Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

resurrection of the dead. But even he admits that
     the vast majority of the resurrection traditions found in Judaism are not about individual
     exaltation but about national restoration. In other words, this is about a metaphorical
     resurrection of the Jewish people as a whole, not the literal resurrection of mortals
     who had died and come back again as flesh and blood. Indeed, Charlesworth notes that
     if by “resurrection” we mean “the concept of God’s raising the body and soul after
     death (meant literally) to a new and eternal life (not a return to mortal existence),”
     then there is only one passage in the entire Hebrew Bible that fits such a criterion—Daniel
     12:2–3: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting
     life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” The many other passages that have
     been interpreted as referencing the resurrection of the dead simply do not pass scrutiny.
     For instance, Ezekiel 37—“Thus said the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath
     to enter you and you shall live again …”—explicitly refers to these bones as “the
     House of Israel.” Psalm 30, in which David writes, “I cried out to you and you healed
     me. O Lord, you brought me up from Sheol, preserved me from going down into the pit”
     (30:2–4), is very obviously about healing from illness, not literally being raised
     from death. The same holds true for the story of Elijah resurrecting the dead (1 Kings
     17:17–24), or, for that matter, Jesus raising Lazarus (John 11:1–46), both of which
     fall into the category of healing stories, not resurrection stories, as the person
     “resurrected” will presumably die again. Charlesworth, however, does find evidence
     of belief in the resurrection of the dead into immortality in the Dead Sea Scrolls,
     especially in a scroll called
On Resurrection
(4Q521), which claims that God, through the messiah, will bring the dead to life.
     Interestingly, this seems to fit with Paul’s belief that believers in the risen Christ
     will also be resurrected: “and the dead in Christ shall rise” (1Thessalonians 4:15–17).
     See James H. Charlesworth et al.,
Resurrection: The Origin and Future of a Biblical Doctrine
(London: T&T Clark, 2006). Those scrolls that seem to implythat the Righteous Teacher of Qumran will rise from the dead are speaking not about
     a literal resurrection of the body but about a metaphorical rising from disenfranchisement
     for a people who had been divorced from the Temple. There is something like a resurrection
     idea in the
pseudepigrapha
—for instance, in 1 Enoch 22–27, or in 2 Maccabees 14, in which Razis tears out his
     entrails and God puts them back again. Also,
The Testament of Judah
implies that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will rise to live again (25:1). With regard
     to ideas of the resurrection in the Mishnah, Charlesworth correctly notes that such
     passages are too late (post–second century C.E.) to be quoted as examples of Jewish beliefs prior to 70 C.E. , though he admits it is conceivable that “the tradition in Mishnah Sanhedrin defined
     the beliefs of some pre-70 Pharisees.”
    Rudolf Bultmann finds evidence for the concept of the dying and rising son-deity in
     the so-called mystery religions of Rome. He states that “gnosticism above all is aware
     of the notion of the Son of God become man—and the heavenly redeemer man.” See
Essays: Philosophical and Theological
(New York: Macmillan, 1995), 279. But I think Martin Hengel is right to note that
     the great wave of interest in “mystery religions” that arose in the Roman Empire,
     and the synthesis with Judaism and proto-Christianity that resulted, did not take
     place until the second century. In other words, it may have been Christianity that
     influenced the dying and rising deity concept in gnosticism and the mystery religions,
     not the other way around. See Martin Hengel,
The Son of God
(Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 1976), 25–41.
    Other important texts for the historical and cultural study of resurrection in the
     ancient world include Geza Vermes,
The Resurrection: History and Myth
(New York: Doubleday, 2008) and N. T. Wright,
The Resurrection of the Son of God
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).
    There can be no question whatsoever that Psalm 16 is self-referential, as the first
     person singular form is used from the beginning: “Preserve me, O God, for in thee
     I take refuge.”