Resurrection or Ghost Story

8/16/2019 Resurrection or Ghost Story

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Resurrection or Ghost Story?

Robert Conner

According to Paul, arguably Christianity’s foremost spokesman, belief in theresurrection is the sine qua non of Christian belief and the basis of Christian

hope:

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, howcan some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If thereis no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has beenraised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless andso is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raisedChrist from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead arenot raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not beenraised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile;you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep inChrist are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are ofall people most to be pitied.1

1 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, NIV.


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For Paul, Jesus’ miracles—which he never mentions—are not the decisivefactor for belief, nor are Jesus’ teachings—which he never directly referencesdespite his putative authorship of half the books of the New Testament—nordoes Paul allude to Jesus’ virgin birth or transfiguration. In fact, Paul explainsthat he did not rely on the original community of belief for his information:

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached isnot of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was Itaught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ...Thenafter three years [in Arabia] I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of theother apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother.2

According to his own testimony, Paul knew only Peter [Cephas] among theapostles and met only a single relative of Jesus, his brother James. In short,Paul’s idiosyncratic theology appears to have derived “by revelation,” the sortof visionary transports to which Paul refers in his letters.3

What, if anything, did Paul actually know about Jesus’ death and burial? Likeother New Testament stories, the accounts of Jesus’ trial and execution areproblematic. Although it was claimed that Jesus’ disciples removed his bodyand buried it,4 in a passage in Acts Paul clearly states that “those living in Jerusalem and their rulers...asked Pilate to put him to death, even as theyfulfilled all the things written about him, and taking him down from thegibbet, they laid him in a tomb.”5 Paul, in his previous incarnation as Saul, was an avid persecutor of the early church6 and so may have known for a fact

that the authorities that had Jesus executed were the ones who then removedthe body from the cross and disposed of it. Reimer suggests that Paul mayhave had some relationship with the temple police in his role of “enforcing Jewish religious law...in a punitive fashion, initiating policy, enforcing it withconsiderable zeal, and casting judgment against those caught.”7

Whatever the case, the empty tomb was not at first a symbol of Jesus’ victoryover death, but a problem that required an explanation and the early churchaddressed the disaster of the rejected and crucified messiah by creatingresurrection stories. However, the gospel stories of the resurrection raised atleast as many questions as they answered and, moreover, represented only one

of several possible theological solutions as evidenced by Paul’s allegation that

2 Galatians 1:11-12, 18-19, NIV.3 2 Corinthians 12:2, for example.4 John 19:38.5 Acts 13:27-29.6 Acts 7:58-8:1; 22:4-7 Reimer, Miracle and Magic , 65-66.


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some rejected the idea of resurrection—“how can some of you say there is noresurrection of the dead?”8

Kirby lists four plausible historical scenarios besides the traditional explana-tion for the empty tomb: Jesus “was left hanging on the cross for the birds,”

the Romans dumped the body in a mass grave, the Jewish authorities buriedthe body, or the disciples buried the body and it remained in a tomb. 9 It is inconnection with the disposition of Jesus’ body that Crossan describes “thehierarchy of horror” that entailed not only the loss of life and possessions, buteven the “destruction of identity” that included the utter corruption of thebody of the condemned, in some cases even the killing of his family, and “thefinal penalty,” to be unburied, having no tomb to memorialize him, no gravethat might be visited. The worst penalties included being burned alive,thrown to the beasts, and crucifixion, which in the last case “the body wasleft on the cross until birds and beasts of prey had destroyed it.” Crossan con-cludes, “I keep thinking of all those other thousands of Jews crucified around Jerusalem in that terrible first century from among whom we have foundonly one skeleton and one nail. I think I know what happened to theirbodies, and I have no reason to think Jesus’ body did not join them.”10

Given the well-attested magical and necromantic use of “relics” obtainedfrom those violently killed,11 as a crucified criminal Jesus’ body, the cruci-fixion nails, and even the wood of the cross would have been tempting targetsfor theft. Once the Christian practice of collecting post-mortem remains touse as miraculous relics became known to the Romans, “some governors usedsoldiers to keep the believers from taking bodies and then took the further

step of rendering the bodily remains entirely inaccessible.”12

It is significantthat the gospel of Matthew reports that the Jewish authorities expressedconcern that Jesus’ disciples would come by night to steal the body and claimthat Jesus had raised himself. Matthew—the identity of the author isunknown, but following convention we will call him “Matthew”—who wroteas late as fifty years after Jesus’ death,13 likely included this bit of narrative tocounter charges that Jesus’ disciples had stolen his body, charges still in circu-lation in Matthew’s day:

The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests andthe Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that

while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise

8 1 Corinthians 15:12.9 Kirby, The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave , 233.10 Crossan, Who Killed Jesus? , 160-161, 183.11 Conner, Magic in Christianity: From Jesus to the Gnostics , 289-294.12 Fuhrmann, Policing the Roman Empire , 187.13 Most authorities put the date of composition somewhere between 80-110 C.E.


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again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until thethird day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body andtell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This lastdeception will be worse than the first.”

“Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as

you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by puttinga seal on the stone and posting the guard.14

Jesus’ post mortem appearances fall generally into three categories: visions,epiphanies, and apparitions, but the distinctions are not always maintainednor the details wholly consistent. For example, the account of Jesus’ appear-ance to Saul on the road to Damascus, reported in three places in Acts,15 differs in detail with each retelling. According to the first report, Paul falls tothe ground while the men with Paul stand speechless, hearing a voice butseeing no one,16 and in the second the men see a light but do not hear avoice,17 but in the third account, all the men fall to the ground.18 Soon afterhis conversion, Saul (aka Paul) again sees Jesus, but under different circum-stances:

It happened that after returning to Jerusalem, while I was praying inthe temple, I fell into a state of ecstasy and I saw him saying to me,“Hurry and leave Jerusalem at once because they will not accept yourtestimony about me.”19

Jesus’ appearance to Paul in the temple is an ecstatic vision, but his manifes-tation on the road to Damascus has characteristics of other post-resurrection

epiphanies: light, voices, glowing raiment,20

supernatural entities and naturalupheavals.21 Visions during prayer are well known22 and as Strelan observes,“That [Paul’s] prayer included an ecstatic vision is not at all unusual...it isquite likely that Temple prayer had rhythm and repetitive element. In addi-tion, it is possible that the body moved in harmony with the rhythm of theprayer. Such a method of praying is often mantra-like and can induce ahypnotic, ecstatic state.”23

14 Matthew 27:62-66.15

Acts 9:1-19, 22:6-16, 26:12-18.16 Acts 9:7.17 Acts 22:9.18 Acts 26:14.19 Acts 22:17-18.20 As at Matthew 28:3, Luke 24:8.21 Matthew 28:2, 5.22 Daniel 9:20, for example.23 Strelan, Strange Acts , 180.


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The Greek term ekstasij (ekstasis ), which literally means “to be outsideoneself,” is the obvious source of ecstasy . An altered state of consciousnessis in view, and the word is often translated trance —Peter also has a vision while in a state of ecstasy.24

Throughout the Mediterranean world even the dead were expected to be upand active by early morning, a belief that persists even today in the form ofEaster “sunrise services.” “The funeral was finished and the slow process ofdeath completed when the soul finally departed at the coming of dawn...”25 “The ‘Spell for Coming Forth by Day’...draws the parallel between the sun’spassage from night to day, and the deceased’s emergence from the tomb tothe daylight.”26

A text often cited as an early report of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearancescomes from a letter written by Paul:

For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received,that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to thescriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then heappeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, the greaternumber of whom remain until now but some have fallen asleep.

Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, heappeared even to me, as to one born before his time.27

The usual words in Greek meaning to see , physically and metaphorically, are

blepw (blep!

) and qewrew (the !

re !

), but this passage Paul repeatedly usesforms of oraw (hora ! ), a verb often employed in the New Testament for pre-ternatural visions and similar experiences. 28 The related noun, orama (horama ), often denotes vision in the sense of supernatural experience, al-though clear distinctions in usage are not consistently maintained.

The claim that Jesus appeared to 500 witnesses at one time is the sort ofexaggeration one would expect from a later apocryphal account, and the factthat none of the gospels, written later than 1 Corinthians, report this amazingconfirmation of the resurrection almost certainly marks the passage as aninterpolation inserted into the text after Paul’s death. “A simple comparison

24 Acts 10:10-11.25 Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry , 21.26 David, Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt , 84.27 1 Corinthians 15:3-8.28 As at Luke 1:11, Acts 7:2, for example.


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of the Gospels and 1 Corinthians 15 shows that the two traditions cannot bereconciled.”29

Robert Price has proposed that the chain of connectives—“that Christdied...that he was buried...that he was raised...that he appeared”—is evidence

of an early liturgical confession, i.e., not written by Paul,30 an argument Ibelieve to be supported by the use of Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrectionin healing spells such as this one which takes the form of a confessionalformula put to magical use: “Christ foretold, Christ appeared, Christsuffered, Christ died, Christ rose, Christ ascended, Christ reigns, Christ savesOuibius, who Gennaia bore, from all fever, from all shivering, daily, quoti-dian, now, now, quickly, quickly.”31

The chain of repetitive professions of belief in the preserved text of 1Corinthians 15 seems designed to elicit a confessional response: wfqh Khfa...epeita wfqh...adelfoij...epeita wfqh Iakwbw...toij apostoloij...escaton

de pantwn...wfqh kamoi, “seen by Peter...then seen...by the brothers...thenseen by James...the apostles...and last of all...seen by me.” Given the flow ofthe text it is easy to imagine that we are hearing the echo of an early liturgy in which the resurrected Lord appears during ritual to the community of faithpast and present—to Peter, to James, to the brothers and apostles—and ‘lastof all...to me,’ the individual believer now far removed in time and locationfrom the miracle of the resurrection.

If the text of 1 Corinthians 15 is discounted, the gospel of Mark becomes theoldest report of the resurrection:

When the Sabbath had passed, Mary the Magdalene and Mary themother of James and Salome bought spices so that they might go andanoint him, and very early in the morning on the first day of the week, the sun having risen, they went to the tomb. They were sayingto one another, “Who will roll the stone away from the door of thetomb for us?”

Looking up, they saw that the stone—which was very large—hadbeen rolled away and as they entered the tomb, they saw a young manclothed in a white robe, sitting off to the right and they were alarmed.But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You are seeking Jesus of

Nazareth who was crucified. He is not here. He has been raised. Lookat the place where they laid him! But go tell his disciples and Peterthat he goes ahead of you into Galilee. You will see him there just ashe told you.”

29 Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered , 89.30 Price, Journal of Higher Criticism 2/2 (1995): 69-99.31 Daniel & Malrtomini, Supplementum Magicum, 35.


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And after they left, they fled from the tomb, for trembling andpanic seized them. And they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.32

Three days in the tomb reflects the Jewish belief that the soul remained in the

vicinity of the tomb for three days following burial.

The account in Mark contradicts our expectations for several reasons, mostclearly in that the women do not actually see Jesus, but a “young man”usually assumed to be an angel.33 Moreover, there is no sense of reassurance—the women flee in panic, too frightened to speak of their experience. Latermanuscripts of Mark append several spurious endings designed to improveon the original conclusion, a conclusion many readers apparently found to betheologically deficient.

The authors of Matthew and Luke were also dissatisfied with Mark’s endingand set about repairing it, introducing a number of new difficulties in theprocess. Matthew appropriates the youth’s words from Mark,34 but in hisrevision the women are not struck silent from fear but run joyfully to informthe apostles that Jesus has risen, being met by Jesus on the way.35 Matthew’sexpansion has the eleven remaining apostles go to Galilee—contradicting Acts 1:4 where the disciples are ordered to remain in Jerusalem—where theyreceive the commission to make disciples of all nations, but, we are told, somedoubted .36

The doubt of some of the apostles clearly troubled the early church—as Paul

explained to the Corinthians, the resurrection and glorification of Jesus wasalready the keystone in the arch of Christian belief—but when Luke setabout removing the last element of doubt about the reality of Jesus’ returnfrom the dead, he created a startling narrative shift: the appearances of the risenLord begin to take on the characteristics of classic ghost stories .

D.T. Prince, who has published a detailed comparison of the features ofLuke’s account with the features of classical ghost stories, concludes, “themethod at work in Luke 24 is an attempt to disorient the reader in order to

32

Mark 16:1-8 (my translation). Another occurrence of ekstasis , which I have translated panic . The Greeks

believed the sight of the nature divinity Pan induced irrational fear, hence our word. 33 I have made the case elsewhere that Lazarus was the original identification of the“young man” in the tomb. (The “Secret” Gospel of Mark: Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and Four Decades of Academic Burlesque , 2014).34 Matthew 28:5-7.35 Matthew 28:9-10.36 Matthew 28:17.


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reconfigure the traditions known to the author and reader in light of thedisciples’ extraordinary experience of the resurrected Jesus.”37 Prince cites anumber of examples of ghosts what were corporeal “revenants” but changedappearance at will, exhibiting a well-known spectral tendency to polymor-phism, and engaged in various physical activities including sexual inter-

course.38 However, it seems to me her conclusion risks begging the questionof how extraordinary ghost stories seemed in antiquity—ghost stories areextraordinary by definition—or whether the ancients were any less confusedthan moderns when ghosts exhibited contradictory traits, being in some wayphysical yet defying the laws of physics. In any case, ghosts that displayedelements of physicality were not uncommon: “Textual allusions or inferences would seem to point in favor of both of these visible types of manifestationsof the dead [spirit and shadow , my note] as being totally human in form.”39

Prince’s conclusions, which are limited to the gospel of Luke, have quitepredictably received an apologetic response. Jake O’Connell, then a studentat the Catholic Assumption College, published an attempted rebuttal in the Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, a periodical issued byMcMaster Divinity College, a Baptist seminary. At the beginning of his pieceO’Connell concludes, “it is much more probable that Luke is not addressingGreco-Roman conceptions of apparitions at all; rather the similarities anddifferences are purely accidental” but notes “the same logic could be used toargue that all Christian accounts of the resurrection intentionally draw onGreco-Roman apparition types,”40 exactly the logic of the argument I intendto make, focusing specifically on the text of Luke and John.

O’Connell’s concedes that the spectral characteristics cited by Prince “applynot only to Luke’s resurrection appearances, but in varying degrees, to theappearances in Matthew, Mark, John and Paul as well; John in fact attests toall six of them...if [Prince’s] argument is applied consistently it leads to theconclusion that Matthew, Mark, John and Paul were intentionally evokingthese models as well...”41 In briefly unpacking O’Connell’s contentions, I would note first that in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts of Markthere are no resurrection appearances which is both the problem posed byMark’s gospel in its earliest known form and an obvious reason both for itsexpansion by the addition of spurious endings and the invention of resur-rection stories by the other synoptics and John.

37 Prince, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 29 (1987), 297.38 Ibid, 294.39 Adams, Current Research in Egyptology , 2006 , 3.40 O’Connell, Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 5 (2008): 191-192.41 Ibid, 194.


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Secondly, the minor inconsistencies cited between Jesus’ post mortem ap-pearances in the gospels and ancient ghost stories are easy enough to under-stand if one assumes that the authors were borrowing features of universallycurrent ghost stories to construct their narratives but were at least cleverenough to recast them—nearly any undergraduate plagiarist might be assum-

ed equally capable.

Lastly, O’Connell appears to think “Jesus’ eating does not clearly separatehim from non-bodily ghosts.”42 For ghosts to be perceptible, either visually oraudibly, to ordinary waking consciousness presumes some element of physi-cality and that ghosts could appear from nowhere, eat, and then disappear isconspicuously proven by Phlegon’s story of Polykritos, a man who returnsfrom the dead on the occasion of the ill-omened birth of his hermaphroditicchild.

The people had clustered together and were arguing about theportent when the ghost took hold of the child, forced back most ofthe men, hastily tore the child limb from limb, and began to devourhim...he consumed the entire body of the boy except for his head,and then suddenly disappeared.43

The longest of the gospel resurrection stories is the ‘road to Emmaus’narrative; two disciples meet a stranger to whom they relate the account ofthe women at the tomb and as they journey, Jesus, who they have been pre-vented from recognizing, explains the Old Testament prophecies relating tohimself. Finally, as they eat the evening meal together, the disciples are

vouchsafed a fleeting glimpse of the real Jesus when he blesses the bread,breaks it, and hands it to them. His appearance then comes to this jarringconclusion: “Their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he becameinvisible to them.”44

The chief priests and our rulers handed [Jesus] over to be sentencedto death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was theone who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the thirdday since all this took place.

In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tombearly this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us

that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Thensome of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all

42 Ibid, 196.43 Hansen, Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of Marvels , 30-31.44 Luke 24:31.


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that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to sufferthese things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Mosesand all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all theScriptures concerning himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus

continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged himstrongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almostover.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give itto them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, andhe disappeared from their sight.

They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they foundthe Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It istrue! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” Then the twotold what had happened on the way, and how they recognized Jesus when he broke the bread.45

In a further interrogation of the Lukan account D.T. Prince comments on“the rhetorical strategy of the author of Luke-Acts.” The gentile writer, wholikely composed his work in Asia Minor, late in the 1st century, “was aware ofthe scrutiny that such wondrous events elicited in his context and was parti-cularly concerned to retell the stories in such a way that they would providethe reader with certainty regarding the events they related (Luke 1:1-4)...Inlight of widespread suspicion and confusion over Christian claims about Jesus

and objections like those of Celsus, the rhetorical question [“Why do youseek the living among the dead?”]46 functions to provide a response to therhetorical problem, both uncertainty from within the community and suspi-cion from without.”47 According to Luke, the uncertainty arose from a simplefact: according to the most primitive tradition the disciples who went to thetomb “did not see Jesus .”48

Few if any ancient people appear to have believed that the physical body would persist after death or be restored to life without recourse to sorcery. Yetthe disembodied dead could talk, walk, eat and drink, and food offerings andlibations were brought to tombs even in cases where the body had been

cremated or lost at sea—following his self-immolation, Peregrinus was re-ported to be seen walking about dressed in white.49 The phantom or eidwlon

45 Luke 24:20-35.46 Luke 24:5.47 Prince, Journal of Biblical Literature 135 (2016): 123-124, 134.48 Luke 24:24. Compare Mark 16:6, “he is not here.”49 Lucian, On the Death of Peregrinus , 50.


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(eid ! lon), from eidos , form or shape , is the reflected image of the soul, adeathless entity, and could accordingly be considered more real than thecorruptible body.50

Unfortunately for Christian apologetic efforts, the association between invisi-

bility and magic is tight. Luke’s is the only direct mention of invisibility inconnection with the resurrection—afantoj egeneto ap ’ autwn, “he becameinvisible to them”51—and the only occurrence of afantoj, (aphantos ), invisi-ble , in the Greek New Testament. The Greek magical papyri preserve thisspell for invisibility: “Arise, demon from the realm below...whatever I maycommand of you, I, [insert name], in that way obey me...if you wish tobecome invisible, just smear your forehead with the mixture and you will beinvisible for however long you want.”52 The wording of the spell, to become“invisible”—aphantos —duplicates Luke’s description of Jesus’ sudden disap-pearance. The sudden departure of ghosts is well-attested; besides the afore-mentioned example of Polykritos, Lucian’s story of the ghost of Eucrates’ wife, who returns from the dead to reclaim a golden sandal, ends abruptly when the household dog barks: “and she vanished (de hfanisqh) because ofthe barking.”53

Luke was not unaware of the ghostly nature of the Emmaus story. Indeed,the next account he relates appears designed specifically to prove that Jesus isnot merely a ghost:

But while they were talking about these things he stood in theirmidst and said to them, “Peace be with you!” But they were alarmed

and became afraid, thinking they were seeing a spirit. And he said tothem, “Why are you terrified and why do doubts arise in your hearts?Touch me and see, because a spirit does not have flesh and bones asyou see I have.” And saying this, he showed them his hands and feet.

But even in their joy they did not believe him, and while they were wondering he said to them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” Andthey gave him a piece of fish and he took it and ate it in front ofthem.54

Jesus proves his corporeal reality to his disbelieving disciples by having themtouch him and by eating food in their presence, but the disciples wonder—as

well they might—how a body of flesh and bone has suddenly appeared fromnowhere. A rather similar case of touching is related in Apuleius’ story of the

50 Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered , 49.51 Luke 24:31.52 Priesendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae , I, 14.53 Lucian, The Lover of Lies , 27.54 Luke 24:36-43 (my translation).


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miller slain by a crone who turns out to be a ghost.55 Daniel Ogden observes,“The fact that the ghost could touch the miller’s arm suggests that it had asolid form, but the fact that it could then disappear from a locked room sug-gests, perplexingly, that by contrast it was ethereal.”56

The 4th century church historian Eusebius quotes an ancient variant of theEmmaus story: “He said, take, touch me and see that I am not a disembodied demon (daimonion aswmaton)...”57 “Daemon” is a common word for “ghost”in magical texts and literature of the era,58 but in this context it might reflecta Christian belief that ghosts were evil spirits pretending to be souls of thedead. In any case, the textual variant quoted by Eusebius is of great antiquity. An epistle of Ignatius, written at the beginning of the 2nd century, preserves itverbatim:

For I know and believe him to have been in the flesh after the resur-rection when he came to those with Peter and said to them, “Take,touch me and see that I am not a bodiless demon,” and immediatelythey touched him and believed...but after the resurrection he ate anddrank with them as made of flesh, although spiritually united withthe Father.”59

Ignatius’ explanation hardly clears up the problem of the ghostly nature ofthe risen Jesus—Jesus is wj sarkikoj (h! s sarkikos ), “as of flesh,” although“spiritually united with the Father.” One suspects that Ignatius is having hiscake and eating it too. In any event, the disembodied daemon logion “isclearly a free saying with a long history” known to Ignatius, Jerome—who

believed it came from the now lost Gospel According to the Hebrews —andOrigen, who cites it in the Latin version: “Non sum demonium incor-poreum.” Riley concludes, “Both Luke and Ignatius have drawn on a com-mon source. Their source sought to demonstrate a material resurrection bodyby means of physical proof.”60

Interestingly, Jesus’ appearances tend to occur at night or in the intervalbetween day and night, i.e., “between times” typically associated with worksof sorcery.61 It is clear from the frequent mention of lamps in the magical

55 Apuleius, Metamorphosis IX, 29-31.56 Ogden, Night’s Black Agents , 70.57 Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History III, 36.58 Compare Lucian, The Lover of Lies , 17: “Haven’t many others met with spirits (daimosin), some at night, some during the day...”59 Ignatius, Ad Smyrnaeos, 3.60 Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered , 95-96.61 Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:29, John 21:4.


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papyri that night was the propitious time for magic and the appearance ofghosts. On this feature of the magician’s work, Eitrem noted:

Lamp or lantern magic (Lampenzauber) plays a major role here asgenerally in Egyptian magic—for light, the nocturnal sun, was

something to be exploited. The night with its horde of dead spiritsand eerie ways—the night through which the sun god navigated inhis vessel to reach the east through the dark kingdom of theunderworld while the moon shone or the heavens were starry—offered the magician the best opportunity for exercising his art orarts.62

The nocturnal workings of the magicians were, in part, a simple matter ofphysiology: “In general the association between sleep, death, dreams, andnight was tight.” 63 Matthew, for example, clearly believed at least somedreams were of supernatural origin,64 and the world of the New Testament, a world before the glow of artificial light nearly banished darkness, was a worldpullulating with works of sorcery. Ancient sources preserve terms such asnuktiplanos , “roaming by night,” and nuktoperiplan" tos , “wandering aroundby night,” that refer to the activities of magicians as well, no doubt, of ghosts.“Alongside public Dionysiac festivals there emerge private Dionysos mys-teries. These are esoteric, they take place at night, access is through anindividual initiation, telete .”65 “It seems the magos [magician, my note] had alittle bit of everything—the bacchantic (i.e. ecstatic) element, the initiationrites, the migratory life, the nocturnal activities.”66

Jesus’ nocturnal appearances in the gospel of John—“in the evening of thefirst day of the week”67—retain several spectral qualities. Jesus appears twicein the disciples’ midst even “though the doors were locked”68—the Greek textemploys the verb kleiw (klei ! ), “to lock,” from kleis , “key.” Translations thatrender the verb as simply to shut fail to fully convey the (miraculous) fact thatthe doors were locked and not simply closed, and that in spite of the doorsbeing locked, Jesus “came and stood in their midst.”

So being the evening of that day, the first of the week, and thedoors having been locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace to

62 Eitrem, Magika Hiera , 176.63 Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy , 77.64 Matthew 2:12, 19, for example.65 Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical , 291.66 Luck, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome , 104.67 John 20:19.68 John 20:19, 26.


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you!” and having said this, showed his hands and side to them.Consequently the disciples rejoiced because of seeing the Lord. And after eight days his disciples were again indoors and Thomas

was with them. Jesus came, the doors having been locked, and stoodin their midst and said, “Peace to you!”...Then he said to Thomas,

“Put your finger here, and look at my hands, and reach out yourhand and stick it into my side, and be not unbelieving, butbelieving.”

Thomas exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “You have seen me and believed. Happy are those

who not having seen yet believe.”69

That “Doubting Thomas” has become the paradigm of unbelief reveals theapologetic intent of the stories, stories that would have had little need of suchmarvelous supernatural details as walking through locked doors and displaysof pre-mortem wounds had Jesus’ resurrection not been subject to doubt.Indeed, doubt and disbelief is the constant thread connecting the resurrectionstories—a missing body, an empty tomb, and the disbelief of witnesses even when confronted with ‘evidence.’70

In these manifestations Jesus exhibits traits of the “revenant,” an embodiedghost that appears once or for a brief period of time following the death ofthe subject71 and performs bodily functions such as speaking and eating, dis-plays pre-mortem wounds, is associated with an empty tomb, and vanishessuddenly without a trace, all of which are characteristics noted by DebbieFelton who has produced a particularly thorough analysis of Greco-Roman

ghost stories.72

“...late classical tradition attributed various activities to ghosts,such as informing, consoling, admonishing, and pursuing the living.” 73 Vermeule’s observation regarding ghosts is particularly pertinent to Jesus’appearances: “wounding the flesh means wounds in the shade below...”74 TheRoman critic Celsus noted that after Jesus died, he appeared only to his ownfollowers “and even then as a ghost.” The Greek skia (skia ), “shadow,” or“ghost” is used in other contexts in a magical sense.

It is well known that people of antiquity thought certain classes of the dead,“well-defined categories of restless death,”75 were particularly likely to becomeghosts: the awroj (a ! ros ), the prematurely dead, the agamoj (agamos ), the

69 John 20:19-21, 26-29 (my translation). 70 Matthew 28:17; Luke 24:11, 38; John 20:25, 27.71 Evans, Field Guide to Ghosts , 19.72 Felton, Haunted Greece and Rome , 7, 14, 17, 23-26, 28. 73 Finucane, Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead and Cultural Transformation, 25.74 Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry , 49.75 Ogden, In Search of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice , 117.


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unmarried, the atafoj (ataphos ), the unburied, and the biaioqanatoj (biaiothanatos ), those dead by violence. According to the gospel evidence, Jesus could easily be numbered among all of these groups that shared acommonality identified by Sarah Johnston: “Those who died before complet-ing life were understood to linger between categories, unable to pass into

death because they were not really finished with life.”76 A person who fell intosuch a category was described as atelestoj (atelestos ), “unfulfilled.” Based on widespread 1st century belief, Jesus had all the makings of an angry, restlessghost. Little wonder the gospel writers were at such pains to prove that Jesus was not merely an apparition.

The ghost of Jesus fits perfectly with the culture’s understanding of thepowerful dead. Spirit manipulation was standard magic praxis, including Jewish practice, everywhere in the Middle East millennia before the time of Jesus and ghosts were often invoked to accomplish magical acts.

These are the angels that obey [you] during the night (if you wish) tospeak with the moon or the stars or to question a ghost or to speak with the spirits...if you wish to question a ghost; stand facing a tomband repeat the names of the angels of the fifth encampment...I adjureyou, O spirit of the ram bearer [Hermes, my note], who dwell amongthe graves upon the bones of the dead...”77

I command you, ghost of the dead (nekudaimon), by the powerful andimplacable god and by his holy names, to stand beside me in the nightto come, in whatever form you had...”78

The ghost of the Sepher Ha-Razim that one might wish to question is thefamiliar ! b (bwa) conjured by the medium of Endor.79

It is now confirmed that in some cases even an aborted or miscarried fetuscould be used as a power source for binding spells. Although such practicerepresents “a new form of curse” not found in extant magical papyri, itsabsence “teaches us that the magical papyri, while immensely rich in docu-mentation for ritual practices in Roman Egypt, should not be taken as in any way exhaustive.”80 A recently published analysis of burials that include thepresence of nails as apotropaic devices concludes, “a considerable percentage

of the nails discussed here derive from infants’ burials; infants are one of the

76 Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in AncientGreece , 149.77 Morgan, Sepher Ha-Razim, 36, 38.78 Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae IV, 2030-2034.79 1 Samuel 28:3-25.80 Frankfurter, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 46 (2006), 42.


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categories of particularly dangerous dead.”81 It would appear that belief inghosts and their dark powers was ubiquitous in the ancient world

It is probably significant that the Greek of Luke’s gospel reveals a highersocial register than that of either Matthew or Mark—the historiographic

preface of Luke’s gospel, in keeping with official histories of the era,“indicates that the author has done extensive research.”82 If that is the case, itis quite likely that the author was familiar with accounts of ghosts in secularhistories as well as the popular paradoxa , collections of uncanny and bizarreevents that quite naturally included ghost stories.

Phlegon of Tralles’ story of the recently dead Philinnion, who repeatedlyreturns to have sexual relations with her family’s guest, Machates, has severalfeatures in common with the apparitions of Jesus that are, for the lack of abetter word, uncanny. Like Jesus, Philinnion appears at night—“night cameon and now it was the hour when Philinnion was accustomed to come tohim”—and like Jesus in the Emmaus narrative, “she ate and drank with[Machates].”83 After her tryst is interrupted by her panic stricken parents, sheupbraids them: “how unfairly you have grudged me being with the guest forthree days ,” and succumbs once again to death. 84 When the thoroughlyalarmed citizens investigate this amazing occurrence, they find Philinnion’stomb empty but containing tokens of affection gifted her by Machates.

The shared elements of the stories include (1) the empty tomb, (2) tokens leftbehind by its former occupant—in the case of Jesus, burial wrappings 85—(3)the shock and awe experienced by witnesses,86 (4) eating and drinking as

‘proof of life,’ (5) the evening appearances of the revenant, and (6) thepassage of three days. To assume that the shared similarities of these shortnarratives are mere coincidence, accidents of free composition, amounts toconjuring up a supernatural set of coincidences by the power of wishfulthinking.

A fragment of an ancient novel, included among the Greek magical papyri,alludes to a “handsome phantom”—kalon eidwlon (kalon eid ! lon)—that ap-pears to a woman, evidently only one of many enamored of a ‘phantastic’body.87 By describing the woman who was the primary witnesses of Jesus’

81 Alfayé Villa, Magical Practice in the Latin West , 450.82 Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early ChristianWritings , 115.83 Hansen, Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of Marvels , 26.84 Ibid, 27.85 John 20:5-7.86 Mark 16:8.87 Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae XXXIV, 20-21.


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resurrection as hysterical ( paroistros ), 88 the Roman critic Celsus at leastimplied a sexual component to her attraction. A related verb, oistraw (oistra ! ), was used by Lucian to describe a man turned to a donkey by magicas acting, “like a man mad with lust (oistroumenos ) for women and boys.”89 “The hysterical female, Mary Magdalene, fits the image of the woman sus-

ceptible to bizarre religious impulses that emerges from ancient literature. Yet, she is by no means a silent victim of Jesus’ magic. Although she isdeluded by sorcery, Mary Magdalene also becomes one of the mainperpetrators. She is an active witness, a creator of the Christian belief in theresurrection.”90

The disappearance, return, and re-disappearance of the famous dead is hardlylimited to the story of Jesus—here, according to Plutarch, is how the careerof Romulus was reported to have ended:

...Romulus was perceived to transform suddenly, and no part of hisbody or shred of clothing was seen. Some speculated that thesenators, gathered in the temple of Hephaistos, rose up against himand killed him, and distributed pieces of his body to each to carryaway hidden in the folds of his clothing. Others believe it was neitherin the temple of Hephaistos, nor when the senators alone werepresent that he disappeared, but when he held an assembly aroundthe so-called Marsh of the Goat. Suddenly wonders strange todescribe occurred in the air, incredible changes, the light of the sunfaded and night fell, not gently or quietly, but with terrible thunderand gusts of wind driving rain from every direction, during which the

great crowd scattered in flight, but the influential men huddledtogether with one another. When the tempest had passed and the sunbroke out and the mass reassembled, there was an anxious search forthe king, but the men in power neither inquired into the matter norinvestigated it, but loudly exhorted all of them to honor and worshipRomulus as a man imbued with divinity, a god favorably disposed tothem rather than a worthy king. The mass of people, believing thesethings, left rejoicing with high hopes to worship him. However, somebitterly contested the matter in a hostile way and accused thepatricians of foisting a stupid story on the people, being themselvesthe perpetrators of murder.

At this point, a man from among the patricians, high born, reliableand most esteemed, a trusted intimate of Romulus himself, a colonistfrom Alba, Julius Proculus, went into the forum and swore by themost sacred emblems that as he traveled along the road he saw

88 Origen, Contra Celsum II, 55.89 Lucian, Lucius or The Ass , 33.90 MacDonald, Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion, 124.


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Romulus approaching him face to face, handsome and strong as ever,decked out in bright, shining armor. He himself, struck with fear atthe sight, said, “O king, what were you thinking, subjecting us tounjust and evil accusations, the whole city an orphan in tears, weeping for having been abandoned?”

Romulus answered, “It pleased the gods, Proculus, that I be withmen for just so long a time, and having founded a city of superlativeglory, dwell again in heaven. Farewell, and proclaim to the Romansthat if they practice self-control with manliness, they will achieve thevery heights of human power. And I will be your propitious daemon,Quirinus.”

These things seemed believable to the Romans, based on thecharacter of the man who related them and because of his oath,besides feeling some participation in divine destiny equal topossession by the gods. No one objected, but all set aside suspicionand opposition and prayed to Quirinus, calling upon him as a god.

...Romulus is said to have been fifty-four years old, in the thirty-eighth year of his rule when he disappeared from among men.91

If Luke sought, consciously or not, to imitate the genre of the classical ghoststory or other fabulous ‘histories’ in framing his accounts of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, his technique might at the very least have set aprecedent followed by the author of the gospel of John. Alternatively, and farless feasibly, it is possible that the gospels of Luke and John were notinfluenced by Greco-Roman literary conventions in which case we areconfronted with a primitive New Testament tradition that contains examples

of independently drawn ghost stories.

A similar account is given of the wonder worker, Apollonius of Tyana, whourged his friends to distance themselves from him while he awaited trialbefore the paranoid Emperor Domitian, but to expect his reappearance:

“Alive,” asked Damis, “or how?”“As I myself believe, alive, but as you will believe, risen from the dead.”

After Apollonius reappears, still alive, this is the reaction of his disciples:

Whereupon Apollonius stretched out his hand and said, “Take holdof me and if I evade you, then I am indeed a ghost come to you fromthe realm of Persephone...but if I resist your touch, then you shallpersuade Damis also that I am both alive and that I have not

91 Plutarch’s Lives I, 27.5-28.3, 29.7 (my translation).


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abandoned my body.” They were no longer able to disbelieve, butrose up and threw themselves on his neck and kissed him.92

The gospel of John implies that Jesus could disappear at will, a trait shared bythe holy man Apollonius. After the healing at Bethzatha, Jesus “slipped away”

into the crowd, 93 and when the authorities sought to arrest him, Jesus“eluded their grasp,” or literally “went out from their hand.”94 After pro-claiming that he was not yet destined to die, Apollonius “disappeared fromthe courtroom,”95 and in his hearing before Domitian makes a slyly mockingreference to the ability of magicians to break out of bonds: “If you think me a wizard, how will you ever fetter me? And if you fetter me, how can you saythat I am a wizard?”96

An additional point of interest is the gospel tradition that Jesus appeared postmortem in various forms. In addition to his appearance on the road toEmmaus,97 he appears on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, again initiallyunrecognized.98 In the following century the apocryphal gospels and Acts tellof additional appearances of Jesus in the form of “an old man, a youth, aboy...in the form of Paul...in the form of Andrew...To Drusiana he appearsin the form of John, and of a young man...to John he appears as an old man,to James, who was with John, as a youth...and to a young married couple ontheir wedding night he appears as Thomas...The world of the apocryphalacts...is, in many ways, the Hellenistic world in which magic and sorcery werequite at home.”99

According to Origen, Jesus was polymorphic even in life: “Jesus, being one,

had more than one reflection and to those who saw him he did not appear inthe same way...he was not always present nor did he appear even to theapostles themselves...before his Passion he was clearly visible to the multitude,although not always, but after his Passion he no longer appeared in the same way.”100 Lalleman, who has written a valuable discussion of polymorphism inthe apocryphal Acts, points out that “Polymorphy in the narrow sense is notfound in the texts that are older than the [Acts of John] and the [Acts ofPeter] (2nd century AD),”101 but notes a tradition of shape-shifting in the

92 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana , VII, 41, VIII, 12.93

John 5:13.94 John 10:39.95 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius , VIII, 5.96 Ibid, VII, 34.97 Luke 24:15-16.98 John 21:4.99 Goldin, Aspects of Religious Propaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity , 167-168.100 Origen, Contra Celsum II, 64-66.101 Lalleman, The Apocryphal Acts of John, 111.


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spurious ending of Mark, “Afterward, when two of them went walking in thecountry, he appeared in another form.”102

Apologist scholars have proposed a number of supposedly objective criteriaby which the resurrection stories can be positively judged as representing

historical fact, but as Hector Avalos has pointed out in a devastating critique,the very same criteria could be applied with positive results to full-bodiedapparitions of another gospel character, the Virgin Mary.103 Oddly enough,no evangelical scholars seem to take such sightings of Mary seriously, al-though many hundreds of witnesses over the course of centuries have testifiedto the reality of such events.

That the infancy narratives of Mathew and Luke are fictional concoctionsmotivated by apologetic intent is widely recognized in mainstream NewTestament studies. I would argue that the post mortem appearances of Jesusare also amalgamations fabricated from elements widely known and readilyavailable to the gospel writers: the stories of revenants, full-bodied apparitionsof the newly dead, tangible and capable of performing the functions of theliving. Jesus, executed as a criminal, presumably unmarried and childless, anddead before the natural span of life, was a perfect candidate for a restlessghost with magical powers. “The [atelestoi or “uncompleted”] are the deadthat have not received the due rites. Such spirits, like the ones of those whohave died by violence or before their time, cannot achieve rest...”104

Every essential feature of the resurrection stories—sudden appearance as wellas disappearance, the fear and confusion of witnesses, the empty tomb and

tokens found within it, speaking, eating and drinking as proof of life, tangiblepresence, encouraging and admonishing—is also found in contemporaryGreco-Roman ghost stories. Luke, writing a minimum of fifty years after theevents of Jesus’ life, had a rich repertory of legends and popular ghost storiesfrom which to construct the details of his resurrection narratives as well as anabundance of motive to do so.

Besides the doubt simmering with the early Christian community, the resur-rection was unbelievable to potential gentile converts as well—“ When theyheard Paul speak about the resurrection of the dead, some laughed incontempt.”105 Both within the Jewish community as well as the early Chris-

tian movement, there were believers who denied resurrection on principle:“Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a

102 Mark 16:12.103 Avalos, The End of Biblical Studies , 191-194.104 Ogden, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Greece and Rome , 22.105 Acts 17:32, New Living Translation.


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question.” 106 Paul’s insistence on the centrality of the resurrection alsostrongly implies that some within his churches rejected it—“For if the deadare not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.”107 The Roman criticCelsus knew that some Christian sects rejected “the doctrine of the resur-rection according to scripture.”108 Given the defects of the primitive tradition

that recorded female witnesses of dubious reliability finding an empty tomb,doubt from within and without the Christian communities, and competingtheologies, the writers of the gospels had compelling motive to createresurrection narratives. The writers also had an abundance of popular folklorefrom which to draw the elements of their resurrection stories as a comparisonof the gospels with surviving ghost stories clearly demonstrates.

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106 Mark 12:18, NIV.107 1 Corinthians 15:16, NIV.108 Origen, Contra Celsum V, 12.


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Daniel, Robert W. & Franco Maltomini, eds. Supplementum Magicum,Volume I (1990) & Volume II (1992), Westdeutscher Verlag.David, Rosalie. Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt , 2002, Penguin Books.Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the EarlyChristian Writings , 3rd ed, 2004, Oxford University Press.

Eitrem, Samson. “Dreams and Divination in Magic Ritual,” Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, C. Faraone & D. Obbink, eds, 1991,Oxford University Press.Evans, Hilary & Patrick Huyghe. The Field Guide to Ghosts and Other Apparitions , 2000, HarperCollins.Felton, Debbie. Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity , 1999, University of Texas Press.Finucane, Ronald C. Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead and CulturalTransformation, 1996, Prometheus Books.Frankfurter, David. “Fetus Magic and Sorcery Fears in Roman Egypt,”Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 46 (2006): 37-62.Fuhrmann, Christopher J. Policing the Roman Empire: Soldiers, Administration, and Public Order , 2012, Oxford University Press.Goldin, Judah. “The Magic of Magic and Superstition,” Aspects of ReligiousPropaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity , 1976, E. Schüssler Fiorenza,ed, University of Notre Dame Press.Hansen, William. Phlegon of Tralles’ Book of Marvels , 1996, University ofExeter Press. Johnston, Sarah Iles. Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and theDead in Ancient Greece , 1999, University of California Press.Kirby , Peter. “The Case Against the Empty Tomb,” The Empty Tomb: Jesus

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