Thursday, May 24, 2007

Chuck Hill on the Resurrection

I know that Easter 2007 is behind us, along with the fairly brief tempest surrounding James Camerson's 'documentary' about the alleged Jesus family tomb. But a month or so ago, Chuck Hill wrote an article assessing these matters that's simply too good not to disseminate. The first 8 pages (out of 11) of the article are a concise rehash of the issues involved, along with snippets from a wide swath of scholarship regarding the Jesus family tomb. Given that Cameron's 'documentary' was almost universally panned by biblical and archaelogical scholars of every stripe, Hill's treatment simply puts the controversy to bed (since in much of the academic world, there is no controversy - from the standpoint of scholarship, Cameron's efforts clearly come from the low-rent district). However, because several million people watched the documentary, the myths contained therein are still circulating to some degree in the cultural petri dish, so this article will be valuable in the inoculation process.

Perhaps more importantly, the last 2-3 pages of Hill's article hit on themes that have perennial value. While related to the tomb stuff, Hill's focus switches more to the resurrection. And here, Hill's observations are extremely helpful and worth cataloguing in our apologetic encyclopedia:

http://www.rts.edu/Site/Staff/chill/Why_Do_You_Seek_the_Living_Among_the_Dead.pdf

For those who don't know, Chuck Hill is a first rate NT scholar who was the closest thing to a professorial mentor I had during my time at RTS. He has provided assistance to me on multiple occasions, including giving me some good thoughts on an article I am submitting to the Westminster Theological Journal in the hopes that they might publish it (though they probably won't). He has done very little in the way of popular-level writing and publishing, opting instead to produce academic articles in biblical and theological journals, as well as producing some outstanding academic books that have been very well received in the Academy. I commend this article to you wholeheartedly.

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