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REVIEW SYMPOSIUM

Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection. By

Pheme Perkins. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984. 504 pages. $19.95.

FOUR PERSPECTIVES

I

Pheme Perkins has written a remarkably comprehensive volume. Itwill serve as a resource for some time to come. Describing herself as aNew Testament exegete, she nonetheless reports accurately and atlength on the concepts of resurrection and immortality in the pre-Christian Jewish world, immortality and other views of survival amongthe pagans of the classical age, gnostic patterns of thought, systematictheological investigations (largely Catholic) on death and resurrection,and modern approaches to death. She has written a book that is moreprofitable to consult, once its overall plan has been mastered, thanenjoyable to read. There is one important exception, Chapter 11, entitled"Resurrection and the Foundations of Christian Faith." Readers with aprimarily theological interest, indeed any readers concerned to see howthe present century is appropriating ancient faith categories, shouldappreciate the deftness of the summary presented there.

The immensity of the task Perkins has undertaken will put many inher debt. She has commented intelligently on some five hundred booksand articles in her bibliography, in many cases giving the author'scomplete argument. The philosophical entries are dealt with as seriously as the historical and the exegetical. Fortunately, the book's ap

paratus is adequate , so that locating a discussion or a par ticular author 'sviewpoint is an easy matter. At no point does the author stumble, butreports positions in an absolutely straightforward way. When she cannotfavor one view over others she repor ts them all, never however inc lud ingan opinion that is unworthy of serious consideration. The net effect is alittle numbing, but then, this volume is no less than an encyclopedia.Resurrection and all other forms of belief in an afterlife in the MiddleEastern and Graeco-Roman worlds are dealt with exhaustively, with afollow-up on the modern situation in the West.

The plan of the book mus t be discovered early if the reader is to makethe most profitable use of Resurrection It begins with a reflection on the

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Review Symposium 359

accomplished. A shift in thought patterns brings about a shift in language. But multiple shifts over the centuries have brought us into amodern world of discourse in which there is little room for direct,personal divine action of the kind described by the resurrection andglorification accounts. Their meaning must be recovered by a search forways of entry into that earlier world of discourse. The problem is not somuch one of faith as of meaning , since the symbolic struc ture of resurrection language often appears as a barrier to its appropriation. Declaringthe theological task of articulating the significance of resurrection fortwentieth-century Christians largely undone, Perkins proceeds to the

humbler challenge of determining what the New Testament authorsmeant by what they said in their time.

An examination of Jewish literature from the Maccabean agethrough the first century CE. reveals the variety of patterns of Jewishbelief. The vindication by God of the righteous martyrs is paramount,their fates and those of their persecutors being reversed in the vision of the future. Immortality, surprisingly, vies with resurrection in theperiod, to reveal that there is no predominant pattern of the concept of resurrection in pre-Pharisee times as is widely thought. An analysis of Jesus' sayings, various gospel miracles and christological logia, andresurrection as the conclusion of Jesus' life, follows. The discussionyields the paradoxical finding that while the resurrection of the deadwas not centra l to Jesus' preaching, his resurrect ion has so been diffusedthrough the gospels as to convey the dawn of a new age rather than asingle "mighty act of God."

The first three verses of the kerygma of 1 Cor 15 are then commentedon and related to the traditions of the empty tomb , the Galilean risen-lifeappearances, and the calling of the disciples in Lk 5:1-11. The reader ispermitted a certain puzzlement by the chapter's end, at which time itcomes to light that the empty tomb is Mark's way (though he may havehad a predecessor in it) of concluding his account of the earthly life of Jesus. All subsequent elaborations of Jesus' exalted existence are thereaf-ter necessarily related to it. The fact is, however, that the significanceattached to Jesus' resurrection cannot be found in the Jewish backgroundor the vindication of a righteous hero but only in its power as the symbol

"of the insistence that this salvation [viz., of the New Testament period]cannot be found any where except in Jesus" (p. 103).It t h b ibl f P ki t t t thi i t i h

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360 HORIZONS

resurrection of Jesus as apostolic commissioning and as kerygma. Because of the author's election of a thematic treatment we return to 1 Cor15 and examine vv. 8-11 briefly under the heading "Paul's apostleship"in the commission chapter, then explore w . 1-34 as four distinctpericopes out of nine in the authentic letters designated "Paulinekerygmatic formulae."

The remainder of 1 Cor 15 is dealt with as three pericopes in thechapter "Resurrection and the Future of the Christian," but not before atreatment has supervenedin the chapter "Resurrection as Jesus'Presence"on the passages from John's discourses, the Paulineparaenesis (including commentary on all of Rom 8), and certain mealand liturgical traditions. By then the book is almost over, leaving spacefor chapter-length discussions of resurrection in second-century Christianity, Catholic and Gnostic, its place in the theology of faith andpractice commended above, and a summary of the body-person problems raised in modern discussions. The latter are highly disparate,including those of Ricoeur and Freud, Lifton, Becker, Karl Rahner andSebastian Moore. The book stops more than it comes to a conclusion. As

it does so, we know with the author that there are not many moretwentieth-century views of importance to summarize. Teilhard andPhilip Aries, for example, are there in full measure along the way.

This is a book that will be consulted by the many who come to knowof it for its wide variety of explorations. Perhaps the college teachers toprofit most by it will be those in the New Testament field who have had atwo-dimensional, historical view of the problems surrounding Jesus'resurrection, and the numerous others whose concern is with death anddying. For the first group Resurrection calls in doubt any simplisticsummaries of how things stood on the resurrection of the body in Jesus'day. It is especially helpful in conveying the diffusion of the symbol of Jesus' resurrection throughout the New Testament books. For symbolhisresurrection indisputably is, despite its actuality, a powerful symbol thathas given life and hope to many over the ages.

Temple University GERARD S. SLOYAN

II

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