Resurrection Miracles in Acts
(avg. read time: 3–5 mins.)
This entry will be a short one, as there are not many resurrection miracles in Acts. But they need to be addressed if we are to properly talk about resurrection in Acts. As I mentioned in a similar entry on the resurrection miracles in the Synoptic Gospels, I part company with scholars who insist on reserving the term “resurrection” for what happened to Jesus and for the eschatological resurrection while using the term “resuscitation” for these miracles. I see no need to give the misleading impression that these events are not “resurrection” proper or that this distinction actually has some merited basis in the Greek. As a matter of fact, there is no terminological distinction. The word ἀνίστημι appears in reference to the raising of Tabitha (9:40) and Jesus’s resurrection (2:24, 32; 10:41; 13:33–34; 17:3, 31). And the word ζάω appears in stories both resurrection miracles we are examining (9:41; 20:12), but it too applies to Jesus’s resurrection (1:3; 25:19). The book of Acts makes no distinctions in the words used but only in the implications of the events. That is why I distinguish between Jesus’s resurrection as part of the eschatological resurrection, wherein his body is transformed and the effects are everlasting, and these events as “temporary” resurrections, since they are only restored to life for a time with the expectation that they will die again. With that clarification, let us proceed to the miracles.
Lydda is on the way up to Joppa (now Jaffa in the Tel Aviv metropolis) from Jerusalem, and Joppa is the next setting, as a Christian woman named Tabitha (or Dorcas in Greek) is there. She was apparently a woman of means who could afford to make clothes and garments for many others, which was among her many deeds of kindness and mercy (9:36, 39). She became ill and died, leading to her being put in an upper room after she is washed (9:37–38). As we have noted previously that Luke has made connections with Elijah and Elisha in the Gospel, it seems reasonable to infer that Luke has mentioned this minor detail of her being taken to an upper room in order to implicitly connect this story to Elijah and Elisha performing raising miracles in upper rooms (1 Kgs 17:19, 23; 2 Kgs 4:10, 32–35).
At this point, the disciples in Joppa call for Peter in Lydda (9:38). Peter, like Jesus in Jairus’s house, puts everyone outside, prays, turns to “the body” and says, “Tabitha, arise [ἀνάστηθι]” (9:40). She opens her eyes, sits up, and Peter presents her alive to the others (9:40–41). I have highlighted the common verb here with Peter’s previous healing miracle (even having the same form of the aorist imperative) to remind my readers of an important point. Even as there is no terminological distinction between what scholars allow to be called “resurrections” and what they insist should be called “resuscitations,” there are no reserved verbs for resurrection in the NT. The sense of “resurrection” must be determined from contextual clues, as I have highlighted elsewhere. In this case, the distinction is that Tabitha was dead when she was so commanded, but Aeneas was only bedridden. Still, it is a raising action of healing that is in continuity with resurrection, effected as it is by the same power derived from the same risen Lord.
Eutychus (Acts 20:9–12)
The story set in Troas can be discussed rather briefly. On the first day of the week (one of our early indications of Christians gathering to worship on Sunday; 20:7), Paul spoke to an assembly of believers gathered to break bread in some upper room, though this time the upper room will not be a setting for a resurrection. Paul talked until midnight and a young man named Eutychus fell asleep while Paul continued speaking, and because he had been sitting on a window sill, as he drifted off, he fell from the window, which was on the third story of the building (20:7–9). Presumably, he died on impact because it is said he was “picked up dead” (20:9). But Paul comes down and declares that “his life is in him” after embracing him (cf. the contact with the dead in 1 Kgs 17:21 and Kgs 4:34–35), after which point Eutychus is led away alive (20:10, 12), presumably staying away from window sills at night for the rest of his life. As for Paul, he continues conversing with the believers until dawn (20:11).