You’ve got to love it when a scholarly book makes you want to stand up and cheer.

I was reading Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God tonight and came across just that sort of passage at the end of a chapter entitled “Time to Wake Up”:

The biblical language of resurrection (‘standing up’, ‘awakening’ etc.), . . . involves, not a reconstrual of life after death, but the reversal of death itself. It is not about discovering that Sheol is not such a bad place after all. It is not a way of saying that the dust will learn to be happy as dust. The language of awakening is not a new, exciting way of talking about sleep. It is a way of saying that a time will come when sleepers will sleep no more. Creation itself, celebrated throughout the Hebrew scriptures, will be reaffirmed, remade.

Yeah baby!