurrection faith seems to be an affirmation of a different sort altogether.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The second edition of The Burial of Jesus<\/em><\/a> is an ebook published by Patheos Press, and is available on Amazon.com for $2.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote the book The Burial of Jesus: What Does History Have to Do with Faith? to mediate historical approaches to the Bible and to Jesus to a Christian audience, and to wrestle with the stories of Jesus\u2019 death, burial, and resurrection myself, while paying attention to the neglected middle \u2013 the traditions about Jesus\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":6347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[1461,2322,2936,3329,4059,4660,5677,10276,12050,12722],"class_list":["post-29378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical-jesus","tag-burial","tag-crucifixion","tag-easter","tag-faith","tag-good-friday","tag-history","tag-jesus","tag-resurrection","tag-sunday","tag-tomb"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Burial of Jesus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I wrote the book The Burial of Jesus: What Does History Have to Do with Faith? to mediate historical approaches to the Bible and to Jesus to a Christian\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/04\/the-burial-of-jesus-3.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Burial of Jesus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I wrote the book The Burial of Jesus: What Does History Have to Do with Faith? to mediate historical approaches to the Bible and to Jesus to a Christian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/04\/the-burial-of-jesus-3.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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