It seems to me that the intent of the gospel writers is not to make the resurrection seem somehow plausible or credible – this could hardly be done without diminishing its impressiveness as miracle – but instead to heighten its singularity, when, as event, it would seem by no means unexampled. I believe it is usual to say that the resurrection established who Jesus was and what his presence meant. Perhaps it is truer to say the opposite: that who Jesus was established what his resurrection meant, that he seized upon a narrative familiar or even pervasive and wholly transformed it.

– Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam: essays on modern thought (Macmillan, 2005), p. 238.