Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] That Christ delivered this resurrection the apostolic writings also bear witness: for the apostles, at least among Israel, had no other business than to unseal the old testament, to seal the new, and, rather, now to proclaim God in Christ. [2] So on the resurrection too they brought forward nothing new, except that they announced this very resurrection as bound up with the glory of Christ, receiving it otherwise as a plain matter already familiar to the faith, without any question as to its nature — the only ones contesting it being the Sadducees; so much easier was it found to deny the resurrection of the dead outright than to understand it differently. [3] You have Paul, before the high priests, under the tribune, among Sadducees and Pharisees, professing his faith: Men, brothers, he says, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; it is concerning hope, and concerning the resurrection, that I am on trial before you — a resurrection shared in common, no doubt, lest, since he already appeared a transgressor of the law, he should be thought, on the chief article of the whole faith, that is, on the resurrection, to side with the Sadducees. Thus, by not wishing to seem to be undoing faith in the resurrection, he was in fact confirming it, siding with the Pharisees and repudiating the Sadducees who denied it. [4] Likewise before Agrippa he says he offers nothing beyond what the prophets had announced. So he was upholding the resurrection too, of just the kind the prophets had announced. [5] For also, in recalling what was written in Moses concerning the resurrection of the dead, he knew it to be a bodily one, in which, namely, a man's blood will be required back. [6] So then he was preaching a resurrection of the very kind that the Pharisees had accepted, and the Lord himself had defended, and the Sadducees — precisely so as not to believe in that kind either — had refused to admit at all. [7] Nor did the Athenians understand anything different from what Paul was proclaiming: indeed, they laughed him to scorn — and they would not have laughed at all had they heard from him only a restoration of the soul; for a mere renewal of the soul is exactly what they would have embraced, since it only confirmed their own native philosophy. [8] But once the nations were shaken by the very novelty of this unheard-of proclamation of resurrection, and a fitting incredulity began to twist faith in so great a matter into questions, then the apostle, through practically the whole of his writings, took care to strengthen faith in this hope — showing both that it exists and that it has not yet taken place, and — what was more in question — that it is bodily, and — what was doubted still further — bodily in no other sense than this.