Resurrection

Resurrection means rising from the dead. The word comes from Middle English, Anglo-French, and Latin (from resurrectio “the act of rising from the dead,” from resurgere “to rise from the dead,” from Latin re- “again” + surgere “to rise”). The word resurgence has similar roots. The best-known example of resurrection would be the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is seen by Christians as a model for the resurrection of all dead humans that will take place before the final judgment. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines resurrection as “rising again from the dead, the resumption of life.” This last part makes a distinction between resurrection and reincarnation—which would see the lifeforce or soul move to a new life rather than resuming a previous one.

Egyptian and Zoroastrian Beliefs

Perhaps the first reported resurrection was that of the Egyptian god Assur (later called Osiris by the Greeks). The story is told that Assur was on a trip abroad and left his kingdom in the care of his wife, Isis. As he was returning to the Nile Delta from one of these trips, Assur was murdered by the evil [Page 844]god Set. His body was hacked into pieces and the parts were scattered. Isis found and gathered the body parts of Assur, put them back together, and resurrected Assur from the dead. She then joined with Assur and their union produced a son, Heru. Assur/Osiris became king of the afterlife. Isis became the earth-mother (and the first “Eve”). Heru was the first pharaoh to whom all other pharaohs traced their ancestry and from whom they received their divinity and immortality.

The earliest discussion of general resurrection can be found in the teachings of Zoroaster between the late 7th century and early 6th century B.C.E. Zoroaster taught that each individual would be judged at the end of life, but at the end of the present world order there would be a general resurrection of all dead humans and, at that time, a fire would cover this world and the next and separate the evil and the good. The evil would be consumed by the flames. The good, or righteous, would not be harmed by the fire because they had no evil in them and no need to be purified by the flames. At that time Angra Mainyu and his devils would be driven away forever. The idea of resurrection remained a part of Zoroastrian belief and influenced the followers of other religions, including Judaism.

Resurrection and Jewish Belief

The Sadducees (the clan that provided the priests for the Jews) sought to purify Judaism and rejected beliefs they felt were counter to the teachings of the Torah, and the five books of Moses in particular. One of these rejected ideas was the belief in the resurrection of the body to “full consciousness” in the afterlife. For the Sadducees to want to reject it, the belief in resurrection must have been present in Jewish thought of the time. Even today, among the 13 cardinal principles of the Jewish faith is the final one, which says that a Jew reciting the cardinal principles believes with perfect faith that there will be a resurrection of the dead. In the Orthodox Union translation, Principle 13 says, “I believe with perfect faith that the dead will be brought back to life when G-d wills it to happen.” This statement seems consistent with the beliefs concerning resurrection in Zoroastrianism. When Reform Judaism was growing in the mid-19th century, references to belief in the Messiah and the resurrection of the dead were dropped from their Sabbath service, leaving belief in resurrection as an Orthodox tenet.

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