What the Bible Really Says about Death, Afterlife, and Resurrection?

Jul 25, 2022 | This private lecture was informally filmed in 2010 and the video and sound quality are not ideal. The video is, however, fully understandable and I thought the information it contains would nonetheless be of value.

The relevant chapter of James D. Tabor’s book is here: What the Bible Really Says.

Genesis, White Jesus, and Debating the Resurrection (with Dr. Bart Ehrman)

Mar 29, 2022 Dr. Bart Ehrman is a New Testament scholar, author, and educator. In advance of his upcoming debate with apologist Dr. Mike Licona, he joins us to talk about the Bible, Christ, and the April 9th online debate: "Did the Resurrection of Jesus Really Happen?"

Genesis, White Jesus, and Debating the Resurrection (with Dr. Bart Ehrman)

Mar 29, 2022 • Dr. Bart Ehrman is a New Testament scholar, author, and educator. In advance of his upcoming debate with apologist Dr. Mike Licona, he joins us to talk about the Bible, Christ, and the April 9th online debate: "Did the Resurrection of Jesus Really Happen?"

Archbishop of Canterbury Urged to Act over Vatican Envoy Who Questioned Resurrection

THE TELEGRAPH: A row has erupted within the Church of England as senior Anglicans are calling on the Archbishop of Canterbury to force his ambassador to the Vatican to resign because he does not believe Jesus rose from the dead.

It has emerged that Dr John Shepherd, an Australian cleric appointed last week as the new representative to Rome, had delivered a sermon in which he said Christians should be “set free” from the traditional view of the resurrection.

The controversial comments, delivered while he was Dean of Perth Cathedral, have been criticised for flying in the face of the most fundamental Christian doctrines. » | Steve Bird | Saturday, January 12, 2019

The Church Must Stop Trivialising Easter
He is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
THE TELEGRAPH: Christians must keep their nerve: the Resurrection isn’t a metaphor, it’s a physical fact

Private Eye ran a cartoon some years ago of St Peter standing in front of Jesus's Cross and saying to the other Disciples: “It's time to put this behind us now and move on.” It was a satire not on Christian belief, but on politicians and counsellors, and their trivialising mantras. It depended on Jesus's death being not just an odd, forgettable event - and that it was His Resurrection, rather than a shoulder- shrugging desire to “move on”, that got the early Christians going.

Easter was the pilot project. What God did for Jesus that explosive morning is what He intends to do for the whole creation. We who live in the interval between Jesus's Resurrection and the final rescue and transformation of the whole world are called to be new-creation people here and now. That is the hidden meaning of the greatest festival Christians have.

This true meaning has remained hidden because the Church has trivialised it and the world has rubbished it. The Church has turned Jesus's Resurrection into a “happy ending” after the dark and messy story of Good Friday, often scaling it down so that “resurrection” becomes a fancy way of saying “He went to Heaven”. Easter then means: “There really is life after death”. The world shrugs its shoulders. We may or may not believe in life after death, but we reach that conclusion independently of Jesus, of odd stories about risen bodies and empty tombs.

But “resurrection” to 1st-century Jews wasn't about “going to Heaven”: it was about the physically dead being physically alive again. Some Jews (not all) believed that God would do this for all people in the end. Nobody, including Jesus's followers, was expecting one person to be bodily raised from the dead in the middle of history. The stories of the Resurrection are certainly not “wish-fulfilments” or the result of what dodgy social science calls “cognitive dissonance”. First-century Jews who followed would-be messiahs knew that if your leader got killed by the authorities, it meant you had backed the wrong man. You then had a choice: give up the revolution or get yourself a new leader. Going around saying that he'd been raised from the dead wasn't an option.

Unless he had been. Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead by the Friday evening; Roman soldiers were professional killers and wouldn't have allowed a not-quite-dead rebel leader to stay that way for long. When the first Christians told the story of what happened next, they were not saying: “I think he's still with us in a spiritual sense” or “I think he's gone to heaven”. All these have been suggested by people who have lost their historical and theological nerve. >>> The Right Rev Dr Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham | Saturday, April 11, 2009