Resurrection (uvacrTaaie) of the Body, the re- vivification of the human body after it lias been forsaken by the soul, or the reunion of the soul hereafter to the body which it had occupied in the present world. This is one of the essential points in the creed of Christendom.
I. History of the Doctrine.— It is admitted that there are no traces of such a belief in the earlier Hebrew Scripture. It is not to be found in the Pentateuch, in the historical books, or in the Psalms; for Psa. xlix, 15 does not relate to this subject ; neither does Psa. civ, 29, 30, although so cited by Theodoret and others. The celebrated passage of Job xix, 25 sq. has indeed been
strongly insisted upon in proof of the early belief in this doctrine; but the most learned commentators are agreed, and scarcely any one at the present day disputes, that such a view of the text arises either from mistranslation or misapprehension, and that Job means no more than to express a confident conviction that his then diseased and dreadfully corrupted body should be restored to its former soundness; that he should rise from the depressed state in which he lay to his former prosperity; and that God would manifest ly appear (as was the case) to vindicate his uprightness. That no meaning more recondite is to be found in the text is agreed by Calvin, Mercier, Grotius, Le Clerc, Patrick, Warburton, Durell, Heath, Kenni- cott, Doderlein. Dathe, Eichhorn, Jahn, De Wette, and a host of others. That it alludes to a resurrection is disproved thus: 1. The supposition is inconsistent with the design of the poem and the course of the argument, since the belief which it has been supposed to express, as connected with a future state of retribution, would in a great degree have solved the difficulty on which the whole dispute turns, and could not but have been often alluded to by the speakers. 2. It is inconsistent with the connection of the discourse; the reply of Zophar agreeing, not with the popular interpretation, but with the other. 3. It is inconsistent with many passages in which the same person (Job) longs for death as the end of his miseries, and not as the introduction to a better life (ch. iii; vii, 7, 8; x, 20-22; ch. xiv; xvii, 11-16). 4. It is not proposed as a topic of consolation by any of the friends of Job; nor by Elihu, who acts as a sort of umpire; nor by the Almighty himself in the decision of the controversy. 5. The later Jews, who eagerly sought for every intimation bearing on a future life which their Scriptures might contain, never regarded this as such ; nor is it once referred to by Christ or his apostles. 6. The language, when exactly rendered, con- tains no warrant for such an interpretation ; especially the phrase "yet in my flesh shall I see God," which should rather be rendered " out of my flesh." See Job, Book of.
Isaiah may be regarded as the first Scripture, writer in whom such an allusion can be traced. He compares the restoration of the Jewish people and state to a res- urrection from the dead (xxvi, 19, 20); and in this he is followed by Ezekiel at the time of the exile (ch. xxxvii). From these passages, which are, however, not very clear in their intimations, it may seem that in this, as in other matters, the twilight of spiritual mani- festations brightened as the day-spring from on high approached ; and in Dan. xii. 2 we at length arrive at a clear and unequivocal declaration that those who lie sleeping under the earth shall awake, some to eternal life, and others to everlasting shame and contempt.
In the time of Christ, the belief of a resurrection, in connection with a state of future retribution, was held by the Pharisees and the great body of the Jewish peo- ple, and was only disputed by the Sadducees, Indeed, they seem to have regarded the future life as incom- plete without the body ; and so intimately were the two things — the future existence of the soul and the resur- rection of the body — connected in their minds that any argument which proved the former they considered as proving the latter also (see Matt, xxii, 31; 1 Cor. xv, 32). This belief, however, led their coarse minds into gross and sensuous conceptions of the future state, al- though there were many among the Pharisees who taught that the future body would be so refined as not to need the indulgences which were necessary in the present life; and they assented to our Lord's assertion that the risen saints would not marry, but would be as the angels of God (Matt, xxii, 30; comp. Luke xx, 39). So Paid, in 1 Cor. vi, 13, is conceived to intimate that the necessity of food for subsistence will be abolished in the world to come.
In further proof of the commonness of a belief in the resurrection among the Jews of the time of Christ, see Matt, xxii; Luke xx; John xi, 24; Acts xxiii, 6-8.
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Josephus is not to be relied upon in the account which ' he gives of the belief of his countrymen {Ant. xviii. 2; War, ii. 7), as he appear- to use terms which might suggest one thing to his Jewish readers and another to i he Greeks and Ro man-, u ho scouted the idea of a res- urrection. It is clearly taughl in the Apocryphal books of the Old Test, (Wisd. iii. 1. etc; iv, 15; •-' Mace \ ii. 1 1. 23, 29, etc). Manj Jews believed that the wicked would nol be raised from the dead; but the contrary