I think that would good opportunity for some really striking scenes, has any movie showed these? Why is it usually if not always not shown?
Matthew 27:51-53
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
There’s a scene in Intolerance where this appears to be happening, but there is no caption. It unusual that there is no caption, and later when Jesus rises to heaven, there are others with him, but it’s hard to tell if they are other resurrected souls, or angel throngs.
DW Griffith usually explained everything, so I think it was deliberately ambiguous; if you wanted that part of the gospel in your story, there is was. If you didn’t want to see unbaptised Jews resurrected into heaven, particularly after Griffith had been libeling the Pharisees all over the screen, you could see the scene as something else.
Also, not quite what the OP is asking, but in The Last Temptation of Christ, the resurrection of Lazarus is quite prominent.
ETA: make sure you get the longest version of Intolerance you can find, because there are lots of different cuts floating around.
Yes, in a way. The movie was The Judas Project. The idea is “What if Jesus came today?… the first time?” At the crucifixion, when He dies, a sort of smoke emanated from Him & sinks into the ground, resulting in earth tremors. As the Evil Priest walks through a graveyard, the tremors hit and he sees ghosts rising from the graves and zipping into a Divine Light breaking through the clouds.
The resurrection of Lazarus is unrelated the the OP.
Jesus raised Lazarus long before he was put to death himself. Revtim is referring to the aftermath of Jesus’ death, at which time (Matthew claims) many noteworthy people who had died were seen alive.
To the best of my knowledge, no film about Jesus has shown that happening.
I don’t think that curious passage has been depicted or even seriously discussed that much in nearly 2,000 years of New Testament scholarship. It’s like a biblical ink blot.
How far did she go into it? Was it just mentioned in passing or thoroughly discussed? It’s such an odd and strangely often-ignored passage in the New Testament that I’m curious about what she said about it.
It actually warranted an Apocryphal book, the Gospel of Nicodemus, in which one of the revived dead testifies before the Sanhedrin on Christ’s Harrowing of Hell.
I can find Commentators through the centuries discussing if it was a resurrection into immortality or a resuscitation into mortal life, if it involved all or some of the Old Testament righteous or perhaps only the recently deceased. The Jehovah’s Witnesses believe it was a quake breaking open of tombs showing the bodies to those going into Jerusalem.
I attended an extremely conservative, Evangelical, pro-miracle Bible College (Bible was the entire focus of the college) about 30 years ago. This passage got about 5 minutes of discussion. IIRC, I’ve only heard one evangelist even address it, with no more than 2 or 3 minutes talk on it.
In 40 years, that’s been it.