Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide:

on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Adapted from: "Your Christ is too small," by Roy Abraham Varghese, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, November, 2005.

Regarding the beginnings of the post - Resurrection era of Christianity, there came what the author calls "The transformation of the disciples," which, he is careful to note, "cannot be explained without accepting their story of the resurrection of Jesus."

He then quotes directly from the noted Jewish scholar, whose name is Pinchas Lapide:

"Despite all the legendary embellishments, in th eoldest records there remains a recognizable historical kernel which cannot simply be demythologized.

"When this scared, frightened band of the apostles which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision [Or the American Catholic Church's John Pilch - style trance experience !] or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutinary transformation ...

"Such a post - Easter change, which was no less real than sudden and unexpected, certainly needed a concrete foundation which can by no means exclude the possibility of any physical resurrection." (4)

(4) Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus -- A Jewish Perspective. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1983, 129 - 130.