The Dent in History

Sometime between 30 & 33 AD, something remarkable happened in the world—or appeared to—that left an enormous dent in human history and redirected the course of Western civilization. Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish teacher, philosopher, and healer, was sentenced under Roman law and executed.

He was quite visibly dead, but days later eyewitnesses numbering in the hundreds claimed to see, talk, even eat with Jesus; months later, all Israel was unhinged; years later, the entire Roman empire was turned upside down; thousands of years later, the religion begun by his followers came to predominate the world.

In an Easter op-ed appearing in The New York Times, writer Peter Steinfels asks the obvious question,

Shortly after Jesus was executed, his followers were suddenly galvanized from a baffled and cowering group into people whose message about a living Jesus and a coming kingdom, preached at the risk of their lives, eventually changed an empire. Something happened . . . But exactly what?