This is an impressively monumental volume. The text of Tertullian's De resurrectione mortuorum is ninety-two pages in Borleffs’s 1954 edition in CCL ii, while this volume, including French translation, comes in at 663 pages, in which there are 251 pages of various introductions. Sources Chrétiennes has been steadily publishing fresh editions and French translations of Tertullian's works since the 1952 volume of De baptismo (SC xxxv). This is a most welcome addition to that still incomplete project. Helpfully, a list of differences between Podolak's and Borleff's texts is offered for the reader (pp. 191–3). The size of the bibliography (pp. 195–246) shows the breadth of consultation that went into the preparation of this volume.
The first point of interest is the name given to the text. It is usually known as De resurrectione mortuorum, following the twelfth-century Codex Trecensis (Troyes, BM 523). After a thorough description of the available manuscripts (pp. 145–64) and the transmission of the text (pp. 165–79), Siniscalco argues for the title being De carnis resurrectione (pp. 185–9). I am particularly grateful for the time and effort put into the analysis of the manuscripts. Given that the companion piece of this work, De carne Christi, focuses on the reality of Christ's flesh, it makes sense that the following work would be specifically on the possibility of the resurrection not simply of the dead but of human flesh. Indeed, the focus of the work is to argue that it is not only the soul that will experience resurrection, but the flesh as well.
The volume begins with a discussion about the theology of resurrection (and eschatology) in early Christian authors and Tertullian in particular (pp. 15–67), where Siniscalco (p. 42) has divided Tertullian's works into Catholic, semi-Montanist and Montanist periods, despite the rather unfortunate impression that creates. This discussion about anthropology and eschatology in this text specifically is continued at pp. 127–41.
In terms of the date this work was written (pp. 69–73), there is no mention here of Timothy Barnes's work (although it appears in the bibliography, but only its 1971 edition rather than the 1985 revision), with which most English-speaking readers of Tertullian would be most familiar. He dates De resurrectione to 206/207. Siniscalco dates it between 211 and the beginning of 212. Both would agree on a relative chronology by placing it between De anima and De carne Christi on the one hand and De fuga in persecutione and Ad Scapulam on the other.
Siniscalco offers a rhetorical structure for the work (pp. 75–106). To me this is the best approach for discerning the method of argumentation an author constructed. A comparison with Robert Sider reveals that while the latter discerned the partitio and propositio in 2.5–7 and 2.13–14, here the propositio is said to run from 18–28. The further pages on style (pp. 107–16) are a useful addition. The Christian position is contrasted briefly at the beginning with that of non-Christians and then, with greater emphasis, with that of former Christians (i.e. heretics), who had argued that Jesus did not possess real flesh. Tertullian faced the most basic of objections to the idea of the resurrection of the flesh head-on: since the flesh changes during life and disintegrates in death and since sin is so intimately connected with flesh, just what will it be like in resurrection? For him, the flesh was noble and its destiny clearly mapped out in Scripture, providing that one read it correctly (and in this work we see Tertullian's attitude towards allegory, at least as it helped him make this particular argument). The exposition of Scripture occupies most of Tertullian's efforts in this work. While he sufficiently shows that Scripture argued for the resurrection of the whole person, body and soul, the initial question about the quality of the flesh in the resurrection is one that Tertullian addressed with reference to 1 Corinthians xv and the change to the flesh in the resurrection (ch. 52).
The notes to the text and translation are extensive and will prove beneficial to readers of Tertullian. This volume will be essential for scholars of Tertullian and the degree of erudition that the team responsible for its creation has managed to achieve is a standard for future editors of ancient texts. Readers are provided with a valuable framework through which to interpret the text of Tertullian they read. Sources Chrétiennes has produced another magnificent work.
