..resurrection has been done in one form or another by many religions..not necessarily in the classical christian gospel style but the idea of a god figure
reappearing or reassembling to give new insight is not unique to the christian religion...i am sure a wikipedia consult would show a couple...( i have not looked ).
here i just looked up resurrection in the indian tradition from wiki
Modern India
Best selling author and philosopher of Yoga, and the guru of Mahatma Gandi, Paramahansa Yogananda recorded the following accounts of resurrections in his Autobiography:
* Lahiri Mahasaya resurrected Rama a friend of Sri Yukteswar who had died of Cholera. He was brought back to life a day after he had passed,Chapter 32.[12]
* On June 19th, 1936 at the Bombay Hotel Swami Sri Yukteswar, who had died three months earlier, appeared to Yogananda in "flesh and blood" and spoke to him of life in the astral realms. Yogananda describes touching Sri Yukteswar and provides a detailed account of the meeting but some believe this could have just been a hallucination, Chapter 43.[12]
* Mahavatar Babaji the guru of Lahiri Mahasaya is said to have healed and resurrected a disciple who had willingly thrown himself to death from a high cliff after learning he was unfit to be a disciple in his present form, Chapter 34. However, the authenticity of this account is questioned, as the body would have doubtlessly been badly broken, making any resurrection superfluous.
Sathya Sai Baba disciple Dr. John S. Hislop reported in his book My Baba and I that while attending a conference, Walter Cowan, of Tustin, California, was pronounced dead on the morning of December 25, 1971 of a heart attack. According to Hislop, later in the day, he was found sitting up in a hospital bed alive raised to life by Sai Baba. Elsie Cowen, Walter's wife provided details of the account at a lecture at the Unity Church in Santa Ana, California. According to Elsie, Walter recounted witnessing Sai Baba convincing a council to let him live again to perform a purpose.[13] Some believe many of the Sathya Sai Baba miracles are questionable, thus throwing this account of a disciple into doubt. Furthermore, according to medically established consensus, the body can be resuscitated after 9 hours. Within this time frame certain people emerge, and falsely claim to be resurrected, however, it is not true resurrection. This might explain Walter Cowen's resurrection.[citation needed]
[edit]and here is some wiki concerning ancient pre-christian mesopotamiam god resurrection ideas ( not the human personalities just noted in the above indian wiki reference )
Mesopotamia and the classical world
In the literal sense of the word, resurrection refers to the event of a dead person returning to physical 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 1 Corinthians 15:36-37 and in John 12:24 reflecting the agricultural images of the Ba'al myth. [1]
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