Why this story matters
(commentary on Matthew 27:51-53)
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Introduction
This story presents a formidable challenge to those who claim everything in the Bible is literal history. It involves one of the most astounding miracles in the entire New Testament, yet it is only recorded in the gospel of Matthew. No other chronicler of Jesus' death and resurrection even alludes to it. Logically this means one of two things. Either none of the other gospel writers knew of the story, or none of them thought this apocalyptic phenomenon was worth mentioning. Of course, if it happened, it would be virtually impossible for the other gospel writers not to have known about it. So that leaves us with the highly implausible alternative that they didn't think it was worth mentioning. This raises serious questions regarding the historical authenticity of Matthew’s claim.
Furthermore, even if we give Matthew the benefit of the doubt and accept that this really happened, it just raises more questions that are hard for believers to deal with. In fact, these questions tend to produce conflicting and sometimes completely contradictory answers depending on who you ask. For example, what did the saints do after they had appeared to people in Jerusalem? Did they ascend to heaven like Jesus? Or did they live on until they died of natural causes? It depends who you ask. No one seems to have any clear answers and there's a good reason for this. No matter what answer one gives, there are logical problems that arise from it. So was this an historical event, or was this creative fiction by Matthew for the purpose of making the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ death seem more powerful?
When were the saints raised?
One of the most confusing aspects of the story concerns the timing of the saints’ return to life. Were they raised to life at the moment of Jesus’ death, or at his resurrection days later? This this is an important issue with serious theological implications. If the text is read in a plain manner, it appears that the saints were raised back to life at the moment of Jesus’ death and then went into the city after his resurrection:
“At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” (Matthew 27: 51-53 NIV)
On the surface this seems pretty straight forward. But this interpretation creates a problem. If this is true, we have a very odd scene where freshly resuscitated corpses are hanging around in or near their tombs for three days waiting for Jesus to rise from the dead. What were they doing during this time, twiddling their thumbs?
To avoid this problem, some apologists will say that the saints did not rise from the dead at the time of Jesus' death. Instead, they rose at the moment of his resurrection three days later. To support their claim, they present a different translation that's a little more ambiguous. For example, the King James Bible translates the passage like this:
“And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many."
This translation is interpreted as saying that the saints were not raised until after Jesus’ resurrection. Thus, they rose from the dead and went into the city on the same day. This conveniently solves the problem of hanging around in the cemetery with nothing to do, but is it accurate? Well, even Christian scholars are willing to acknowledge that the proper interpretation is that they rose at the point of Jesus’ death.
In the book, Matthew, scholar Thomas G. Long, tells us, “Amazing events now occur: an earthquake rattles through the land, the curtain in the temple is torn top to bottom, tombs are opened, and saints rise from the dead. After Jesus’ own resurrection, these newly raised saints appear to many in Jerusalem” (John Knox Press, 1997, p.319). And in the book The Words and Works of Christ, authors J. Dwight Pentecost and John Danilson write, “Although raised at the time of Jesus’ death, these saints did not appear in Jerusalem until after the resurrection of Christ” (Zondervan, 2000, p.488). In a 652 page tome, also called Matthew, renowned scholar Robert Horton Gundry studied this passage carefully and surmised, “Thus Matthew probably means that the saints stayed in their tombs for several days even though their bodies had been raised to life” (Eerdmans, 1994, p.576).
Even the massive 808 page apologetics work, Hard Sayings of the Bible, can’t disagree with this conclusion. Written by four Christian authors, including revered writers Walter Kaiser and F. F. Bruce, the consensus is, “The righteous dead are raised by the power of the crucifixion, according to Matthew, but they do not go into the city yet…They wait in their tombs until his resurrection occurs and then leave the tombs” (InterVarsity Press, 1996, p. 402).
So even according to conservative Christian Bible scholars, the dead saints were raised at the moment of Christ’s death and apparently hung around their graves for three days doing...well, I’ll leave that up to the imagination of the reader. Whatever you choose to imagine, it's not a very credible scene and this begins to undermine the reliability of Matthew's account.
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