Miraculous resurrection of one sort or another has been a recurrent theme or central doctrine of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Religious accounts represent the resurrection of individuals, as well as a general resurrection of humanity on Judgment Day. Christianity also uses the term to refer to God's resurrection of Jesus. Accounts of resurrection also occur in other religious traditions. With the advent of written records, the earliest known recurrent theme of resurrection was in the ancient Egyptian religion and it was especially focused upon an individual in the cults of Neith, Isis, and Osiris.

Mesopotamia and the classical world

In the literal sense of the word, resurrection refers to the event of a dead person completely returning to life. Thus it is not to be confused with things like Hellenistic immortality in which the soul continues to live after death, "free" of the body.

"Centuries before the time of Jesus Christ the nations annually celebrated the death and resurrection of Osiris, Tammuz, Attis, Mithra, and other gods" 1. A cyclic dying-and-rising god motif was prevalent throughout ancient Mesopotamian and classical literature and practice (eg in Syrian and Greek worship of Adonis; Egyptian worship of Osiris; the Babylonian story of Tammuz; rural religious belief in the Corn King).

Specifically, some of language concerning resurrection in the Hebrew Bible appears to have origins in Canaanite belief as demonstrated by the Baal cycle found at Ugarit in Northern Syria. Ba'al-Hadad's battle against Mot seems to be the origin of the some of the resurrection imagery found in Hosea, Isaiah and Daniel. This influence survives into the New Testament and even Rabbinic literature, with agricultural imagery regarding resurrection in and in reflecting the agricultural images of the Ba'al myth. Day, John, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, 2000

The Hebrew Bible

See: Jewish eschatology: Biblical verses

The Torah addresses the issue of bodily resurrection, but for the most part only in an indirect way.. When Jacob dies, he says "I am about to be gathered to my kin. Bury me with my forefathers in the cave which is in the field of Ephron the Hittite" (Genesis 49:29). All the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs (except Rachel) wthire buried in the family cave, and so were many other biblical personalities, including King Saul and King David.

The Hebrew Bible refers to the term Sheol, which in traditional Judaism is translated simply as "grave" and is perceived as a transitory state. Critical views (see below) interpret it as a referring to a permanent, shadowy underworld. For biblical references to Sheol see Genesis 42:38, Isaiah 14:11, Psalm 141:7, Daniel 12:2, Proverbs 7:27 and Job 10:21,22, and 17:16, among others.