Bible Zombies: The Gospel Truth
An Easter Story
INT. UPPER WRITERS’ ROOM – DAY (AD 34)
A small, dusty room in ancient Judea. Four men in robes sit around a crude wooden table littered with scrolls, quills, and half-eaten loaves of bread. A jar of wine sweats on the table. The energy is tense.
MATTHEW (pacing, animated)
Guys. Guys. Earthquake. Curtain tears. Jesus dies. Boom! The tombs crack open.
Cut to: Sunday. He’s up. Dead people start strolling into town. Prophets or patriarchs or, I don’t know, townspeople who croaked last month.
DR. LUKE
(scowling)
None of my patients, I hope. This isn’t Night of the Living Dead, Matthew. Stay grounded.
JOHN
(sipping wine, eyes dreamy)
I’m opening with cosmic metaphors and existential light. Y’all can fight over tomb logistics.
MARK
(confused)
What’s Sunday?
MATTHEW
C’mon guys, have some vision. It’s bold. It’s fresh. It’s way more interesting than three pages of genealogy.
MARK
(leaning back, skeptical)
I’m just saying, if it did happen, someone else would’ve mentioned it.
LUKE
(muttering)
You’re gonna get us kicked out of canon, Matt.
JOHN
Or crucified.
MATTHEW
(shrugs)
I’ll give the people what they want. Something memorable. I can’t be an accountant forever.
(beat)
Hmm, how many people come back to life? That’s gonna mess up our census count.
I used to have a student who would go to Barnes & Noble1 and put Bibles in the fiction section. An offensive prank to many? Sure. But sometimes the bible doesn’t help itself.
In his gospel, Matthew actually wrote this weird bit, one of the most bizarre verses in ancient literature. Like, NBD but BTW corpses rose and hit the town.
“The tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” - Matthew 27:52–53 (NIV)
Just a casual, drive-by zombie resurrection report. Bold choice, Matthew. Maybe he was a few denarii short of a full tithe.
The great painters of yore2 even skipped this one, although a few took a stab at The Harrowing of Hell. Check out the works of Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch if you wanna see what dropping acid felt like in the 15th century. He was basically the medieval lovechild of Salvador Dalí and Wes Craven. Bosch painted scenes like he’d just walked out of a sermon, taken a bad mushroom, and decided to illustrate the entire Book of Revelation.
People who literally believe every word in the bible mostly ignore this passage. Weekend At Bernie’s: Jerusalem is simply too strange for them. The rest of us have questions, sir.
The tombs cracked open when Jesus died, but the bodies came out after he rose? So… were they just standing there in their tombs waiting? What’s another couple days compared to eternity?
Matthew gives no timeline. How long were they up? Hours? Months? ARE THEY STILL AROUND TODAY?
“Appeared to many” is hilariously vague. Did they knock on doors? Go shopping at the market? Skip town because they still owed money to a bookie?
Fortunately for you, I’m a trained historian. One fun fact lost to history is how these walking corpses led to the first recorded instance of brunch.
And it came to pass that Mary was just about to serve beverages to Lazarus and friends after temple. Tomato juice for the ladies, wine for the guys. When suddenly ol’ Esther—dead and gone seven years—just strolled in, badly needing a shower and moisturizer.
Mary was so stunned she jumped, spilling tomato juice all over her tunic and into the wine jar. Lazarus rushed to help, of course, saying “Mary, you look bloody!” But it was just juice, which mixed well with the booze. That was the first brunch, which also happens to be where Bloody Marys were invented.
I bet the experience was no joke for some poor schmuck who came back to life only to head home and find his wife remarried to some other guy.
Mister Corpse: Who’s this guy?!
The Wife: What d’ya want from me?
Mister Corpse: I’ve only been gone, wait, what year is it?
The Wife: It was till death do us part. You died, so we parted!
We’ll never understand Matthew’s vision.
What I do know is that we love to tell dark stories when times are terrible. There’s a reason zombies first became popular during the Great Depression. The undead had an especially big year in 1968, a miserable time to endure for people in the U.S. Young George Romero (and Pittsburgh icon) was inspired to create his masterpiece Night of the Living Dead.
Better to traumatize ourselves through entertainment when real life is so terrifying and depressing.
No wonder The Last of Us on HBO is a smash hit these days. If you’re not familiar, The Last of Us is a horrifying zombie show that makes The Walking Dead feel like the Teletubbies. But reality in America currently makes The Last of Us feel like The Wiggles, so I guess it’s a wash.
If you think it’s bad now, imagine being an early Christian in the Roman empire when people got nailed to trees and fed to lions. I learned all about that and much more from Mrs. Smith in 5th grade. She told us about Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, a 16th century who’s who of murdered Christians. Lots of beheadings and burnings and more. I learned what being flayed alive was. Fun stuff for a 9-year-old who wasn’t allowed to watch scary movies. Cuz, you know, wouldn’t want me to see anything inappropriate lol.
John Foxe started writing his Christian Faces of Death stories while on the run from Mary I, aka Bloody Mary3, who came to power in 1553. Her ascension was a middle finger to her dad Henry VIII. She fulfilled her pledge to Make England Roman Catholic Again (MERCA) and went on the warpath against Protestants. Nearly 300 were executed during her short, five year reign. Many were burned.
Foxe got the heck up out of there and fled to Switzerland. He wanted to document all the horrible things that had happened to Christians so future generations could also be traumatized. This is why modern day Evangelicals are obsessed with believing they are actually persecuted. Living for Jesus doesn’t feel as important if you don’t have to suffer for it like in the old days.
Foxe tells the stories of early Christian murder victims like he’s reading the winning answer from a game of Clue. According to tradition, he wrote, it was the Apostle Matthew, in Ethiopia, by a halberd.4
Writers have always reflected the dark times they inhabit. It’s been that way since the first Christians and continues today with popular fiction such as The Last of Us and Fox News.
I’m glad Matthew put that wild story in his gospel. Maybe he just wanted to keep future believers on their toes. It’s like saying, “Okay guys, if you ever pretend to follow Jesus but really only want to support the most evil people and policies you can find, just remember: your dead ancestors will probably come back from the dead to haunt you.”
Annnnd scene.
Barnes & Noble is a bookstore, which is a place Americans used to go to read books, which are little printed miracles that contain the wonder, beauty, and meaning of life. People used to read books to understand what was good and how to recognize evil and fight against it.
Literally, “ye olden times before.” Probably. Maybe.
Callback. Nailed it.
Foxe said it was around 60 AD, but he didn’t even have Wikipedia.
This is super fun. Excellent Bloody Mary set up and call back. That Bosch painting is my laptop sticker