A Worse Resurrection

A Worse Resurrection April 1, 2013

My Sunday school class yesterday started with me suggesting that we could either carry on in Hebrews or do something more Eastery. Someone in the class asked, “Hebrews isn’t Eastery?”

And that’s how it all started.

We took a close look and saw that, on the one hand, the author mentions resurrection a couple of times (mainly referring to the general resurrection). And so the author did not neglect or reject the idea of bodily resurrection, it would seem.

Yet there is no mention of the resurrection of Jesus until the very end of the work. And so I suggested that this might be because the author’s metaphor of Jesus’ death as sacrifice with Jesus himself as high priest really left no room to incorporate the resurrection. Having the sacrifice return to life before it is presented messes up the analogy. Badly.

In the process of looking to see what the author says about resurrection, the mention of a “better resurrection” in 11:35 came up – leading one person who is a fan of the zombie genre to ask what a “worse resurrection” might look like. One possibility (which is what made this post seem appropriate for April 1st) is of course something like this:

Hebrews can be Eastery, and it also works on April Fools’ Day too, apparently.


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