The resurrections that no-one talks about

This piece has also been posted on my Substack here.

This is a post about an incident in the Bible which is generally overlooked.

According to the Gospel of St Matthew, after Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday, “many” holy men in Jerusalem rose from their graves and “appeared unto many”.

The story

Here is the relevant passage in Matthew 27.50-53:

Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

The story of the resurrections of “the saints which slept” is not often mentioned by Christians today. It tends not to come up in sermons or in discussions of the passion of Christ. There is a contrast here with the better-known claim that the veil of the temple was torn, which is sometimes talked about (and not necessarily for a good purpose - it tends to be used to support supersessionism, the idea that Judaism is no longer a legitimate religion because it has been replaced by Christianity).

Where does the story come from?

It isn’t clear where Matthew got the story from. It appears in his text from out of nowhere, so to speak. He appears to be using Mark’s Gospel as a source immediately before and after the verses in which the story appears. But the story isn’t in Mark, so it can’t have come from him.

Perhaps Matthew was reporting a popular rumour. Maybe a small earthquake had taken place - this would not be an unusual occurrence in the region - and had left some graves damaged and open. That might have encouraged members of the early Christian community to put two and two together.

When and where did it happen?

Matthew reports the story contemporaneously with Jesus’ death on Good Friday, but he says that the “saints” were not resurrected until after Jesus himself rose from the dead on Easter Sunday.

This seems strange, and there is a good chance that the words “after his resurrection” are a later interpolation made by a scribe who couldn’t believe that the “saints” were resurrected before Christ. Other parts of the New Testament describe Christ as “the first-born from the dead” (Colossians 1.18) and “the first-fruits of them that rise again” (1 Corinthians 15.20).

As to where the resurrections happened, the “holy city” is undoubtedly Jerusalem, and there was a view that the purpose of the event was to persuade the people there to believe in the resurrection of Christ. It has been claimed, with the assistance of archaeology, that the tombs of the resurrected “saints” were located in a specific zone at a distance of 4 or 5 miles from the city. An alternative theory held that the text is referring to the metaphorical Jerusalem of Heaven.

Who was resurrected?

Scholars theorised that some of the great figures of the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) were among those who were resurrected. The following passage is taken from the Catholic Bible scholar Cornelius a Lapide, who was writing in 1637. We can see that he was obstructed by the fact that the Catholic Church claimed to have the relics of some of the resurrected figures:

Probably those, in the first place, who were specially connected with Christ... as Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Melchisedek, David, who wished to be buried in the promised land, and thus be partakers of Christ’s resurrection. Job, also, and Jonah, as types of the resurrection; Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Isaiah, and the other Prophets. Daniel, also, and his three companions (though their bodies are at Rome). Eve, also (some suppose), as well as Adam, though Lorinus considers that the Blessed Virgin was the first woman raised from the grave, as Christ Himself was the first-fruits among men. Those, also, who died but recently; as Zacharias, Simeon, S. John the Baptist (though his head is shown at Rome and Amiens, his finger at Florence).

An apocryphal early Christian text, the Gospel of Nicodemus, claims to contain the account of two of the resurrected “saints”: the sons of the Biblical character Simeon. They tell how Jesus came in triumph to the realm of the dead after his crucifixion. But that is another story.

What actually happened?

Many Christians today would not take the story of the resurrections literally. Even conservative theologians sometimes have doubts about it. It is an extraordinary episode - “many” dead people returning to life and showing themselves in the capital city - and it is not mentioned in any of the other gospels, let alone in secular historians. Even for religious believers, it stretches credulity beyond breaking point.

How the story came into being is not clear. We suggested above that it might have derived from a real-life earthquake. Alternatively, it may simply have been made up.

A possible inspiration for the story may be found in the Old Testament at Ezekiel 37.12-13:

Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves….

In any event, the story can readily be given a symbolic or theological meaning. St Jerome thought that it served as a precursor of the future resurrection of all believers. It has also been interpreted metaphorically to represent the repentance of Christians who abandon their sins like graves.

What happened to the resurrected “saints”?

If the story was literally true, the question would arise of what ultimately happened to the people who were resurrected. Three options have been canvassed here.

The first option is that the “saints” remained alive only for a very limited time. The sons of Simeon referred to above were given only three days on earth. An alternative possibility is that the “saints” ascended to heaven at the same time as Jesus.

The second option is that they continued to live out their earthly lives and died naturally at some point in the first century AD.

The third possibility is that they lived on indefinitely. If this is so, they would join other figures in Christian tradition - like the Beloved Disciple or the Three Nephites from the Book of Mormon - who are believed by some to have survived to this day.