Immortality and Resurrection: Ingersoll Lectures

by Krister Stendahl (Editor)

Behind all western speculation about a life after death lie two conflicting traditions. The ancient Greeks talked of the "immortality of the soul" and the Hebrew of the "resurrection of the dead."

In a now famous Ingersoll lecture delivered at Harvard University in 1955, the Swiss scholar Oscar Cullmann used the contrast between Socrates' calm dignity in the face of death and Jesus' cries and tears, to open up an investigation of these two traditions and the way they have interacted in Christian thought.

The Cullmann lecture is reprinted here with subsequent Ingersoll lectures in which his investigation was pursued further by a classicist, a philosopher, and a New Testament scholar. Professor Stendahl's Introduction gives the reader a context in which to hear the discussion.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Krister Stendahl was a Swedish theologian and New Testament scholar, Emeritus Bishop of Stockholm (Lutheran); Professor Emeritus, Harvard Divinity School. Stendahl is perhaps most famous for his publication of the article "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West."

Stendahl received his doctorate in New Testament studies from Uppsala University with his dissertation The school of St. Matthew and its use of the Old Testament (1954). He was later Professor at the Divinity School at Harvard University, where he also served as dean, before being elected Bishop of Stockholm in 1984. Stendahl was the second director of the Center for Religious Pluralism at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. After retiring in 1989, he returned to the United States, and was Mellon Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the Harvard Divinity School. He also taught at Brandeis University. Bishop Stendahl was an honorary fellow of the Graduate Theological Foundation. (from Wikipedia)