Michael Goulder on the Resurrection, Bibliography

I posted an audio clip yesterday of Michael Goulder being interviewed about the resurrection of Jesus. There have been several interesting comments on this, including on The Busybody. I should perhaps have added that the brevity of the interview (just four minutes) means that it gives one just a little flavour of Michael's thinking on the topic. My main reason for posting was to get a chance to listen to his voice again. I hope to publish more in due course. But for those who are interested in investigating his views on this subject further, he published several articles:

“Did Jesus of Nazareth Rise from the Dead?”. In J. Barton and G. N. Stanton (eds.), Resurrection. Festschrift Leslie Houlden (London: SPCK, 1994): 58-68

“The Baseless Fabric of a Vision”. In Gavin D'Costa (ed.), Resurrection Reconsidered (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1996): 48-61

“The Explanatory Power of Conversion-Visions”. In Paul Copan, and Ronald K. Tacelli (eds.), Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? : a Debate between William Lane Craig & Gerd Lüdemann (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2000): 86-103

“Jesus' Resurrection and Christian Origins: A Response to N.T. Wright.” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3 (2005): 187-195

Michael Goulder on the Resurrection and Losing Faith

This is a short clip from an episode of the BBC Radio 4 series Beyond Belief (25 March 2002) in which Michael Goulder was asked by Ernie Rea about his coming to doubt the resurrection of Jesus, and his giving up his Anglican orders:

Update (10 October 2018): If you can't see the audio player above, try this direct link to the audio file.

Wright on Resurrection in Today's Guardian

N. T. Wright has a short piece, a kind of numbered list, in today's Guardian, responding to Adam Rutherford who has been attending an Alpha Course* and who is writing up his experiences as he goes:

The resurrection was as shocking then as it is now
When Adam Rutherford talks about the resurrection, he misses the point. It isn't an extra thing, bolted on to our moral philosophy

Fans of Wright's work will find the piece a robust and engaging summary of familiar themes from his work on the resurrection, like the claim that the ancients found resurrection as perplexing an idea as we do ("we all know that dead people don't rise. Actually, the early Christians knew that too") but there was one element that appeared new to me, the idea that "The other "raisings" in the NT are of course what we would call 'near death experiences' – people who are clinically dead and then find themselves called back," but it is possible that I have missed that in Wright's writings.

A couple of other things occur to me. The first, underlined for me all the more after reading James McGrath's post today on Preach your doubts, is that I am quite taken aback by the degree of confidence that Wright has in his historical analysis. For those who do not share the same degree of confidence, the certainty expressed here, the repeated "of course" (x 6 in a short article), may perhaps be tough to handle. I wondered too whether this kind of vigorous response quite met the more impressionistic jottings-style commentary of Rutherford's original piece in his ongoing response to the Alpha course he is attending.

*The Alpha Course is a popular British evangelical week-by-week introduction to the Christian faith, usually consisting of a talk, a meal and some discussion.

Tom Wright on the Resurrection: Online Video

The N. T. Wright page notes a new online lecture from N. T. Wright, available to download as an MP3, or to watch as a .mov file:

Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection (MP3)
Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection (Streaming Video)
Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection (Video Download)

The location is the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St Edmunds College, Cambridge (and that link will take you to several other lectures on the topic "Science and the Bible"), and the date is 15 May 2007.

Tom Wright on Easter

Here's one I missed over Easter, but it's linked on the N. T. Wright Page, from The Guardian's weekly Face to Faith column:

Face to faith
In these troubled times, Easter's message of resurrection is a powerful one, says Tom Wright

A couple of features of interest for academic NT geeks:

We reflect on, and mourn, the ruin of the world and the folly of humankind. We look in the mirror and see our own shame and sin. And then we contemplate Jesus's suffering and death at the heart of the whole thing: the place where the arrogance of empire, the frenzy of religion and the betrayal of friends all rush together and do their worst.

Notice how central the motif of empire is becoming in Wright's thinking, and not just in discussion of Paul (cf. the fresh perspective on Paul and Empire). Also notice:

That's why the Easter stories tumble out in bits and pieces, with breathless chasings to and fro and garbled reports - and then, stories like nothing else before or since. As the great New Testament scholar EP Sanders put it, the writers were trying to describe an experience that does not fit a known category. They knew all about ghosts and visions, and they knew it wasn't anything like that.

I like the characterization of Sanders, whom I once described in print as "the greatest living New Testament scholar", though I don't think he would be so keen on the sentence that follows here, about ghosts and visions, which is pure Wright.

Joel Marcus and Gary Habermas to debate the resurrection

Thanks to Ken Olson for passing on news of this event:

Two Views on the Resurrection
Joel Marcus (Duke Divinity School) & Gary Habermas (Liberty University)
February 20 @ 12:20-1:20 – Gary Habermas: “The Resurrection of Jesus and Recent Scholarship”
February 20 @ 7:00-8:30 PM – Two Views on the Resurrection Dialogue (Marcus & Habermas)
Blog: http://resurrectiontwoviews.blogspot.com/
RSVP at resurrectiontwoviews@yahoo.com

Flyer (PDF)

N. T. Wright Page latest

New on the N. T. Wright page:

Resurrecting Old Arguments: Responding to Four Essays
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 3.2 (2005): 187–209

The essay is a response to four critiques of his mammoth tome, The Resurrection of the Son of God, by David Bryan, James Crossley, Michael Goulder and Larry Hurtado. It arose out of a couple of sessions at the Historical Jesus Seminar at the British New Testament Conference. I suppose my only regret about the availability of this essay free to all is that it is only one part of a five-part dialogue, and I can imagine that many will read this piece without reading and evaluating all contributors to the debate.