Scripture was composed by believers

It is difficult enough to evaluate the evidence that the British government is supposed to have received before its decision to engage in the Iraq war: imagine, therefore, the enhanced problem in determining the evidence for the Resurrection of Christ — 2,000 years after the event. There are also 2,000 years of accumulated attempts. Now Professor Vermes offers a further essay; his version is lucid and uncomplicated and unoriginal. His arguments are, in their way, fair- minded, but no new insights extend before us, and his conclusions, impeccably liberal, add virtually nothing to understanding.

Vermes writes from a Jewish perspective, and with the authority of an established scholar; he is a Fellow of the Jewish Academy. His study sets out to describe the ideas of resurrection, both corporeal and spiritual, which furnished discussion in the time of Christ. The work, however, lacks depth: astonishingly, there is no mention of the Egyptian cult of Osiris and Isis, the most widespread form in which the culture of the ancient world envisaged bodily resurrection.