Human beings have always hoped that maybe, just maybe, life is lord of death and love will not lose its own. It has been a hope almost too good to be true. The Egyptian monarchs, building their pyramids and putting the utensils of home in graves expressed a wistful hope that this life is not all. Native Americans who spoke of a happy hunting ground were giving voice to a universal longing. Everywhere people have hoped that this short, pathetic little life is not all.
Death seems so final.
The hope that we can withstand its assault is so weak that even when the good news of resurrection broke forth, humanity could hardly believe it. The arguments, most of them old hat, still rage. A popular book years ago was Hugh Schonfeld's The Passover Plot. Based on knowledge of pharmaceutical and entombment methods in first-century Palestine, it tries to explain away the resurrection. According to theory, Jesus rigged his execution, and things went wrong.