Table of Contents

Foreword Part I. Setting the Stage 1. Overture 2. Options Part II. Historical-Critical Studies 3. Formulae and Confessions 4. Appearances and Christophanies 5. The Story of the Tomb: Friday 6. The Story of the Tomb: Sunday 7. Resurrected Holy Ones? 8. Rudolf Pesch Redivivus? Part III. Thinking with Parallels 9. Apparitions: Characteristics and Correlations 10. Visions: Protests and Proposals 11. Enduring Bonds 12. Rainbow Body 13. Cessationism and Seeing Jesus 14. Zeitoun and Seeing Mary Part IV. Analysis and Reflections 15. Some Tenuous Arguments: Apologetical 16. Some Tenuous Arguments: Skeptical 17. Inferences and Competing Stories 18. Overreach and Modest Results Coda Index

Promotional Information

The mystery at the core of Christian belief is examined from the earliest evidence and sources through to present day, with arguments for and against the historical truth of this aspect of faith.

About the Author

Dale C. Allison, Jr., is the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, USA, and the author of many books, including Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History and the International Critical Commentary on James.

Reviews

The Resurrection of Jesus is a book which will probably become standard reading for everyone interested in the great challenge of studying the events of Easter from a historical viewpoint.
*The Heythrop Journal*

One of the greatest strengths of this book is Allison’s willingness, time and again, to take seriously the reality of religious experience ... [A] masterful book
*Biblica*

This is the best book on the historical and exegetical problems surrounding the resurrection that I know of. Nowhere else will one be informed by such comprehensive, discriminating, and fair-minded judgment regarding the exegetical and historical discussion of Jesus' resurrection. I have learned much from this great book.
*Gerd Theissen, Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies, University of Heidelberg, Germany*

This book is the product of the deep and wide reflections of a preeminent scholar. Allison is refreshingly transparent and honest. Some will accuse him of being too pessimistic. Others will charge him with not being skeptical enough. If he is guilty of either, he cannot be faulted for accepting easy answers or of neglecting any arguments. Although I remain persuaded that historical inquiry can yield greater confidence pertaining to what happened to Jesus after his death than Allison allows, this volume is a fair-minded assessment of the data and is scholarship at the highest level.
*Michael R. Licona, Associate Professor of Theology, Houston Baptist University, USA*

This is the most interesting and illuminating piece of writing on the resurrection of Jesus that I have ever read.
*Joel Marcus, Professor Emeritus of New Testament & Christian Origins, Duke Divinity School, USA*

This is a book of massive erudition around the resurrection, the real events that may well lie behind it, and how to read its popular New Testament residues and cross-cultural parallels. Allison engages the full power and depth of contemporary biblical criticism to show that the scriptural accounts are relatively thin but nevertheless intriguing documents for the responsible historian and can reasonably be read faithfully or skeptically. The originality, even genius, of the book lies in how he then turns to other independent literatures to “think in parallels,” playing, for example, well-documented Marian apparitions and angelic, bereavement, and near-death contacts off the early New Testament accounts or the Buddhist rainbow body off the empty tomb, always with a double refusal to fall into either easy debunking reduction or naïve literalist belief. The result is a shocking book that troubles one’s certainty, whatever that certainty happens to be, and advances a profound humility before one of the most important mysteries of the history of religions. It turns out that the questions of “what really happened” or, more basic still, “what a body is” are much more complicated than is normally thought or believed.
*Jeffrey J. Kripal, Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought, Rice University, USA*

For anyone who wants to wrestle seriously with what to think about Jesus of Nazareth and with the history of scholarship on this matter, the writings of Dale Allison offer more food for thought, from more angles of vision, than any other recent author I know of. The Resurrection of Jesus, now venturing to bring his expertise to bear on the standard arguments of Christian apologetics and counter-apologetics, will again be an indispensable aid to those who, from within a faith perspective or in search of one, find themselves in pursuit of genuine inquiry.
*Stephen Wykstra, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Calvin College, USA*