Chapter 1 Summary

Pagels begins by pointing out how the Resurrection may be the key building block of orthodox Christianity. That "Christ rose from the dead" is the essence of the creeds recited by Christians for several thousand years. The Resurrection was a "turning point in world history." The author believes that this cardinal point of dogma sets Christianity apart from other faiths, which deal with cycles of birth and death, not rebirth. She focuses on the physical reality of the event, recounting how Jesus in Luke challenges his disciples to handle him- to show he is flesh and bones. Amazingly, he eats a broiled fish before their very eyes. This was not like Plato's doctrine of the soul's immortality, taught in Greece only five hundred years before. This was real flesh, reconstituted and reborn.

Tertullian, who wrote c. 190 A.D., an exponent of Orthodoxy, points...