Easter Books

But did they have to follow a rotten movie with a book? Without respect for the culture (just the marketing of it) why do it? $$$

I was not impressed with this book. I have 7 kids in Sunday school and nothing in the book would have impressed the church or the kids.
Don't waist your money.

after reading the whole book, there is not one liitle play I want my kids in Sunday school to do. They just are not that good.

I love the old fashion design of these greeting cards, so purchased them at an amazingly low price. When they arrived, I discovered that they were flimsy and of poor card stock. They're not nearly as nice as the photo appears. I never sent them out for Easter, instead, I used them as bookmarks in books I'm reading or cookbooks, etc.

This is really not even a phrasebook, although it contains a few pages of phrases. Mosty, it contains wordlists based upon themes (food, weather, etc.) with very little help in putting them together in any meaningful manner. And half of the book is just a translation of the English part into Spanish, so really the amount of information is limited. Unfortunately, there is not much available on Rapanui except a very expensive Routledge grammar, so for the casual explorer, this is your best bet. But don't expect much.

Hard to say where the author got his information, since he doesn't bother with a bibliography, but he would have benefitted from reading actual scholarship on calendar customs rather than reproducing such popular claptrap as the so-called Celtic Tree Calendar and the notion of a goddess named Easter/Eostre--speculation by Bede more than verified tradition. To his credit, the author embraces traditional non-Christian customs of the seasons such as eggs and bunnies by saying they are appropriate celebrations of renewal, helping the celebrants to the "true" message of the Resurrection. A quibbler might point out that the Resurrection itself can be seen as merely symbolic of Spring renewal, just like any of these other customs, but Collins's way does allow for the protection of such secular traditions. He appears to be on firmer ground with his chapters on hymns, and provides a number of interesting stories of their origins.

If you buy this book thinking it intends to deal substantively with the answer to the question in it's title, you will be sadly mistaken. Look for another book. This small book is a collection of lectures delivered by the author at several universities in the United States in 1988. His opinion is that this is an illegitimate question and you should not be asking it. So this book is really about why you ought not to be asking an "essentially meaningless" question like the one in the title of this book - Did God Raise Jesus from the Dead?

I am in agreement with the previous reviews. The main difficulty with this book is that the author makes a mistake about the definition of Christian faith. He sees faith as antithetical to reason. This is a very common error in today's world. In the traditional Christian concept, faith is almost synonymous with the word trust or confidence and is subject to reason and evidence, which is why the Biblical authors give evidence and reasoning for the Christian faith. Marxsen, however, thinks faith is something you do instead of reasoning or what you believe without any evidence. To Marxsen faith is only personal so a "faith question," like the one in the title, doesn't transcend a personal preference like whether one prefers vanilla or chocolate. Therefore, to expect an objective answer he claims is illogical.

While Marxsen is elusive, I suspect he does not believe that a resurrection event actually happened. From the tone of the book he seems to just assume that there was no actual physical resurrection. The closest he comes to answering the question is to say near the end of the book that the resurrection "exits only as an illusion which developed out of a misunderstanding." Perhaps he is some kind of Christian Naturalist or a Deist? Regardless, He goes to extraordinary lengths - the whole book actually -- to create a "just-so" story about how the first person to believe in the physical resurrection did so by mistake! Yes that's right, a simple miscommunication. It happened like this: After Jesus was crucified Peter and some others continued to meet as a "Jesus Group." They found that the "faith" feeling that Jesus had given them came back and was "alive" in them again. It made them feel that Jesus had been "raised" in them again. When one of these told others that Jesus had been "raised" the hearers naturally thought this meant "God raised Jesus from the dead." And well, you know how rumors grow --eventually they become the dominant religion on the planet; well at least this rumor did. (Now nighty night children.)

Seriously, Marxsen does not directly address the evidences for the resurrection. He mentions the empty tomb but never discusses it's evidential value. He says the post-resurrection appearances were only "visions" but never gives any supporting evidence. He does not discuss the non-biblical evidences, internal evidences, or the evidence of hostile witnesses. He never discusses what would have made the disciples be willing to die rather than deny that Jesus had been raised. Remember, these things don't matter when you are asking the wrong question in the first place.

My advice is: look for an author who takes the question seriously.

The book by Marxsen contains a lot of very scholarly verbiage but little substance. He makes sweeping claims and broad sweeps of the brush to attempt to dispel the idea that we can know the "historical Jesus" (13) and that all attempts to the present "have failed for the good." (13) He tells us that we should "not appeal to the historical Jesus. If we do it anyway, then we are appealing to an entity which cannot be attained and which therefore for us does not exist." (13)
Marxsen defines the historical Jesus as "...Jesus before anyone has ventured any interpretation of Him..." and "...The historical Jesus must be reconstructed." Marxsen says that we need to get to the Jesus and what he really said not what people said he said ... and what he really did, not what people said he did. (16)
He wants to get as "...close to Jesus as possible. With this attempt, however, I can only get as far as the people who are telling us about Jesus, never any further...we can only get to Jesus through what people have said about him, and that does not bring us to the historical Jesus." (22, 23)
He differentiates between the statements "Jesus has risen from the dead" and "God has raised Jesus from the dead." The difference is that the first is possibly a statement of fact (as far as we can know it) and the second is a statement of faith that is presumed by the cultural context of what the writers (whoever they were) expected to be able to say.
Marxsen points to something he calls "Jesus' activity towards others" and tells us that this produces faith in others so that they can act the same way. In doing this he defines this as having faith in Jesus, yet not in the person but in his activity.
On page 35 Marxsen has problems with all the divine titles given to Jesus by the writers such as "Son of Man", "Son of David", "son of David", "Messiah", "Son of God" and last of all, "God." He says, "Indeed, one has to say, as we have noted, that Jesus was the Bridegroom. But was he all of these? And was he all of these together?" "If Jesus was truly the Son of Man, then with the best of intentions he cannot have been at the same time the Messiah, nor the Son of God, etc."
Throughout the book Marxsen seems to not be aware that many statements made by the writers were made as eyewitnesses to the fact that Jesus was crucified and died and that they saw, touched and ate with him for 40 days afterward. Surely they knew what a dead man looked like and what a live man looked like. He takes issue with the statements that could destroy his arguments only in passing and says that he cannot take up their explanation in the book, which may be inconvenient, but he offers no references, footnotes or endnotes in the book so that the reader can look further into the subject.
By his assertions he says that there is no way to get to the actual Jesus that walked the earth but this is self defeating since he seems to be able to get back to the intentions and thoughts of the people that wrote about him, even to the point of finding the mystery text that they had before them so they could be "redactors" and not recorders of actual events they experienced.
It seems obvious that Marxsen is not desirous to have the Jesus that is commonly found in the Bible and evangelical Christian faith. He defines "resurrection" for us as follows: Jesus' resurrection is that moment in which the dead Jesus comes to life, however that coming to life took place or however one may conceive of it." (41) The resurrection is left in this vague form throughout the book so that one may make up ones own version it seems. He further comments on page 42 that "We must hold to this point: One cannot believe in the resurrection as an event which happened in the past. Indeed, one cannot believe in an event at all, no matter what kind of an event."
As such I do not see how he can even say that the texts of the Bible that he refers to are found to be written at any time in the past and if they were how do we know this? He claims that the interpretation of the writers that record statements such as "Jesus has risen" cannot reliability make these claims if they add "God has raised Jesus from the dead." And yet, Marxsen seems to be able to know that someone has tampered with the text, redacted it and changed it and attributed to Jesus things he never said and things he never did. Since we can never know anything back in the past it may be asked how he knows this?
While claiming to be a "New Testament scholar" (37) his arguments are not convincing. He makes it totally a matter of "faith" while the writers tell us we can know (Luke. 1:1-4; John 20:30-31; Acts 1:1-3; 1 John 1:1-4; 5:13) for certain the things that what we take by faith are events that really happened.

The title of Marxsen's book is almost ironic because his core premise is that this is the wrong question to ask. In fact, he says this question is wrong in at least two significant ways.

First Marxsen claims any search for the historical Jesus is futile because we cannot know Jesus as he was; we only have access to how people interpreted him. The correct approach is to "ask historically for" Jesus. The primary difference is in acknowledging that we can only get as far as the people who are telling about Jesus, never to Jesus himself.

The second problem Marxsen has with the title question is that bringing the claim that God was the agent of resurrection turns what should be an inquiry about a fact (whether Jesus was raised from the dead) to a question about a statement of faith. Because faith is personal, Marxsen says this is an improper and even meaningless question.

Marxsen attempts to correct these "mistakes" by addressing what he sees as the correct questions. What did people say about Jesus? What did people mean when they said that Jesus lived after his crucifixion?

Part of Marxsen's case for the impropriety searching for the historical Jesus leads him to critique the work of Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768). Marxsen takes Reimarus to task for the methodology he employed in attempt to present a historically accurate account of Jesus. Marxsen accuses Reimarus of using what calls the "quarry method" of taking fragments of Biblical texts out of context to prove his supposition. A more modern term might be "cherry picking".

Marxsen's problem is that he makes a very similar move. He appeals to dating and sequencing the gospel writers, and to literary criticism to support his down selecting of resurrection statements until he is able to say, "...the earliest recoverable statement abut Jesus' resurrection has been successfully reconstructed." Marxsen's technique is more refined than that of Reimarus, but his method is identical in that he carefully defines every term and chooses every supposition, not to find the truth, but to prove his presupposition.

Marxsen also puts significant focus on the fact that there was no one inside the tomb to witness a physical resurrection of Jesus. His conclusion is that since nobody watched as life returned to Jesus' body, then we can have no knowledge of it, which seems obviously absurd. We consider that we have knowledge of many things that we cannot see. I know that x-rays have passed through my teeth, not because I see them, but because I see the pictures that develop on the film. In the morning, I know that it rained during the night while I slept because everything outside is wet and there are large puddles. I know that my body processes the food I eat into energy and waste. People are frequently convicted of crimes even though there was no eyewitness at the exact moment the crime occurred. We don't have to see a process to know that it has occurred. The product produced by the process is sufficient evidence that the event has occurred.

Page after page of supposition and contorted logic are not sufficient for Marxsen to prove his claim, so finally he sinks to calling the early Christians liars. Marxsen claims that they invented the empty tomb story to support their case for the resurrection of Jesus by God as an actual event. Matthew then has to defend against the Jews' counter-claim that the disciples stole the body, so Marxsen claims that Matthew lies again and says the tomb was guarded by soldiers.

When comparing Marxsen's version of history against a more literal interpretation of the Gospel texts, one would do well to apply Achem's Razor - All things being equal the simplest answer is probably correct. To put one's faith in Marxsen's revision instead of believing that there is a God that can resurrect the dead seems the less rational choice.

As historical fiction, this book is boring. As historical analysis, it is suitable for little more than inspiration for a Mel Brooks farce.

In his work, Jesus and Easter: Did God Raise The Historical Jesus from the Dead?, Willi Marxsen attacks the historicity of the resurrection of Christ with sheer skepticism. Though he makes a few valid points along the way, one discerns a palpable bias by Marxsen (against the possibility) which spoils any opportunity for a fair, historical analysis of the question. For example, though he identifies proper exegesis as asking the question, "What did the author want to say with this text?" rather than "What does the text say?" Marxsen proceeds to strip the Biblical authors of the ability to convey any real, knowable historical facts about Jesus and the resurrection based on their own personal biases. He says, "Exegesis can only lift up how they conceived of the resurrection of Jesus, how they reflected upon it. Nothing more! We cannot ascertain by means of exegesis what actually happened at the resurrection of Jesus. Nor can we by means of exegesis determine what should be said about the resurrection of Jesus today." How does he know this? This view seems untenable, as this type of skepticism could be applied to any portion of the historical record, even the parts which Marxsen is inexplicably able to pick and choose as knowable to build his own case. Ironically, the author does not expect the same treatment from his readers.
Marxsen enters the discussion proposing that one cannot know the historical Jesus (and therefore, the resurrection); one can only "know" what has been historically written about Jesus by those closest to him (in this case, the New Testament authors). In Marxsen's view, the Biblical authors presuppose the resurrection and incorporate the evidence into their writings as support. For Marxsen, the only way we can have any real knowledge of the resurrection (from the texts) is through reconstruction via literary criticism. He does not explain how this method is able to overcome personal bias to reveal real history, nor does he provide substantial (or any) detail as to his sources for how the texts are reconstructed.
Further, Marxsen claims that the question itself (of the historicity of the resurrection) is problematic. For him, the question and answer are audience-dependent, only relevant in an existential sense to the Christian who "believes in Jesus" in an abstract way. He does not make clear the foundation on which this belief consists. He says, "Jesus' resurrection is that moment in which the dead Jesus comes to life, however that coming to life took place or however one may conceive of it." This smacks of postmodern, relativistic thought, where answers to these questions depend on the individual, and more broadly, the culture group's own narrative. In this line of thinking, one's narrative need not be, and can not, be objectively true, making historicity irrelevant.
Besides (and stemming from) the obvious bias against the historicity of the resurrection, throughout his work, Marxsen makes broad, unsubstantiated, and unverifiable statements. For example, regarding Matthew's answer to the theft of Jesus' body, Marxsen claims that "Matthew made it up because he needed an argument against a malicious rumor." Marxsen however cannot have access to the mental acts of the author, making this argument highly specious. While it is not within the scope of his work (and he does not even try) to provide evidence for his claims, they can not then be investigated for their accuracy. For a question of such historical, cultural, and political import, such an unsupported, superficial look at the issue is insufficient to the task.
Along with his unsubstantiated claims, Marxsen makes several claims which can be investigated and can be shown to be false. For length considerations, only two will be listed here. First, Marxsen claims, "The followers of Jesus did not formulate historical accounts." If one takes seriously the Biblical witness, the introduction to the book of Luke directly refutes this claim. "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught." (Luke 1:1-4) Of course, using Marxsen's method for analyzing this passage, one would not take these words at face value, and would dismiss out of hand the possibility of their objectivity. Throughout his work, Marxsen tends to look for any answer (as to historicity) other than the possibility that words can mean exactly what they say they mean and that that meaning could be discovered. A second false claim Marxsen makes relates to the creed of 1 Corinthians 15. He states, "However, it is by no means an ancient formula, but a relatively late one." Suffice it to say most contemporary scholarship would disagree with Marxsen, placing this passage as the earliest known written creed of the resurrection.
Though in his conclusion, he rightly endorses a living faith for the Christian, Marxsen's analysis of the resurrection destroys any firm foundation upon which that faith is to stand. His unsubstantiated, personal speculations make his method highly questionable and not worth serious consideration as plausible, historical explanation for the resurrection of Christ.

When I spotted this title, I was delighted. The idea seemed excellent, nay, inspired. Upon receiving and reviewing it, however, I was dismayed to find that, while the excerpts have been judiciously selected, they have also been subjected to an editorial process which deprives Donne of much of his rhetorical force. For instance, Donne's quotations from the Bible are replaced with those of a modern translation, both his language and syntax are modified to conform to modern American practice, and his prose further altered to reflect gender inclusivity. Is it really necessary to change every "thee" to a "you" in order to make these writings accessible? Isn't it hubris in the highest degree to re-write the "Holy Sonnets" or the "Hymn to God the Father"? This edition may be fine for those who like their Donne strained to the consistency of baby food. Others should be forewarned that this isn't Donne, but Donne as translated into contemporary Anglican liturgy-speak. Deeply disappointing.

I am afraid that I must agree with this book's other reviewer. I, too, was delighted to see this title, and chose it to be my daily meditation reading for Lent. After only three days, however, I am determined to exchange it at the church bookstore for a title that is more fitting the solemnity and introspection of the season.

It is simply mond-boggling that someone, particularly an Anglican scholar or priest, feels called to edit Donne in the way. One of the glories of the Anglican tradition is an acute sensitivity to ritual, language, and the spiritual life of the intellectual, and unfortunately, this book seems to respect none of these. It's such a disappointment. Who better to read on the 40 days of Lent than John Donne? I will still do so, but on my own, in the original, glorious language.

We have hundreds of children's books in our household, and, when you read a lot of them, it's quite easy to tell the good ones from the bad ones. This one is bad.

The drawings are competent -- but in a sort of "corporate marketing machine" way. The text and story are pretty bad. This book is about expanding/reinforcing brand recognition and nothing more.

Toddlers don't care, of course. But their parents should. Skip this one.

I won't sum up the book since the first reviewer did so quite nicely. This book was so boring that I thought I would just put it down. It went between a religious romance then dabbed to sensual. I think that writer was hoping for an Easter miracle with this one...