Any old resurrection will not do

So, reading the article on ABC News about the outback floods up north, Crossan's book The Birth of Christianity, and Jesus' resurrection in the Bible, should be read literally. It means that figures of speech are included in the literal meaning. This has been the case in reading any kind of literature down through the centuries.

Literal interpretation is not the bogeyman of fundamentalists but the tools used by all of us in reading any document when we want to understand the plain meaning of the writing.

I did it today in completing forms to renew my driver's licence. What a joke it would be to fill in the documents as though I interpreted them symbolically.

From primary school to university, I learned there is one way to read any document – literally. If I find it is poetry, I interpret it as a poem, as I do with Homer's epic, The Odyssey.

2. Making a meal of Jesus' resurrection

These are some of the variations of resurrection meals served up in recent times:

(a) John Shelby Spong: 'Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history' (1998).

(b) John Dominic Crossan: 'Jesus' burial by his friends was totally fictional and unhistorical. He was buried, if buried at all, by his enemies, and the necessarily shallow grave would have been easy prey for scavenging animals'(1994:160) and Jesus' resurrection was an apparition – a ghost (1994:160).

(c) Rudolf Bultmann asked: "But what of the resurrection? Is it not a mythical event pure and simple? Obviously it is not an event of past history" (1984).

(d) An antagonist: 'If, as you say you believe, Jesus, resurrected with a physical body about 2,000 years ago, the probability that he is still alive and well is so infinitesimal that it may be considered non-existent'.

(e) Scott Korb, a non-practicing Roman Catholic of New York University, gave this view of Jesus' resurrection: 'What I mean is that we can reach the lowest points of our lives, of going deep into a place that feels like death, and then find our way out again - that's the story the Resurrection now tells me. And at Easter, this is expressed in community, and at its best, through the compassion of others'.

(f) The laity again, 'I believe the bible is a mythical book….'

If I interpreted the floods in north Qld that way, you would have every reason to question my integrity in dealing with any text. But it's acceptable for these scholars to make such bizarre claims.