Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Just When I Thought the Pandering Couldn't Get Any Worse!

20/20 is devoting a full hour to the resurection of Jesus Christ!

From the webpage:

Sometime between the year 30 and 33 of the first century, a young Jewish preacher named Jesus of Nazareth was crucified in Jerusalem. It was a brutal and humiliating death that should have ended his tiny movement right there. And yet his followers carried on, planting the seeds of a religion that would eventually rule the Western world. What convinced them to continue? The Bible says that after Jesus died, his mother and other women who had followed him actually took his body down off the cross and that he was laid to rest in a tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea. What happened next is a mystery.

Vargas also interviews Jewish scholars in Jerusalem who are experts in the history of the early Christian movement there. Professor Daniel Schwartz of Hebrew University and professor Albert Baumgarten of Bar Ilan University help shed light on the mindset of the first followers of Jesus. While neither obviously believes a physical resurrection occurred, both concur that something extraordinary took place shortly after Jesus' death. "I think definitely something happened," said Schwartz of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, "I don't know how they convinced themselves. But the historical fact is, you've got people who are convinced he was resurrected."