Messianic Theology: Resurrection
The classic statement is that of Achilles as he addresses the grief-stricken Priam, mourning his son Hector whom Achilles has killed:
You must endure, and not be broken-hearted. Lamenting for your son will do no good at all. You will be dead yourself before you bring him back to life.
Nor, declares Hector’s mother, could Achilles raise up his dead companion Patroclus, despite dragging her son round his body.
The tradition is maintained unbroken through the hallowed Athenian dramatists. Here, from Aeschylus’ Eumenides, is Apollo, speaking at the foundation of the Athenian high court, the Areopagus:
Once a man has died, and the dust has soaked up his blood, there is no resurrection.
Still another theological reaffirmation of the doctrine is in a monograph, “Resurrection,” by Morton Wyschogrod in Pro Ecclesia 1:1 (Fall, 1992), pp. 104–112. Wyschogrod echoes his colleagues in claiming that “… because God is a redeeming God, it follows that death cannot be the last word.… Either death wins or God saves.” Redemption marks God’s ability to transform “whatever bad things happen to people,” but the conquest of death is “… the one triumph of the negative over which we have not as yet seen any triumph” (p. 109). Wyschogrod makes the further claim that the major difference between Jewish and Christian eschatology lies in the fact that Christians can claim to have witnessed God’s triumph over death (in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth), whereas Jews cannot.
This is the first biblical reference to a general resurrection of the righteous and the wicked. Justice mandated the resurrection, for it is the only answer for the death of the faithful servants of the covenantal God of Israel.
The period between the testaments exhibited a variety of beliefs that imply resurrection, but they add little to the Old Testament (Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life, 1972):
• Second Maccabees affirms the belief that God will vindicate the faithful by bringing their bodies to life (e.g., 2 Macc 14:46).
• Ethiopic Enoch 90:33 implies resurrection and describes the righteous as living with the Son of Man forever and ever.
• The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs affirm the resurrection of righteous Israelites (e.g., T. Jud. 25:1–4).
At the time of Jesus, the Sadducees believed that only the Torah was authoritative and denied the resurrection, which was not explicitly taught there. Thus, they opposed the Pharisees (compare Matt 22:23; Acts 24:20–21). The Essenes affirmed an immortality of the soul akin to Greek notions of the soul’s release from the fleshly body (Josephus, Jewish War 8, 11).
According to the author of the letter, the king’s librarian, Demetrius, requested the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem to send translators with the Hebrew Torah scrolls to Alexandria. The high priest complied, sending six men from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, that is, seventy-two translators, with a large escort carrying gifts for the king. The twelve tribes of Israel had long before been dispersed, so if there is any truth to this unlikely story, the number of people sent would have been merely a symbolic gesture. Aristeas was among the envoys.
The entourage from Jerusalem was welcomed to Alexandria with a royal banquet lasting several days, during which time the king and the envoys from the high priest discussed questions of theology and ethics. Finally, the translators were escorted to an island called Pharos, connected by a causeway to Alexandria. Working there for seventy-two days, they produced the first Greek translation of the Pentateuch. When the translation was complete, it was read to an assembly of the Jews of Alexandria, who enthusiastically received it and gave the translators a great ovation. The Jews asked the king’s librarian to make a copy of the new translation for use in their community. To ensure that the original words of the translators would be preserved in perpetuity, the priests and elders pronounced a curse on anyone who should later change the text in any way.
ἀνίστημι (anistēmi). vb. arise. The action of arising or standing up, even out of death.
Although it is more commonly used with its core meaning “to stand up” (e.g., Acts 26:16, 30), anistēmi is also used specifically for the resurrection of Jesus (e.g., Luke 24:7, 46; Acts 2:24, 32) or the general resurrection (e.g., Eph 5:14; 1 Thess 4:14, 16). The word is also used for other miraculous risings in the NT: Peter told Dorcus/Tabitha to “arise (anistēmi),” and she revived (Acts 9:40); similarly, Jesus told a girl to “arise (egeirō)” and she arose (anistēmi) from death (Mark 5:41–2; Luke 8:54–55).
It appears 42 times in the NT, always, apart from Luke 2:34 (→ 2), in conformity with the technical use of the vb., i.e., in the sense of the raising up or the resurrection of the dead (→ 3, 5).
We note here in passing the use of a text from Deuteronomy (18:15) which, containing the word anastesei in the LXX, lent itself easily to being a proof of the special resurrection of the prophet-Messiah Jesus.8 This too appears as an innovation from within the Jewish tradition: the explanation of what had happened to Jesus, and what it all meant, is only comprehensible within Judaism, but nobody had thought of it like this before the early Christians did. And, within the interval between Jesus’ resurrection and the apokatastasis, a new life was available, with new possibilities of healing, for those who would believe. God’s raising of Jesus from the dead is the sign that salvation is found in him alone, which in turn is the explanation for the remarkable healing performed by Peter and John (4:5–12). The whole early Christian message can be summed up in the phrase ‘this life’ (5:20). When we find, in this context, that Peter raises a widow from the dead, and that Paul likewise restores to life an apparently dead boy, the reader of Acts is bound to feel that such incidents cohere with the underlying theological message—and with events reported in the gospels. This is a time of life, of restoration, of resurrection.
He will restore us to health after two days;
on the third day we will rise and live before him