Resurrection
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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It stands there before us in entire and actual splendour, the greatest picture in the world." --"The Best Picture" (1925) by Aldous Huxley |
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Resurrection (anglicized from Latin resurrectio) is the concept of a living being coming back to life after death. It is a religious concept, where it is used in two distinct respects: a belief in the resurrection of individual souls that is current and ongoing (Christian idealism, realized eschatology), or else a belief in a singular "Resurrection of the Dead" event at the end of the world. The Resurrection of the Dead is a standard eschatological belief in the Abrahamic religions. In a number of ancient religions, a life-death-rebirth deity is a deity which dies and resurrects. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the central focus of Christianity.
The soul is believed by some to be the divine and immortal part of the human being, and some believe it is the actual vehicle by which people are resurrected. However, theological debate ensues with regard to what kind of resurrection is factual – either a spiritual resurrection with a spirit body (i.e. Heaven), or a material resurrection with a restored human body. While most Christians believe Jesus' resurrection was in a material body, a very small minority believe it was spiritual.
There are documented rare cases of the return to life of the clinically dead which are classified scientifically as examples of the Lazarus syndrome, a term originating from the Biblical story of the Resurrection of Lazarus.
Zombies
A zombie (Haitian Creole: zonbi; North Mbundu: nzumbe) can be either a fictional undead monster or a person in an entranced state believed to be controlled by a bokor or wizard. These latter are the original zombies, occurring in the West African Vodun religion and its American offshoots Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo.
Zombies became a popular device in modern horror fiction, largely because of the success of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead and they have appeared as plot devices in various books, films and in television shows. Zombie fiction is now a sizable sub-genre of horror, usually describing a breakdown of civilization occurring when most of the population become flesh-eating zombies – a zombie apocalypse. The monsters are usually hungry for human flesh, often specifically brains. Sometimes they are victims of a fictional pandemic illness causing the dead to reanimate or the living to behave this way, but often no cause is given in the story.
See also
- 1 Corinthians 15
- Cryonics
- Information-theoretic death
- Omega Point (Tipler)
- Near death experience
- Suspended animation
