Matthew 27:52 and the saints who walked out of tombs

What the text says

Matthew 27 narrates Jesus's crucifixion in the standard synoptic sequence (mockery, darkness from noon to three, the cry from Psalm 22, the loud final cry, the death). Then comes verse 51, the tearing of the Temple curtain, which Mark 15:38 and Luke 23:45 also report. Mark and Luke stop there. Matthew alone adds three more sentences.

Matthew 27:51 (full): 'And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.' Matthew 27:52: 'The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.' Matthew 27:53: 'And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.'

The Greek tense and time markers create an immediate problem. Verse 52 says the tombs were opened and the bodies were raised at the moment of Jesus's death (the aorist passive verbs are time-coordinate with the curtain-tearing and the earthquake). Verse 53 says they came out of the tombs and appeared in Jerusalem 'after his resurrection' (meta tēn egersin autou). So the tombs opened on Friday afternoon, but the saints walked out and appeared on Sunday or later. The text presents this as the sequence. The two-day gap between the resurrection event and the appearance has invited reorderings, reinterpretations, and (in some manuscript traditions) text-critical fixes for almost two millennia.

The three positions

How each position handles the four hard questions

The three positions all have to handle the same four difficulties: the timing in 27:53, the identification of the saints, the silence of Mark, Luke, and John, and the Old Testament background in Ezekiel 37 and Daniel 12:2. Reading the columns side by side surfaces what each reading costs.

The Licona case: a 2010 evangelical controversy

Michael R. Licona is an evangelical New Testament scholar specializing in resurrection studies. In 2010 he published The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, an 800-page case for the historical resurrection of Jesus from the empty tomb and the post-mortem appearances. The book defended the resurrection's historicity at length. It also made one brief move that would cost Licona his teaching position.

In a footnote and a brief discussion across pages 548-553, Licona treated Matt 27:52-53 as 'apocalyptic imagery' rather than as a literal historical report. He noted the OT background in Ezekiel 37 and Daniel 12:2, the apocalyptic genre conventions of cosmic-sign reporting around major events, and the silence of Mark, Luke, and John. He concluded that the verses were 'special effects' (his term) inserted by Matthew to mark the cosmic significance of Jesus's death, and that they did not require literal historical occurrence.

The reaction inside evangelical scholarship was severe. Norman Geisler, a senior evangelical philosopher and former teacher of Licona's, wrote a series of open letters arguing that Licona's reading was incompatible with the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978), which most evangelical institutions hold as a doctrinal standard. Geisler argued that allowing 'special effects' at 27:52-53 created a hermeneutical opening that could be applied to other miraculous passages, including the resurrection of Jesus itself. The argument was that genre flexibility, once granted, could not be limited.

The institutional consequences followed. Licona was teaching at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte at the time of the book's publication. He was also a research professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Both relationships ended in 2011-2012. Licona maintained that his reading of 27:52-53 was internal to a high view of scripture and that genre analysis was a standard interpretive tool, not a denial of inerrancy. The institutional response treated the genre move itself as the problem, regardless of intention.

The case is illuminating for the deep-dive question because it shows how much remains live at 27:52-53. The literal-historical reading is not simply the default; it is doctrinally protected in some institutional contexts. The apocalyptic-symbolic reading, even when held by a scholar with high resurrection commitments, is treated as a category breach. The 2010 case has been the focus of several subsequent academic discussions (Norman Geisler's 2012 essay 'A Response to Mike Licona on Inerrancy,' Craig Blomberg's 2013 essay defending genre analysis, Licona's own 2013 response). The dispute is ongoing.

Where the arguments actually disagree

Stepping back from the three positions, the disagreement clusters around three questions. First, what is the relationship between genre and historicity. The literal-historical position holds that the verses are historical narrative and must be read as event-report. The apocalyptic-symbolic position holds that the verses are apocalyptic narrative inside a historical passion account, and that genre analysis is internal to good exegesis. The late-legend position holds that the verses are later additions to a more conservative original, regardless of their genre.

Second, how to weigh the silence of the other gospels and Acts. The literal-historical position treats the silence as editorial selection. The apocalyptic-symbolic position treats the silence as evidence the verses are Matthew-specific theological composition. The late-legend position treats the silence as decisive evidence the event did not happen and the verses are an addition.

Third, what to do with the OT background in Ezekiel 37 and Daniel 12:2. The literal-historical position treats these as predictive prophecy fulfilled in the event. The apocalyptic-symbolic and late-legend positions treat them as the source of Matthean composition or later expansion. The same OT texts are read as backward-source by some and forward-prophecy by others.

Reading the verses with the question open

Matthew 27:52-53 is one of those passages where the textual evidence does not settle the historical question on its own. The reader is choosing among three readings that each preserve something and cost something. The literal-historical reading preserves the chapter's narrative voice and the OT-prophecy framework, at the cost of unexplained silence in three other gospels. The apocalyptic-symbolic reading preserves Matthew's literary art and the OT-composition pattern, at the cost of distinguishing genre layers inside a single passion narrative. The late-legend reading preserves the simple explanation for the four-gospel silence, at the cost of arguing for a textual addition that left no manuscript trace.

The Licona case shows that the question matters institutionally as well as exegetically. An interpretation that one scholar holds as straightforward genre analysis can be received by another as a hermeneutical breach. The history of interpretation, from Origen through Jerome and Augustine to Wenham and Licona, is the history of readers wrestling with the same three sentences and producing different answers. What is not disputed is what the verses are doing in Matthew's text: marking Jesus's death as cosmically and eschatologically decisive, drawing on Ezekiel and Daniel, and joining the curtain-tearing and the centurion's confession in a sequence of signs around the cross.