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While the overall direction of this study seems eminently praiseworthy, certain questions can be raised. In his stress upon "New Covenant," D. is very anachronistic in drawing such a sharp division between the Christian communities in Paul's time and the rest of Israel. While, to be sure, few other Jews could have imagined the elimination of circumcision (p. 38), this position was not uncontested by other Christians, and it is perhaps no more radical than, say, the views of the Qumran community on the Jerusalem Temple. Similarly, D. adopts a more "existentialist" interpretation of the human predicament prior to Christhe speaks of it as "radical egoism" and relates this to sarx. However, Paul himself stressed the deterministic role of the cosmic/ demonic powers. For Paul the problem was not egoism but human inability to achieve the good. Also open to question is the heavy reliance by D. upon 1 Thess 4:1-12. On the one hand, D. argues that this passage is a particularized teaching concerned solely with sexual morality and the promotion of Philadelphia of a practical sort, and on the other he tends to use it as a structurally programmatic statement of Paul's ethical understanding. There is certainly some tension here. (I believe, in general, that D. has overstated Paul's interest in issues of sexual morality.) Finally, while D.'s overall position about the role of external precept in Pauline ethics is carefully argued and, I think, basically correct, certain qualifications are in order lest the true state of affairs in earliest Christianity be significantly distorted. D. himself sees the reference in Rom 8:6 to the phronma of the Spirit as undergirding the notion of a sensus fidelium or "Christian instinct" and he holds that the community's teachers must also be learners. To this I would add that, if nothing else, Paul's own behavior in the aftermath of the "Jerusalem council" suggests that, however strongly he wished his own commands to be obeyed, he certainly was well aware of the incarnate character of paroklesis when it came to him from someone else! Yet having said these things, I congratulate D. for his work; it is a valuable exploration of a most important topic. Robert A. Wild, S.J., Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI53233

J. DUNCAN M. DERRETT, The Anastasis: The Resurrection of Jesus as an Historical Event (Warwickshire: P. Drinkwater, 1982). Pp. xiv + 166. Paper 5. Arguments punctuated with claims that modern scholars are unable to appreciate the "Asian mind" always arouse suspicions. Derrett has read the literature on resurrection and should be able to make a case without resort to such attacks. D.'s reconstruction of the historical events surrounding the resurrection draws on ancient and modern accounts of revival of those declared dead. Jesus revived in the tomb and was found by a young man assigned to watch it. He summoned the women and later the disciples to brief meetings before he died. The disciples then made sure that there was no body by cremating it secretly and disposing of the ashes in the place set aside for the bones of the Passover lambs. Several factors make it necessary that there be no body. The value of the body of Jesus for those seeking a focus of miraculous cures might lead Joseph to claim it as his. Or, from the point of view of disciples, the

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conviction that the risen Jesus is the manifestation of Yahweh cannot be maintained if Jesus' body remains in a tomb. Were the body entombed, it would become the site of veneration. Derret follows the traditional interpretations of resurrection in accounting for it as the catalyst of christological reflection in the early community. Jesus' own identification with the Servant of Yahweh would not have led him to expect such a vindication. But, when he did revive, he would immediately have seen it as God's gift to him of the power of forgiveness. Though Jesus cannot have provided his disciples with an elaborate interpretation of resurrection, his brief meeting with them must have communicated this perception. Not only is that encounter one in which Jesus communicates his charism by touch, but it is also the setting for Jesus' use of the numinous "I AM." This charismatic identification with the divine was elicited, D. suggests, by the disciples' question whether or not Jesus was a body animated by a demonic spirit. It is probable that Jesus also spoke of his own impending death as ascent to the Father. After his death, the disciples, adept at visionary experiences, would easily come to have visions of Jesus from heaven. D. draws on recent studies which show that the bodily character of resurrection is not well established in Jewish sources to argue the plausibility of resurrection preaching by disciples who knew what had happened to Jesus' body. He goes on to suggest that the cremation was suggested by the analogy between Jesus' death and that of Isaac. This basic argument is clothed with polemic and tendentious etymologies. Derrett knows the literature well enough to realize that the scholarly community will not take this book seriously. Nor should it. Rather than pick over the details, we would simply raise the question, suppose this imaginative reconstruction represents the objective, historical truth that the author claims. What is gained? Surprisingly little. Many scholars already agree with D.'s criticism of Marxsen and others who reduce resurrection to the subjective experience of the disciples and dismiss the empty-tomb traditions. Many scholars already agree that one cannot make absolute statements about the connection between the physical body of Jesus and his resurrected presence with God, since the tie between resurrection and the physical body that is the object of burial is not presupposed in Judaism. What D. appears to gain in the final analysis is a grounding in the life of Jesusthough granted in that short anastasis periodfor all the christological and soteriological images that are attributed to him in the NT. Jesus is the exalted righteous one; the one who dies as sin-offering; the source of divine forgiveness, and even identified with the Father in the ecstatic I AM of Johannine christology. In short, understandings of Jesus, which most scholars agree develop from the resurrection, but do so in different ways in the different communities of the NT writings, are now collapsed in the post-resurrection experience of Jesus himself. Thus, this elaborate hypothesis appears to serve a subtler form of historical fundamentalism. The creativity and developing insights of the NT traditions, their ability to perceive and tell the story of Jesus through the images of the Scriptures, and even their confession of resurrection as the powerful act of God must be constrained within the facticity of modern perceptions. Our faith is to be grounded in a historical reconstruction which makes the historical Jesus the Risen One. Pheme Perkins, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167

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