Easter: A zombie love story
By Gene X. Christian
Image Credit: Gemini
Are you a fan of zombie stories? The Walking Dead, World War Z, Train to Busan (a favorite), Return of the Living Dead …
There are no shortage of stories that tell the tale of a society having to deal with the dead coming back to life, defying scientific laws and nature. Usually, zombies cause trouble. Somtimes, as in the cases of Sean of the Dead or Zombieland, they are downright hilarious.
It’s a crazy thing to consider, right? The dead coming back to life is a pretty wild story. But, we don’t have to look much further than the Easter story to see this is a pretty old plot.
Check this out: After the resurrection, dead people came back to life and roamed the streets as written in Matthew.
“The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.” Matthew 27:52-53
Yowza, that’s wild. Zombies walking around Jerusalem? I haven’t heard of that from any history books.
Technically, Jesus would be considered a zombie as well since he was a corpse raised from the dead supernatrually. So what about Jesus?
“Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.” 1 Corinthians 15:6
Hang around Christians long enough and someone will give the “proof” that the resurrection was a real event because “500 people saw him.” But what kind of proof is there?
There is only that verse in 1 Corinthians. That’s it. There are no non-biblical sources of Jesus occuring to 500 people. There are no eyewitness accounts. All we have to go on is what you read in the bible, and New Testament writings were written decades after the alleged event of Jesus’ ressurection.
That’s not proof, because saying the bible is true because the bible is true doesn’t hold water. That is known as a non-falsifiable claim, meaning it is impossible to prove it false. That does not mean it is true by default. On the contrary, being non-falsifiable means it cannot be tested and confirmed.
To be a Christian, you have to either:
- Believe these events actually happened, although the only source for these events are the aforementioned two passages
- Believe these events are metaphorical
If the belief is that these events were only metaphorical, then it kills the argument that resurrection was a real event. Nice story, no historicity.
If the belief is that these events literally happened, it is not unreasonable to ask for more proof besides the bible. As Carl Sagan once said:
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
The dead coming back to life is a very extraordinary claim, but without extraordinary evidence, it’s just another “trust me, bro” fictional zombie story.
Published on 2025-03-10