People in the bible and the number of times they died

[jack]

People in the bible	Number of times they died
ElijahA	0
Everyone else	1
LazarusB	2

[A] Edit: Also Enoch (?), Also Mary (according to Catholicism only?)
[B] Edit: Also Widow of Zarephath, also some of http://www.pathlightspress.com/resurrection.html (?)

Comments

[naath]

Some people claim that Mary (mother-of-God) didn't die (but was raised up to heaven instead). But maybe that's only confused Catholics? not sure.

[simont]

I like the fact that even Jesus doesn't qualify for a special line in this table.

[jack]

Exactly, that's what made me start it. I considered saying "everyone else (including Jesus)" or adding a "taken bodily into heaven" column, but decided it was a lot funnier without, on the assumption that people would assume I would not simply have FORGOTTEN Jesus but must have done so deliberately.

I normally don't ever assume it'll be obvious that I left something out deliberately, but I assumed that "Jesus" in a list of "people in the bible who came back to life" people would assume that even I would have to remember :)

[simont]

Although, hmm. What about Enoch?

[pseudomonas]

Enoch got translated :)

[ptc24]

Hmmm, might there be people in Revelation that don't die, what with the rapture and all that? Or do they fail to be named people and thus fail to count?

[jack]

Yeah, I just thought about that when people started naming other bodily-assumptions. I've decided to go out on a limb and say that Revelations is prophecy that hasn't come true yet so those people won't be taken bodily into heaven YET (if they ever will)

[ptc24]

Hmmm, if you take that approach, then every person in Revelation has to be counted in the zero row, even those that do die (the column says "Number of times they died"). Unless you use the whole issue of prophecy to exclude them from being people in the bible at all.

Also, are the characters in parables people? Perhaps you can say that parables and prophecies etc. are not events that are directly described as having taken place.

[jack]

:) I'm not sure how I describe it, but I think "not people in the bible" has to be how it is.

If I go into a bar, and tell someone about Jesus, and then die, and someone asks "how many people here died", I think you have to say "just me", even if I described someone else dying in the past/future...

[cjwatson]

The Catholic tradition is that Mary died, but was then assumed body and soul into heaven before her body might otherwise have been corrupted. (See e.g. the Catholic Encyclopaedia's article on the subject.) I'm not sure what the Orthodox tradition is exactly, but this predates the Great Schism so I should think most of it's common to both. Orthodox tradition is often rather richer about this kind of thing, and for instance I've heard of a tradition of theirs that some even quite modern holy men aren't touched by death's decay.

There was a belief at one point, not nowadays widely credited although I understand the LDS still hold it, that St. John was assumed body and soul into heaven. There's a lovely passage in Canto XXV of Dante's Paradiso in which Dante meets St. John, and inadvertently blinds himself trying to peer inside his celestial light to see if there's a body hiding in there. St. John teases him about it and says that that was just Christ and Mary.

[jack]

:) Thank you

[liv]

According to Jewish tradition, other people in the 0 group include Enoch (as previously mentioned), Serach the daughter of Asher, and Jonah. There are probably some others I'm forgetting. They all get to be harbringers of the Messiah in one way or another, though Elijah is the most important. Jonah is going to slay the Leviathan in order to prepare the feast at the end of time, and Serach is going to teach Torah to all the women who got excluded from study by misogynists. Enoch I think is just going to do weird shit.

Others who might arguably count for two: Isaac (some traditions say he actually was sacrificed and then brought back), the widow's son resurrected by Elijah, the other kid resurrected by Elisha (those last two are mentioned in your link).

These guys might come under the heading of metaphors rather than events that actually happened, but: the Psalmist who says "I shall not die, but live, and declare the deeds of the Eternal" could count as 0, and the whole bunch of people in the valley of dry bones who are brought back to life might count as 2 (although Ezekiel doesn't explicitly state that they are resurrected to normal mortal life, perhaps they just live forever).