Resurrecting Easter: Hunting for the Original Resurrection Image

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What is the earliest depiction of Jesus’s resurrection?

In the late fall of 1999, our friends Marianne Wells Borg—then a canon at an institute for spiritual development at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon—and her husband, Marcus Borg, invited us to be coleaders with them on an annual trip to Turkey (guiding 40 people). Our purpose was to locate Paul in his original matrix of Roman Imperial theology and liberate him from his later matrix in Reformation Protestant theology.

Granted that annual trip to Turkey, we soon started to take an extra week before or after the official tour to visit other countries in that general area. We found ourselves again and again deep in the world of Eastern Christianity—from Orthodox Russia to Coptic Egypt, from Byzantine Tiber to Syriac Tigris, from Serbia and Kosovo to Romania, and across the Mediterranean from Sicily through Cyprus to Crete. Across 15 years of travel in those realms of Byzantine gold, we saw again and again the profoundly divergent imagery of Jesus’s resurrection in Eastern (as distinct from Western) Christianity. We moved inexorably from the history of art and details of iconography into interpretations of meaning. Here we summarize our findings around three major facts.¹

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The first fact: All the main events in the life of Jesus, from the Annunciation to Ascension, are directly described in the New Testament and, granted creative ability, can be depicted in any artistic medium—with one exception. This striking exception is the most important event of them all, the Resurrection itself, which is never directly described in the New Testament.

Jesus’s resurrection is described repeatedly, of course, by the Empty Tomb Tradition, with either female or male disciples (e.g., Matthew 28:1–8; Luke 24:1–12), or by the Risen Vision Tradition, again with either female or male disciples (e.g., Matthew 28:9–10; Luke 24:13–49). But those are indirect and not direct descriptions of the Resurrection. They are effects, results, and consequences—but not the cause, instant, and moment itself. The actual event of Jesus’s resurrection is never directly described anywhere in the New Testament.

The second fact: Within that absence of direct description, Christianity eventually produced two direct depictions of the resurrection moment (Easter), and they are utterly different from each other. In Christianity’s first millennium, either depiction might have been normative everywhere, but in its second millennium the West kept one and the East the other. Looking at the earliest extant case of each one emphasizes their radical divergence.

During the last week of April 2013, we were based at Avignon to explore the Provençal remnants of Roman Imperial theology at the time of Paul. Our primary focus was on sites and museums in Glanum, Orange, Nîmes, Arles, and Vaison-la-Romaine around the lower Rhône River in France. Despite this primary interest, we kept seeing examples of a specific type of sarcophagus, dated 350–400 C.E., and associated with the great necropolis of the Alyscamps (or Elysian Fields) at Arles.

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The type was established by the central image on the front panel. Depictions on either side of this archetype varied widely in form—divided in four or six niches or else in undivided flows—and in content, showing the sufferings, healings, or apostles of Jesus. Despite all such variations, the central image remained consistently the same. Whether preserved today as artifacts in museums, used as altars in churches, or extant only in records, there is not a single undamaged central image among all the Provençal examples of this type of sarcophagus. Impious revolutionary vandalism or pious pilgrim looting had removed it—either totally or partially.²

It was, in fact, only two weeks later that we finally realized the importance of that central panel. We went directly from France to Italy and met our tour group. On May 13, 2013, we were at the Vatican’s Pio Cristiano Museum of Christian antiquities with its multiple examples of this same type of sarcophagus, most of which have fully preserved central panels.

A museum sign in Italian and English calls them “Sarcophagi of the Resurrection” and explains them as “a type called Anastasis, the Greek word for ‘Resurrection.’” The central image of the front panel shows a triumphal banner with the Chi-Rho symbol (standing for the first two letters of Christ’s title in Greek), a laurel wreath, and doves.

It was then, looking at the Vatican’s undamaged examples, that we realized what we had not grasped in Provence: The central image of this sarcophagus-type is the earliest attempt at a direct depiction of Jesus’s resurrection.

Although the only complete images of that central panel are now in the Vatican, this sarcophagus type derived originally from Arles, a site possibly more important than Rome in the late fourth century.

This inaugural Easter image had one very obvious problem. Jesus was physically and bodily present in all life imagery on other sarcophagi and on all other niches of these resurrection sarcophagi except that central panel. It was unlikely, therefore, that this image—with Jesus represented as a Chi-Rho symbol—would ever become the normative Easter icon.

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It had to—and did—evolve into a physical and bodily Jesus resting in the tomb, sitting up in the tomb, stepping out of the tomb, standing atop the tomb, and, finally, hovering above the tomb. That development of what we call the Individual Resurrection Tradition with Jesus rising clear of the tomb, arising triumphant but completely alone, began in the mid-ninth century but was firmly established only by the 14th century.

While that vision of Jesus’s individual resurrection was still in its hybrid and undeveloped status, another fully formed vision appeared toward the end of the seventh century. This was a very different image from the Individual Resurrection Tradition, and we saw the earliest extant example of it—only three days later that same May—across the Tiber in the Santa Maria Antiqua complex at the foot of Rome’s Palatine Hill.

In 537, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, having reconquered Italy, controlled once more—and indeed to its greatest extent ever—a united East-and-West Roman Empire. During the next 200 years, during what Roman Catholicism calls the “Byzantine Captivity of the Papacy,” the emperor in Constantinople determined the selection of the pope in Rome.

In the sixth and seventh centuries, many ancient buildings—especially in Rome’s Imperial core—were converted into Byzantine Christian churches. They were deliberately intended as Christian counter-monuments and anti-memorials to the pagan monuments and memorials all around them.

We were first inside Santa Maria Antiqua Church in 1993, but our 2013 visit was focused especially on these first extant images of the new and alternative Easter imagery dated between 705 and 707.³ (Remember, we are in papal Rome but viewing imagery from a Byzantine pope.)

Halfway down the left aisle of the church is a now-closed doorway to the Palatine Ramp, and to the right of that entrance is a fresco with a radically new vision of Easter:

The risen Jesus moves to viewer left with elegant robes streaming backward from the force of his movement. He holds a scroll in his left hand, his halo has a cruciform insert, and traces of a white mandorla (or almond-shaped aureola of heavenly light) are still discernible around him.

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Jesus’s right foot tramples on the head of Death’s personification, Hades (as a character), warden of the ancient prison house of Hades (as a place). Jesus’s right hand reaches down to grasp the limp wrist of Adam and pull him bodily from his opened sepulcher. At the same time Hades’s right hand seeks unsuccessfully to pull Adam back down by his emerging knee.

Eve is behind Adam. She is fully upright and clear of her sepulcher. Although she reaches her right hand out in supplication to Jesus, her wrist is not grasped as is that of Adam.

This scene is the core of what we call the Universal Resurrection Tradition, in which Jesus raises with him the whole human race, embodied in humanity’s First Parents, Adam and Eve.

Just as the Individual Resurrection Tradition developed from 850 to 1350, so this Universal Resurrection Tradition developed from 700 to 1200. Very early, Jesus replaces that scroll of a philosopher with the cross of a martyr. Very late, Eve balances Adam on the other side of Jesus, and eventually each gets an equal-opportunity liberating hand.

Here is the question I am forced to ask: Which artistic Easter tradition, the individual or the universal, is in better continuity and closer conformity with the understanding of Jesus’s resurrection in the New Testament? Put another way, if the Corinthians had asked Paul to depict what he imagined when he wrote that Jesus “was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:4), would his drawing have been individual or universal?

Recall that Paul writes of Jesus arising as “the first fruits of those who had slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20, author’s translation). Matthew describes how026 “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his [Jesus’s] resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many” (Matthew 27:52–53 ). Further, the resurrection story in the extra-Biblical Gospel of Peter includes both Jesus and “them that sleep” (41).

However we understand and enumerate these Sleepers, they are clearly plural. Yet the Individual Resurrection Tradition shows Jesus arising totally alone. What about the Sleepers? The Biblical Easter must, even if not universal or even communal, at least be plural.

Next, Paul’s argument with the Corinthians is that, “If there is no resurrection of the dead [Greek: ὰνάστασις νεκρῶν], then Christ has not been raised … For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised” (1 Corinthians 15:13, 1 Corinthians 15:16). Paul never considers that “resurrection” might be a special individual favor for Jesus, whom Christians believe to be the Messiah, Lord, and Son of God. Such a privilege would not be resurrection but ascension, assumption, or apotheosis—as with Enoch, Moses (possibly), and Elijah.⁴

In pre-Christian and Christian Judaism, “resurrection” meant the universal “resurrection of the dead” and could be used of Jesus only as the start of that process for everyone. As such, “resurrection” necessarily included the past as well as the future, the past Sleepers and the future Risers.

Jesus lived, died, and rose as a Jew. Within Jewish tradition, the claim of his resurrection (Greek027: ἀνάστασις) can only mean that the general resurrection of the dead (Greek: ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν) has now begun with him. Such an event would never have been understood to be limited to Jesus the individual; rather, it had to be universal. The East’s universal Anastasis is closer to that vision than the West’s individual Resurrection.

The third—and final—fact: Both the Individual and the Universal Resurrection Traditions derive their basic iconographic models from images of military victory on imperial coinage.⁵

The Individual Resurrection Tradition’s model on those Arles sarcophagi came from Constantinian coinage celebrating military victory and minted precisely at Arles (Roman Arelate) in the earlier fourth century.

The obverse of a bronze coin—dated to 333 and mint-marked “Arelate”—shows the right-facing head of CONSTANTINUS MAX[IMUS] AUG[USTUS]. The reverse says GLORIA EXERC[IT]VS (glory of the army) and depicts two legionary standards in the center with a soldier armed with spear and shield facing inward to each.

The obverse of a slightly later coin (dated to 336) from the same Arles mint is identical in image and record. So is the reverse save for one very significant change: Those twin armed soldiers now face inward toward a single legionary standard, and this is now Constantine’s battle standard with its Chi-Rho monogram of Jesus.

The Universal Resurrection Tradition’s model derived from Theodosian victory coinage in the later fourth century. It did so, in fact, by combining two such images, one for the trampling down of Hades and the other for the raising up of Adam and Eve.

Imperial coinage could depict military victory brutally and accurately as the trampling down of one’s opponent with the ancient symbol of a conquering foot on the captive’s neck. This is how it appears, for example, on a bronze coin dated from 383 to 388 mint-marked “Nicomedia.” The obverse shows the right-facing D[OMINUS] N[OSTER] THEODOSIUS P[IUS] F[ELIX] AUG[USTUS] (our lord Theodosius Pius Fortunate Augustus). The reverse says VIRTVS EXERCITI (courage of the army) and depicts the emperor standing to right, holding a standard in his right hand, globe in left, and left foot on prostrate opponent.

In terms of propaganda, however, imperial coinage could also depict military victory not as trampling down but as raising up—not as abject domination but as happy liberation! Another bronze with the same Theodosian obverse, for example, has a very different reverse. Dated between 378 and 383 and mint-marked “Siscia,” the reverse says REPARATIO REIPVB[LICAE] (restoration of the Republic). The image shows the standing emperor facing out, his left hand holding the globe surmounted by Victory offering him a wreath. With his right hand, he raises a woman whose crowned figure represents the oikumene (inhabited world).

There are both good and bad results from these resurrection traditions originating from images celebrating military victory on imperial coinage. The good one is that, since coinage was the only mass medium of visual communication in antiquity, the claim of resurrection as victory was immediately and widely understood by all. The bad result was that, since imperial victory was politically violent, Jesus’s paschal victory might be seen as religiously violent.

Does the Universal Resurrection Tradition point to a violent or a nonviolent reality, to a violent or nonviolent victory of028 a violent or nonviolent Jesus and a violent or nonviolent God?

Focus once more on the four major protagonists at the core of this Eastern tradition—Jesus, Hades, Adam, and Eve—and recall that Jesus initially carried the scroll of a philosopher. Look next at a more fully developed example from the 1400s on the outside of the Church of St. George from the Voronet Monastery in Romanian Bucovina. Focus still on the four core characters and especially on Jesus (David and Solomon are recognizable at left, John the Baptist at right).

Jesus is emphasized three ways as crucified, as the one executed for nonviolent resistance to the violent normalcy of civilization embodied there and then by imperial Rome’s Mediterranean globalization: his halo has a cruciform insert; the flattened bifold doors of Hades are set in a cruciform pattern; and, above all else, he carries a very large cross in his left hand. Jesus is now a nonviolent martyr by violence and not just a nonviolent philosopher against violence.

Violent resistance means the leader and his closest companions are all crucified together: “A man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection” (Mark 15:7). Nonviolent resistance means that the leader alone is crucified: “The authors of sedition and tumult, or those who stir up the people, shall, according to their rank, either be crucified, thrown to wild beasts, or deported to an island” (The Opinions of Julius Paulus Addressed to His Son 5.22.1). Jesus was crucified, but his followers were not arrested with him. This does not mean Pilate considered him “harmless.”⁶ It means Pilate recognized Jesus as a nonviolent activist and executed him appropriately according to Roman law.

The cross becomes so standard in the Universal Resurrection Tradition that, by 1200, when Jesus grasps both Adam and Eve and his two hands are fully occupied, an angel often arrives to carry the cross for him. In other words, the East’s Universal Resurrection Tradition is never separated from Jesus’s individual execution.

How, then, does this individual execution correlate with a Universal Resurrection in the iconography of Eastern Christianity’s Easter vision? What is the meaning of this universal Easter image when put verbally rather than visually?

Escalatory violence has been our human drug-of-choice since the Neolithic Revolution was first consummated on the plains of Mesopotamia as the “Cradle of Civilization.” You can see civilization’s progress from Cain to Lamech in Genesis 4 and notice there the Bible’s first mention of “sin” (4:7).^a

Only nonviolent resistance to violence as embodied in Jesus can save humanity as embodied in Adam and Eve from extinction as embodied in Hades, the personification of Death and warden of its prison house. This is not prophecy but trajectory: It took us only 3,000 years to get from an iron sword to an atom bomb, so what will we get in the next 3,000 years?

All of the main events in Jesus’s life are directly described in the New Testament— except for the Resurrection. This central event happens off-screen and is not directly witnessed. As a result, early Christians created two very different depictions of this moment. Join the Crossans as they hunt for the earliest images of Jesus’s resurrection—and attempt to resurrect the original Easter vision.