Why has the resurrection once again become the centre point of a new storm brewing in both popular and academic culture? Because of the combination of a realisation of death, and of human beings’ need to interpret its (death’s) mysteries; a question innate to the human experience. In a fear-filled world where war, terrorism, and economic collapse bring the question of death (and the afterlife) to the fore, people are asking – perhaps more than ever – what happens after we die. This popular fascination with the end, with death, and with what (if anything) lies beyond it, has also influenced the theme and the direction of academic work in the theological field. For this reason an informed analysis of the resurrection debate has become necessary – a process of analysing the different strata of understanding as it relates to current resurrection research. Any consideration given to gender or power, birth or burial, money or food is made in an effort to situate the debates being studied. Could a reason for these still varied conclusions on the subject be that those writing on it are not equipped for the task of analysing and interpreting history and historical method? In order to be able to begin answering this question, one of this study's main objectives is to learn and apply the approach of historians – outside of the community of Biblical scholars – to the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead; thus providing interaction with philosophers of history related to hermeneutical and methodological considerations. The method proposed here is a combination of historiography and an ethics of understanding, with the use of Correspondence theory (in which history is described as knowable, and some hypotheses as truer than others in a correspondence sense). This study wants to address both the different questions and analyses of the debate by asking: What if we see things differently? What if we were to ask a different set of questions? In order for this to be possible, we need to develop an ethics of interpretation – instead of asking the expected questions, this study aims to ask: What interests and frameworks inform the questions we ask and the way in which we interpret our sources? How does scholarship echo (and even participate in) contemporary public discourses about Christian identity? These questions will be attended to through three intersecting practices – critical reflexivity, complemented by the use of the two related practices of textual re-reading and public debate. However, these are not methodical steps in a linear progression, they are mutually interacting practices that draw on each other; raising new possibilities for the way in which we historically reconstruct the Jesus movement, allowing us to enter into the public debate about Jesus and eschatology in a way that takes the ethical possibilities and consequences of our reconstructions of Christian origins and identity seriously. For, though fragmentary and broken human words may be, they nevertheless possess a capacity to function as the medium through which God is able to disclose himself. Copyright / Dissertation (MTh)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / New Testament Studies / unrestricted

The purpose of this essay is to discuss what kind of normativity can be considered acceptable in academic theology today in Sweden. This I do by critically and comparatively analyze two debates. The first debate is from Sweden and has its origin in the book Den okände Jesus written by Cecilia Wassén och Tobias Hägerland. The second debate is an international debate about Joseph Ratzingers or Benedict XVI book Jesus of Nazareth. For the purpose of comparison I am working with three analytical questions. I am asking the different texts whether the author express any ontological assumptions or if he or she argumenting at a epistemological level, what enables intersubjective verifiability according to the author and what kind of methods does the author see as acceptable to reach historical knowledge? This questions works as a methodological cluster and the answers indicate what the authors think about acceptable normativity in academic theology. After that I identify similarities and divergences and I ́m comparing different positions and arguments. Finally I evaluate the reasonability of these positions and argument. The reader will be lead to the conclusion that intersubjective verifiability in academic theology and exegetic doesn ́t demand naturalistic or empirical points of departure but rather transparency and cognitive understandable argument which includes theological normative arguments and research. An attitude I name as methodological reciprocity.