Three Day Resurrections
November 14, 2010
by William P. Meyers

Site Search

Popular pages:

Rising from the dead after three days, as in the story of Jesus Christ, is explained by Christian apologists as being a matter of fulfilling prophesies. However, the reasoning to match the alleged Old Testament prophecies to the re-animation of Jesus is fairly tortured. For a typical example see The Resurrection: Prophecies. The fact that Mary Magdalene and the Apostles were surprised by the resurrection shows that at the time they knew of no prophecy giving its timing.

The Old Testament prophecies also beg the question: why three days? And as many school children have noted, why call it three days when the story goes that Jesus died late on Friday, but was resurrected early on Sunday, a period of less than 48 hours?

Hercules (or more properly Heracles) was a prototypical resurrected god, or vampire. He was super strong, he was violent, but he was not always a bad guy. According to stories widely accepted as true in ancient Greece he was both resurrected himself and brought back at least one dead person to life.

In Euripides' play Alcestis, she dies in place of her her husband Admetus, but then is rescued from death by Hercules. Here is the key passage, written some 450 years before the birth of Jesus:

Admetus: But why does she stand here speechless?

Hercules: It is not permitted for you to hear her voice until her consecration to the powers below be removed and the third day come.

Which proves little except that those who were resurrected were expected to be unable to speak until the third day, in the Greek town of Athens fairly close to Judea, centuries before Jesus is said to have pulled off the trick.

There may also be a connection to the timing of the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, but because they were a well-kept secret, it is difficult to make a comparison.