Religion

Sunday Monster Series 3: Zombies

If Jesus rose from the dead…
does that make him a zombie?

That’s the question of the week. Here are a few Jesus=Zombie sightings to help you decide.

First, a sock knitting pattern named for Jesus the Zombie. When I first saw a zombie sock pattern in the atheist and agnostic crafters forum on Ravelry, I couldn’t imagine what zombies had to do with anything. Then I read the description. (A side note to knitters and crocheters, if you’re not on Ravelry you are missing the premier opportunity to indulge your internet addiction and your crafting habit at the same time. It’s still in beta so there’s a waiting list to sign up, but it goes quickly and you won’t regret signing up.)

Zombie Jesus SocksThis pattern was inspired by Lime & Violet Podcast #50. One of Ms. Lime’s friends has a 9 year old son who concluded that Jesus was a Zombie because he rose from the dead. 

Second, here’s a cartoon by Jessica Hagy at Indexed. The connection between Jesus and zombies is a bit more tenuous.

You can get a shirt to spread the word…actually there are a whole slew of shirts available online…

Jesus is a zombie tshirt

And, holy crap, there’s even a movie!

Once you know about the connection, it’s easy to see how Easter can become Zombie Jesus Day.

And I’ll close with this entry from the Futurama Encyclopedia:

Jesus: In the 31st century, the word “Jesus” has become a standard exclamation of amazement, usually used by old people. Examples include, “Holy Zombie Jesus!” and “Sweet Zombie Jesus!” Due to the Zombie content, it is fair to assume that Jesus was not at his physical prime during his second coming.

I hope all this gives you pause for thought, or at least a few chuckles for your Sunday morning. I can’t believe I never made the connection before. Am I the only one who has never heard of Zombie Jesus?

Oh, and Happy Mother’s day to the moms amongst our readers!


 P.S. There are two other skeptical angles I want to take with zombies in the future, so expect to see them coming back in this series soon!

Writerdd

Donna Druchunas is a freelance technical writer and editor and a knitwear designer. When she's not working, she blogs, studies Lithuanian, reads science and sci-fi books, mouths off on atheist forums, and checks her email every three minutes. (She does that when she's working, too.) Although she loves to chat, she can't keep an IM program open or she'd never get anything else done.

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14 Comments

  1. Classic re zombie Jesus, lifted from IIDB:

    Christianity: The belief that a Jewish cosmic zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat fruit from a magical tree.

  2. I myself was in a similar state of ignorance until but a few months ago.

    Whew! With all the time I waste on the internet, I don’t know how I can miss these things.

  3. To be fair, Jesus was potent enough that his second coming was able to destroy all the videotapes on Earth. What, didn’t you see the episode where the Omicronians wanted to watch Single Female Lawyer, and then Fry. . . .

    /me realizes why I have no friends

  4. Let’s give Him his proper due.
    Jesus is not just any zombie, He is King of the zombies.

  5. Jesus as a Zombie raises many questions. I mean he brought Lazerous back to life right, and everyone knows that you have to be infected while alive to rise up as a zombie so how did the son of the invisible sky wizard do it.
    And if this is true then wouldn’t Lazerous be the first zombie. hmmm we have much to think on.

  6. I’ve never commented on Skepchick before but my inner fan demanded that I jump in and mention this. My favourite zombie-Jesus moment is this one, from the brilliant and often skeptical show Bones. =D

  7. Well if we’re doing youtube comments…watch Foamy the Squirrel have a philosophical discussion on wether one should see “Passion of the Jesus” or “Dawn of the Zombies” at the theatre…

    Passion of the Zombies

    “Yes it is the same thing – only Dawn of the Zombies has more people coming back from the dead”

  8. Wasn’t it in Last Temptation of Christ where Jesus’ rising of Lazarus had zombie-ish undertones? Not of the brain-eating zombie type, but that being dead had left him not quite right.

    There were plenty of risen dead myths prior to Lazarus though.

    An older tradition of risen dead who bestow gifts to the living is the tradition of the grateful dead myth (not the band, the myth that the band got their name from). In these myths, if you help out a dead person with burial or repayment of debt, he or she will repay the debt and help you along. The apocryphal Book of Tobit is one example of this mythology. Book of Tobit Wikipedia entry

    The characterization of Christians who believed in a physical resurrection as zombie worshipers is not that new. It dates back to some of the earliest Christians communities, though they didn’t have the horror movie genre to fill in the visuals in the popular imagination. Thomistic Christians considered the idea of physical resurrection revolting, to their perspective Jesus was risen but not in the flesh. I think it safe to say they would have found these parodies on the physical resurrection as supporting their point of view.

    I look forward to reading and viewing the many links everyone has so kindly posted, it looks like some funny stuff (even if it is an almost 2,000 year old premise — good jokes never die, they just get resurrected!).

  9. P.S. There are two other skeptical angles I want to take with zombies in the future, so expect to see them coming back in this series soon!

    Of course we’ll expect them to come back. They’re zombies!

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