The roots of the Easter story: Where did Christian beliefs about Jesus’ resurrection come from?

A mosaic of the Resurrection in the Basilica of St. Paul in Harissa, Lebanon. FredSeiller/Wikimedia Commons by Aaron Gale, West Virginia University As Easter approaches, Christians around the world begin to focus on two of the central tenets of their faith: the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Other charismatic Jewish teachers or miracle workers were active in Judea around the same time, approximately 2,000 years ago. What set Jesus apart was his followers’ belief in his resurrection. For believers, this was not only a miracle, but a sign that Jesus was the long-awaited Jewish messiah, sent to save the people of Israel from their oppressors. But was the idea of a resurrection itself a unique belief in first-century Israel? I am a scholar of ancient Judaism and its connection to the early Christian movement. The Christian concept of Jesus rising from the dead helped shape many of the faith’s key teachings and, ultimately, the new religion’s split from Judaism. Yet religious teachings about resurrection go back many centuries before Jesus walked the earth. There are stories that likely predate early Jewish beliefs by many centuries, such as the Egyptian story of the god Osiris being resurrected by his...