There are three such “resuscitation” stories in the Hebrew Bible. Elijah prays over the son of a widow who had fallen ill and stopped breathing and “the life-breath came into him again and he lived” (1 Kings 17:17–22). Elisha, his successor, performs a similar miracle for the dead son of a wealthy woman. He lies upon the corpse, literally mouth to mouth, until it becomes warm, and the child opens his eyes and gets up (2 Kings 4:32–37). Finally, after Elisha has died and been buried, another corpse is put into his grave and as soon as it touches the bones of Elisha, the man “lived and stood up.” In the gospels Jesus performs three such miracles. He revives a twelve-year-old girl who had died, with the words “Little girl, I say to you arise.” The child immediately gets up, walks about, and takes something to eat (Mark 5:41–43). On another occasion he halts a funeral procession, touches the bier, and speaks to the corpse of a young man who had died, “Young man, I say to you arise.” The dead man sits up and begins to speak (Luke 7:11–17). Finally, when his friend Lazarus dies, and has already been buried for two days, Jesus goes to his tomb, asks that the stone be removed, prays, then shouts, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man comes out with his hands and feet still bound in the burial cloths (John 11:43–44). The book of Acts records two such miracles: one by Peter, and the other by Paul. When a widow named Dorcas falls sick and dies, Peter is called in. He prays, then turns to the body and commands it to rise. Dorcas opens her eyes and gets up. Paul revives a young boy named Eutychus who fell from a third-story window and was presumed dead (Acts 20:9–12).
The descriptive language in each of these cases is noteworthy: “He lived,” “she got up,” “he sat up,” or “he came out.” These are verbal expressions of what took place, not conceptual terms about life after death more generally. In that sense the English term “resurrection from the dead” is misleading. In the Hebrew Bible there is no noun for “resurrection,” just verbs describing the dead being revived. Even in the New Testament the Greek word anastasis, translated “resurrection,” occurs forty-two times; it literally means “a standing up.”
Most scholars agree that there is only one unambiguous reference to a general resurrection of the dead in the entire Hebrew Bible.12 It is found in the book of Daniel, an uncharacteristically apocalyptic book, considered by scholars to have been written much later than the other books of the Prophets in the Hebrew Bible. Daniel receives a long visionary prophecy that purports to give him a glimpse into human history right up to the end of time. The revelation concludes with these words:
And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time; but at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And multitudes of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars for ever and ever. (Daniel 12:1–3)
The metaphor of “sleeping in the dust of the earth” and then awakening captures precisely the core idea of resurrection of the dead in the context of the ancient Hebrew understanding of death. The dead come forth from Sheol and are judged at the end of time, receiving either everlasting life or shame and contempt. Their bodies have long ago decayed and turned to dust, so rather than a resuscitation of a corpse, their revival entails a transformed state of glorified immortal existence.
Daniel writes at a time, in the mid-second century B.C., when Jews had chosen to die at the hands of their Greek conquerors rather than give up the practice of their religion (1 Maccabees 1:41–64). Coinciding with these gruesome tales of martyrdom there are declarations from the mouths of those dying that God will restore to life those who have perished: “You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws” (2 Maccabees 7:9). Here we see emerging a new Jewish understanding of both life and death. The older idea, found in much of the Hebrew Bible, that God justly rewards good and punishes evil in this life, was beginning to unravel. The book of Job struggled mightily with this issue, with Job insisting that his suffering was undeserved and that God was obligated to adjudicate his case, even if it required that he be vindicated by some future interlocutor, long after his death (Job 19:23–27).13 But if Daniel’s vision of the future were true, then any question about God’s justice would become moot, since the dead would be raised at the end of time and all would face final judgment.
As appealing as the notion of resurrection of the dead might be, it was sharply debated in Jewish circles for at least three centuries (200 B.C. to A.D. 100). Those who opposed the idea argued that since it was found only in the book of Daniel, a book whose authenticity some disputed, but nowhere else in the Hebrew scriptures, it represented an intrusive and unjustified addition to the teachings of Moses and the Prophets.
According to Josephus, the first-century A.D. Jewish historian, of the three major schools of Jewish thought, the Sadducees opposed the idea of resurrection of the dead while the Pharisees and the Essenes accepted it.14 Josephus says the views of the Pharisees were accepted by the general populace, whereas the Sadducees tended to represent the aristocratic classes with decidedly “this worldly” interests in wealth and political power. The Essenes are most often identified with the sect that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. Books like Daniel and Enoch, in which the idea of resurrection of the dead is pivotal, inspired their decidedly apocalyptic views. Both Jesus and Paul stood squarely with the Pharisees and the Essenes.
The Sadducees challenged Jesus on this point and in response he declared: “You are wrong, for you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God,” explaining his understanding of resurrection:
Those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. (Mark 12:24–25; Luke 20:34–36)
Whether Jesus himself spoke these precise words or they were an elaboration by the gospel writers, what they show is that within the Jesus movement the resurrection of the dead at the end of the age was understood as the release of the dead from Sheol, or Hades, clothed in a new spiritual body no longer subject to death or decay. Resurrection involved transformation to a higher order of life, no longer differentiated as male and female, and thus no birth or death. The idea of resuscitating corpses or reassembling decayed flesh and bones long perished or turned to dust did not even enter the picture. Metaphorically one could speak of “those in the graves” coming forth, but since the “grave” ultimately referred to the underworld of Hades or Sheol, even those “buried” at sea come forth: “And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done” (Revelation 20:13).
The Jewish notion of resurrection of the dead never means disembodied bliss, or even “life after death,” but always a re-embodied life. This is quite different from the Greek idea of the immortal soul being freed from the mortal body and experiencing heavenly bliss. For Plato death is a friend, offering release from the prison of a mortal body, whereas for Jews and Christians death is an enemy that sends one to Sheol forever, until God intervenes and raises the dead in their new form.15