Monday, April 01, 2013

The Walking Dead

EASTER THOUGHTS FROM JARED CALAWAY: Creepiest Part of Jesus' Death and Resurrection in the Gospels.

Matthew 27:52-53 is an odd passage that leaves many loose ends and open questions. Why does it say "many bodies" as though the souls might be elsewhere, leaving ... zombies? What were the reactions of the hapless folk in the Holy City when confronted by these reanimated bodies? Joy at seeing lost loved ones again? Terror? Confusion? Baseball bats? What happened to these bodies? Did they have souls and settle in and rejoin society for an extra lifetime? Did they go back to their graves after a while and climb back in? Were they all slain again by the living? Or did they shuffle off into the wilderness to prey on passers by?

The implications of the passage arising from an intertextual reading with the zombie apocalypse have been noted before, and I have commented on them here.