This little book on the resurrection is one of the most convincing, faith affirming treatments of Christianity (let alone the resurrection) you will ever read. It is an excellent book to put in the hands of friends who are curious about the Christian message but have trouble believing. Yet, it is not merely a book of apologetics. It is also a helpful introduction for Christians to a biblical understanding of the resurrection, the foundation of our faith.
Bishop Wright is both a biblical scholar and an historian. It is the historical work that really stands out here. He succinctly reconstructs how the first-century Jew and Gentile world would have understood the resurrection, unpacking all of the assumptions and expectations about death and the supernatural. Then he shows the impact Jesus’ resurrection had on the first Christians and why it generated such a powerful movement.
The genius of his argument is how it explains the development of early Christianity. Wright explains how Christ’s resurrection is both in line with Jewish expectation and yet so radically different from it that no one would have constructed it on their own. What Jesus’ resurrection blew away the previous categories while still following in their intended trajectories. In fact, the reader is left saying the best explanation for both the continuity of symbolism and discontinuity of expectation is that the events must have unfolded just as the New Testament writers had said.
For those who don’t have the stomach for Wright’s other book on the resurrection, the 700 page highly academic The Resurrection of the Son of God, this book provides a wonderful popularized alternative.
-Kevin Nelson
