Immortality and Resurrection

Behind all western speculation about life after death lie two conflicting traditions. The ancient Greeks talked of the 'immortality of the soul' and the Hebrew of the 'ressurection of death'.

In a now famous Ingersoll lecture delivered at Harvard University in 1955, the Swiss scholar Oscar Cullman used the constrast 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 Cullman 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.