It shouldn’t need saying that a physical resurrection from the dead is impossible. In modern times, many possible alternatives have been offered to an actual resurrection in an attempt to try and explain the gospel story.
Some have proposed that maybe it was actually just a trick; others that Jesus was never actually dead when he came off the cross, merely wounded; some have suggested that his closest followers secretly removed his body from the cave; others have gone so far as to propose that it wasn’t actually Jesus who was crucified and buried in the cave.
All of the above are equally needless explanations, because they assume that the story of the resurrection is based on some real life event of the apostles finding an empty cave. There’s no evidence for that being the case. We’ve seen how the gospels are literary creations, written decades after the events they describe.
Jesus’ resurrection was a mythical representation of the final salvation believed to be on offer to the initiate after death. Paul wrote on this allegory in his letters,
‘Have you forgotten that when we were baptised into union with Christ Jesus we were baptised into his death? By baptism we were buried with him, and lay dead, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead in the splendour of the Father, so also we might set our feet upon the new path of life. For if we have become incorporate with him in a death like his, we shall also be one with him in a resurrection like his. ’ (Romans 6.3-9)
The gospels probably have Jesus rising from the dead on the third day to coincide with the story of Jonah in the Old Testament. Jonah supposedly spent three days and three nights in the belly of a giant fish. There’s a clear reference to this in the gospel of Matthew where Jesus is asked by the Pharisees and Saducees to produce a sign from heaven. His response is, ‘The only sign that will be given is the sign of Jonah. Jonah spent three days and three nights in the sea-monster’s belly, so shall the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the bowels of the earth’ (Matthew 12.39-40). Augustine likewise noted this connection.
‘The prophet Jonah, not so much by speech as by his own painful experience, prophesied Christ’s death and resurrection much more clearly than if he had proclaimed them with his voice. For why was he taken into the whale’s belly and restored on the third day, but that it might be a sign that Christ should return from the depths of hell on the third day?’ (City of God 18.30)
There are also similarities to the resurrection of Attis. An effigy of Attis was tied to a sacred pine tree and decorated with flowers, to represent Attis’ self castration under the tree. The effigy was then buried in a sepulchre, and miraculously rose from the dead on the third day. The priest anointed the initiates stating ‘To you likewise there shall come salvation from your trouble’.
All this happened at a three day festival dedicated to Cybele and Attis called hilaria (‘day of joy’). Both hilaria and Easter occurred at the spring equinox. Early Christian tradition placed the death of Jesus on March 25th, the exact same date as the festival of hilaria.
The festivities held in honour of the resurrected Attis were described by J. G. Frazer in The Golden Bough as follows,
‘But when night had fallen, the sorrow of the worshippers was turned to joy. For suddenly a light shone in the darkness: the tomb was opened: the god had risen from the dead; and as the priest touched the lips of the weeping mourners with balm he softly whispered in their ears the glad tidings of salvation. The resurrection of the god was hailed by his disciples as a promise that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave. On the morrow, the twenty fifth day of March, which was reckoned the vernal equinox, the divine resurrection was celebrated with a wild outburst of glee. At Rome, and probably elsewhere, the celebration took the form of a carnival. It was the festival of Joy (Hilaria).’ (The Golden Bough p350)
There are clear similarities between the festivals of hilaria and Easter and the mythologies of Attis and Jesus. Both had a passion story involving a tree, probably representing the world axis.
We find the concept of a resurrection of the dead at the end of time in Zoroastrianism, the Persian state religion that undoubtedly influenced Judaism. The Jewish and Christian concept of a final resurrection of the dead may have originated in that religion. A Zoroastrian religious text talks of the day, ‘when the dead will rise, when life and immortality will come, and the world will be restored.’ (Zamyad Yasht 19.23)
The Jews originally believed in a shady underworld similar to Hades called Sheol, but some had started to believe in a resurrection of the dead by the Hellenistic period. We find a ‘day of resurrection’ mentioned in apocryphal Jewish texts like The Revelation of Moses. That text states that, ‘In the end of the times. Then shall all flesh be raised up from Adam until that great day, all that shall be of the holy people’ (The Apocalypse of Moses 13.2-3). 1 Enoch likewise states that, ‘The righteous shall arise from their sleep’ (1 Enoch 91.10) at the final Day of Judgement.
We also have mentions of the dead rising from their graves in the Old Testament, which may have been the basis for the resurrection story, and have influenced the Jewish and Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. We read in Isaiah,
‘Your dead will come back to life,
their corpses will rise up.
You who live in the dust, wake up and sing!
Your dew is like the morning dew,
and the earth will cast out its dead.’ (Isaiah 26.19)
A bizarre passage in Ezekiel 37 may also be the root of the resurrection story. In it Yahweh transports Ezekiel to a desert valley of bones, where he tells him to prophesy and bring the bones back to life. First the bones rejoin to each other, then flesh and skin reappear on the bones. Lastly breath enters the bodies and they stand up and come back to life. The story finishes with, ‘You shall know that I am Yahweh when I have opened your graves and brought you up out of your graves, O my people’ (Ezekiel 37.13).
Interestingly, Yahweh calls Ezekiel ‘Son of Man’ several times in the passage, the term later reused in Daniel and then in the gospels. Both of the above examples of Isaiah and Ezekiel originally referred metaphorically to the Jews / Israelites. But early Christians believed that the Jewish scriptures really referred to Jesus, so this may be where the concept of resurrection derived from.
We also find a possible allusion to resurrection in the Book of Daniel, that was so important to the gospel writers,
‘But at that time your people, whose names is found written in the book, will be delivered. Many of those who sleep in the dusty ground will awake – some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.’ (Daniel 12.1-3)
The early Church ended up viewing this story of resurrection literally and believed that the physical bodies of the dead would be resurrected at the Day of Judgement. Pagan critics of Christianity ridiculed this bizarre and grotesque belief, and Christian apologists wrote at length to justify it.
This led Christian writers like Augustine to go into outlandish details on how infants and even aborted foetuses shall have a physical resurrection in the adult body they would have grown into. Likewise old people would be resurrected into the body of their youth. Augustine wrote, ‘We conclude that every man shall receive his own size which he had in youth, though he died an old man, or which he would have had, supposing he died before his prime’ (City of God 22.15). Augustine even felt the need to go into detail on how someone could be resurrected even if they had been eaten by someone else!
‘This leads me to that question which seems the most difficult of all – to whom, in the resurrection, will belong the flesh of a dead man which has become the flesh of a living man? For if someone, famishing for want and pressed with hunger, use human flesh as food…That flesh, therefore, shall be restored to the man in whom it first became human flesh. For it must be looked upon as borrowed by the other person, and like a pecuniary loan, must be returned to the lender.’ (City of God 22.20)
Likewise people could be physically resurrected even if they had been eaten by animals, drowned at sea or even had their body ground to powder,
‘But even though the body has been all quite ground to powder by some severe accident, or by the ruthlessness of enemies, and though it has been so diligently scattered to the winds, or into the water, that there is no trace of it left, yet it shall not be beyond the omnipotence of the creator – no, not a hair on its head shall perish.’ (City of God 22.21)
The letters of Paul suggest that he may have viewed resurrection as a spiritual phenomenon, very different from that of the later church. He believed that our ‘spiritual bodies’ would be raised to the heavenly realm at the final Day of Yahweh. He wrote,
‘I declare to you, brothers and sisters. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the blinking of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.’ (1 Corinthians 15.50-53)
The Bible and Mythology 