First, in preindustrial society about one third of those who survived birth were dead by six, two thirds by sixteeen, and three quarters by twenty-six years of age. In the ancient world and in all those places where the modern world is still ancient, death is not life’s future and distant end, but its present and constant companion. Even apart from death by the famine and plague of war, there was death from disease, malnutrition, and exhaustion caused by injustice.

Christ’s “death” always meant for Paul the terrible death of an unjust execution, the horrible death of a shameful crucifixion. It did not mean death as the normal end of life.

His theology was not built on Christ’s death and resurrection as if Christ had died at home in Nazareth and rose there on the third day. Christ’s death was the result of injustice and violence. Here, then, after two thousand yeas and especially as the twenty-first century’s terrorism replaces the twentieth century’s totalitarianism, we ask this question. Is it death or is it violence that is the last enemy of God? Or better, is it unjust and violent death that is the last enemy of God?

— Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in “The First Paul.”