ABSTRACT
The Pauline heritage of belief in the Resurrection of Christ had faded over time. 1 Fathers of the first and second century ‘remained reluctant’ towards Easter stories, indeed many ‘are silent about them’; for a long time, however, it has been seen that authors who wrote later in the second century placed the Resurection right in the centre of their thinking. 2 Similarly, up to the mid-second century, the celebrations of Sunday and Easter did not focus on Christ’s Resurrection, as we shall see in the next chapter, but were celebrations of his salvific sacrificial death, while in the second half of the second century evidence for a first reticent and later more wholehearted inclusion of the Resurrection theme in both forms of worship can be noticed. 3 What happened around the mid-second century that can explain this development in belief and ritual?
