During the season of Easter, Christians tend to focus mainly on the death and resurrection of Jesus, but historical Jesus scholar Stephen J. Patterson believes that Jesus’s life is what makes his death and resurrection important. In his book Beyond the Passion: Rethinking the Death and Life of Jesus (Fortress, 2004), Patterson explains his view.
“To celebrate his death apart from the cause for which he lived,” Patterson believes, “would be ridiculous and meaningless. Yet that is what we have done for the most part.” Jesus’s earliest followers were profoundly devoted to his way of life, and they used his death to call attention to his way of life. “They did not see his death or his resurrection as events significant in themselves. They were the fitting end of a life of extraordinary power and vision.” It was a life to be embraced and remembered as revealing God.
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