Reading Wright, RSG, Chapter 2

Shadows, Souls and Where They Go

I continue The Resurrection of the Son of God in Chapter 2, pp. 32-84. This chapter is the second of the four chapters of Part 1 and covers the Greco-Roman view of death and “resurrection.” I put the latter in quotes because the main argument of Wright in this chapter is that a bodily resurrection was neither expected nor desired by Greeks and Romans. In short, they did not believe in resurrection (p. 35).

At the opening of the chapter, Wright makes the parallel that for the Greco-Roman world, its “Old Testament” was Homer (p. 32); later he says that its “New Testament” was Plato (p. 47-8). Scanning the stories contained in both, as well as other literature of the time, one rarely sees people ‘returning’ from the dead, but if so, in a disembodied state, and usually for a brief time. For example, in the story of Achilles and Patroclus, the latter returns as a ghost in order to get Achilles to give him a proper burial (pp. 39-40)! In short, he can’t depart fully until the funeral is complete. One of the interesting observations of Wright is that Patroclus wants to remain dead; that is, he doesn’t want to return—there’s not even a hint of a resurrection possibility (this appears to be consistent in nearly all the stories).

The change that occurs in Plato, Wright observes, is that death appears to be desirable—the soul is what matters, the body, not so much (p. 49). The soul did go to a ‘pleasant Hades’ upon death (for some people), but it was still a disembodied ‘afterlife’ from which there was no return (p. 52). In Plato we do not find anything coming close to the idea of bodily resurrection either.

For the Romans, certainly at the highest level, there seemed to be a suggestion that upon death the emperor ascended to the heavens to become a… comet (Julius Caesar) or a star? But as Wright notes, Cicero will observe that stars and souls are made of the same stuff (p. 60). Not resurrection. Stardust, no one invited you.

Wright scans through other stories in the Greco-Roman world, with the conclusion that no one in the ancient world took any of the stories as real resurrection (p. 77). What about dying and rising gods? Wright argues that this was used in the ancient times as metaphor for the planting and harvesting (pp. 81-2). No one actually thought a real human being died and rose again.

There is one additional theory that Wright addresses, coming out of Plato, which he terms the “transmigration of souls.” (pp. 77-9) We would call this just another form of reincarnation. Indeed, reading this section, I almost thought I accidentally transmigrated into Hindu territory! Turns out, ideas spread far.

As Wright concludes the chapter, he emphasizes again that for the Greco-Roman world, those who had died were expected to stay dead; indeed, this was a good and desirable state. Perhaps some were in a pleasant form of Hades, or floating around, but an unthinkable result would have been a return to the body. Especially following Plato, the soul mattered far more (one has to wonder how much relationship later Gnosticism has with Platonic ideas). What the early Christians claimed happened to Jesus was a unique, unexpected, and undesirable event from a Greco-Roman view.

Next time, we will explore the Jewish idea of resurrection found in the Old Testament.