ABSTRACT
Having looked at the rise of interest in the soul, it is now time to turn towards the body. Undoubtedly, the most spectacular religious doctrine regarding the body is resurrection. For Greeks and Romans this was an unthinkable idea. The terse observation of a character in Aeschylus’ Eumenides (648) that ‘once a man has died, there is no resurrection’,1 reflected a widely held feeling, and Christian apologists and theologians would spend an enormous amount of energy in explaining and defending this central part of their religion, beginning with Luke’s (Acts 17) presentation of Paul’s oration before the Areopagus in which the resurrection of Jesus guarantees, so to speak, the resurrection of us all.2 Yet, the resurrection has been an integral part of Christian doctrine ever since the Church began formulating the creed in compact form in the so-called symbola (the same word the Orphics used for their ‘passports’ to the underworld: Ch. 2.2).3 Naturally, in such a confession of faith, doubts and nuances yield to confident formulations. However, a historian of religion, whether a Christian or not, has the duty to go beyond such symbola in order to investigate the origins and development of this central Christian doctrine.
