The hope of liberation from creeping dystopia or even a dramatic, Hollywood-style rescue from certain death. The Biblical story is far bigger than that: everyone, including everyone who was born or who would ever be born, has all been rescued from death’s clutches.

Our souls may shed these imperfect bodies, but we’re promised perfect, ageless, and indestructible replacements.

Nor are we asked to accept that unlikely sounding promise on faith alone; God came to Earth and proved the concept. Jesus’ existence as a historical figure is widely accepted as fact, and his crucifixion and resurrection are the most well-attested events in the ancient period. So well attested that many secular historians prefer speculating about absurd possibilities like Jesus only looked dead but was just comatose, rather than trying to deny it happened.

At that particular time in history —the height of the Roman Empire’s global power— the sudden appearance and flourishing of a new monotheistic religion was nearly as improbable as the resurrection itself. It wasn’t like today, where a little wrongthink might get your Facebook page shut down. Back then, they punished monotheistic heretics by burning them alive, forcing them to fight angry wildlife, or just chopping them into convenient bite-sized bits.

The point is, in the First Century, defying the Approved Narrative could get you slowly and painfully erased. Picking that risky path required a pretty solid rationale. Thus, it seems more likely that, for some reason, First Century folk believed the Bible’s Resurrection story in a sufficiently convincing way that they’d undertake a great deal of discrimination and unpleasantness.

I doubt a clay pamphlet could do it. C&C