Resurrection Immortality And Eternal Life In Intertestamental Judaism

In this book, George Nickelsburg places ideas in their historical circumstances as he probes biblical and post biblical texts and challenges widely accepted scholarship.

In this cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study, John Hick draws upon major world religions, as well as biology, psychology, parapsychology, anthropology, and philosophy, to explore the mystery of death. He argues that scientific and philosophical objections to the idea of survival after death can be challenged, and he claims that human inadequacy in facing suffering supports the basic religious argument for immortality.

Selection of articles and excerpts by George Nickelsburg, with critical responses and Nickelsburg's rejoinders.

Few questions exert such a great fascination on human conscience as those related to the meaning of life, history, and death. The belief in the resurrection of the dead constitutes an answer to a real challenge: What is the meaning of life and history in the midst of a world in which evil, injustice, and ultimately death exist? Resurrection is an instrument serving a broader, more encompassing reality: the Kingdom of God. Such a utopian Kingdom gathers the final response to the problem of theodicy and to the enigma of history. This book seeks to understand the idea of resurrection not only as a theological but also as a philosophical category (as expression of the collective aspirations of humanity), combining historical, theological, and philosophical analyses in dialogue with some of the principal streams of contemporary Western thought.

All four canonical gospels identify the resurrection of Jesus, yet none detail the exact moment of its happening. The absence of this narrative detail was hotly contested in the second century, when critics derided a resurrection account without credible witness. Thus, the discovery of the Akhmim fragment at the end of the 19th century, which purports to provide exactly that detail, is a huge and surprisingly under-utilised addition to Biblical scholarship of the Apocryphal gospels. Johnston examines both the impact of this discovery on the scholarship at the time, and argues for the dating of the fragment to the second century AD. He identifies shared characteristics with other documents from this period, including a rise in anti-semitic feeling, and developments in concepts of the afterlife, and makes a claim for this fragment being the text that aided the development of these movements. The Second Century was the key time in which the non-canonical Biblical texts were established. It was also the era in which theologies which would become 'orthodox' in the third century were penned and defined. The significance, then, of dating the Akhmim fragment to the second century AD is huge. This work will be of great use to scholars of Second Temple Judaism, and those with an interest in the creation of the ideas that surround scholarship of the Bible.

New to this expanded & updated edition are revisions of Ferguson's original material, updated bibliographies, & a fresh dicussion of first century social life, the Dead Sea Scrolls & much else.