The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God Book 1)

by N.T. Wright

But let us suppose that (within a context of first-century Jewish belief that the covenant god was to intervene within the course of history to deliver his people from their oppression and exile) Jesus had done and said certain things which led people, in however muddled a fashion, to believe that somehow their god was achieving this purpose in and through his work. In such a case, the beginnings of post-resurrection belief in the saving significance of his death, articulated first as the rescue of Israel from exile, is far more credible. The cross and resurrection, in short, are clearly central to virtually all known forms of early Christianity. But the rise of that early Christian understanding is only comprehensible on the basis that certain things continued to be known, as history, about the one who (among so many others) was crucified outside Jerusalem and who (unlike any others before or since—a fact of some significance) was declared by his followers to be alive shortly afterwards.