The crucifixion could have spelled the end of the Jesus movement. But some members of Jesus’s inner circle, who seem to have fled Jerusalem and returned to Galilee after his arrest, had startling visions in which they saw his broken, bleeding body raised to new life, standing, vindicated, at the right hand of God’s throne in the highest place in Heaven. This, they concluded, meant that God had designated Jesus as the Messhiah, the “anointed” descendant of King David who would establish God’s Kingdom and inaugurate a reign of justice.
