RESURRECTION AND THE MESSAGE OF EASTER

Evidently the fruit of decades of research, this is an exhaustive study based on the biblical record of the Resurrection of Christ. It discloses, in ever-widening concentric circles, the successive modes and contexts in which the mystery is expressed -- from the primitive credal and liturgical formulas, through the basic narrative forms of early tradition, to the various theological interpretations of the evangelists and, ultimately, the hermeneutical challenge of contemporary theology and preaching. The nub of Leon-Dufour's findings is that God's resurrection and exaltation of Jesus is a mystery of faith grounded in the historical fact of early Christian experience. It is a ""trans-historical event"" that can neither be proven by historical research nor proclaimed as a saving myth to which history is irrelevant. Though the study moves briskly from point to point, it stresses linguistic analysis and is sufficiently technical in spots to prove difficult for those who don't know a hiphil from a niphal. Well organized and executed, it is the most thorough, and perhaps the best, Catholic biblical study of the Resurrection available.