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Resurrection or anastasis is the concept of coming back to life after death. Reincarnation is a similar process hypothesized by other religions involving the same person or deity returning to another body. The disappearance of a body is another similar but distinct belief in some religions.
With the advent of written records, the earliest known recurrent theme of resurrection was in Egyptian and Canaanite religions, which had cults of dying-and-rising gods such as Osiris and Baal. Ancient Greek religion generally emphasised immortality, but in the mythos, a number of individuals were made physically immortal as they were resurrected from the dead.
The universal resurrection of the dead at the end of the world is a standard Eschatology belief in the Abrahamic religions. As a religious concept, resurrection is used in two distinct respects:
The death and resurrection of Jesus are a central focus of Christianity. While most Christians believe Jesus's resurrection from the dead and ascension to Heaven was in a material body, some think it was only spiritual. The Watchtower Society claims that Jesus was not raised in his actual physical, human body, but instead was raised as an invisible spirit being—who he was before: the archangel Michael. They believe that Jesus's appearances post-resurrection were on-the-spot manifestations and materializations of flesh and bones with different forms that the Apostles did not immediately recognize. Their explanation for the statement "a spirit hath not flesh and bones" is that Jesus was saying that he was not a ghostly apparition but an actual materialization in the flesh, to be seen and touched, as proof that he was actually raised. But that, in fact, the risen Jesus was, in actuality, a divine spirit being who made himself visible and invisible at will. The Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses believes that Christ's perfect manhood was forever sacrificed at Calvary and that it was not actually taken back. They state: "...in his resurrection he 'became a life-giving spirit.' That was why for most of the time he was invisible to his faithful apostles... He needs no human body any longer... The human body of flesh, which Jesus Christ laid down forever as a ransom sacrifice, was disposed of by God's power."—Things in Which it is Impossible for God to Lie, pp. 332, 354.
Like some forms of the Abrahamic religions, the Dharmic religions also include belief in resurrection and/or reincarnation. There are stories in Buddhism wherein the power of resurrection was allegedly demonstrated in the Chan Buddhism or Zen Buddhism tradition. In Hinduism, the core belief in resurrection and/or reincarnation is known as saṃsāra.
Aside from religious belief, cryonics and other speculative resurrection technologies are practiced, but the resurrection of long-dead bodies is not considered possible at the current level of scientific knowledge.
Many other figures, like a great part of those who fought in the Trojan War and Theban War, Menelaus, and the historical prizefighter Cleomedes of Astupalaea, were also believed to have been made physically immortal, but without having died in the first place. Indeed, in Greek religion, immortality originally always included an eternal union of body and soul.Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs, 21–45, 64–72. Alcestis undergoes something akin to a resurrection in her escape from the underworld,
but without achieving immortality.
Writing his Lives of Illustrious Men (Parallel Lives) in the first century, the Middle Platonism philosopher Plutarch in his chapter on Romulus gave an account of the king's mysterious disappearance and subsequent deification, comparing it to Greek tales such as the physical immortalization of Alcmene and Aristeas the Proconnesian, "for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's work-shop, and his friends coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton". Plutarch openly scorned such beliefs held in ancient Greek religion, writing, "many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal." Parallel Lives, Life of Romulus 28:4–6 Likewise, he writes that while something within humans comes from the gods and returns to them after death, this happens "only when it is most completely separated and set free from the body, and becomes altogether pure, fleshless, and undefiled."Collins, Adela Yarbro (2009), "Ancient Notions of Transferal and Apotheosis", pp 46,51
The parallel between these traditional beliefs and the later belief in the resurrection of Jesus was not lost on the early Christians, as Justin Martyr argued: "When we say ... Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus." ( 1 Apol. 21).
The other is the passing of Chinese Chan master Puhua (Japanese: Jinshu Fuke), recounted in the Record of Linji Yixuan (Japanese: Rinzai Gigen). Puhua was known for his unusual behavior and teaching style. Hence, it is no wonder that he is associated with an event that breaks the usual prohibition on displaying such powers. Here is the account from Irmgard Schloegl's "The Zen Teaching of Rinzai."
During the Ministry of Jesus on earth, before his death, Jesus commissioned his Twelve Apostles to, among other things, raise the dead.Not in the Great Commission of the resurrected Jesus, but only in the so-called Lesser Commission of Matthew, specifically .
Similar resurrections are credited to the twelve apostles and Catholic saints. In the Acts of the Apostles, Saint Peter raised a woman named Dorcas (also called Tabitha), and Paul the Apostle revived a man named Eutychus who had fallen asleep and fell from a window to his death. According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus's resurrection, many of those previously dead came out of their tombs and entered Jerusalem, where they appeared to many. Following the Apostolic Age, many saints were said to resurrect the dead, as recorded in Orthodox Christian hagiographies. Columba supposedly raised a boy from the dead in the land of PictsAdomnan of Iona. Life of St Columba. Penguin books, 1995 and Saint Nicholas is said to have resurrected pickled children from a brine barrel during a famine by making the sign of the cross.
Belief in the resurrection of the dead, and Jesus's role as judge, is codified in the Apostles' Creed, the fundamental creed of Christian baptismal faith. The Book of Revelation also makes many references about the Judgment Day, when the dead will be raised.
According to Nasir Khusraw (d. after 1070), an Ismaili thinker of the Fatimid era, the Resurrection ( Qiyāma) will be ushered by the Lord of the Resurrection ( Qāʾim al-Qiyāma), an individual symbolizing the purpose and pinnacle of creation from among the progeny of Muhammad and his Imams. Through this individual, the world will come out of darkness and ignorance and "into the light of her Lord" (Quran 39:69). His era, unlike that of the enunciators of the divine revelation ( nāṭiqs) before him, is not one where God prescribes the people to work but instead one where God rewards them. Preceding the Lord of the Resurrection ( Qāʾim) is his proof ( ḥujjat). The Qur'anic verse stating that "the night of power ( laylat al-qadr) is better than a thousand months" (Quran 97:3) is said to refer to this proof, whose knowledge is superior to that of a thousand Imams, though their rank, collectively, is one. Hakim Nasir also recognizes the successors of the Lord of the Resurrection to be his deputies ( khulafāʾ).
Description of the occurrence of the incidence of the day of Judgement appeared at many places in the holy Quran and believing in the occurrence and coming of that Day is among the Six Pillars of Faith. Allah SWT made a wise and prudent question on those who doubt the resurrection of the dead in Suratul Qiyamah; verse 3-4 by saying "Does the human thinks that We shall not gather his bones (and bring him back to life) - Nay, (We) are capable of regenerating his fingertip".
According to Herbert C. Brichto, writing in Reform Judaism's Hebrew Union College Annual, the family tomb is the central concept in understanding biblical views of the afterlife. Brichto states that it is "not mere sentimental respect for the physical remains that is...the motivation for the practice, but rather an assumed connection between proper sepulture and the condition of happiness of the deceased in the afterlife".Raphael Jewish Views of the Afterlife, 45.
According to Brichto, the early Israelites apparently believed that the graves of family, or tribe, united into one, and that this unified collectivity is to what the Biblical Hebrew term Sheol refers, the common grave of humans. Although not well defined in the Tanakh, Sheol in this view was a subterranean underworld where the souls of the dead went after the body died. The Babylonians had a similar underworld called Aralu, and the ancient Greeks had one known as Greek underworld. According to Brichto, other biblical names for Sheol were Abaddon "ruin", found in Psalm 88:11, Job 28:22 and Proverbs 15:11; Bor "pit", found in Isaiah 14:15, 24:22, Ezekiel 26:20; and Shakhat "corruption", found in Isaiah 38:17, Ezekiel 28:8.Herbert Chanon Brichto "Kin, Cult, Land and Afterlife – A Biblical Complex", Hebrew Union College Annual 44, p. 8 (1973)
During the Second Temple period, there developed a diversity of beliefs concerning the resurrection.Cf. Elledge Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism, 19–65; Finney Resurrection, Hell and the Afterlife, 49–77; Lehtipuu Debates over the Resurrection, 31–40. The concept of resurrection of the physical body is found in 2 Maccabees, according to which it will happen through re-creation of the flesh.2 Maccabees 7.11, 7.28. Resurrection of the dead also appears in detail in the extra-canonical Book of Enoch,1 Enoch 61.5, 61.2. 2 Baruch,2 Baruch 50.2, 51.5 and 2 Esdras. According to the British scholar in ancient Judaism Philip R. Davies, there is "little or no clear reference ... either to immortality or to resurrection from the dead" in the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls.Philip R. Davies. "Death, Resurrection and Life After Death in the Qumran Scrolls" in Avery-Peck & Neusner (eds.) Judaism in Late Antiquity, 209; cf. Nickelsburg Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life, 179. C.D. Elledge, however, argues that some form of resurrection may be referred to in the Dead Sea texts 4Q521, Pseudo-Ezekiel, and 4QInstruction.Elledge Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism, 160–172. Too, there is the Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones in the Book of Ezekiel, and the Book of Daniel, which mentions resurrection. As Professor Devorah Dimant notes on TheTorah.com, "Originally an allegorical vision about the future return of Judeans to their land, Ezekiel's vision (ch. 37) becomes one of the cornerstones for the Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead. ... The only biblical passage that unambiguously refers to resurrection is found in the final chapter of the book of Daniel."
Both Josephus and the New Testament record that the Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife,Josephus Antiquities 18.16; Matthew 22.23; Mark 12.18; Luke 20.27; Acta 23.8. but the sources vary on the beliefs of the Pharisees. The New Testament claims that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection, but does not specify whether this included the flesh or not.Acta 23.8. According to Josephus, who himself was a Pharisee, the Pharisees held that only the soul was immortal and the souls of good people will "pass into other bodies," while "the souls of the wicked will suffer eternal punishment."Josephus Jewish War 2.8.14; cf. Antiquities 8.14–15. Paul the Apostle, who also was a Pharisee,Acts 23.6, 26.5. said that at the resurrection what is "sown as a natural body is raised a spiritual body."1 Corinthians 15.35–53 The Book of Jubilees seems to refer to the resurrection of the soul only, or to a more general idea of an immortal soul.Jubilees 23.31
John Hick argues that the "replica theory" makes the religious doctrine of bodily resurrection somewhat plausible. For example, if a man disappears or dies in London and an exact "replica" suddenly re-appears in New York, both entities should be regarded as the same, especially if they share physical and psychological characteristics. Hick extends this theory to parallel universes, which occupy a different space to our own. He also distinguishes the theory from reincarnation, where a person lives in several successive bodies.
Other scholars reivse the replica theory with the "counterpart theory", where it is believed that God creates a resurrection counterpart to one's current body, which is new and improved. Although it is defined by one's soul and history, it is not identical to the current body, which Eternal oblivion. A useful analogy is to imagine a soul as a programme, a body as a computer and the "series of states" that a soul undergoes as a person's biography. They believe the theory has precedent in scriptures like the New Testament. In addition, it incentivizes people to care about their future.
Ray Kurzweil, American inventor and futurist, believes that when his concept of singularity comes to pass, it will be possible to resurrect the dead by digital recreation. Such is one approach in the concept of digital immortality, which could be described as resurrecting deceased as "digital " or "digital avatars". In the context of knowledge management, "virtual persona" could "aid in knowledge capture, retention, distribution, access and use" and continue to learn. Issues include post-mortem privacy, and potential use of personalised digital twins and associated systems by big data firms and advertisers.
Related alternative approaches of digital immortality include gradually "replacing" neurons in the brain with advanced medical technology (such as nanobiotechnology) as a form of mind uploading (see also: wetware computer).
Most advanced versions of such capabilities may include a method/system under development reported in 2019, 'BrainEx', that could partially revive (pig) brains hours after death (to the degree of brain circulation and cellular functions). It showed that "the process of cell death is a gradual, stepwise process and that some of those processes can be either postponed, preserved or even reversed". A similar organ perfusion system under development, 'OrganEx', can restore – i.e. on the cellular level – multiple vital (pig) organs one hour after death (during which the body had prolonged warm ischaemia). It could be used to preserve but may also be developed to be useful for revival in medical emergencies by buying "more time for doctors to treat people whose bodies were starved of oxygen, such as those who died from drowning or heart attacks".
There is research into what happens during and after death as well as how and to what extent patients could be revived by the use of science and technology. For example, one study showed that in the hours after humans die, "certain cells in the human brain are still active". However, it is thought that at least without any life-support-like systems, death is permanent and irreversible after several hours – not days – even in cases when revival was still possible shortly after death.
A 2010 study notes that physicians are determining death "test only for the permanent cessation of circulation and respiration because they know that irreversible cessation follows rapidly and inevitably once circulation no longer will restore itself spontaneously and will not be restored medically". Development of advanced live support measures "including cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and positive pressure ventilation (PPV)" brought the interdependence of cessation of brain function and loss of respiration and circulation and "the traditional definition of death into question" and further developments upend more "definitions of mortality".
In his 1994 book The Physics of Immortality, American physicist Frank J. Tipler, an expert on the general theory of relativity, presented his Omega Point Theory which outlines how a resurrection of the dead could take place at the end of the cosmos. He posits that humans will evolve into robots which will turn the entire cosmos into a supercomputer which will, shortly before the Big Crunch, perform the resurrection within its cyberspace, reconstructing formerly dead humans (from information captured by the supercomputer from the past light cone of the cosmos) as avatars within its metaverse.Tipler The Physics of Immortality. 56-page excerpt available here.
David Deutsch, British physicist and pioneer in the field of quantum computing, formerly agreed with Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the idea of resurrecting deceased people with the help of quantum computersDavid Deutsch (1997). "The Ends of the Universe". The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes – and Its Implications. London: Penguin Press. . but he is critical of Tipler's theological views.
Italian physicist and computer scientist Giulio Prisco presented the idea of "quantum archaeology", "reconstructing the life, thoughts, memories, and feelings of any person in the past, up to any desired level of detail, and thus resurrecting the original person via 'copying to the future'".
In their science fiction novel The Light of Other Days, Sir Arthur Clarke and Stephen Baxter imagine a future civilization resurrecting the dead of past ages by reaching into the past, through micro wormholes and with Nanorobotics, to download full snapshots of brain states and memories.Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible, Millennium i.e., Edition, Victor Gollancz – An imprint of Orion Books Ltd., 1999, p. 118: "the novel that Stephen Baxter has now written from my synopsis — The Light of Other Days."
In the Buddhist Epic of King Gesar, also spelled as Geser or Kesar, at the end, chants on a mountain top and his clothes fall empty to the ground.Alexandra David-Neel, and Lama Yongden, The Superhuman Life of Gesar of Ling, Rider, 1933, While still in oral tradition, it is recorded for the first time by an early European traveler. The body of the first Guru of the , Guru Nanak Dev, is said to have disappeared and flowers left in place of his dead body.Shukla, A. (2019). The Politics of Kartarpur Corridor and India–Pakistan Relations. Indian Council of World Affairs, 10, 1–8.
Lord Raglan's Hero Pattern lists many religious figures whose bodies disappear, or have more than one sepulchre.Otto Rank, Lord Raglan, and Alan Dundes, In Quest of the Hero, Princeton University Press, 1990 B. Traven, author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, wrote that the Inca Virococha arrived at Cusco (in modern-day Peru) and the Pacific seacoast where he walked across the water and vanished.B. Traven, The Creation of the Sun and Moon, Lawerence Hill Books, 1977 It has been thought that teachings regarding the purity and incorruptibility of the hero's human body are linked to this phenomenon. Perhaps, this is also to deter the practice of disturbing and collecting the hero's remains. They are safely protected if they have disappeared.See: Michael Paterniti, Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain, The Dial Press, 2000
The first such case mentioned in the Bible is that of Enoch (son of Jared, great-grandfather of Noah, and father of Methuselah). Enoch is said to have lived a life where he "walked with God", after which "he was not, for God took him" (Genesis 5:1–18). In Deuteronomy (34:6) Moses is secretly buried. Elijah vanishes in a whirlwind 2 Kings (2:11). In the Synoptic Gospels, after hundreds of years these two earlier Biblical heroes suddenly reappear, and are reportedly seen walking with Jesus, then again vanish.Mark (9:2–8), Matthew (17:1–8) and Luke (9:28–33) In the Gospel of Luke, the last time Jesus is seen (24:51) he leaves his disciples by ascending into the sky. This ascension of Jesus was a "disappearance" of sorts as recorded by Luke but was after the physical resurrection occurring several days before.
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