In these pages, author Maier fascinatingly portrays the Easter event, as well as the critical days of the first Holy Week preceding it. He lays bare the nature of the conspiracy against Jesus, unravels the politics behind the Crucifixion, and establishes an absolute date for Good Friday, besides documenting the Last Supper, the capture at Gethsemane, the trial before Pilate, and the process of crucifixion. In retelling the resurrection accounts, Dr. Maier breaks new ground with evidence that, whatever else happened that first Easter morning, the sepulcher in which Jesus was buried was empty. A host of magnificent photographs in color and in black-and-white - many never before published - illustrate the material and provide a pictorial trip to the sacred sites in Palestine. These include an aerial view of old Jerusalem with the locations of Jesus' Passion identified with greater precision, as well as the now famous "Pilate" stone and the newly unearthed bones of the first crucified victim ever discovered. "First Easter" is "a splendid work…objective, interesting, and thought-provoking," says Norman Vincent Peale.