Jesus had evoked these (apocalyptic) hopes when he, like John the Baptizer before him and like Paul after him, had announced the impending advent of God’s Kingdom. His followers’ experiences of Jesus raised—whatever it is that they thought they saw; however we interpret their experience now—point irrefutably to this movement’s rootedness in these apocalyptic convictions and commitments. The resurrection of the dead and the vindication of the righteous are two prominent tropes in these traditions, each representing God’s opportunity to finally put right all the things that, in the course of normal history, had gone wrong. - Paula Fredriksen, When Christians Were Jews.