Resurrection
With the advent of written records, the earliest known recurrent theme of resurrection was in Egyptian and Canaanite religions, which had cults of dying-and-rising gods such as Osiris and Baal.
There are stories in Buddhism wherein the power of resurrection was allegedly demonstrated in the Chan or Zen tradition[example needed].
Sir James Frazer, in his book The Golden Bough, relates to these dying-and-rising gods,[9] but many of his examples, according to various scholars, distort the sources.
Achilles, after being killed, was snatched from his funeral pyre by his divine mother, Thetis, and brought to an immortal existence in Leuce, the Elysian plains, or the Islands of the Blessed.
According to Herodotus's Histories, the seventh-century BC sage Aristeas of Proconnesus was first found dead, after which his body disappeared from a locked room.
[13] For example, Asclepius was killed by Zeus for using herbs to resurrect the dead, but, by his father Apollo's request, was subsequently immortalized as a star.
[19][full citation needed] Writing his Lives of Illustrious Men (Parallel Lives) in the first century, the Middle Platonic philosopher Plutarch in his chapter on Romulus gave an account of the king's mysterious disappearance and subsequent deification, comparing it to Greek tales such as the physical immortalization of Alcmene and Aristeas the Proconnesian, "for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's work-shop, and his friends coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton".
Plutarch openly scorned such beliefs held in ancient Greek religion, writing, "many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal.
"[20] Likewise, he writes that while something within humans comes from the gods and returns to them after death, this happens "only when it is most completely separated and set free from the body, and becomes altogether pure, fleshless, and undefiled.
One is the legend of Bodhidharma,[22] the Indian master who brought the Ekayana school of India that subsequently became Chan Buddhism to China.
These resurrections included the daughter of Jairus shortly after death, a young man in the midst of his own funeral procession, and Lazarus of Bethany, who had been buried for four days.
[citation needed] St. Columba supposedly raised a boy from the dead in the land of Picts[25] and St. Nicholas is said to have resurrected pickled children from a brine barrel during a famine by making the sign of the cross.
According to Paul the Apostle, the entire Christian faith hinges upon the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus and the hope for life after death.
Brichto states that it is "not mere sentimental respect for the physical remains that is...the motivation for the practice, but rather an assumed connection between proper sepulture and the condition of happiness of the deceased in the afterlife".
[52] Anastasis or Ana-stasis is a concept in contemporary philosophy emerging from the works of Jean-Luc Nancy, Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan.
For example, if a man disappears or dies in London and an exact "replica" suddenly re-appears in New York, both entities should be regarded as the same, especially if they share physical and psychological characteristics.
[58] Cryonics is the low-temperature freezing (usually at −196 °C or −320.8 °F or 77.1 K) of a human corpse or severed head, with the speculative hope that resurrection may be possible in the future.
[66][67] Ray Kurzweil, American inventor and futurist, believes that when his concept of singularity comes to pass, it will be possible to resurrect the dead by digital recreation.
[65] Issues include post-mortem privacy,[73] and potential use of personalised digital twins and associated systems by big data firms and advertisers.
[74] Related alternative approaches of digital immortality include gradually "replacing" neurons in the brain with advanced medical technology (such as nanobiotechnology) as a form of mind uploading (see also: wetware computer).
[79][82] It could be used to preserve donor organs but may also be developed to be useful for revival in medical emergencies by buying "more time for doctors to treat people whose bodies were starved of oxygen, such as those who died from drowning or heart attacks".
[87] Development of advanced live support measures "including cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and positive pressure ventilation (PPV)" brought the interdependence of cessation of brain function and loss of respiration and circulation and "the traditional definition of death into question"[88] and further developments upend more "definitions of mortality".
His first project is connected with collecting and synthesizing decayed remains of dead based on "knowledge and control over all atoms and molecules of the world".
Nevertheless, Fedorov noted that even if a soul is destroyed after death, Man will learn to restore it whole by mastering the forces of decay and fragmentation.
[94] Both the Church of Perpetual Life and the Terasem Movement consider themselves transreligions and advocate for the use of technology to indefinitely extend the human lifespan.
The term comes from Haitian folklore, where a zombie is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magic.
In ancient Greek religion, this was a way the gods made some physically immortal, including such figures as Cleitus, Ganymede, Menelaus, and Tithonus.
[97] In the Buddhist Epic of King Gesar, also spelled as Geser or Kesar, at the end, chants on a mountain top and his clothes fall empty to the ground.
[100] B. Traven, author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, wrote that the Inca Virococha arrived at Cusco (in modern-day Peru) and the Pacific seacoast where he walked across the water and vanished.
In the Synoptic Gospels, after hundreds of years these two earlier Biblical heroes suddenly reappear, and are reportedly seen walking with Jesus, then again vanish.
