The oddness of Easter
Yesterday I posted about Bart Ehrman, who has made it his business to find all the “problems” with the Bible. For Ehrman, if two tellings of the same story are not completely identical, then someone is lying.
On the other hand, N.T. Wright has a new book coming out which discusses the Passion and Resurrection, explaining what the Gospel writers intended by their respective perspectives. Christianity Today excerpts a portion in which Wright explores the “oddness” of the resurrection accounts, and how this oddness gives them more credence, not less. He mentions four particular aspects of these stories:
1) The strange absence of Scripture in the Resurrection accounts.
2) The presence of women as the primary witnesses.
3) The portrait of Jesus himself.
4) The absence of any mention of the future Christian hope.
The second and third points are pretty well-known, but I have to admit that I have never considered the other two points. Be sure to read the whole article.
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I love the ‘oddness’ of the Resurrection. The Risen Lord can be touched, but he doesn’t have to bother with doors. So in what consists his bodiliness? Why does Mary Magdalene mistake him for the gardener?
To me it is all of these that push us toward the various facets of the one mystery!
I found the last 2 paragraphs of the article especially interesting–I was wondering if you care to comment/elucidate, you know, for homeschooling moms who have trouble writing anything up without spell check, let alone figuring out biblical theology type things before 10 o’clock in the morning.
Always happy to help:
Oddness of Easter, part II