hjalti

Well, you're maybe one of those who think that the author of Matthew made up the story about the guards at the tomb! If so, the same author "can only admire [your] ability to believe such remarkable things"!

vid

I am pretty sure this Zombie passage was explained by Justin Martyr from Christian viewpoint somewhere in his Dialogue with Trypho, but unfortunately it seems I didn't take a note, and can't find it again. Maybe someone knows the passage. The argument went something like that some of those righteous were resurrected on first coming, and the rest (christians) would be on second coming. Might be that Justin also supported this by some OT quote.

Doug Shaver

Hmm. Which of those three is not an option for Christians, I wonder.

Sheshbazzar

The timing of WHEN this mass resurrection of zombie saints allegedly occurred presents a theological problem, being a short time after "about the ninth hour" (Matt 27:46)
Thus according to the passage, 'many' zombie saints "arose.....And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many."
beginning on the same afternoon as the crucifixion, perhaps before he had even been placed in the tomb.

Such an event is at odds with the developed Christian theology of 1 Cor 15:20-23
For more clarity here is the NLT rendering of verse 23
This Matthean 'zombie saints' story is out of order, in having 'many saints' arising from their graves well before Zombie Christ arose from his grave
three days latter, thus making Christ not the 'first' of many.

So if we are to at all to accept these verses as being a valid part of the storyline, one needs to consider the nature of these particular resurrected saints.

Did their reanimation differ from that of Jebus, who being dead, supposedly came back to life?
Did they (already 'saints' for certain) achieve eternal life?
Or were they really -zombie- zombies? that is to say really still -dead- dead, and not really brought back to life at all, but just walking rotting cadavers???

What does Christian theology or mythology posit became of these 'many' amazing resurrected saints?
Did they eat and drink with their friends and families after their resurrection like Jebus allegedly did?
Did they move back in with their families?
Get jobs? Have more kids?
And most importantly, given that "it is appointed for men to die ONCE...." (Heb 9:27) did they die yet again making them twice dead?
Or did these dead zombie zombies for Jebus just shuffle on back to their graves dripping fluids and dropping body parts like a bad B-grade Horror flick?

Or did they once live, die 'once', resurrect, live and die yet again, supposedly to resurrect yet again?

Or are these living dead zombie saints still out shuffling around among us after all these years?

The Easter story smells an awful lot like Halloween.

Zenaphobe

Sheshbazzar seems to have shown including this event in Matthew would have been an embarrassment to those who knew early Christian expectations concerning the order of the resurrection of the dead, therefore it would have a higher historical probability. Correct?

Or am I misunderstanding the application of the COE?

Toto

No, the correct application of the COE is to show that Jesus said some words of wisdom that were unexpected, or some benign event happened. Otherwise, this must be a misuse of that criterion. </sarcasm>

Minimalist

Nah, I'm one of those who thinks that all of this crap was made up.

DCHindley

You made me look closer at the commonly used Criteria of Authenticity. The following are those enumerated by J P Meier:

1 Embarrassment/Contradiction:
* Authenticity in favor of Saying/Event that would have embarrassed, or created difficulty for, the author of the source, or weaken his position in arguments with opponents. This is commonly used in secular history (e.g. Josephus).

2 Discontinuity/Dissimilarity/Originality/Dual Irreducibility:
* Authenticity in favor of Saying/Event does not appear to derive from Judaism or the later early church. Problems: This kind of approach is not commonly used by secular historians. Assumes uniqueness of Jesus' Sayings/Actions and a certain uniformity of cultures or organization that may be hard to support.

3 Multiple Attestation/Cross Section:
* Authenticity in favor of Saying/Event that is attested in more than one independent source (Mark/Q/Paul/John). This is commonly used in secular history. Problem: Assumes accurate knowledge of the preservation history of Christian Tradition about Jesus.
* Authenticity in favor of Saying/Event that is attested in more than one literary form/genre (Parable/Dispute Story/Miracle Story/Prophecy/Aphorism). This is not so commonly used in secular history.

4 Coherence/Consistency/Conformity:
* Authenticity in favor of Sayings/Events tentatively identified by previous three criteria that are similar to others so identified (but reverse is not necessarily true). Problem: Conflicts with #2.

5 Rejection and Execution:
* Authenticity in favor of Saying/Event that can explain why Jesus was rejected by the Jewish Authorities, or executed by the Romans. This is really a subset of #1.

6 Traces of Aramaic:
* Authenticity in favor of Saying/Event that are preserved in Jesus' presumed mother tongue. Problems: Makes assumption that has not been proved. Tells us only the language that may have preserved any particular tradition.

7 Palestinian Environment:
* Authenticity in favor of Saying/Event that preserves elements familiar to Jesus' presumed Palestinian environment. Problems: Makes assumption that has not been proved. Tells us only what context the source placed the Saying/Event.

8 Vividness of Detail/Concreteness of Details:
* Authenticity in favor of Saying/Event that preserved these kind of details. Problems: Presumes eyewitness account, and may contradict criterion #9.

9 Conformity to Tendencies of Synoptic Tradition:
* Authenticity is not in favor of Saying/Event that has characteristics resembling tendencies of lateness as discerned from study of the various solutions to the Synoptic Problem (e.g. Mk/Q => Mt/Lk, or other solution). Problems: No agreement over the tendencies of Synoptic tradition. May conflict with #8.

10 Historic Presumption/Burden of Proof:
* Authenticity in favor of Saying/Event when party attempting to claim authenticity or in-authenticity of a Saying/Event does not bear the burden of proof. Problem: Subjective!

FWIW, in my opinion, the only two of these criteria that are really universally usable are #1 (+#5) & #3.

And yes, it IS a misuse of the criterion of Embarrassment. There is nothing embarrassing about resurrected bodies walking about, except to us who by analogy *know* that dead bodies can't do that. Ancient people believed all sorts of crazy things can magically happen, and thus do not *know* what we know. And besides, if the Greek version of the Jewish scriptures says it at Isaiah 26:19, Daniel 12:2, and Ezekiel 37:12-14, then gosh darn it could very well have happened.

DCH

James Brown

Too wordy; let's tighten that baby up a bit:

Sheshbazzar

I have a different word for it....