"The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective" Critical Book Review -- Introduction

Hooray, I'm back to Blog Projects! These are simply just multiple blog posts to address one big specific subject. I haven't done one since last school year, when I did only two. So now I am excited to have enough material to create another.

I heard about this book from the debate between J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen titled Does God Exist? Moreland wrote, "So strong is [the sudden preaching of the resurrection out of Judaism] that recently an orthodox Jewish rabbi, a Jewish scholar of New Testament in Frankfurt, Germany, was converted to belief in the resurrection on strictly historical evidence. And he has written a book defending its historicity. Lapide writes, 'How is it possible that His disciples, who by no means excelled in intelligence, eloquence, or strength of faith, were able to begin their victorious march of conversion only after the shattering fiasco of Golgotha?'"

Carl E. Braaten, the introduction's author, wrote, "Pinchas Lapide is a leading Jewish ecumenist who has been directly engaged in a series of dialogues with many of the most eminent scholars in the world of Protestant and Catholic theology. And these dialogues deal with the most central and sensitive theological issues that divide church and synagogue." (2)

He himself said on page 125, "Concerning the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, I was for decades a Sadducee [who deny the resurrection]. I am no longer a Sadducee since the following deliberation has caused me to think this through anew. In none of the cases where rabbinic literature speaks of such visions did it result in an essential change in the life of the resuscitated or of those who had experienced the visions. Only the vision remains which was retold in believing wonderment and sometimes also embellished, but it did not have any noticeable consequences."

Before I acquired his book I naturally assumed he had became a Christian, because I had been taught that if Jesus rose from the dead Christianity must be true, for if God is willing to resurrect a person He would have only let the message from the ground-breaking event get recorded accurately. But upon reading the introduction, I learned that, instead, Pinchas Lapide interpreted Jesus's resurrection as a pre-Messianic times preparation, and remained orthodox Jewish. (All the more reason, I suppose, for this book to raise eyebrows.)

 Lapide doesn't address my belief, at least not explicitly. Some arguments he cites -- not all he agrees with, but I will still explain them -- threatens the New Testament's accuracy, and perhaps he recorded them with the fact that if the reports of the resurrection and sayings of Jesus are wrong, they cannot be the word of God(3).

That being said, this Blog Project will be only critical, for there is a great number of responses to give. The evidence he has mastered about first century Judaism from Christianity I will use later.

Citations:

1. J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists and Atheists (Prometheus Books, 1993), 42. He cited Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983), 68. This is different from my copy.
2. Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Augsburg Fortress Publishing House, 1982), 5.
3. Technically, this still wouldn't refute my core claim. By looking at all the times the New Testament speaks of Jesus's deity and the way to salvation, we could compare them and see which doctrine outweighs the other, if there even are any contradictions. I don't believe there are, as I have seen a number of challenging questions raised from passages over Jesus's identity and salvation by belief in Him alone, but had reasonable explanations for them.