If you think Jesus’ resurrection was unique, think again, writes Deane Galbraith.
At Easter, Christians celebrate the story of a first-century Jew rising from the dead. That is admittedly unusual. These days, you don’t hear many stories of people returning from the dead, outside of zombie films.
But in the first century AD, resurrections were reportedly happening left, right and centre. The resurrection of Jesus might be the most famous of these stories, but the account is far from unique.
In Jesus’ time, many Jews believed that the world was just about to end, probably in a violent and fiery apocalypse. They also expected that, at that time, God would raise the dead from their graves, judge them according to their deeds, reward the righteous, and punish the wicked.
Jesus himself held these types of apocalyptic beliefs. He expected the world would end in just a few years.
Jesus claimed God had "anointed" him as a special end-times messenger or prophet, whose purpose was to proclaim to members of his generation that they would be the ones to witness the end of the world as we know it.
There was also a widespread Jewish understanding, in the time Jesus lived, that a select few righteous men would rise before the end times, before the general resurrection of all humankind. These special righteous men included great founding ancestors of Israel, Jewish prophets from the distant and recent past, and Jewish heroes and martyrs.
For example, in the 160s BC, the great Jewish warrior Judas Maccabeus received a vision of two righteous men who were now in heaven, who had already risen from the dead (2 Maccabees 15). One was the prophet Jeremiah, who had died centuries before, but in Judas’ vision had received an exalted resurrection body that was no longer subject to death. The other figure was the “noble and good” priest Onias, who had died only a few years earlier, but whose arms had been restored with his resurrection body, and were now continually outstretched in prayer.
A second-century BC scroll found in the caves at Qumran, called the War Scroll, describes two armies living in the heavens with God. One is an army of angels. The other is an army of the "Great Men" of Israel, or the righteous dead: an army of the dead! The bodies of these dead heroes had already been transformed into immortal bodies, so that they could sit on thrones in heaven and, in the end times, fight in the final apocalyptic battle on earth.
According to the Testament of Abraham, Adam, the first man, is pictured as sitting enthroned in heaven, able to weep and to pull at the (resurrected) hair of his head. He is later joined by other resurrected righteous men: his son Abel and the forefather of Israel, Abraham. Other early Jewish and Christian works, such as 1 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Peter, similarly agree that early human ancestors and other righteous Jews had already arisen in glorious new bodies into the heavens.
Sometimes in Jewish tradition only the soul was resurrected, sometimes body and soul. In the Testament of Job, all the children of the righteous man Job die. But their bodies are nowhere to be found, because their bodies had been resurrected up to heaven and transformed into glorious immortal bodies. The earliest accounts of Jesus’ postmortem appearances to his disciples likewise assume that God had previously raised him to his right hand in heaven, transforming his body into a glorious immortal form.
In some of these ancient Jewish texts, the sequence of resurrection is spelled out. The Testament of Benjamin, for example, narrates that resurrection to the right hand of God will occur first for the righteous Enoch, Seth, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Later, all other people will rise from the dead.
The Gospel of Matthew makes the similar claim that, at the time of Jesus’ death, many righteous Jews were resurrected from their graves. According to Matthew, many people spotted these great deceased Jewish heroes walking around the streets of Jerusalem, bodies fully restored.
Another common Jewish expectation in Jesus’ time was that the prophet Elijah would rise from the dead in the days immediately preceding the end of the world. Jesus discusses this prophecy, but with a twist. Given that he considered that the end times were already well under way, Jesus informed his disciples that Elijah would not be resurrected in the future. Rather, Elijah had already risen from the dead. Jesus explained that John the Baptist, who had proclaimed the end of the world during Jesus’ lifetime, was really the resurrected Elijah (Matthew 17:10-13).
Today, many Christians imagine that accounts of Jesus’ resurrection found in the Gospels were unprecedented and unexpected, and sometimes reason that such an idea could only derive from his actual resurrection. But while belief in the resurrection is ultimately a matter of faith, it is clear there was a widespread Jewish expectation that end-times prophets and preachers of righteousness like Jesus would rise from the dead prior to the remainder of humankind.
Whatever we decide about the reality of resurrection, Jewish precedents made it entirely predictable that Jesus’ Jewish followers would likewise claim that Jesus had risen from the dead.
- Dr Deane Galbraith is a lecturer in religion at the University of Otago and chairman of the Aotearoa-New Zealand Association for Biblical Studies (ANZABS).
