Who Said That?

"I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event. If the resurrection of Jesus from the dead on that Easter Sunday were a public event which had been made known...not only to the 530 Jewish witnesses but to the entire population, all Jews would have become followers of Jesus."

Leave your guess in the comments section below.  Please, no google searches or cheating.  Answer to follow with the next "who said that?" post.

Update on Saturday, February 19, 2011 at 09:02AM by Kim Riddlebarger

The quote is from Pinchas Lapide, Orthodox Jewish scholar, best known for his book, The Resurrection of Jesus:  A Jewish Perspective (SPCK, 1984).

Comments

[Paul L.]

Cornelius Van Til

...Just kidding. This is actually a good example of the kind of thinking that (unfairly) gives evidential apologetics a bad name!

I'll guess N. T. Wright.

[reg]

No clue who said this, but the implication of this quote is that if only God had given the resurrection of Jesus a little bit more thought he might have gotten it right. So the wisdom of the speaker is (he believes) greater than the foolishness of God. Unbelievable blasphemy. I guess he did not understand what Jesus meant when he said: "If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

["lee n. field"]

"I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event."

That's a curious statement. A religious liberal might say the resurrection was an invention, and not be bothered. A conservative Christian wouldn't phrase belief in the resurrection like that.

I'm going to _guess_, the atheist turned deist who died last year, Anthony Flew. I have read that he accepted the historic reality of Jesus' resurrection.

[John Stebbe]

The author of this post was on the John Ankerberg show several years ago, debating Walter Kaiser on the question, "Who is the Messiah?" or something related. It was amazing to hear an orthodox Jew admitting that the bodily resurrection of Christ really happened in history, but in spite of this, still refusing to become a Christian.

It's also amazing that today you have to type "bodily" before "resurrection" to be properly understood.

[George P]

Is it just my own lack of understanding, or does the first sentence in the quote contradict the second sentence? Seems to me it essentially says "I believe the resurrection was a real event, but if it were a real event, then all the Jews would have believed."

[Caleb Phillips]

It's a toss up between John Shelby Spong or John Dominic Crossan

[dsanger]

Bart Ehrman

[Charles S]

A Jewish person