1. I would like to thank Byron Wheaton for his willingness to read this paper and his helpful criticisms.
It is axiomatic in mainstream Old Testament scholarship that the concept of resurrection from death is largely absent from the Hebrew Scriptures.[2] Typical statements from Old Testament theologians suggest that it is a “foreign body” within the Old Testament itself.[3] Some scholars hardly discuss it in their works because it “simply is not a component among the theology of the books of the Old Testament.”[4] Others simply omit any mention of such a belief.[5] At the most it is relegated to the very end of the Old Testament period, consigned to very late apocalyptic works like Daniel 12:2 and Isaiah 26:19.
2. Exceptions to this view can be found in Byron Wheaton, “As It Is Written: Old Testament Foundations For Jesus’ Expectation Of Resurrection,” Westminster Theological Journal 70 (2008): 245-53. The recent comprehensive work by Mitchell Chase is another strong exception: Mitchell L. Chase, Waking from the Dust: Daniel 12:2 and Resurrection Hope in Biblical Theology (Bellingham: Lexham Academic, 2026).
3. Robert Martin-Achard, “Resurrection: Old Testament,” ed. David Noel Freedman, trans. Terrence Prendergast, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 5: 684.
4. John L. McKenzie, A Theology of the Old Testament (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2009), 321.
5. Erhard Gerstenberger, Theologies in the Old Testament (Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 2002).
Yet we know that by the time of the New Testament period there was a strong belief in a doctrine of resurrection in which both the righteous and wicked would be resurrected for a final judgment. The Sadducees, a small but politically powerful group within Judaism, argued that there was no such doctrine, and they conveniently proved this by stressing only the authority of the Torah—the first five books of the Bible, as their canon of Scripture. The Pharisees, a much more popular sect in Judaism, disagreed, perhaps because their canon was larger and included “outlier” texts that many modern scholars consider very late and marginal to the Scriptures (such as the two texts mentioned above).
Jesus and Paul aligned themselves with the Pharisees on this issue, and on one occasion, Jesus used logic and exegesis to argue against the Sadducean position from within the Torah itself. In Matthew 22:23–32, the Sadducees presented Jesus with what they believed was foolproof evidence for the absurdity of the concept of resurrection. Using Deuteronomy 25 and the law of levirate marriage found there (which stated that the brother of a married man, who had died without leaving an heir, was obligated to marry his widow and raise up a child for his deceased brother), the Sadducees gave the hypothetical case of a childless widow whose husband had died. She then is married by a succession of his six brothers, who each die in turn without producing a child. Then the Sadducees pressed their clinching question: “In the resurrection, to whom will she be married?” Jesus replied that their question revealed a fundamental failure to understand both the Scriptures and the power of God. He used a familiar text from the Torah to prove his point, the story of God appearing to Moses in the burning bush, and calling Himself, “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Exod. 3:6). Jesus’s logic is clear. God is obviously alive, and he identifies himself as the God of these patriarchs long after they have died, perhaps even after half a millennium! Then Jesus states, that since God is the God of the living and not the dead, the assumption is that these dead patriarchs will rise up to life someday, and cannot remain dead. It cannot be otherwise. Indeed as Christopher Ash rightly observes:
This is what the Sadducees failed to understand in Matthew 22. When they read words like, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (Exod. 3:6) they ought to have deduced that there must be a resurrection. No doubt they looked back with puzzled faces and scratched their heads. We do the same. But we too ought to have been able to deduce this for the logic is quite simple. If I am bound by covenant to the living God, then that tie cannot be broken. He lives and therefore I must live. And therefore I cannot die and stay dead. [6]
6. Christopher Ash, Bible Delight: Heartbeat of the Word of God (Ross-Shire: Christian Focus Publications, 2021), 179
The Old Testament Evidence
Resurrection in Genesis and Exodus
Now while it is undoubtedly true that there are not many actual examples of resurrection in the Old Testament, it seems that the concept is inherent in the entire storyline of the biblical narrative. The prominence of life and death is at the forefront of the primal narrative in Genesis 2–3. When the first couple sin, the penalty is death (Gen 2:17). When they do not die immediately in a physical sense, that process has certainly started as they are barred from the Garden, the source of Life, and they cannot access the tree of Life, the guarantor of immortality; moreover, they have certainly died in a spiritual sense. Their eyes are opened to a new reality they had never known before, which leads to shame and alienation. Death is more than a static, biological category. The first couple are still breathing but in biblical terms they are hardly alive. Their subsequent history outside the Garden is one of fratricide and violence—a form of dynamic death. The repetition of physical death, which functions like a drumbeat in the pre-flood genealogy of Seth, despite the lengthy ages of the descendants, is a forceful reminder of the penalty of death (Gen. 5:5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 27, 31.). Death becomes one of the fundamental facts of life. Indeed, it can be later called “the way of all the earth” (Josh. 23:14, 1 Kgs. 2:2).
Yet even in the early passages of Genesis there is the hope that death will give way to life someday because of Yahweh. Fellowship with Yahweh leads to Enoch escaping the Grim Reaper (Gen. 5:24). That same fellowship results in Noah saving a violent world from final judgment of the Flood, and leading to a divine covenant with all creation, preserving life (Gen. 6:18, 9:8–17.).The call of Abram and Sarai is a call to bring life-giving blessing to the entire world (Gen. 12:3). Even their trust in God’s promise shows the power of that life as it results in a birth to a ninety-year-old “dead” womb (Gen. 21:1–7). Is this not a form of resurrection? As B.F. Westcott observed, when commenting on the fact of Abraham’s willingness to obey God in later sacrificing Isaac, the old man believed that God could resurrect his son from death “because the very birth of Isaac some years before had been a ‘resurrection’ since the body of Abraham and the womb of Sarah were considered to be ‘dead.’”[7] The name of that impossible child, Isaac, meant that God was bringing laughter again into a world of crying and suffering, alluding to the fact that someday he will wipe away so many tears from so many faces.
7. Cited in Edwin Wood, “Isaac Typology in the New Testament,” New Testament Studies 14 (1968): 588. The relevant reference is Hebrews 11:17–19.
The later salvation of Israel from the oppression of Egypt could be described as a form of resurrection. Faced between the pursuing armies racing behind them and the formidable sea in front of them—sure death either way—the Israelites cross through the waters on dry land being saved from both the marauding hordes to their rear and the threatening waves walled up on each side (Exodus 14–15). When they reach the shore safe and sound on the other side of the sea, their song of triumph, “I will sing to Yahweh,” sounds the notes of rescue likened to a resurrection: “Yahweh is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation!” Indeed, later rabbinical tradition viewed the Exodus as a type of resurrection. Jon Levenson, citing Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, mentions how the latter viewed the exodus from Egypt not only as a redemption from Egypt but as “a prototype of an ultimate redemption.” To which Levenson aptly comments, “Beneath this last transformation lies a conviction that so long as human beings are subject to death, they are not altogether free: resurrection is the ultimate and final liberation.”[8]
8. Jon Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) 27–28.
Resurrection in the Ministries of Elijah and Elisha
In later Israelite history in the early prophets there is the recording of three literal resurrections in the ministry of Elijah and Elisha. The first juxtaposes a miracle from near-death-by-starvation beside a resurrection, which suggests that both are virtually equivalent. Elijah is saved from hunger by asking a poor widow in Phoenicia to give him some of the last food she is preparing for her and her son before they die of starvation in a severe famine (1 Kgs. 17:7–24). She willingly sacrifices her food and then discovers the prophet’s miracle of provision for the duration of the famine. So, she and her son experience a type of resurrection. Almost immediately, the next episode shifts to the death of her son sometime later, and the prophet resurrects her son with an earnest prayer to Yahweh. Here are two miracles -deliverance from starvation and resurrection—which suggest that both are virtually “cut from the same cloth.”
In the second example of resurrection there is the juxtaposition of the barrenness of the womb with the revivification of a corpse (2 Kgs. 4:8–36). Elijah’s disciple, Elisha, wants to reward a hospitable female host who has provided him with a room, a desk, a lamp and a bed at her estate, and asks his servant what she really needs. He mentions that she has never had a child, and Elisha rectifies this with a promise that in the next year this lack will be addressed with the birth of a child. She protests this impossibility; nonetheless the prophet assures her of its certainty. The next year the “impossible” happens—the child is born. The very next paragraph switches to a scene probably several years later when the child is in the field helping his father harvest crops. He experiences an illness akin to heat stroke, and his father takes him to his wife, where he dies. She knows exactly what to do. The person who gave him life in the first place is the only one who can give him life again. She takes him up to the prophet’s room and lays him on his bed, and she then makes a beeline to where the prophet is located. Elisha returns with her and resurrects her son from death. The point is that there is a seamless connection with birth and resurrection in this case. Both miracles are “cut from the same cloth.”
The final example of resurrection occurs at Elisha’s deathbed and the text literally explodes with the incredible power of the prophetic word (2 Kgs. 13:14–21). Joash, the Israelite king, describes the dying prophet as the true power of Israel, using the same words as Elisha used when his Master, Elijah, departed: “My father, My father, the chariots of Israel and its cavalry” (2 Kgs. 13:14; cf. 2 Kgs. 2:12). The real military power of Israel was in truth the prophetic word. The prophet emphasizes this point exactly when he orders Joash to strike an arrow into the ground to symbolize the defeat of his enemies. He strikes the ground three times, and the prophet scolds him by telling him that he would only defeat his enemies three times instead of completely defeating them. After the prophet dies, the true power of the prophetic word is shown. An episode follows in which two men are carrying a corpse to bury it. A band of marauders come into the picture. The two men hurriedly dump the body down a burial pit where it hits the bones of Elisha, and comes to life. The dead prophet’s bones resurrect the corpse! And then as if to stress the life-giving nature of the prophetic word in the realm of politics and warfare, the text laconically states that Israel defeated its enemy three times (2 Kgs. 13:24–25)! The prediction of the prophet lives on after death!
Now there are many who would argue that these stories are not realistic, and they should not be used as evidence for the presence of the concept of resurrection. They argue that these stories should be relegated to the realm of myth and legend and not historical reality; they are more in line with tales about floating axe-heads and flying chariots. Regardless of this perspective, there was clearly a belief among the circles of prophets in the supernatural world, and this belief is even held by Israel’s enemies. It is a world governed by a different set of assumptions and possibilities, and it testifies to resurrection—in a similar way as the early stories of Israel’s beginnings. But the point is that these resurrections should not be seen as differences in kind from all the other miracles of these prophets –and there were many—but rather differences in degree. There is a life-giving power at work in all the miracles: whether relief from drought, a supply of oil and flour in a famine, purification of water and food, a supply of bread for a great number of people, the curing of disease, birth to a barren womb, or victory in war.[9] As Nachman Levine rightly describes the situation, the miracles of these two prophets stress the keys of the kingdom of God, and those are “the keys of the womb, the grave and the rains—to cure the barren, make the dead live and bring rain (life, death and the sustaining of life).”[10]
9. For the many miracles in the Elijah and Elisha stories see Leila Leah Bronner, The Stories of Elijah and Elisha as Polemics against Baal Worship (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968).
10. Nachman Levine, “Twice as Much of Your Spirit: Pattern, Parallel and Paronomasia in the Miracles of Elijah and Elisha,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 85 (1999): 25.
Resurrection in the Later Prophetic Writings
In the later writing prophets there are several examples of literal resurrections. In the little apocalypse in Isaiah (chapters 24–27), at the end of history, the great shroud of death which hangs over the nations will be removed, and all the nations will migrate to Jerusalem where they will experience a great festive meal, with the best wine and a gourmet dinner. But what makes it so joyous is that Yahweh will eat a very different meal, a deadly meal—death itself, and he will take death into himself to be destroyed forever by omnipotent Life (Isa. 25:1–8). Consequently, tears will wiped away from every face, as death will die. A chapter later, there is a stunning description of the judgment of God, but afterwards, there is a description of Israel as a pregnant woman about to give birth, which is juxtaposed to resurrection:
17 Like a pregnant woman
who writhes and cries out in her pangs
when she is near to giving birth…
18 Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
19 For your dew is a dew of light,
and the earth will give birth to the dead. (Isa. 26:17–19)
In Ezekiel, Israel’s return from the exile is viewed as a resurrection of dismembered skeletons. When all the bones are assembled and then covered with ligaments and muscles, there is still remaining a large body of corpses. Then the wind of God descends and breathes into the dead exiles resurrection life and they begin to march. Thus, the transcendent word of God interprets the vision to the astounded prophet,
12 I will open your graves and raise you from your graves…and bring you into the land of Israel. 13 And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people. 14 And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. (Ezek. 37:12–14)
While this is clearly a metaphorical resurrection, it shows that the idea of resurrection from death is not out of the realm of possibility as is shown next in the book of Daniel in no uncertain terms. In Daniel 12 there is clearly an assumed doctrine of resurrection, which will take place after a time of great tribulation at the end of history:
2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; 4 and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. (Dan. 12:2–3)
The question that needs to be asked, are these ideas part of the warp and woof of biblical faith? They may be rare but they are natural concomitants of the biblical worldview. If death is not just a static state of “flat-lining” but a dynamic condition, then resurrection must be viewed in the same way: Thus, birth after long periods of barrenness, healing from a disease, deliverance from guilt, rescue from a crisis, and forgiveness of sins are all forms of “resurrection.” Thus consider Psalm 103’s list of Yahweh’s actions for his people:
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
3 who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
5 who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. (Ps. 103:2–5)
At the beginning of the biblical story, then, death reigns as a result of the Fall, but the future of the world portends a different reality as shown in some of these texts—the end of the story points to the abolition of death and the triumph of life.[11]
11. There are a number of other texts which suggest resurrection, e.g. Psalms 16, 49 and 73.
The New Testament and the Significance of Jesus’s Resurrection
Jesus Brings the New Age
If anything is clear by the time of Jesus’s arrival on the scene, the end of the story is fast approaching. The kingdom of God—of life—is not far off in the distant future, it has arrived and drawn near in the presence of Jesus of Nazareth (Matt. 4:12–17). This is no time for dilly-dallying or fooling around, or even being concerned about legitimate claims. There is a sense of urgency, immediacy. Something radical is happening. It cannot be business as usual (Matt. 8:18–22; 16:24–27; Luke 14:25–34). Nothing less than a new world is dawning. One has to prepare for the coming of the King to his old world, which he will make new.
So, people start getting cleansed from their sins in baptism and making amends to those they have oppressed (Matt. 3:1–12). When Jesus, as the new king, begins working miracles, they are not just arbitrary acts of power. They are signs of the new age, which God’s anointed king will demonstrate in powerful fashion. When even a close follower has begun to doubt Jesus’ identity, Jesus simply quotes the Old Testament and tells him: “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them” (Matt. 11:4–6, cf. Isa 35:5–7, 61:1–2). By adding the “dead are being raised” Jesus is pointing to the ultimate significance of all these miracles.
Jesus’s mission can be likened to the sending out of an invitation to a wedding banquet to which all are invited—the good and the bad (Matt. 22:1–14). The meal will be a delicious gourmet dinner with forgiveness and reconciliation on the menu, and the dessert will be the abolition of death (Cf. Isa. 25:1–8). The allusion to Isaiah’s great banquet is hard to miss.
Resurrection on the Third Day “in accordance with the Scriptures”
And what is the great sign of this new age? It is not as if it has been kept in the dark. Jesus has been predicting it all through his ministry. He states not only that he will die but that his body will be resurrected on the third day.[12] A number of times he states it, and it is clear that there is a belief that it has been foretold in the Old Testament as Paul presents a summary of the early Christian beliefs: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures . . .” (1 Cor. 15:3–4).
12. It occurs eighteen times in the New Testament: e.g. Mark 8:31, 9:31, Luke 9:22, 24:7, 46. See further Gustav Stählin, “‘On the Third Day’: The Easter Traditions of the Primitive Church,” Interpretation 10 [1956]: 292–93.
The Scriptures here are clearly the Old Testament. But it seems that nowhere does it ever say that the Messiah will be raised on the third day. In a sense, nowhere, but in another sense, everywhere. Like Edgar Allan Poe’s purloined letter, it is hidden in plain sight. Of course there is a reference to a repentant Israel being raised on the third day after being killed by Yahweh for sin in Hosea 6:2, but as Douglas Hill trenchantly observes, this is a “slight peg” to hang the future resurrection of Jesus.[13] But if the entire history of Israel is considered, and the Messiah can be viewed as a representative of Israel, this slight peg is not so much an outlier as a revealer of a pervasive motif running through the entire Old Testament. Thus it is on the third day, that Isaac experiences “resurrection” from the grave in a great test of his father’s faith (Gen. 22:4); in another testing period, Joseph’s interpretation of dreams vindicates his accuracy three days later, which will eventually lead to his rise to power to save “Israel” (Gen. 40:20); the nation of Israel appears before Sinai trembling to face a holy Yahweh on the third day (Exod. 19:16); it is on the third day that Israelite spies are saved from capture at Jericho and the Israelites get set to move into the promised land (Josh. 2:22, 3:2); it is on the third day of the devastating plague that David is able to bring it to an end from ravaging the land and the city (2 Sam. 24:13–16), it is on the third day that king Hezekiah is healed from a fatal illness (2 Kgs. 20:5), it is on the third day that Esther gets a hearing from the king to save her people from destruction (Est. 5:1). Thus, third day deliverance is a pregnant type of salvation in a critical time of dire need, as Karl Lehmann and other scholars have shown decisively.[14]
13. See Douglas Hill, “On the Third Day,” Expository Times 78 (1967): 266.
14. Karl Lehmann, Auferweckt am dritten Tag nach der Schrift: Früheste Christologie, Bekenntnisbildung und Schriftauslegung im Lichte von 1 Kor. 15, 3–5 (QD 38; Freiburg: Herder, 1969). For other studies see my “From slight peg to cornerstone to capstone: the resurrection of Christ on ‘the third day’ according to the Scriptures,” Westminster Theological Journal 76 (2014): 371–409.
Thus, Jesus’s resurrection on the third day is the antitype of all these earlier salvations, an antitype which leads to a new age of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, and the new life in Christ. He is identified with Israel, killed for their sins, and restored to life on the third day. His death and resurrection means the restoration of his people, but more than that, the salvation of the nations.
George Nickelsburg observes that the resurrection of Christ is much more than the vindication of Jesus’s life, and the restoration of his people; it is the dawn of an entirely new world:
Jesus’s resurrection is understood from two perspectives. First, it is God’s vindication of the persecuted man Jesus. It makes sense of the humiliation, tragedy, and scandal of the crucifixion. Secondly, the resurrection of Jesus has broader implications, as an act of salvation for humanity and the cosmos. It facilitates Jesus’s exaltation as Lord and Judge and promises resurrection and eternal life to all the faithful.[15]
15. George W. E. Nickelsburg, “Resurrection: Early Judaism and Christianity,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 5: 688.
George Ladd makes a similar observation:
The resurrection of Jesus means nothing less than the appearance upon the scene of the historical of something that belongs to the eternal order! Supernatural? Yes, but not in the usual sense of that word. It is not the ‘disturbance’ of the normal course of events; it is the manifestation of something utterly new. Eternal life has appeared in the midst of mortality.[16]
16. George Eldon Ladd, I Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 145. I would like to thank Byron Wheaton for pointing out the relevance of this quote.
Thus, his resurrection does not just mean the resuscitation of a corpse, but the beginning of the new heavens and new earth. Consequently, Paul can state in his defense before Agrippa this truth in the following way:
22 Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying no other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come: 23 That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles. (Acts 26:22–23, emphasis added)
Christ was not the first to rise from the dead in one sense. Resurrections had happened in the Old Testament and in Jesus’s own ministry. But these individuals died again. Jesus, however, was the first to rise from the dead and stay alive. In contrast to everyone else, he now had a glorified body. And his resurrection is the first of many who will follow. That is why Paul can write that Christ’s resurrection is the firstfruits of a great final harvest of resurrections to come in the future when death is finally destroyed as the last enemy, and God becomes all in all in the new creation (1 Cor. 15:20–26). What has happened is that in Christ the great resurrection at the end of history has intruded into the middle of history to begin the great transition of the ages, from the age of sin and death to the age of righteousness and life.[17] Thus there is a great overlap of the ages—the old world of death coinciding with the new world of life, but the new world guarantees that the old world will be history someday. And while believers wait in hope for the future resurrection of their bodies in this age of sin and death until Christ returns, they also taste the powers of the age to come in the present as well in the gift of the Holy Spirit (Cf. Heb. 6:4–5). This has happened because Jesus’s resurrection has brought the end of history into the middle of history. Thus, John can point out that those who believe in Jesus Christ have bubbling up within them and flowing out from them a life-giving river of water which is the Spirit (John 7:37–39). Paul can add,
17. See e.g. N. T. Wright, ed., The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008).
10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. (Rom. 8:10–11)
Paul is saying that in a very real sense, the Holy Spirit who raised Christ from the dead, has come to live in us, giving us a new life and motivating us and empowering us to a life of doing God’s will, and he will also raise our bodies at the very end of history.
Conclusion
What an incredible gift Christians have in this age of the Spirit! The very life of God now lives in us, and it guarantees a hope that though our bodies age and decay in this old world, they will be transformed someday to a body like our Lord’s. So even at our death, Paul can speak of the situation as not only firstfruits and harvest, but planting and growing. Our corpse placed in the ground is like a seed being planted. It descends in corruption and weakness. As a recent paraphrase puts it:
The corpse that’s planted is no beauty, but when it’s raised, it’s glorious. Put in the ground weak, it comes up powerful. The seed sown is natural; the seed grown is supernatural—same seed, same body, but what a difference from when it goes down in physical mortality to when it is raised up in spiritual immortality! (1 Cor. 15:43–44, The Message)
A while ago I was asked to speak about resurrection in the Old Testament on a podcast, and one of the final questions posed to me was pastoral, “What relevance does this doctrine have in a practical way?” My face lit up, as at the time I actually was ministering to a dear friend, colleague and brother in the Lord who was on death’s door. He had just been transferred to palliative care as there were no more medical measures that could help him; it was clear to him that the end was near. But he was buoyed up by the truth that this was not the end, but only the beginning. He had the hope of eternal life in the truest sense. I mentioned to him that because of Christ and his resurrection, the English poet George Herbert was so right: death had been transformed from an executioner to a gardener.[18] My brother smiled and pointed to the sky, confident of resurrection hope.
