A ‘Better Resurrection’ (Hebrews 11.35),but Better Than What?

Abstract

Nearly all agree that the ‘better resurrection’ (κρείττων ἀνάστασις) of Heb. 11.35 refers to the eschatological, general resurrection, but the majority view that it is to be compared merely with the resuscitations of the women’s sons by Elijah and Elisha stands on weaker foundations than is usually recognized. Building on Jon Levenson’s work on ancient, scriptural notions of death and resurrection (2006), the article shows through a close reading of Heb. 11.35 in context that the ‘better resurrection’ is compared most immediately with the ‘redemption’ from captivity the verse’s Maccabean martyrs reject, i.e., a temporary return to life understood as a kind of resurrection, but also with the resuscitations of the faithful women’s sons. Together with the resurrection of Isaac ‘in a symbol’ (ἐν παραβολῇ, 11.19), this conclusion suggests that Hebrews’ catalogue of Israel’s heroes is marked throughout by the proleptic experience of resurrection from the invasive realm of death.

That the ‘better resurrection’ (κρείττων ἀνάστασις) hoped for by the martyrs of Heb. 11.35 refers to the general, eschatological resurrection of the dead approaches the eminent status of a truth universally acknowledged. ¹ But than what is that resurrection better? The majority view holds that since the resuscitations granted to the previous exemplars, the faithful women of 11.35a, are explicitly designated as ‘resurrection’ (ἀνάστασις), the comparison in the ‘better resurrection’ must look back exclusively to those resuscitations. ² Older commentators, however, often understood the author to be comparing choices actually available to the verse’s martyrs: either obtaining the general resurrection of the dead or a temporary but dramatic return to life through a redemption (ἀπολύτρωσις, 11.35b) from captivity, understood metaphorically as a resurrection from grave circumstances. ³

This article, by contrast, will suggest that the famously capable homilist who authored Hebrews plays skilfully off both comparative options at once. ⁴ Most immediately, the ‘better resurrection’ (11.35c) is ‘better’ than the temporary ‘redemption’ the verse’s martyrs reject, which would have been a ‘resurrection’ from the throes of death, but it is also ‘better’ than the one-off examples of resurrection granted to the faithful women (11.35a). This argument builds on the groundbreaking work of Jon Levenson (2006), who has extensively shown that resurrection from the dead, and the realm of death itself, are wider ranging concepts in the ancient thought world of Israel’s scriptures than they are from the vantage point of modernity. That scriptural universe has by all accounts profoundly shaped the imagination of the homilist who authored Hebrews. ⁵ What Levenson’s work recaptures for modern readers is the ability to recognize those such as the tortured captives of Heb. 11.35 as already in the realm of death before their martyrdom. The ‘redemption’ offered to them would have been, I will argue, a kind of ‘resurrection’ in the ancient, scriptural sense Levenson identifies (described more fully in the next section). Furthermore, as we will see, there are other crucial indicators that our homilist has a more capacious view of ‘resurrection’ than is usually recognized. ⁶

An implication of this argument is that the author of Hebrews may understand ‘resurrection’ proleptically to characterize historic Israel’s experience more thoroughly than is typically thought. Recognizing this may help to negotiate the well-known tension between statements in Hebrews that Abraham and other faithful heroes did ‘obtain’ or ‘reach’ (ἐπιτυγχάνω) the promise (e.g., 6.15; 11.33) and statements that they did not ‘receive’ (κομίζω or λαμβάνω) the promise (e.g., 11.13, 39). It may, moreover, help to articulate a point of continuity between the faith and experience of Israel and of Christ-believers in an epistle which has often been subjected to full-throttle supersessionist interpretations, particularly in relation to its use of the term ‘better’ (κρείττων). ⁷

Nevertheless, despite having considerable interpretative consequences, this exegetical question has never to my knowledge been pursued at length. ⁸ Therefore, a fresh analysis of this unresolved issue is called for. This article undertakes that task, beginning with a close look at the place of Heb. 11.35 in that chapter’s ‘hall of faith’.

Clarifying the Exegetical Dilemma

There are various ways of dividing Heb. 11 structurally, but it is widely agreed that a distinct shift occurs in 11.32 with, ‘And what more should I say? For time would fail me to recount…’ (Καὶ τί ἔτι λέγω; ἐπιλείψει με γὰρ διηγούμενον ὁ χρόνος …). ⁹ This section (11.32–40) races through heroic examples of faith until in 11.35b a tonal shift takes place and tales of this-worldly victories give way to the triumphs of martyrdom and holy alienation up through the description of the wandering exemplars of 11.38. In this way, 11.35 straddles both sides of the list, reading: ‘Women received back their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept redemption, in order to obtain a better resurrection’ (  Ἔλαβον γυναῖκες ἐξ ἀναστάσεως τοὺς νεκροὺς αὐτῶν· ἄλλοι δὲ ἐτυμπανίσθησαν οὐ προσδεξάμενοι τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν, ἵνα κρείττονος ἀναστάσεως τύχωσιν ¹⁰ ).

Commentators ancient and modern have typically identified the ‘women’ in 11.35a as the widow of Zarephath (1 Kgs 17) and the Shunammite woman (2 Kgs 4), whose children were raised from the dead by Elijah and Elisha, respectively. ¹¹ These are the only such instances of the restoration of dead family members to women by resurrection in Israel’s scriptures and are thus the most probable reference. Similar agreement obtains for the identity of the martyrs of 11.35b–c. Most recognize in them a description of the Maccabean martyrs: Eleazar, the seven brothers, and their mother (2 Macc. 6.18–7.42; 4 Macc. 5.1–18.24). ¹² The verb τυμπανίζω (‘to beat with a drum’) probably alludes to the torture of Eleazar on a τύμπανον (‘drum’ or ‘torture rack’; 2 Macc. 6.19, 28), and ἀπολύτρωσις might reflect the influence of ἀπολυθῇ τοῦ θανάτου (2 Macc. 6.22) and ἀπολυθῆναι τοῦ θανάτου (2 Macc. 6.30; Weiss 1991: 619; Rose 1994: 313). The martyrs’ hope for a ‘better resurrection’ is evident in, e.g., 2 Macc. 7.14: ‘When he was near death, he said, “One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him (πάλιν ἀναστήσεσθαι ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ). But for you there will be no resurrection to life (ἀνάστασις εἰς ζωὴν)!”’ (see Rose 1994: 313–14).

The Maccabean martyrs are thus the first exemplars of this second major section (Heb. 11.32–40) whose faith is evidenced by their endurance of death rather than by this-worldly victories. As the author of Hebrews narrates it, they are presented with a choice between ‘redemption’ (ἀπολύτρωσις) and a ‘better resurrection’ (κρείττων ἀνάστασις). Considered in isolation, this is a perfectly intelligible contrast if the ‘redemption’ is taken as a metaphorical resurrection, a dramatic return to life after coming very near to death (so Spicq 1953: 365). In fact, as I began to indicate in the introduction, such a conception of resurrection would not be unique to the theology of Hebrews. On the contrary, it is a consistent characteristic of the conceptual universe of Israel’s scriptures. Levenson (2006) has demonstrated that throughout a wide range of scriptural texts the line between death and life is thought to lie not where modern Westerners tend to conceive it, as between the medical cessation of life and the sickness, distress, or dire circumstances that precede it. Instead, those who are sick or in distress or despair are characteristically described as already in the realm of the grave. Deliverance from such circumstances is consistently understood as salvation from death itself.

For example, Jonah famously says: ‘I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol (שׁאול‎ / ᾅδης) I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas …’ (Jon. 2.2–3). Similarly, although the context of David’s psalm in 2 Sam. 22 is given as ‘when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul’ (22.1), David describes his condition like this: ‘For the waves of death encompassed me; the torrents of perdition assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me’ (22.5–6). Neither David nor Jonah are literally dead as they utter their prayers, but according to these texts they are already living in Sheol, the land of the dead. ¹³ By extension, in places like Ezekiel’s vision of the revivifying of the dry bones (Ezek. 37.1–14) and Hosea’s affirmation that, ‘After two days he will revive (ὑγιάζω / חיה‎) us; on the third day he will raise us up (ἀνίστημι / קום‎), that we may live before him’ (Hos. 6.2), the language of resurrection is applied explicitly to deadly circumstances but without referring (in their original setting) to the raising of those literally dead. ¹⁴ Furthermore, while the association of the nominal form, ἀνάστασις, with resurrection in the doctrinal sense emerges late, it would be natural for the author of Hebrews to use this by-then common term even where it is absent in the scriptural text, as he does in describing the resuscitations of the women’s sons in terms of ἀνάστασις in 11.35a (the term is absent from Greek 1–2 Kgs). ¹⁵

It is entirely plausible, therefore, from an ancient Jewish point of view to understand the Maccabean martyrs as already in the realm of death while still in captivity. The ‘redemption’ offered to them would have represented a kind of ‘resurrection’ in this ancient, scriptural sense. The once-popular view that understands the comparison in the ‘better resurrection’ exclusively in these terms might heuristically be called the ‘metaphorical resurrection’ view. As I noted in the introduction to this article, however, the majority view today holds that since the resuscitations granted to the previous exemplars, the faithful women of 11.35a whose sons were raised by Elijah and Elisha, are explicitly designated ‘resurrection’ (ἀνάστασις), the comparison in the ‘better resurrection’ must look back exclusively to these resuscitations. We might for the sake of brevity call this majority position the ‘better-than-resuscitation’ view. From different angles, both leading views could seem plausible and have apparent strengths and weaknesses. The next section evaluates those strengths and weaknesses in order to demonstrate the necessity of this article’s new proposal.

Evaluating Other Leading Views’ Strengths and Weaknesses

The clear advantage of the majority, ‘better-than-resuscitation’ view is that the κρείττων ἀνάστασις (11.35c) would refer back to an explicitly named ἀνάστασις from the previous example, the resuscitation of the women’s sons (11.35a), ensuring that the contrast is explicitly between temporariness and permanence. ¹⁶ However, a weakness of this view is that the object of the martyrs’ hope is described as comparatively better than something that is not available to them nor even discussed in the narratives of their martyrdom in 2 and 4 Maccabees: temporary resuscitation. Furthermore, this view has the awkward effect of drawing an implicit contrast between the martyrs’ faith and that of the women whose sons are raised (11.35a). For the martyrs’ faith rests solely upon the eschatological horizon, but that of the women of 1–2 Kings rests merely upon an immediate but temporary restoration of the lives of their loved ones. This comparison appears particularly pointed when considering the mother of the seven brothers, who is in a similar position to the widow of Zarephath and the Shunammite woman, imminently bereaved of her children. Yet, she places her faith in the eschatological resurrection rather than in any mere resuscitation. Is her faith not, therefore, superior to theirs in its long-term perspective? ¹⁷ Therefore, on the better-than-resuscitation view the usage of κρείττων results in an incidental but potentially problematic or confusing comparison between heroes of faith.

The ‘metaphorical resurrection’ view avoids this problem by focusing the comparison on the options given to the martyrs, emphasizing their choice between something good (ἀπολύτρωσις) and something better (κρείττων ἀνάστασις). However, a weakness of this view is that for the martyrs to have capitalized on the offered ἀπολύτρωσις would have been for them to compromise their loyalty to Israel’s God. This, along with the influence of the use of ἀπολύω in 2 Macc. 6.22 and 6.30, is probably why ἀπολύτρωσις is sometimes translated here in the purely neutral sense of ‘release’, without the positive, saving connotations of ‘redemption’ (e.g., NRSVue; NIV).

However, there is more distance between the ἀπολύω of 2 Macc. 6.22 and 6.30 and the ἀπολύτρωσις of Heb. 11.35 than commentators typically observe. Ἀπολύτρωσις is used only nine times in the New Testament and consistently in a soteriological sense, referring to eschatological redemption in Lk 21.28 and the redemption accomplished through Christ in Paul (e.g., Rom. 3.24; 8.23; 1 Cor. 1.30). Old Greek Dan. 4.34, the only LXX usage, describes the time of Nebuchadnezzar’s ‘redemption’ (ἀπολύτρωσις) from insanity, which is of course brought about by God and which results in Nebuchadnezzar’s giving glory to God. It is not merely a neutral ‘release’ but rather a deliverance resulting in salvation.

To be sure, the term can be used strictly in the sense of a physical redemption from captivity, as when Philo recalls the example of an imprisoned Laconian boy who is said to despair of an ἀπολύτρωσις from his imprisonment and as a result to commit suicide (Prob. 114; cf. Weiss (1991: 619n23)). However, that example evokes a decidedly non-theological context, and even there the notion of salvation or rescue broadly understood is not demonstrably absent. By contrast, elsewhere Philo associates ἀπολύτρωσις with, for instance, the symbolic significance of the number ten in Abraham’s saving intercession for Sodom’s ‘redemption’ (Prelim. Studies 19.109). In a comparable usage that cannot but evoke the soteriological overtones of the exodus, Josephus describes the freeing of enslaved Jews in Egypt under Ptolemy Philadelphus as an ἀπολύτρωσις (Ant. 12.27).

Hebrews itself uses ἀπολύτρωσις only one other time, where the sense is clearly soteriological (‘a death having occurred as a redemption from the transgressions committed upon the first covenant;’ θανάτου γενομένου εἰς ἀπολύτρωσιν τῶν ἐπὶ τῇ πρώτῃ διαθήκῃ παραβάσεων, Heb. 9.15) (cf. Büchsel 1964: 355). Just three verses earlier (Heb. 9.12) is one of only three instances of the closely cognate word λύτρωσις in the NT: ‘he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood … thus obtaining eternal redemption (αἰωνίαν λύτρωσιν εὑράμενος)’ (cf. Lk 1.68; 2.38). Given, then, the soteriological connotations of ἀπολύτρωσις elsewhere in Hebrews and throughout the New Testament, as well as the widespread usage of the term in early Jewish writings in its redemptive sense, particularly in theological contexts, the usage of ἀπολύτρωσις in Heb. 11.35 is very likely to be coloured by soteriological overtones.

This is not to say that ἀπολύτρωσις should be directly translated as ‘resurrection’ in Heb. 11.35 but rather that the term ‘redemption’ better captures in English the soteriological associations of ἀπολύτρωσις than does the more neutral term ‘release’. A ‘redemption’ from captivity and torture could therefore more readily be referred to retrospectively as a metaphorical ‘resurrection’ than could a mere ‘release’. With this usage of ‘redemption’ the author thus emphasizes simply that the martyrs did not receive what other heroes of faith did: deliverance from death considered, in and of itself, as a positive good. To have experienced such a redemption from the brink of death would have been on this view to experience a kind of ‘resurrection’, albeit a temporary one. Therefore, this weakness of the metaphorical resurrection view is ameliorated to some extent by the usage of ἀπολύτρωσις to describe what is offered to the martyrs. However, by itself the metaphorical resurrection view does not securely establish the permanence of the κρείττων ἀνάστασις since perhaps a resuscitation like those in 1–2 Kings (or e.g., Lazarus’s) might conceivably be thought ‘better’ than merely a dramatic return to life.

A Double Comparison

The weaknesses of these views thus invite a proposal which incorporates the views’ strengths while dispensing with their inadequacies. In light of this, I suggest it is more likely that the famously skilled homilist who authored Hebrews plays off both comparative options at once. Most immediately, the ‘better resurrection’ (11.35c) is ‘better’ than the temporary ‘redemption’ the verse’s martyrs reject, which would have been a ‘resurrection’ from the throes of death, but it is also ‘better’ than the one-off examples of resurrection granted to the faithful women.

On this view, the ‘better resurrection’ is to be compared firstly with a metaphorical ‘resurrection’ to life in the form of a redemption from captivity and torture. This keeps the immediate contrast at the level of the martyrs’ decisions and avoids the issue of implying that their choices should be compared directly (and favourably) with those of the widow of Zarephath and the Shunammite woman. However, by also making a comparison with the resuscitations performed by Elijah and Elisha, the most dramatic form of temporary redemption, the author secures the reference to the general resurrection of the dead rather than to any temporary restoration to life.

This sort of wordplay might not in fact be terribly challenging for an accomplished rhetorician, and as we have begun to outline it has some distinct advantages. In the purely better-than-resuscitations view, the faithful women whose sons are raised are presented as one-off examples only to be outdone by the eschatologically oriented faith of the very next exemplars. However, on this view in which the ‘better resurrection’ is compared favourably both to a metaphorical resurrection to life and to resuscitation, the examples of the faithful women and the Maccabean martyrs work in harmony in service of the author’s goal of directing the audience’s hopes towards the ‘something better’ (κρεῖττόν τι, 11.40) stored up for all the faithful. On the one hand, the sons of the widow of Zarephath and Shunammite woman stand as the climactic examples of temporary resurrection from the realm of death which already creeps into the world of the living, concluding a list of victories that give visible expression to the yet invisible shared hope of Israel’s heroic faithful. On the other hand, and in contrast to all these visible victories, the Maccabean martyrs reject a temporary, compromised resurrection to life, choosing instead to endure death in order to bear witness (as Jesus does climactically in 12.2) to Israel’s surpassing hope for the ‘better resurrection’.

This proposal, in which the ‘better resurrection’ is superior both to a metaphorical resurrection to life and a resuscitation, thus removes the considerable weaknesses of both options while maintaining their strengths and better integrating the examples in 11.35 into the seamless narrative of the heroic catalogue. But does the homilist really conceive of resurrection in this ancient, scriptural sense which appears to modern eyes as purely metaphorical?

Resurrection ἐν παραβολῇ

In fact, one need look no farther than Heb. 11.19 for just such an ancient, scriptural conception of resurrection. There Abraham is said to receive Isaac back from the dead ἐν παραβολῇ: ‘He considered that God was able to raise him from the dead (ἐκ νεκρῶν ἐγείρειν), whence also he did receive him ἐν παραβολῇ’. Commentators differ over precisely how to understand this closing phrase. Παραβολή is used in the New Testament most commonly, of course, in the Gospels to describe Jesus’s teaching (e.g., Mt 13.10; Mk 3.23). English translations commonly render ἐν παραβολῇ in Heb. 11.19 as ‘figuratively speaking’ (NRSVue; cf. NIV ‘in a manner of speaking’). However, this translation slightly obscures the term’s usual sense of comparison or illustration (pace, e.g., Richardson 2012: 196). In fact, as is sometimes pointed out, just earlier in Heb. 9.9 the tabernacle is described as a παραβολὴ εἰς τὸν καιρὸν τὸν ἐνεστηκότα (NRSVue: ‘a symbol for the present time’), where a clear sense of typological comparison is present. The translation ‘foreshadowing’ has been usefully suggested as a way of capturing this typological sense in 11.19 (Swetnam 1981: 120–21; Lane 2008: 362; Bockmuehl 2009: 372). For our purposes, ‘whence also he did receive him in a symbol’ may also be a helpful translation of 11.19 in maintaining consistency with the reference to the tabernacle in 9.9, as long as this is not misunderstood to imply that either the tabernacle or the resurrection of Isaac are merely symbolic. For like the tabernacle, the resurrection of Isaac ἐν παραβολῇ is something concrete which functions for the author of Hebrews typologically, either as foreshadowing the general resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus, or both (as is most likely given the integral relation of the two in early Christian thought; see Swetnam 1981: 121).

However, if Abraham received Isaac back from the dead ‘in a symbol’ or ‘in a foreshadowing’ instead of ‘figuratively speaking’, then the phrase ἐν παραβολῇ does not qualify Isaac’s ‘resurrection’ as of a lesser sort but instead identifies its sign-function. Isaac is received back by Abraham ‘from the dead’ (ἐκ νεκρῶν). Does this mean, therefore, that the author believes Isaac was actually (i.e., medically) dead? Some have indeed thought so, partly based on a purportedly definitive meaning of προσϕέρω as a completed sacrifice in Hebrews (Rose 1994: 236). On this reading, when in 11.17 the author says, ‘By faith, Abraham offered (προσενήνοχεν) Isaac when tested’, he means to say that Isaac really was slain as an offering. However, the homilist’s use of προσϕέρω in 5.7, where Jesus offers (προσενέγκας, note the aorist tense) ‘loud cries and tears’, calls this assertion into question, given that the loud cries and tears themselves are not identical with the completed offering which Jesus makes of himself (see 10.14). Furthermore, recent developments in Hebrews scholarship have revealed the difficulties with an exact correlation of the sacrifice of Jesus with the moment of his death (Moffitt 2018, 2020; Moore 2020). In any case, ancient Jewish interpreters often reflected on the nature of the Aqedah, interpreting it as an effective sacrifice, even one that involved the spilling of blood, without understanding Isaac actually to have died. ¹⁸

Therefore, it is best to understand the phrase ‘whence also he did receive him’ (ὅθεν αὐτὸν καὶ … ἐκομίσατο), that is ‘from the dead’ (ἐκ νεκρῶν, 11.19), as a slightly hyperbolic description which both does justice to the magnitude of Abraham’s faith (see 11.12, ‘and these as good as dead’, καὶ ταῦτα νενεκρωμένου) and participates in the ancient conception of the interaction between death and life which we have been highlighting. The intervening adverbial phrase, ἐν παραβολῇ, hints at the symbolic or typical character of a real, concrete event. Nevertheless, even though Isaac’s resurrection is not strictly literal since he never died, the author speaks of it flatly as his being received back ‘from the dead’ (ἐκ νεκρῶν). Therefore, we have a clear example in which the author of Hebrews describes what appears to modern eyes as a ‘metaphorical’ resurrection from the dead within the same chapter as the verse in question.

Furthermore, there are additional connections between the resurrection of Isaac ἐν παραβολῇ (11.17–19) and the Maccabean martyrs’ resilient hope for a κρείττων ἀνάστασις (11.35). Their places in the literary-rhetorical structure of the chapter hint at this since both occupy a central position in its two major sections (11.3–31 and 11.32–40). ¹⁹ However, an even more conspicuous connection between them involves the relationship of the faith of Abraham and Sarah to the faith of the mother of the Maccabean martyrs: It has occasionally been pointed out that the logic of Abraham’s faith that God will raise Isaac from the dead (11.17–19) may be based not only on his confidence in God’s promise to call his ‘seed’ (σπέρμα) through Isaac (11.18) but also on the fact that God had already given power to the ‘as-good-as-dead’ (νενεκρωμένος) bodies of Abraham and Sarah to conceive ‘seed’ (σπέρμα, 11.11–12) (e.g., Swetnam 1981: 121). That is, Isaac’s birth is already, in a sense, a resurrection of the bodies of Abraham and Sarah. Strikingly, a very similar logic is followed by the mother of the seven brothers in 2 Macc. 7.22–23:

I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, in his mercy gives life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws.

Remarkably, the same reasoning seems to be at work both in this passage and in the faith of Abraham and Sarah (Heb. 11.11–12, 17–19), namely that because God sovereignly gives life in the womb he will also do so in the resurrection (Lane 1998: 258). Moreover, both Heb. 11.3 and 2 Macc. 7.28 make similar references to creation which have classically (if perhaps tendentiously) anchored the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, revealing their common interest in God as the creator who gives life from the dead: ‘By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible’ (Heb. 11.3). Compare 2 Macc. 7.28: ‘I beg you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed’. ²⁰

Therefore, between the resurrection of Isaac ἐν παραβολῇ (11.19) and the martyrs’ hope for a κρείττων ἀνάστασις (11.35), there are three discrete connections: (1) resurrection from the dead is explicitly mentioned only in these verses in Heb. 11; (2) they occupy structurally central positions in the two major sections of the chapter; and (3) both Abraham and Sarah (Heb. 11.11–12, 17–19) and the mother of the seven martyred brothers (2 Macc. 7.22–23) reason from God’s power to create life in the womb to his power to raise the dead, drawing on a theme crucial for both the account of the Maccabean martyrs (e.g., 2 Macc. 7.28) and Hebrews’ catalogue of heroes (e.g., Heb. 11.3). These connections add to the likelihood that the temporary ‘redemption’ (ἀπολύτρωσις) of Heb. 11.35b should be understood as one species of the sort of resurrection of which Isaac’s in 11.19 is the apotheosis.

This further suggests that a capacious and porous (i.e., ‘metaphorical’) notion of resurrection may be a more important category in the homilist’s thinking than is usually appreciated. As Moffitt rightly observes, even though Isaac is raised in a symbol while Jesus is raised finally and eschatologically, the πίστις of Abraham and Jesus is nearly identically described. Jesus’s own faith in 5.7 is in God who is ‘able to save him from death’ (πρὸς τὸν δυνάμενον σῴζειν αὐτὸν ἐκ θανάτου), while Abraham’s faith for the resurrection of Isaac ἐν παραβολῇ is that ‘God is able to raise the dead’ (ἐκ νεκρῶν ἐγείρειν δυνατὸς ὁ θεός, 11.19) (Moffitt 2011: 190–93). That is, the proleptic resurrection of Isaac shares with the eschatological resurrection of faith’s pioneer and perfecter a common dependence upon faith in Israel’s God precisely as the one who raises the dead (12.2). Therefore, to the extent that ‘faith in the God who resurrects’ ²¹ leads characteristically to the deliverance of the faithful from death that is a hallmark of this chapter, ²² ‘resurrection’ in the proleptic sense can be said to be a characteristic experience of Israel’s faithful for the author of Hebrews. Yet, the heroic faith of the Maccabean martyrs is evidenced in their endurance of death for the sake of a resurrection even ‘better’ (κρείττων) than any temporary ‘resurrection’ (ἀνάστασις) or ‘redemption’ (ἀπολύτρωσις) awaiting the faithful of Israel. Thus ‘the better resurrection’ brought about by the God who raises the dead forms the ultimate horizon of the πίστις in what is invisible that unites the catalogue of heroes (11.1–2, 13, 27), culminating in the preeminent example of Jesus’s faithful endurance of the cross (12.2–3).

Exegetical Conclusion

Therefore, the view in which the ‘better resurrection’ (11.35c) is compared most immediately with the temporary ‘redemption’ the verse’s martyrs reject, which would have been a ‘resurrection’ from the clutches of death, but is also ‘better’ than the one-off examples of resurrection granted to the faithful women, accomplishes three things: (1) It successfully integrates the examples of the faithful women and Maccabean martyrs (Heb. 11.35) into a catalogue marked by the theme of God’s proleptic resurrection of Israel’s faithful from the invasive realm of death; (2) It elucidates the connections between the faith of the Maccabean martyrs (11.35) and the raising of Isaac ἐν παραβολῇ (11.19), highlighting the theme of God as creator who gives life to the dead (explicit in Heb. 11.3 and 2 Macc. 7.28); and (3) It resolves awkward elements within both other leading views on the meaning of κρείττων ἀνάστασις. For these reasons, it should be preferred.

Interpretative Implications

As briefly anticipated in the introduction of the essay, this exegetical conclusion has implications for navigating the well-known tension between statements in Hebrews that Abraham and other faithful heroes did ‘obtain’ or ‘reach’ (ἐπιτυγχάνω) the promise (e.g., 6.15; 11.33) and statements that they did not ‘receive’ (κομίζω or λαμβάνω) it (e.g., 11.13, 39). ²³ Significantly, whatever is ‘received’ (κομίζω or λαμβάνω) in the immediate context of Heb. 11 is always either ‘the promise’ (τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν) or someone who has been raised from the dead. Abraham is singled out as ‘receiving’ (κομίζω) Isaac back from the dead (11.19), just as he singularly ‘obtained the promise’ (6.15). Outside the reference to Abraham’s ‘receiving’ Isaac, κομίζω is used in Hebrews only of receiving ‘the promise’ (10.36; 11.39). Λαμβάνω, which describes the ‘receiving’ back of their sons by the women of 1–2 Kings (11.35), is naturally used more widely in the epistle (it is a more common word). However, it too is used to describe (not) ‘receiving promises’ in 11.13 (μὴ λαβόντες τὰς ἐπαγγελίας).

Such a coincidence of terms, between ‘receiving’ either the promise or one’s dead back to life, is very likely not accidental. Instead, it most probably reflects the author’s conviction that these resurrections, which as we have seen are of a piece with other deliverances of the chapter’s faithful from death, proleptically realize in themselves their final, eschatological fulfilment and are thus proleptic realizations of that which is promised. ²⁴

Recognizing this proleptic realization of the promise in the form of resurrection underlines a specific point of continuity between the Christ-believing audience of Hebrews and the historic faithful of Israel: both experience ‘resurrection’ through faith as an anticipatory realization of the promise, while both yet await the promise of resurrection in its eschatological fullness. For Christ-believers, that experience of resurrection does have a distinctively present and even retrospective quality in their ‘looking unto Jesus’ (12.2), who has already ‘arisen’ (ἀνίσταται) definitively and eschatologically to an ‘indestructible life’ (7.15–16; Moffitt 2011: 202–8; cf. Heb. 13.20) as the Judahite ‘high priest of the good things to come’ in order to perform his heavenly offering and intercession (9.11–14; 7.25). Nevertheless, even if historic Israel’s proleptic experience of resurrection is only as a ‘shadow of good things to come’ (10.1; cf. 8.5), yet it is still a characteristic experience of the eleventh chapter’s catalogue of Israel’s heroes, as we have seen. In this sense, a fuller recognition of the importance of resurrection as experienced partially or in an anticipatory way among Israel’s faithful adds further support to the argument that the resurrection of Jesus, which arguably marks the beginning of the ‘better resurrection’ towards which those proleptic resurrections point, is a critical category in the theology of Hebrews (e.g., influentially, Moffitt 2011, 2018; Jamieson 2019).

This suggests that the readings which discover in the use of κρείττων to describe the ‘better resurrection’ in 11.35 as accentuating a contrasting or even antithetical relationship between the covenants are likely mistaken. ²⁵ To be sure, Hebrews does strongly emphasize the advantages of the ‘new covenant’ in terms of its being ‘better’ than the ‘first covenant’ and even ‘founded on better promises’ (ἐπὶ κρείττοσιν ἐπαγγελίαις νενομοθέτηται, 8.6). Nevertheless, as has sometimes been pointed out, the Christ-believing audience of Hebrews awaits still in fact the same eschatological ‘better resurrection’ promised to Israel’s faithful and opted for by the Maccabean martyrs. In this sense, in Hebrews the ‘something better’ (κρεῖττόν τι, 11.40) reserved by God for those who put their faith in Jesus is still in the realm of the ‘not-yet’ rather than the ‘already’. ²⁶ Furthermore, not only does the era of explicit Christ-belief continue to be marked by the same faith and hope exemplified by Israel’s heroes, but to the extent that both eras are marked by the power of Israel’s God to raise the dead (5.7; 11.19, 35), historic Israel’s proleptic experience of resurrection continues as an abiding witness to the eschatological life from the dead promised to all the faithful.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the ‘better resurrection’ of Heb. 11.35 is to be compared most immediately with the ἀπολύτρωσις which the Maccabean martyrs reject, which would have been a ‘resurrection’ from the throes of death, but also with the one-off examples of resurrection granted to the faithful women. These and the resurrection of Isaac ἐν παραβολῇ (11.19) are indeed signal instances, but they are of a piece with the rest of the catalogue in revealing Israel’s God as the one who gives life to the dead. For Hebrews, ‘resurrection’ is in this proleptic sense a characteristic feature of Israel’s history with God, and the ‘better resurrection’ is its unifying hope.

Because this proleptic experience of resurrection partially realizes the promise, the tension between statements in Hebrews that Abraham and other faithful heroes did obtain the promise (e.g., 6.15; 11.33) and statements that they did not receive it (e.g., 11.13, 39) is made more comprehensible. Recognizing this helps, furthermore, to articulate a point of continuity between the experiences of Israel and Christ-believers according to Hebrews: both know ‘resurrection’ through faith as an anticipatory realization of the promise, even if for Christ-believers a distinctively retrospective dimension is added, while both yet await the promise of resurrection in its eschatological fullness.