[JSNT 26A (2004) 489-504] ISSN0142-064X

Compleat History of the Resurrection: A Dialogue with N.T. Wright Markus Bockmuehl
Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge CB3 9BS Bockmuehl@cantab.net

Tom Wright is not one to do things by halves. His is the high-octane, Grand Unified Theory approach to New Testament studies. Where lesser mortals may acquiesce in losing the wood for the exegetical trees, N.T. Wright deals in inter-galactic ecosystemswithout neglecting in the process to footnote a surprising number of trees. His history-cum-theology of Chris tian origins is now proposed to run to at least five volumes, of which The Resurrection of the Son of God (RSG) is the third and most recent.1 The project's ambitions are expanding at a breathtaking rate: this latest instal ment of 800 pages and half a million words had been planned as a 70-page conclusion to Jesus and the Victory of God (henceforth JVGf until the closing stages ofthat previous volume. The resulting tome, ironically, is 10 percent longer than its predecessor, which in turn dwarfed the first, most comprehensively titled volume of the series {The New Testament and 3 the People of God=NTPG ). Readers with doctorates may remember toss ing on their beds in sleepless dread of an oral examination to be conducted in the spirit of Mt. 12.36-37. But half a dozen Cambridge dissertations, bound end to end, still could notfilla volume of this size without exceeding their combined word limit. Tom Wright is not one to do things by halves. As an embarrassingly slow and distracted reader (and not for that reason alone a disciple of Callimachus's maxim ), this reviewer tends to reach swiftly for the smelling salts whenever faced with

1. N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, 3; London: SPCK, 2003). 2. London: SPCK, 1996. 3. London: SPCK, 1992.
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grands projets of this sort. Yet after trudging through these 800 pages with the help of double espressos and other liquids suitablyfitto raise the dead, I must acknowledge that I found this a remarkably engaging work of scholarship, which communicates in consistently winsome and persuasive terms not only most of what I knew already, but a good deal more besides. An inescapably morbid part of the reviewer's brief is to find fault; and I shall get round to some ofthat in due course. But in the face of a work of this magnitude we do well to be reminded of Brendan Behan's famous quip about the critic being like the eunuch in a harem... The present work isfreshand intellectually captivating. Whether because of its subject matter or because of extensive pre-publication road testing (pp. xv-xvi), Wright's case here does not depend, in precariously dominolike contingency, on a few high-profile theories that have over the years been widely questioned and prone to caricature. Among these have been a Palestinian Judaism oppressed by its general sense of continuing exile, a gospel eschatology overwhelmingly focused on the year 70, or Jesus of Nazareth's grand self-assertion as the definitive replacement of Jerusalem, Temple and all that stood for Israel. These familiar theories do indeed surface, as does the somewhat idiosyncratic non-capitalization of'god' and 'lord'. But rather less of the argument seems to rest on them; and RSG is on the whole much less vulnerable to flippant dismissal by critics for a single favourite methodological bte noire (such as that it fails to render an account of the synoptic problem or of authenticity in the sayings tradition, as was occasionally said about JVG). Knee-jerk criticisms of Wright's earlier theories willfindsurprisingly little leverage in this clear and vigorous case, conceived, in deliberate contrast to its predecessors, as 'essentially a simple monograph with a single line of thought' (p. xvii). To be sure, we still have here the self-professed 'historian'a term that is used emphatically throughout and relies largely on the 'critical realism' outlined in volume 1 of the series (cf. pp. 12-23). We shall return to the question of historical method a little later; those prepared to hold methodological prissiness in abeyance and press on with the argument will find that swashbuckling critical adventure soon ensues. One need not follow Tom Wright very far into the scholarly woods to find the customary rhetorical arsenal of shooting, cutting and thrusting implements once again deployed to entertaining effect in a relentlessly didactic range of bons mots and finger-wagging reprimands. An ancient writer's sense that he need not provide additional illustrations of his view merits an approving nod ('quite so', p. 54 n. 126); a modern author fondly imagin-

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ing a lacuna in scholarship is brought down to earth with a bump ( think it is he who has missed thepoint', cf. p. 41 n. 53); another prominent writer is found to 'agree with the wicked in making an alliance with death' (p. 168). Whether deserved or not, such put-downs reassuringly confirm that all this is vintage 'Wright Stuff. The Argument: Bodily Life after Life after Death Wright divides his task logically into five parts. These begin with (1) ancient pagan, Old Testament and post-biblical Jewish views of life after death, before turning to the resurrection (2) in Paul and (3) in other early Christian writings of the New Testament and the second century. Only then does the argument turn to (4) the interpretation of the actual Easter narratives in the Gospelsas a way of ensuring that they are understood in the context of Jewish and Christian resurrection belief as a whole. The concluding part (5) then devotes the last 50 pages to 'Belief, Event and Meaning'. Chapter 1 (pp. 1-31) deftly and robustly dispels the widely held notion that the resurrection is not an appropriate object of historical inquiry whether it be deemed inaccessible in principle or merely in the absence of evidence, and whether such comprehensively sceptical views are them selves held for theological or for historical reasons. This is a necessary and in my view wholly justified tour deforce, even if I would differ in points of detail or emphasis: to declare the historical dimensions of the resurrection a priori inaccessible or irrelevant can only be seen as obscu rantism, whether its motivations be of the liberal, sceptical or fideistic sort. Chapter 2 is a well-researched, wide-ranging and interesting survey of diverse ancient Greek and Roman views about life after death. The possible options, frommurky subsistence in Hades through a variety of disembodied states to transmigrations and apotheoses, clearly (and in my view adequate ly) support Wright' s conclusion: whatever gloomy or sanguine view ancient pagans may have had of the soul's state after death, resurrectionin the sense of genuine bodily life after genuine bodily deathwas simply 'not an option' (pp. 60, 76, 83). Not least by comparison with Orpheus and Eurydice, Alcestis's return from the underworld is a rare exception. The Graeco-Roman 'background' in this case is no background to the early Christian view at all. Wright is particularly insightful on the theme ofmere ly apparent death {Scheintod, pp. 68-76), illustrated in texts like Chariton's novella Callirho, whose eponymous heroine emerges from the tomb to

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resume her earthly life. We learn that Scheintod accounts appear for some reason to have proliferated from the mid-first century onwards. (In the absence of modern medicine they were surprisingly common well into the nineteenth century.) By contrast, the chapter seems a good deal vaguer and less focused on the viewpoint of Socrates (pp. 51-53). Given the book's stated historical ambitions, this survey surprisingly lacks a chronological frame of reference or development. Two similarly topical chapters on the Jewish background follow under the title 'Time to Wake Up'. In the Old Testament (pp. 85-128), the most important constant factor is seen to be YHWH himself, both as Creator and in his covenant with Israel. It is against this background that Dan. 12 follows logically on the prophetic tradition of Hosea, Isaiah and Ezekiel in its hope of new life for Israel's dead. The chapter's implied development is well understood and largely uncontroversial. There is therefore a natural sequence into the chapter on post-biblical Judaism (pp. 129-206). Wright wisely allows for a wide spectrum of Second Temple Jewish opinion, all the way from 'aristocratic' Sadducean denials via immortality of the souls of the blessed (Philo, 4 Maccabees) to definite bodily resurrection. Some texts combine both of the latter two viewpoints, but the bulk of the chapter is devoted to what he argues is the clear majority position, viz. texts that favour resurrection. Among these, somewhat controversially, is the book of Wisdom, which is squeezed a good deal harder than by most commen tatorsincluding M. Gilbert or E. Puech, who are cited in support. (A few pages earlier, by contrast, another author was praised for his realization that Pseudo-Phocylides 'se peut contenter d'allusions', p. 157 . 108.) Along with assurances about in Wis. 5.1 as 'safely' denoting resurrection (p. 171) or the 'definite possibility' that Josephus's Essenes believed in bodily resurrection (p. 186), such moves from modern critical imaginings to ancient authorial intentions (so explicitly p. 174) are at times close to a sleight of hand. But even if (like the reviewer) one is inclined in a number of these cases to agree with Wright, his argument that 'most Jews of this period hoped for resurrection' (p. 205) could be strengthened by engaging a little more seriously with mixed or discordant evidence, for example in funerary inscriptions. Wright then includes a brief treatment of Qumran that largely follows E. Puech (but without distinguishing sufficiently between sectarian and non-sectarian views). There is also a somewhat perfunctory survey of rabbinic and Targumic sources that remains vague on dates (p. 195 n. 283) and cites none of the specialist literature of the last two decades. Without

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detriment to the argument, it might have been possible to cede a little more ground to the view that some early rabbinic authorities balanced two logically incompatible views : no later than the third century, belief in bodily resurrection could co-exist with entry at death into the Garden of Eden, a place where 'the righteous sit in glory with crowns on their heads and feast upon the splendour of the Shekhinah'.4 Another suggestion is one to which we shall return below: the laudable range of cited sources might have been complemented by some more explicit discussion of how the key Old Testament passages were in fact read in the first century. Never theless, Wright' s conclusion is unquestionably sound and vitally important: resurrection was 'life after "life after death'" rather than a mere redescrip tion of death; it was a metaphor that had 'become literal' (p. 202) and affirmed concrete embodied life after embodied death. If part 1 may have seemed to some tastes a little rushed, part 2 on Paul makes up for this impression by an exhaustive treatment of the entire can onical Pauline corpus, including an extended section on 1-2 Corinthians in general and in particular (pp. 277-311; pp. 312-74 on 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 4.7-5.10) and followed by a separate chapter on Paul's encounter with the risen Jesus in the letters (Gal. 1.11-17; 1 Cor. 9.1; 15.8-ll;2Cor. 4.6; 2 Cor. 12.1-4) and in Acts. As Wright notes (pp. 209-10), the diversity of opinion attested in Judaism surprisingly did not carry over into early Christian beliefs; nor did such a spectrum develop subsequently (except of course in 'gnostic' circles, which are not discussed until pp. 534-51). What was affirmed about Jesus was not 'perceived presence' or even 'exalted status', but bodily resurrection. It is true that one finds here the familiar profile of Wright's reading of Paul, which in this volume is (perhaps understandably) not defended in detail: metaphorical reading of parousia texts like 1 Thess. 4.16-17 and 1 Cor. 15.51-52; \\ as a subjective genitive; the ubiquity of 'story' and the end of exile, and so on. Even allowing for disagreement on some of these and other matters, the exposition struck me as mostly sound and unobjectionable. Despite Paul's relative silence about the actual course and nature of the events on Easter Sunday, Wright correctly interprets the apostle's understanding of their significance in a framework of bodily resurrection. A few nagging questions remain insufficiently addressed, such as why Galatians says so little on the resurrectionthe near silence of the
4. ARN A1 (on Exod. 24.11, ed. Schechter, p. 5); also attributed famously to Rab (third century) in b. Ber. 17a, and later developed by Maimonides; cf. similarly Tank Exod Pequdey 3.
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Pastorals, by contrast, is cited (though not adopted) as a possible argument against authenticity. Absent resurrection language in Phil. 2.9-11 is a simi lar old chestnut that could have benefited from a slightly less oblique engagement (and without necessarily requiring much additional space). Here, as elsewhere, I wondered if in the interests of historicity one might usefully tone down, or at least render more precise, the recurring idea that belief in the resurrection constituted a frontal threat to the imperial cult. As Seneca, among others, humorously illustrates, during Paul's lifetime both the public face ofthat cult and its supporting ideology were perhaps less ubiquitous and totalitarian than much recent New Testament scholar ship has tended to suppose. Even the early church's cultured despisers, from Acts 17.18, 32 to Celsus and beyond, treated the resurrection claim as religiously silly and gullible rather than as politically serious or men acing. In the uncharacteristically cluttered conclusion to this first Pauline chapter I tripped over the assertion that for Paul the story of Israel 'comes to a shocking but satisfying completion in Jesus as the crucified and risen Messiah' (p. 274, my italics): without a measure of qualification or precision, that conclusion is bound to strike some readers as reminiscent of replacement theologies in which the New Covenant has no further need for a covenant with the Jews.5 Rightly or wrongly, Wright is widely be lieved to subscribe to a version of this view, which of course has ample patristic precedent in writers like Origen, Cyril and Eusebius. It is undoubt edly the case that even a mega biblion must leave some things unsaid and refer readers to things said elsewhere. While allowing for that, even warmly sympathetic readers may wonder if there is not in Romans and elsewhere scope for a Pauline interpretation ofthe resurrection as Israel's story proleptically (and indeed 'shockingly') re-affirmed and fulfilled, rather than satisfactorily completed. Future discussion of this topic might profitably expose this position more explicitly in relation to mainstream, orthodox 6 interpreters who take a different view. 5. E.g. on Rom. 11.25-32 in The Climax ofthe Covenant (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), pp. 250-51 ana passim; cf. also Wright's commentary in The New Interpreter 's Bible, X (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002). 6. One thinks of seminal expositions like that of Karl Barth (e.g. CD /2, pp. 28687), or for that matter of Pope John Paul IF s celebrated remarks about the permanence of the covenant with Israel during his historic visit to Rome's synagogue in 1986 (reproduced, e.g., in the 2002 Vatican document The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, pp. 196-97).
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Wright's handling of the Corinthian correspondence is particularly clear and well argued, even if it sides somewhat summarily with R.B. Hays against A.C. Thiselton's renewed case for a Corinthian problem of 'overrealized' eschatology (p. 279). The core of the argument takes shape in the 62 pages on 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 4-5. Here Wright carefully demon strates that Paul sticks uncompromisingly with his Pharisaic background in affirming bodily resurrection in generaland the bodily resurrection of Jesus in particular. The body that is raised differs in some significant ways from that which dies, but even as it remains emphatically a body. The apostle can indeed use the language metaphorically, but only in relation to events of the Christian life and 'returnfromexile'which is in keeping with the Old Testament and in no way amounts to a 'spiritualization' of the resurrection. Wright shows that Paul does change his mind between 1 and 2 Corinthians, but only on the perspectival question of whether he himself would remain alive until the new age was fully realized. There is certainly no hint of creeping Platonism. Even the passages about his own encounter with the risen Jesus in the letters and Acts are found to be compatible with this view of resurrection: unlike in 2 Cor. 12, Paul's 'seeing' there is not a vision. Next we find 180 pages on the non-Pauline texts, beginning with the Gospels but at this stage excluding their resurrection narratives (for the reason given earlier). As might be expected from JVG, attention to 'Q' or any other hypothesis of Gospel origins remains fairly marginalp. 434 points out that even though 'Q' (if it existed) had no resurrection narrative, Matthew evidently had no trouble incorporating it in a theology to which resurrection is vital. Nor indeed is there much discussion (beyond that offered in JVG, cf. p. 409 n. 30) about the authenticity and meaning of Jesus' predictions of both suffering and vindicationthough these are rightly seen as central to the pre-Easter ministry. Within the chosen param eters, Wright offers a competent survey of all the standard texts. Given Wright's subsequent emphatic conviction that no Jew could have expected an individual rather than a general resurrection (e.g. pp. 695, 700 and passim), his relatively thin treatment of Herod's reaction to Jesus as the Baptist redivivus seems the more surprising. The discussion of John's Gospel is an improvement on JVG, whose relative silence in this department reviewers repeatedly faulted. Wright offers a bracing and rapid tour of the major passages, which are found to offer strong confirmation of the centrality of resurrection belief along Pharisaic lines. While bracketing out questions of historicity (p. 447),

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Wright offers some unusual interpretations en route to this conclusion. Two examples may suffice. First, Jesus' anticipatory thanksgiving at the tomb of Lazarus (11.41) is offered because, despite Martha's assurances to the contrary, even by the fourth day 'there was no smell': Jesus' apparent prayer 'for Lazarus to remain uncorrupt' (?) has been answered, and all that remains is to summon him out and send him on his way (p. 443). I came away wondering about the implications for the Fourth Evangelist: should we believe him to be hedging his bets about how dead Lazarus was in the first place, and (despite 11.23-26) about how relevant this story is for his understanding of resurrection? Secondly, Wright's familiar reluctance to find a 'second coming' in the Gospel texts resurfaces in relation to Jn 14.2-3: the which Jesus goes to prepare for the disciples is here not an enduring abode in his Father's heavenly home (as the Fathers since the second century consistently thought), but merely a temporary repose in which souls are kept until their eventual resurrection. Although intriguing, Wright's interpretation here seems difficult to square either with the ancient reception of this passage or with the explicit statement in 14.3 that the purpose of Jesus' 'coming again' is to take the disciples with him to be where he isthat is, with the Father (14.2, 12). The New Testament survey ends with treatments of Acts, Hebrews, the Catholic Epistles and Revelation, and summarizes the overall biblical view of the resurrection body as consistently 'transphysical' (p. 477) rather than non-bodily or spiritual. Part 3 then concludes with a rapid tour of key second- and third-century Christian texts:7 the Apostolic Fathers, some Christian Apocrypha and apologists; theologians like Tertullian, Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Origen; early Syrian Christianity; and finally, by way of contrast, the Gospel of Thomas and the Nag Hammadi literature with its deconcretization of resurrection. Gnosticism interpreted resurrection out side the mainstream framework of creation and new creation, future judg ment, and relativization of secular authorities ('which Roman Emperor 7. Not perhaps 'the entire corpus', pace p. 681: absent and arguably relevant second-century resurrection texts include the writings of Clement of Alexandria, Aristides' Apology, the Diatessaron, the Acts ofPeter and Sib. Or. 6-8 (except p. 580 n. 95, which concerns the cross). Although more difficult to date, some martyrs' Acts other than Polycarp's (p. 487) might have been of interest. Second and third-century epitaphs and catacomb art followed not far behind, some of them placed deliberately near the venerated tombs of the apostles and martyrs. Arguably T. Levi 18.3-4 and Benj. 10.6-9 also belong more clearly in this section than in that on Judaism (p. 159).
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would persecute anyone for reading the Gospel of Thomas?' pp. 549-50). The possibility that such 'spiritualizing' eschatology could predate Thomas might be worth exploring further.8 After highlighting the extent to which the Lordship and Messiahship of Jesus are in the New Testament dependent on an articulate belief in his resurrection, Wright turns to the New Testament's resurrection narratives themselves (part 4). Drawing out indications of historical verisimilitude (including the role of women), while allowing for the difficulties raised by stories like that oftherisensaints in Mt. 27.51 -53, he shows the evangelists' convictions about both continuity and discontinuity of Jesus before and after the resurrection to be, contra many New Questers and the Jesus Seminar, entirely congruous with the Pauline texts examined earlier. The impression given in these accounts is that the disciples were neither religiously nor psychologically prepared for the events of Easter Sunday. Unlike the passion narratives, these texts evince no homiletical application to specific Old Testament typology (or for that matter to Christian eschatology). Once again the question of substantial continuity and subtle difference between the pre-Easter and the post-Easter Jesus is one of the key themes of the Gospelsas typified in stories like that of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Not just Matthew and Luke are adduced in support of this view, but Mark too (with 16.1-8 as well as a lost ending possibly reflected in Mt. 28.9-20) and even John. In their different ways, all four evangelists wrote what they wrote because they believed the events actually took place (p. 680). Part 5,finally,attempts to make some hermeneutical and historical sense out of the mass of evidence presented. This is in some sense where the rubber hits the road. Granted Wright's exegetical conclusion that the early Christians were unanimous in affirming Jesus' bodily resurrection, what can we say from a historical point of view about the factors that gave rise to this belief? Put together, Wright argues, the empty tomb and appearances form a necessary and sufficient condition for early Christian belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus (pp. 692-96). Neither cognitive dissonance theory nor metaphorical theories of divine presence ( la Bultmann, Schillebeeckx et al.) provide historically workable alternatives. No Christian belief of this sort could have arisen if Jesus' body had remained in the tomb. To speak of resurrection per se requires a self-involving judgment
8. E.g. in relation to Corinth, as mentioned aboveand as raised again most recently by Todd E. Klutz, 'Re-Reading 1 Corinthians after Rethinking "Gnosticism'", JSNT26.2 (2003)9pp. 193-216.
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of a kind not ordinarily expected of historians; but Wright presses on to suggest that an actual bodily resurrection provides not only a sufficient but in fact a necessary condition for the empty tomb and appearancesin the simple sense that 'no other explanation could or would do' (p. 717). This in turn, if true, raises the question of the 'so what?'to which, at the end of this maximum opus, Wright devotes just 19 pages. To the early Christians the reality of the resurrection confirmed that Jesus was indeed Lord and Son of Godhence the second part of the book's title. Wright cites plausible ancient pagan and modern Jewish perspectives in allowing that the resurrection might well have been thought to carry a significantly different meaning from that which the apostolic church in fact attached to it. However, in terms of the questions it necessarily raises about the subversion of Caesar's Empire and the nature of Israel's God, the resurrection does point in the direction of the kind of exalted Christology that did in fact develop. In this vein, the arrow has hit the sun. Or at any rate the sun's reflection in the pool. The book closes with a list of abbreviations, a wide-ranging 34-page bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and three indexes. The preface indicated Wright's desire to let the argument emerge from primary rather than secondary sources (p. xvii); and on a topic ofthis magnitude that seems well advised. At the same time, text and bibliography suggest that relatively little of the primary work in Jewish and patristic sources may have been based on standard critical editions in the original languages (though classical texts appear to fare better). Selective engagement with secondary literature seems inevitable in view of the subject, let alone the stated aims. Examples of this include a fair number of even major works referenced once or twice en passant, or not at all. Most ofthe extensive exegetical discussions rarely and inconsistently engage with commentaries. For the international influence of this book it could be of consequence that the majority of foreign-language titles are drawn from three or four multiauthor volumes on the resurrection published within the last five years. But perhaps, before trotting out a pedantic list of omissions, we will do well once again to invoke Behan's rule. Three Questions Leaving aside my earlier Eeyorish quibbles about length versus exhaustiveness, what remains here is a volume of unmatched distinction on the subject. Regardless of one's agreement or disagreement with the author,

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this is a hugely accomplished and persuasive achievement. Indeed, it is in the nature of the case that comprehensiveness was needed in order effectivelyto 'answer Epicurus',as the Mishnahputsit(m.^4o^2.19). Multum in parvo it is not; but the book's size does in fact permit a very clear line of argument, which is pursued with Wright's trademark mix of competence, clarity and gusto. In the process we are presented with an almost encyclopaedic reference work that covers the vast majority of pertinent primary sources in antiquity and demonstrates belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus to have been fundamental to every strand of New Testament and mainstream second-century Christianity (pace certain fondly held views of the importance of Thomas and Gnostic texts). There is quite simply no other book of this size and scope on the resurrection. That alone makes this new maximum opus well worth heaving home from Borders or the library. This is now the standard point of reference on the resurrection. As may have been gleaned from the summary I have given, my own response to Wright's overall argument is one of agreement and appreciation, from which my few passing quibbles do not detract. Within that context of consent, I wish in the remaining space to highlight three queries for further discussion. They are more substantive in the sense that they do (or may well) raise significant areas of interpretative divergence, but I cite them here in the genuine belief that to attend to them would strengthen Wright's overall case. In ascending order of importance, they concern issues of exegesis, of history and of theology. 1. In the exegetical department there appears at times a curiously antiquarian hermeneutical approach to the Old Testament, which is quite extensively read in historical vein to attest ancient Israelite belief. This is done from a conservative stance (assuming a real David, a second-century Daniel drawing on pre-Persian tradition including a 'firmly' eighth-century Hosea, and so on), but it takes for granted that a diachronic scholarly construct is the appropriate way to read the Old Testament. Appropriate, to be sure, for an 'archaeological' documentation of ancient Israelite religion; and I have no quibble here. But also appropriate, it seems to be implied here, for a reading of the Old Testament as the Bible of the New, and of allfirst-centuryJews and Christians. True, Wright's Jewish chapter offers an important discussion of the Septuagint as vital witness to the increasingly resurrection-centred reception history of the biblical text; and Theodotion's 'recension' brings this right up to the beginning of the Christian era. But in general there seems to be only an intermittent sense

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that the hermeneutical footprint of these Old Testament texts in the first century BCE may for purposes of this topic be far more definitive than what they might have meant in the eighth. In seeking to understand the contextual meaning of the resurrection of Jesus, it seems worth asking if the interpretative balance between the his torical genesis of the Old Testament texts and their historical meaning in the late Second Temple period ought not to be roughly the opposite ofthat which Wright assumes. If this is correct, one might wish to assign rather more weight to the ways in which these texts in fact function in the LXX, in other ancient versions, in Philo, the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish interpretations. Such hermeneutical accounting for the biblical resurrection hope's Wirkungsgeschichte might make a difference, for example, to one of the most consistent props of Wright's argument, viz. that nobody expected a messiah to be raised, or indeed any individual at all (pp. 205,695,700 and passim). This claim appears to fall down on a number of fronts. Most obvi ously, perhaps, Herod Antipas is said to have believed that Jesus repre sented a risen John the Baptist (Mk 6.16 parr.). While recognizing here 'an exception to the general rule' (p. 413), Wright is not at his strongest in discussing this passage. Of course we may believe that Antipas, like his father, was an insecure, power-mad and paranoid crank whose religion was no more than a convenient hotch-potch of syncretism and superstition. And yet it was evidently possible, however unusual, for a first-century Jew to think in terms of an individual being raised from the deadraised ambiguously, perhaps, to a life that may or may not be understood as im mortal, but 'raised' nonetheless. Isaiah promised that the dead would be raised(avaoTr]GovTai , , 26.19)yetaproleptic is happily stipulated of John as of other dead people including Jairus's daughter (Mt. 9.25) and the puzzling Matthaean saints (Mt. 27.52). Whatever one might think about the idiom and genre of these assertions (and that ofAntipas is obviously reported as a delusion), the Gospel writers 9 do not seem to single out any one of them as intrinsically ridiculous. In the claim of its surpassing eschatological finality, the resurrection of Jesus is 9. Even today, a tour of the internet or a visit to any Lubavitcher neighbourhood from Brooklyn via the world's original Ghetto in Venice to the mystical city of Safed will easily illustrate how, ten years after his death, many of the followers of Rabbi Menahem Schneerson continue to regard him as Israel's 'King Messiah' whose (indi vidual) resurrection to continue his work is imminent. This analogy is dismissed rather too easily on pp. 25, 31 n. 75.
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not of course like any of these casesand yet even here it might prove worthwhile to correlate andfine-tunethe actual first-century meaning of biblical texts. Another, perhaps more powerfully influential illustration concerns the first-century hermeneutical weight of passages like Isa. 53 or Zech. 12 in Jewish sources and more generally in the context of a variety of traditions that envisage a suffering or dying Messiah. Indeed a whole chapter of the ancient Christian dialogue with Judaism depends on an argument that Scrip ture itself foresaw two comings of the Messiah,firsthumble and then glori ousa point that would not be patently obvious from a diachronic reading of the Old Testament. And yet, as even Trypho' s response to Justin's use of it may suggest, that argument could not have survived as long as it did if in the shared interpretative tradition there had been nothing to talk about. Might it be worth taking the exceptions to Wright's Rule (no raised messiah) a little more forthrightly? The exceptions and their interpretative co-texts may ironically strengthen his case by serving to illustrate that, far from a freakish innovation, the apostolic church's unique confession was entirely within the intelligible range of how Jews would read Scripture and messianic expectation in light of the facts (empty tomb, appearances) that had transpired. 'He is risen indeed' : what if thefirstChristians believed this about the meaning of Easter Sunday because it really was what 'Moses and all the prophets' had said about the Messiah's suffering and glory? 2. My second point for discussion concerns the remarkable epistemological optimism of Wright's historical stance. This is perhaps of interest in two respects, one more general and the other concerned with the resurrection in particular. In the first instance, whether rightly or wrongly, some of us come away wondering about the epistemology underlying the apparent implication of this and previous volumes: that Wright's work, more than others before or besides, comes closest to telling it like it really was. For the sake of the argument, let us accept assurances of 'irony' in the author's claims to be working sine ira et studio (p. 37 . 31), or to be shooting arrows either at the sun or at least at its 'true image' in the pond (pp. 11, 23,736-38). But this reviewer, at least, would still find it helpful to know in which cheek he should envisage Wright's tongue to be planted at this stage. Quite how, for example, do his historiographical aims and results 10 differ in practical terms from those of, say, a Ranke or a Tacitus? While

10. Both of whom were, to be sure, farfromthe picture of the useful idiot in which
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classicists tend to recognize the latter's notorious remark m Ann. 1.1.3 as ideologically motivated and self-serving (along with its complement quorum causasprocul habed), it is by no means universally recognized as ironic. As it stands, more than one reader may come away with the impression that Wright's familiar theoretical crosshairs of standardized 'worldview questions', story-worlds and so forth seem here still to be poised in the robust confidence that this particular exercise will guide the criticalrealist arrow reliably to its target, or at least nearer than it can get by any other means. (As and when his future writing permits, I would also still be interested in seeing Wright's 'critical realism' articulated in more redblooded engagement with contemporary writers on history and historiography; one thinks of John Lukacs, Saul Friedlander, Richard Evans, Jan Assmann and others.) A more immediately pertinent approach to this question is via the relationship between historiography and the resurrection. Wright is in my view entirely correct to reprimand the chorus of cultured despisers who either snidely or piously deny the very possibility, even the desirability, of saying anything of historical consequence about the resurrection. The well-aimed blow dealt here to fatuous and pseudo-intellectual scepticism about the meaning of Easter is more than welcome. Anyone still caught in the stifling rigor mortis of modernist critical assumptions will find here a breath of fresh air. And yet... For all the critical realist qualifications, is it finally true either to history or to theology that if only the historian's tools are honed with sufficient care they will point unerringly to the Resurrection of the Son of God as the only possible conclusion, the only one that is both 'necessary' and 'sufficient' (as the Conclusion suggests)? For what is it that fundamentally sets apart the historical fruits of Wright's 'critical realism' from that which is claimed with equal self-assurance by, say, John Hick? Can it really be a matter of sheer investigative brawn and persistence, of digging the archaeological dirt deeply enough and deploying our video cameras at sufficiently powerful zoom? Is there not a danger that to proceed in deliberate analogies of arrows hitting the target, or in Holmes-and-Watsonesque repartee with one's readers (pp. 710-12), is to imply a sleuthing exercise that belies the epistemological stance that Scripture itself affirms as the only appropriate one? We may (indeed I think any honest reader must) grant the historicity of the empty tomb and the subsequent experiences of 'visions, signs and
some postmodern scholarship likes to portray them as its methodological straw men.
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wonders' befitting a messianic Passover (Deut. 26.8). And yet it remains the case, as Wright himself appears at one point to concede (p. 723), that the Christian interpretation of the historical phenomena is only one of a number of possible conclusions that an ancient or modern observer might draweven one open to 'self-involving' or 'self-committing'judgments. As both the evangelists and their subsequent detractors readily knowledge, tombs might be empty for a number ofreasons; so also transforming visions and religious experiences were known as the stock-in-trade of true prophets and superstitious charlatans alike. For the early Christians, to speak about the resurrection of Jesus was indeed in part to speak truthfully about history, as Wright so admirably demonstrates. But the New Testament writers at the same time repeatedly insist that the only access we have to that truth is through the apostolic testimony (a word not in Wright's index): while the crucifixion was a matter of public record, the resurrection, qua resurrection, quite clearly was not. The events of both days were equally 'factual'. But it is the apostles, and only they, who attest the resurrection (Acts 10.41-42; cf. Acts 1.22, 25; 1 Cor. 9.1; Jn 19.35; 21.24; 1 Jn 1.1-3). Even the Thomas episode is primarily concerned not with the nature of 'the evidence' (even though it confirms its trustworthiness), but really about his emphatic refusal to trust the apostolic testimony ('unless [I see and touch him], I will not believe', Jn 20.25,27,29).11 Rudolf Bultmann's notorious misappropriation of 2 Cor. 5.16 to support the notion of history's irrelevance to faith has over the years encouraged much eisegetical mischief. But for all their insistence on the facticity of the resurrection, the early Christians never claimed that accessible empirical 'events' were intrinsically 'necessary' and 'sufficient' to establish that truth. Even accepting the legitimacy of his plea for historical inquiry over against history's detractors (at Yale and elsewhere), in this respect Wright doth protest too much against the caution voiced by the likes of Hans Frei (pp. 21-23). Does it matter for an epistemology of history that the biblical story itself deliberately introduces the conclusion 'He is not here, but has been raised' not as deduction from 'sufficient evidence', but as angelic proclamationwhich in turn leads to Eucharistie fellowship with the living Christ?

11. Cf. the reviewer's 'Resurrection', in idem (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 102-18.
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3. Finally, a briefer and more tentative point, which is less a criticism than a question, and a request for ongoing discussion of a topic too long neglected. Wright here offers a refreshing tour deforce against the idea of resurrection as 'pie in the sky when you die '. And yet I wondered if this priority is not at times in danger of tipping out the eschatological baby with the spiritualizing bathwater. The belief that a believer will 'go to heaven' is certainly misguided when it abstractsfromthe hope for bodily resurrection; we are agreed on that. But in the absence of such foreshortening it has arguably an excellent pedigree not only in Jn 14.2-3, but in the effective history of passages like Lk. 23.43, Phil. 1.21, Rev. 7.9-10 and so on as read by Christians since antiquity (and none of which Wright discusses in any depth). Side by side with affirmations that the body is 'asleep' until its resurrection are texts that speak of the departed saints as present with Christ in paradise or heaven; indeed passages like Col. 3.3, Eph. 2.6 or Heb. 12.2223 claim this proleptically for all believers even now. Granted that these texts do not subvert belief in a bodily resurrection, is there not a danger that the richness of the biblical hope will be equally short-changed by denying the image of a permanent abode before the throne of God and the Lamb (p. 471), or with Jesus in the 'mansions' he has prepared in his Father's house (pp. 445-46)? What, if anything, should be the role of heaven and of participation in its divine fellowship within the Christian hope? The biblical and early Christian vision of a new heaven and a new earth foresees for the World to Come an end to the ancient chasm between transcendent heaven and fallen earth. This point is exemplified in the important doctrine of the ascended Christ (rather too hastily discussed on pp. 65456): in the resurrection, embodied human existence is no longer incompatible with eternal life in the presence of God's heavenly throne. That too is the vision of Rev. 21-22, as understood by Bernard of Cluny and countless others: Jerusalem the Golden, the heavenly city in which God himself dwells and wipes away every tear, embraces and subsumes the new earth. Here is the 'sweet and blessed country, the home of God's elect'. I reiterate in closing that all three of these queries are raised in anticipation for further constructive discussion, within the context of warm gratitude and genuine admiration for a twenty-first-century classic in scholarship on the Resurrection.

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