180. N. T. Wright, Res. of Son of God- Review

7/30/2019 180. N. T. Wright, Res. of Son of God- Review

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Smith surfacesparticularly the sharing of a meal followed by drinking and con

versation (or entertainment)really does indicate a common Greco-Roman influ

ence. One may argue that such practices are typical of meals around the world, bothformal and informal, ancient and modern. Whether the meal is the noon meal ofa

Lion's Club, a retirement dinner, a family reunion, a meal among Bedouin friends,

a Passover meal, or a Christmas dinner, many groups who share a common bond

dine together and then linger over the table discussing topics of mutual interest.

Although each of these meals serves as a boundary marker between the diners and

the rest of the world, and each is governed by a set of explicit or implicit rules, sure

ly no one would assert that a single model has influenced them all. Yet this is anal

ogous of what Smith attempts to do regarding ancient banquets.

Nevertheless, Smith does surface useful material regarding, for example, the

widely divergent views of ancient Jews regarding the association with Gentiles

(159-166), and the similarities between Paul's admonitions for orderliness in the

assemblies of the Corinthian church and the rules for proper symposium conversa

tion (206-207).

Yet the way Smith handles his evidence should make one reticent to accept his

conclusions uncritically. For instance, he sometimes gives little evidence to support

his claims (80, 134), and he often draws his conclusions before presenting his evi

dence (145, 150). He leads the reader to believe that the Roman governmentbanned clubs because of immorality at their banquets when the actual reason seems

to be their causing of political unrest (which had litde to do with banquets) (97).

He anachronistically infers that the banquet practices in eighth-century BC Israel

(Amos 6:4-7) were within the sphere of Greco-Roman influence (134, 259). He

presumes that the meal in Antioch described by Paul in Gal 2:11-12 must have

been a ritual event (essentially, the "Lord's Supper"), since Christians in Corinth

worshiped at their banquets (174, 176-177).

Finally, the existence of similarities does not necessarily indicate a commoninfluence. In the end, Smith has gathered material that indicates similarities

between the banquets of the Greco-Romans and those of Judaism and Christianity,

but his handling of the material and his lack of careful argument make his con

tention of influence unconvincing.

KENNETH V. NELLER

Professor of Bible

Harding University

N.T. WRIGHT. The Resurrection ofthe Son of God. Christian Origins and the


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traced from the Shaffer Lectures at Yale Divinity School through an amazing number of (mostly American) lectureships to more than twenty lectures given while

Wright held the MacDonald Visiting Chair at Harvard Divinity School during thefall of 1999.Each part of Wright's newest volume intends to contribute toward answering a

basic historical question (with profound theological ramifications): what happenedon Easter morning? (4). His answer, toward which the whole book drives, is thatJesus was raised from the dead. Wright unpacks this assertion as follows: on thethird day after Jesus' death, his body was not only reanimated but was also instantly transformed into a body which, though still physicaloccupying time andspaceis impervious to the forces of dissolution, including death. His resurrected

body is of such a nature that the word "transphysical" aptly describes it. Wrightdivides his investigation into five parts: Setting the Scene; Resurrection in Paul;Resurrection in Early Christianity (ApartfromPaul); the Story of Easter; and Belief,Event, and Meaning.

Following a thirty-one page historical and theological defense of addressingJesus' resurrection as a historical problem, Wright performs an extensive examination of the pagan and Jewish matrix within which Christianity was born. Hedemonstrates that pagans knew the concept of resurrection (expressed primarily by

anastasis, egeiro, and their cognates). It referred to the re-embodiment of one whohad died, an event that might happen at some point after death, and therefore doesnot refer to the event of passing from life into whatever life-after-death there mightbe. Thus "resurrection" is an event that would occur after life-after-death.

In Part One Wright shows that though the pagan world was familiar with thenotion of resurrection, it did not entertain this type of hope. So, too, was the hopeof resurrection missing from much of ancient Israelite history. However, in the second temple period the convergence ofseveral factors inspired a widespread Jewishhope for resurrection: beliefin the power ofthe creator God, the goodness of thecreated order, the validity of God's covenantal promise that Israel would obtain aglorious future in her land, and her experience of exile and martyrdom as divine

judgment. As in paganism, so for second temple Jews, "resurrection" (qum andcognates in Hebrew) denoted the resumption ofbodily life. For Jews in Jesus' day,this was a collective event that had not yet occurred; rather, it would happen whenGod fulfilled his eschatological promiseswhen the "present age" gave way to "theage to come." In fact, in a broad strand of second temple Judaism "resurrection"referred metaphorically to the long-awaited liberation and restoration of the Jewish

nation and literally to the actual re-embodiment ofthe righteous dead. This latterevent, of course, would be part and parcel of the larger, more comprehensive "res


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a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44) nor his words in 2 Cor 4:16-5:5 count against this

interpretation.

Yet Paul's notion of resurrection evinces four striking mutations when comparedto his Jewish environment: for Paul (1) the resurrection hope holds a centrality that

it had not heretofore possessed; (2) the resurrection takes place in Wo stagesfirst

the messiah, then all of God's people when the messiah returns; (3) God's people

will not only be raised, but their bodies will be transformed into bodies which, while

remaining physical, will be impervious to death; and (4) "resurrection," alongside its

literal meaning, becomes a metaphor for "the concrete, bodily events of Christian

living, especially baptism and holiness" (373), thus supplanting the earlier Jewish use

of "resurrection" as a metaphor for the restoration of Israel.

All four of these mutations, according to Wright, are direct consequences of his

experience of seeing Jesus alive after his death and his consequent conviction that

Jesus had been "raised" (bodily) from the dead. Paul's own words (Gal 1:11-17;

1 Cor 9:1; 15:8-11) indicate that he saw Jesus objectively, and in such a way as to

conclude that the risen Jesus had a physical body, but one which transcended

human bodies as we know them. Certain texts in Paul (such as 2 Cor 4:6; 12:1-4)

and the reports of Paul's conversion in Acts cannot be used to overturn this con

clusion in favor ofa purely subjective experience in which Christ appeared to Paul

as a being of light.In Part Three Wright surveys "Resurrection in Early Christianity (Apart from

Paul)," concluding that the witnesses for first-century Christianity (essentially the

NT sans Paul) are at one with Paul in their understanding of resurrection. Only in

the secondcentury, principally in the Gnosticism represented in the Nag Hammadi

codices, do we first encounter a transformation of resurrection language so that "it

no longer refers in any sense to the bodily events of either ultimate resurrection or

moral obedience in this life, but rather to non-bodily religious experience during

the present life and/or non-bodily post-mortem survival and exaltation" (547).The earliest Christians, however, were united in their conviction that God had bod

ily raised Jesus from the dead; only with that certainty could they dare, in the face

of Jesus' crucifixion, declare him as messiah and therefore lord of the world.

Part Four, "The Story of Easter," contains Wright's argument for seeing the

Easter stories of the four Gospels as essentially primitive stories (which gave rise to

the resurrection convictions appearing elsewhere in the NT), rather than late objec

tifying and apologetic tales that stand at the end of a process that began with the

notion that Jesus was exalted directly to heaven from the cross or that he experienced some similar nonbodily fate. This latter reconstruction is seriously compro

mised by four "surprising" features of the Easter stories: (1) "they are told with vir


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tendes" take us back "as close as we are likely to get" to what early Christiansbelieved regarding what had happened to Jesus after his death (614).

Wright's work reaches its climax in Part Five, in which he argues that the emptytomb in conjunction with the appearances of Jesus were not only sufficient for generating belief in Jesus' resurrection, but were also necessary. Other attempts texplain the origin of resurrection faithcognitive dissonance or a Petrine "experience of grace" (Schillebeeckx)are total failures. But if the tomb was empty and ifthe disciples (and some nondisciples) believed that they had encounters with a Jesuswho was bodily present, but who could suddenly appear or vanish at will, thenWright exhorts us to throw off our Enlightenment shackles and conclude that Jesuswas really raised (bodily) from the dead, but with a transformed body that could beappropriately transphysical.

Wright uses the final chapter (19) of Part V to show how belief in Jesus' resurrection led directly to conviction ofhis status as Son of God in a messianic sense,then as Son of God as lord of the world (and thusrivalto Caesar), and then ultimately as divine Son.

This volume constitutes a massive display of erudition. For over seven hundredpages the Bishop of Durham interacts with a dazzling number of ancient texts (seethe 27-page index) and scholars to produce the most sophisticated historical argu

ment for the (bodily) resurrection of Jesus to appear in generations. For the distantfuture it will be necessary for any responsible scholar working on the specific question ofJesus' resurrection or on questions pertaining to resurrection beliefs in second temple Judaism to engage Wright as the major conversation partner.

The strengths of Wright's contribution lie in his linguistic analysis of the resurrection terminology employed by second temple Jews (including Christians), hisexegesis of Paul, his compelling arguments for the primitive nature of the Easterstories in the four Gospels, and his ability to expose the improbability that any fac

tors other than a combination ofJesus' empty tomb and postmortem appearanceswould have given rise to beliefin his resurrection.On the other hand, those looking for an extensive philosophical justification

for the employment of the miraculous in historical study will be disappointed. Thework of Pannenberg is much less prominent than one might have expected. SinceWright's work is decidedly historicalin nature, I would have anticipated a moredetailed defense of the Gospel burial tradition, as well as a more thorough effortto derive the fact of the emptiness ofJesus' tomb from a primitive report that itwas so. Granted that in such a broad work Wright would have to limit his inter

action with secondary sources, I am still surprised that Assessing the New TestamenEvidencefor the Historicity of the Resurrection ofJesus by William L. Craig (a stu


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transformedresurrection body as a historical mutation. He himself admits (162)

that a hope for such transformed bodies is documented in 2 Baruch 51:1-6,10.

Other evidence for such a view appears in Dan 12:3; 4 Ezra 7:125; 1 Enoch 38:4;39:7; 104:2; 2 Enoch 66:7. Moreover, a hope for eternal life after resurrection

(2 Baruch 51:9,16) implies an incorruptible, immortal body. It also appears that a

portion of Wright's argumentation would be affected if the historical Jesus, as the

synoptics have it, predicted not only his death, but also his resurrection on the third

day. For example, in that case appearances by themselves might have been enough

to generate belief in Jesus' resurrection.

Although Wright only cites C.S. Lewis twice, his ghost (ironically!) clearly

haunts this book (400, 459). Any reader of The GreatDivorce will discover that

Wright has provided the exegetical foundation for expecting the everlasting king

dom of God to be a world more solid, more real than the present one. But for

Wright this will be the case, not because the present world will be abolished but

because it will be merged with and transformed by the (presently) invisible world

of God. For this vision, untainted by a dualistic and unimaginative separation of the

physical and spiritual, we give Wright high praise.

BARRY BLACKBURN

Professor of New TestamentAtlanta Christian College

Anselm GRN. Images of Jesus. Translated by John Bowden. New York:Continuum, 2002. 183 pp. $19.95.

This devotional book contains fifty brief word pictures, each describing some

aspect of Jesus' character. The author, a Benedictine monk and cellarer of his

monastery, is better known in Germany than the English-speaking world, but that

may change as translations ofhis books become more widely read in Great Britainand North America.

Of the fifty images, some come directly from Scripture: "Jesus the good shep

herd," "the door," "the crucified Jesus," "the risen Jesus," and so on. Others seem

deliberately provocative: "Jesus the drop-out," "the ghost," "the wild man," "the

clown." Several reflect the author's interest in psychology: "Jesus the physician,"

"the family therapist," "the exorcist," "the tender Jesus." Some images that one

might expect do not appear, such as Lion of Judah or Lamb of God. Grn intro

duces each image with a brief paragraph and follows each with a set of questionsdesigned to help readers apply the image to their lives. A brief Prologue opens the

b k d l E il d it t


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180. N. T. Wright, Res. of Son of God- Review

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