Resurrecting Easter: How the West Lost and the East Kept the Original Easter Vision, Hardcover

Descriere

In this four-color illustrated journey that is part travelogue and part theological investigation, bestselling author and acclaimed Bible scholar John Dominic Crossan painstakingly travels throughout the ancient Eastern church, documenting through text and image a completely different model for understanding Easter's resurrection story, one that provides promise and hope for us today. Traveling the world, bestselling author and acclaimed Bible scholar John Dominic Crossan noticed a surprising difference in how the Eastern Church considers Jesus' resurrection--an event not described in the Bible. At Saint Barbara's Church in Cairo, he found a painting in which the risen Jesus grasps the hands of other figures around him. Unlike the Western image of a solitary Jesus rising from an empty tomb that he viewed across Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, he saw images of the resurrection depicting a Jesus grasping the hands of figures around him, or lifting Adam and Eve to heaven from Hades or hell, or carrying the old and sick to the afterlife. Crossan discovered that the standard image for the Resurrection in Eastern Christianity is communal and collective, something unique from the solitary depiction of the resurrection in Western Christianity. Fifteen years in the making, Resurrecting Easter reflects on this divide in how the Western and Eastern churches depict the resurrection and its implications. Crossan argues that the West has gutted the heart of Christianity's understanding of the resurrection by rejecting that once-common communal iconography in favor of an individualistic vision. As he examines the ubiquitous Eastern imagery of Jesus freeing Eve from Hades while ascending to heaven, Crossan suggests that this iconography raises profound questions about Christian morality and forgiveness. A fundamentally different way of understand the story of Jesus' rebirth illustrated with fifty images, Resurrecting Easter introduces an inclusive, traditional community-bas